chibald Forbes
 
 
 GIFT OF 
 SEELEY W. MUDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 DR. JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 
 
 to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH 
 
 JOHN FISKE
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California
 
 Mm df action 
 
 HAVELOCK
 
 HAVELOCK
 
 H AVELOCK 
 
 BY 
 
 AECHIBALD FORBES 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1890 
 
 85961 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 4-1 5. Z 
 HZF7 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 n 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 ti 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EARLY LIFE BURMAH AND PEACE-TIME 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 AFGHANISTAN . . . . . . .18 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 O5 
 
 H GWALIOR AND THE PUNJAB . . . . .49 
 
 CD 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 >. 
 
 *fi 
 
 ^ PEACE-TIME AND PERSIA .... 69 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 FROM BOMBAY TO CAWNPORE . . . .83 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 No THOROUGHFARE 143 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 LUCKNOW AND THE MANGO-TREE . 178
 
 NOTE 
 
 UNTIL a very short time ago no authentic portrait of Havelock 
 was known to be extant. The pathetic engraving accompanying 
 Marshman's biography, the oil-painting and the marble bust in the 
 possession of Sir H. M.'Havelock -Allan, are all so much idealised 
 as to have nearly lost the expression of the original. It was known 
 that Havelock had once, and only once, been photographed, the only 
 known result being a miniature enclosed in a locket worn by his 
 wife. It is pleasant to add that a successful search for this minia- 
 ture has been made by Sir H. M. Havelock- Allan with the kind 
 intent to render this little volume more complete.
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 EARLY LIFE BURMAH AND PEACE-TIME 
 
 THERE are two occasions on which a man, reserved by 
 nature and training, is apt to disclose himself without 
 restraint ; in confidential communication with his closest 
 and most trusted friend; and on his deathbed face to 
 face with eternity. 
 
 Henry Havelock's dearest friend was George Broad- 
 foot; to whom he thus wrote, as the outcome of the 
 experience of half a century : "In public affairs, as in 
 matters eternal, the path of popularity is the broad way, 
 and that of duty the strait gate, and ' few there be that 
 enter thereby.' Principles alone are worth living for 
 or striving for ; and of all the animals, the most ill- 
 judging, ungrateful, and opposed to their own true 
 interests, are men, that is mankind." When he was 
 near his end, lying in the dhooly under the trees of the 
 Dilkoosha, there came to take farewell of him his valiant 
 and loyal comrade Outram : to whom the dying man's 
 composed assurance was, " I have for forty years so ruled 
 my life that when death came I might face it without fear." 
 
 These two expressions divulge Havelock's character 
 more perspicuously than could any laboured effort of 
 analysis. High principled as well by nature as by 
 religion ; cynical in a measure, probably by nature the 
 
 f & B
 
 2 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 natural trait confirmed and intensified by the sense of 
 disappointment; reserved and sternly disciplined yet 
 at heart fervid and enthusiastic, Havelock lived a long 
 life of repression ; and fate so ruled that his genius 
 had but a late and brief, although singularly brilliant 
 opportunity of proving itself. 
 
 The Havelocks were of the Danelagh, that region 
 of England which, throughout the centuries since first 
 the galleys of the Norsemen crossed the sea we now 
 call the German Ocean, has produced so many men of 
 forward and resolute character. Their original ancestor 
 may have been that Havelok the Dane whose name 
 still lives in one of the oldest lays in the language ; but 
 the pedigree matters little of a man who is the maker 
 of his own name. William Havelock was a prosperous 
 shipbuilder of Sunderland, who, having married the 
 daughter of a Stockton-on-Tees solicitor and having 
 acquired a competency while still in middle life, gave up 
 business and put his money into land, purchasing and 
 settling on the property of Ingress Park, near Dartford 
 in Kent. He had four sons, all of whom went into the 
 army. The two eldest, William and Henry, were born 
 at Ford Hall, Bishop Wearmouth, before the migration 
 southward. The date of Henry's birth was April 5th, 
 1795. 
 
 He went to school very young ; one reads of him 
 at the age of five riding on pony-back the three miles 
 into Dartford, along with his elder brother William, to 
 the seminary of the Rev. Mr. Bradley the curate of 
 that parish. The sagacious reader will heartily agree 
 with the lively biographer of Fitz James Duke of 
 Berwick, when he writes: "No part of biography is
 
 AT THE CHARTERHOUSE 
 
 so apocryphal as that which records the wise saws 
 and modern instances of heroes in the chrysalis state 
 of petticoats and knickerbockers." Havelock has not 
 escaped this species of cruel kindness ; but the curioug 
 regarding his valorous tree-climbings and his chivalrously 
 earned black eyes are referred to the pages of Marshman 
 and Headley. At the age of ten he entered the 
 Charterhouse, where he remained seven years. On this 
 period of his life he ever looked back with pleasure and 
 gratitude. He was of that nature that he did not chafe 
 under the severity of the discipline or the hardships and 
 humiliations of fagging ; and it was no doubt his apprecia- 
 tion of the rigorous discipline of the Charterhouse that 
 mainly made him in after life the military Tartar he un- 
 questionably was. During his curriculum at the Charter- 
 house he addicted himself closely to the study of theclassics, 
 and became an accomplished if not very profound Greek 
 and Latin scholar. Indeed he so imbued himself with the 
 manner of the great historians of antiquity that the 
 works of which in after life he was the author read less 
 like original compositions than like translations from the 
 classics, rendered all but literally in idiom, in style, and 
 even in mannerisms. If the word was in use in his 
 time, Havelock was probably regarded as a " sap " by his 
 comrades of the Charterhouse. His sedate and reflective 
 disposition earned for him the nickname of "Phlos," an 
 abbreviation of " Philosopher " ; and as " Phlos," or more 
 familiarly as " Old Phlos," he dwelt in the memory of 
 his Carthusian contemporaries. Some of these were 
 notable men. Havelock writes : " Nearly contemporary 
 with me were George Waddington, Dean of Durham, 
 distinguished as a scholar and man of letters ; George
 
 4 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 Grote, the historian of Greece ; Archdeacon Hale, after- 
 wards Master of the Charterhouse ; Alderman Thomp- 
 son, M.P. for Northumberland ; Sir Wm. Macnaghten, 
 the talented but unfortunate envoy at Cabul; the 
 Eight Hon. Fox Maule, afterwards Lord Panmure, 
 Secretary-at-\Var ; Eastlake the painter ; and Yates the 
 actor." 
 
 Havelock was fourteen, and a fourth form boy at the 
 Charterhouse, when the first great misfortune of his life 
 befell him in the sudden loss of his mother. From his 
 childhood she had influenced his character for good ; and 
 to her he was indebted for those early religious im- 
 pressions which in after life deeply influenced his whole 
 character. He took the piety of home with him into the 
 uncongenial atmosphere of the great public school ; and 
 he tells how " four of his Charterhouse companions 
 united with him in seeking the seclusion of one of the 
 dormitories for exercises of devotion, though certain in 
 those days of being branded, if detected, as Methodists 
 and canting hypocrites." When he was at home for the 
 Christmas holidays of 1809-10 his mother was struck 
 down by apoplexy, but she rallied for the time and he 
 went back to school early in February. Before the 
 month Avas out he was summoned home, to find himself 
 motherless. The shock of his bereavement affected him 
 for years. 
 
 Dr. Kaine died in 1811, and a new king arose in the 
 Charterhouse who was not to Havelock's taste. Dr. 
 Russell introduced relaxations of that stern discipline 
 which his predecessor had enforced with the vigour 
 Havelock admired so ardently, and the young stickler 
 for Draconian methods persuaded his father to remove
 
 r CHOOSING A PROFESSION 5 
 
 him. His preparation for the university was interrupted 
 by the financial embarrassment which overtook his 
 father and enforced the sale of Ingress Park. The lad's 
 mother had chosen for him the profession of the law ; 
 his father consented ; so in 1813 he was entered of the 
 Middle Temple and became a pupil of Chitty, the 
 famous special pleader, in whose chambers Talfourd, the 
 author of Ion, was his fellow-student. But he was not 
 destined either to succeed or to fail at the bar. He had 
 been in Mr. Chitty's chambers over a twelvemonth when 
 his father withdrew his support, and the son, now on the 
 threshold of manhood, found himself without any settled 
 plan of life. 
 
 It was far different with his brother William, who, 
 although not many years older than Henry, was already 
 a veteran soldier whose name still lives in history as 
 " the fair-haired boy of the Peninsula," and who was 
 later to die a soldier's death in the meUe of Eamnuggur. 
 William Havelock had joined Craufurd's famous Light 
 Division in time for the bloody fight of the Coa, had shared 
 in the subsequent battles of the Peninsular war, and had 
 earned the good offices of his chief, General von Alten, 
 by his conduct on the field of Waterloo. He came home 
 to recover from the wound he had received in that battle ; 
 and at home he found his younger brother Henry in 
 rather a melancholy plight. The soldier -brother, with 
 characteristic energy, cut a way through the complica- 
 tions. He volunteered to solicit Baron von Alten to 
 use his influence to procure a commission for Henry. 
 Henry readily accepted the fraternal suggestion ; the 
 Baron succeeded in obtaining the commission, and 
 Henry Havelock at the age of twenty became a soldier.
 
 6 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 In the autumn of 1815 he was gazetted second lieu- 
 tenant in the old Ninety-fifth, now the Rifle Brigade, 
 one of the most distinguished regiments in the British 
 army. Joining at Shorncliffe in the beginning of 1816, 
 he was assigned to the company commanded by Captain 
 Henry Smith. That gallant soldier was already a veteran 
 of the Peninsula and Waterloo, and in after years he 
 was to attain distinction as a commander in the Punjab 
 and in South Africa. Havelock was fortunate in having 
 so capable a tutor in the practical part of his military 
 education, and more fortunate still in winning the steady 
 and lasting friendship of a man who did not lightly 
 make friends. Long after both ceased to belong to 
 the corps in which their comradeship had commenced, 
 the two maintained a regular correspondence, and 
 Havelock never ceased to feel for his old captain the 
 strongest attachment and gratitude. 
 
 Whether by predilection or because he could not do 
 any better for himself, Henry Havelock had put on the 
 king's uniform, and he was to have full opportunity to 
 realise how weariful a trade is soldiering in the piping 
 times of peace. He spent nearly seven years of un- 
 eventful home service in the Ninety-fifth, remaining all 
 that time in the same battalion and the same company. 
 He was too serious to care for the light-hearted life 
 of the average subaltern, too industrious to endure 
 idleness, too conscientious to belong to a profession 
 and be content to remain unversed in its principles 
 'and literature. In those simple practical days there 
 were as yet no apostles of military novelty engaging 
 themselves in authoritatively assuring mankind that 
 there is not, never has been, and never will be an " art
 
 MILITAR Y STUD Y 
 
 of war " ; and Havelock, primitively free from the be- 
 wilderment such dicta are calculated to produce in the 
 mind of the military student, gave himself with serene 
 assiduity to the study of Clausewitz, Jomini, Tempelhof, 
 and Lloyd. Realising further that in the world's history 
 no art or science or code of principles ever sprang full- 
 grown into being, but, on the contrary, got itself labori- 
 ously constructed out of innumerable instances of actual 
 experience, he read with close attention all the military 
 history to which he could obtain access. The wealth of 
 professional knowledge he acquired during this period was 
 to be of constant and valuable service to the successive 
 commanders under whom he served in the field, and 
 co-operated with his innate capacity for war in bringing 
 about the successes he achieved when independent com- 
 mand ultimately was accorded to himself. He modestly 
 wrote of this time of study that "he now acquired some 
 knowledge of his profession, which was useful to him in 
 after years"; but probably no soldier of his day was more 
 accomplished professionally than Havelock had made 
 himself during the period between his entering the army 
 and embarking for India. This fulness of knowledge 
 and conversance with precedent and examples perhaps 
 engendered some tendency to pedantry. The tendency 
 discloses itself most in his writings. If men smiled when 
 the chief would announce that he was about to put in 
 practice the manoeuvre by which Frederic conquered at 
 Leuthen, or that the operation he was enjoining was 
 identical with that which Marlborough had found suc- 
 cessful on the day of Blenheim, the smile was with the 
 chief when manoeuvre or operation had given him the 
 victory he never tried for in vain.
 
 8 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 As Europe sank deeper and deeper into the lap of 
 peace, it became more and more apparent to the young 
 student of the art military that it was to no practical pur- 
 pose, while he remained at home, that he was thus equip- 
 ping himself for superior efficiency on active service in 
 the field. India presented a likelier field for one whose 
 strongest aspiration was to be a man of action. His 
 brothers William and Charles were already serving there. 
 Henry exchanged into the Thirteenth Light Infantry, 
 sailed for Calcutta, and arrived there in May 1823. 
 
 His early formed religious impressions Avere deepened 
 on the voyage by intimate association with a fellow- 
 passenger; and during the whole period of his subse- 
 quent regimental service he was in the habit of assem- 
 bling for religious instruction and communion such of 
 the soldiers of his regiment as chose to attend the devo- 
 tional exercises. Because of his own strict piety and 
 his regard for the religious welfare of his men, he had 
 to endure the inevitable scoff and contumely of men who 
 " cared for none of these things," and his knot of godly 
 soldiers were sneered at as "Havelock's saints." But 
 their uniform good conduct elicited from blunt old Sale 
 the characteristic aspiration : " I wish to God the whole 
 regiment were 'Havelock's saints,' for I never see a 
 1 saint ' in the guardroom, or his name in the defaulters' 
 book ! " Havelock had not been long in India before he 
 became intimate with the Baptist Missionaries at Seram- 
 pore, to the daughter of one of whom, the Rev. Dr. 
 Marshman, he was married in 1829. Soon after this 
 union he determined to join the Baptist community, and 
 was accordingly baptized into it in the Serampore 
 chapel. During his subsequent career, in the words of
 
 i A STAFF-OFFICER IN THE BURMESE WAR 9 
 
 his Baptist biographer : " Avhile consorting more inti- 
 mately with those whose opinions coincided with his own, 
 he was free from the restrictions of sectarianism, and 
 rejoiced in the fellowship of all who held the Christian 
 faith, and were animated with the same Christian hope." 
 During Havelock's first year in India he was quartered 
 with his regiment at Calcutta, and when the first Bur- 
 mese war was entered into in 1824, he received the 
 appointment of Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General on 
 the headquarter staff of the expedition. The Burman 
 monarch of the period, a descendant of Alomprah and a 
 predecessor of Thebau, had become both aggressive and 
 insolent, and Lord Amherst, the contemporary Governor- 
 General, undertook to punish him in the approved Anglo- 
 Indian manner. The first Burmese war was a dreary 
 business ; it lasted two years, and there were three cam- 
 paigns of mixed Avading and bush- whacking, during which 
 Ave lost, chiefly from disease, five thousand men, of whom 
 three thousand Avere British officers and soldiers. It was 
 regarded as a highly successful Avar, because when within 
 striking distance of the insolent "barbarian's" capital, our 
 arms extorted from him a treaty surrendering consider- 
 able territory and a Avar indemnity Avhich was never paid. 
 It need not be said that it was an expensive Avar we 
 have never learned the art of making Avar economically. 
 And yet again it is a forgotten Avar, of Avhich probably 
 not one reader in twenty has ever heard ; and it Avas too 
 uninteresting to justify here eA'en the most meagre 
 sketch of it. One incident, however, may claim atten- 
 tion. Havelock, Avho with an interval of sickness had 
 been on duty throughout ahvays evincing activity, pro- 
 fessional capacity, and ready daring, had an interesting
 
 HAVE LOCK 
 
 and important mission assigned to him in the closing 
 scene. Sir Archibald Campbell selected him with two 
 associate officers to proceed from Yandaboo to Ava, and 
 receive from the " golden foot " the ratification of a 
 treaty, in the settlement of the terms of which the 
 " Lord of the great White Elephant " was represented 
 by a couple of American missionaries whom he had 
 released from chains. " The monarch of Ava," wrote 
 Havelock, " seated on his throne of state, surrounded by 
 the ensigns of royalty, environed by the princes of the 
 royal house and lineage, and attended by the high 
 ministers and chief officers of the realm, received, with 
 every mark of gracious consideration, our congratulations 
 in the name of the Commissioners on the pacification 
 happily concluded between the two States, accepted their 
 presents, directed suitable returns to be made ; and in 
 conclusion caused the British officers entrusted with this 
 charge to be invested with the insignia of titles and 
 honorary distinctions." In later receptions by Burman 
 monarchs official Britons were exempt from removing 
 their boots before entering the august presence ; unoffi- 
 cial presentees went into the throne-room in their socks. 
 Havelock is so magniloquent that it is not quite clear 
 whether he did not denude himself even of those 
 articles ; the envoys conceded, he says, the pulling off 
 " the exterior covering of the feet " at the bottom of the 
 staircase. 
 
 Those were not the days of copious brevets and lavish 
 "D.S.O.s," and all the honour and glory Havelock took 
 away from Burmah was his investiture by the King of 
 Ava with a forehead-fillet decoration which constituted 
 him a " Valorous, renowned Rajah " : a decoration which
 
 i HIS HISTORY OF THE CAMPAIGN 11 
 
 he is not recorded to have applied for permission to 
 wear. In default of military reward for his services he 
 attempted to extract from the war some literary recogni- 
 tion. He wrote a history of it, which is among the 
 stiffest productions of its kind. It is dedicated to Lord 
 Combermere (then Commander -in -Chief in India), as 
 " the Leader for whom providence reserved the glory of 
 silencing the haughty reproach of our pagan enemies, 
 and of breaking the last spell upon the opinion of the 
 ignorant, and the turbulent, within the Indies, by the 
 daring and scientific reduction of that fortress vainly 
 named the inviolate, the impregnable." The preface 
 consists of a long quotation from Thucydides in the 
 original Greek without a translation ; and of a quota- 
 tion from Bacon's Essay on Empire. The text is as 
 involved, turgid, and stilted as might be expected from 
 such a dedication and preface. Not occasionally but 
 uniformly, the Burman enemy are styled the "bar- 
 barians," a pedantic adoption of Caesar's designation 
 of the Gauls. It is affirmed that this publication made 
 for Havelock many enemies, and created a prejudice 
 against him which hindered his professional prospects. 
 There seem reasons for doubting this statement. It is 
 a task to read the book ; it may be full of adverse criti- 
 cism, but if so, the point is so obscured as to be un- 
 discernible. It A^as printed and published in India, and 
 its author admits that it fell still-born from the press. 
 Marshman relates an anecdote regarding this work. 
 "Some time after its appearance," he says, "William 
 Havelock having visited England and called at the 
 Horse Guards, saw the Campaigns in Am lying on the 
 table of the officer to whom he addressed himself. ' Are
 
 12 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 you the author of that work 1 ' was the inquiry. ' It is 
 from the pen of my younger brother.' 'Is he tired of 
 his commission 1 ' was the curt and significant rejoinder." 
 The simple comment on this is that Marshman must 
 have been the victim of a hoax. 
 
 On the termination of the Burmese war Havelock 
 returned to regimental duty at Dinapore for a few 
 months, but in the spring of 1827, through the influence 
 of Colonel (afterwards General Sir Willoughby) Cotton, 
 whose acquaintance he had made in Burmah, and in some 
 degree in recognition of good service in that country, he 
 Avas appointed to the adjutancy of the depot of King's 
 troops at Chinsurah ; a pleasant post for him, since at 
 Chinsurah he was within a few miles of his friends at 
 Serampore. His work in this staff billet was to take charge 
 of drafts for H.M.'s regiments in India on their arrival 
 from England, administer a tonic in the shape of drill and 
 discipline, and then arrange for their transport to their 
 respective regiments. He varied this routine work by 
 courtship followed by a marriage which was the source 
 of unalloyed happiness till the last day of his life. Even 
 on his wedding-day Havelock was the " duty soldier." 
 He was on a court-martial assembling in Calcutta at 
 noon of that day. He was duly married in the morn- 
 ing, journeyed to Calcutta in a swift boat, attended the 
 court, and was back in Serampore in time for what 
 Marshman calls the " nuptial banquet." Havelock en- 
 joyed the Chinsurah staff appointment for nearly four 
 years ; but the depot was abolished in the beginning of 
 1831, and he had to return to regimental duty at Dina- 
 pore, and afterwards at Agra and Kurnaul, the successive 
 stations of the Thirteenth. There was a brief interval in
 
 i ADJUTANT OF HIS REGIME XT 13 
 
 1834 during which, having qualified in Hindostanee and 
 Persian in the higher standard, he held the position of 
 interpreter to H.M.'s Sixteenth Eegiment quartered at 
 Cawnpore. But he lost that appointment in the begin- 
 ning of 1835, and returned to Agra, to quote his own 
 words "a lieutenant of foot, without even the com- 
 mand of a company, and not a rupee in the world 
 besides my pay and allowances." Presently the regi- 
 mental adjutancy fell vacant, and his application for 
 the appointment to Lord Henry Bentinck, who was 
 Commander-in-Chief as well as Governor -General, 
 proved successful, Lord Henry's half-jocose stipulation 
 being that " the adjutant must not preach." 
 
 Havelock held the adjutancy of the Thirteenth for 
 three and a half years. With Sale for its colonel and 
 Havelock for its adjutant, the good old corps maintained 
 to the fullest its reputation for smartness and efficiency. 
 It seems he did preach, notwithstanding Lord Henry's 
 caution; at all events, "through his exertions, chapels 
 were erected near the barracks for the Baptist and the 
 Church of England soldiers, at which, on week days as 
 on Sundays, the attendance was large." Through his 
 influence a Temperance Society was formed in the regi- 
 ment, which had a coffee-house with every attraction 
 that might wean men from the canteen. At length in 
 1838 he got his captaincy without purchase. Four 
 years before his friends at Serampore had assisted him 
 in the attempt to attain it by purchase, but the cruellest 
 ill fortune attended the effort. It was the year of the 
 tremendous commercial crisis in Bengal, when the great 
 mercantile houses of Calcutta came rattling down as 
 if they had been built of cards. Havelock's financial
 
 i 4 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 arrangement that the purchase-money should be forth- 
 coming was made in the first instance with Alexander 
 & Co. Pending the vacancy they failed. With two 
 other houses in succession the arrangement was renewed. 
 Before his offer to purchase reached England Mackintosh 
 & Co. and Fergusson & Co. had followed each other 
 to the limbo of insolvency, and he had to submit to be 
 purchased over. 
 
 Havelock was forty-three years of age and had been 
 twenty -three years in the service, when he attained 
 without purchase the substantive rank of captain. But 
 titularly he had not been a lieutenant for the previous 
 eight years. In those days a subaltern on completion of 
 fifteen years' service became a brevet-captain. It was 
 an empty name, since it carried neither increased pay 
 nor any real promotion ; the brevet-captain was as much 
 a subaltern as ever. Havelock himself through the 
 greater part of his career grumbled it must be said, 
 not with ill humour at the slowness of his promotion, 
 until one day he was all of a sudden confronted by the 
 danger of being made a major-general to his detriment. 
 In his later subaltern days he writes of himself as " the 
 neglected lieutenant." His biographers unite to de- 
 nounce the Government for having wantonly left him to 
 pine in neglect and obscurity. This charge seems to be 
 unjustifiable. On the second page of this book Havelock 
 is spoken of as having lived long in disappointment and 
 repression ; but I regard those conditions as relative, 
 and not the outcome either of neglect or oppression. 
 Havelock felt himself disappointed and repressed because 
 of a consciousness of his own superiority in most things 
 that make up the fine soldier's character to the men
 
 who were his regimental compeers, and who passed over 
 him by dint of " brutal capital." There is no profession 
 whose ranks do not hold " mute inglorious Miltons " who 
 know that they could be both vocal and glorious if oppor- 
 tunity were given them ; and who experience the sense 
 of disappointment and repression because it is not. But 
 it cannot well be the part of any authority of an organ- 
 ised system to go prospecting about in quest of potential 
 brilliancy in a state of suppression. Specially adverse to 
 any such selection in a military organisation is a condi- 
 tion of peace; it has been tried occasionally in time of Avar, 
 as for instance by the North in the great American civil 
 war, and among the unsatisfactory results were M'Clellan, 
 Burnside, Hooker, and Pope. Experience proves that the 
 empirical is a crude and apt to be a hazardous method. 
 
 Two things are put forward in regard to Havelock, 
 not without countenance from under his own hand : 
 that his promotion was slow ; and that he did not receive 
 employment commensurate with his merits. As to the 
 former claim it must be pointed out that of his own 
 accord and for his own purposes he effected exchange 
 after exchange, each exchange delaying his promotion by 
 relegating him to the foot of his rank. Again, he was 
 avowedly a non-purchase officer, and as such promotion 
 was possible for him only by death-vacancy or augment- 
 ation. It was his misfortune and nobody's blame that 
 his intended purchase of his company should have been 
 thwarted by the failure of the Calcutta houses. Fortune 
 and the regulations were indeed unkind to him ; for he 
 writes that he was " purchased over by three sots and 
 two fools " ; but the authorities of the day were respon- 
 sible neither for fortune nor for the regulations. His
 
 16 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 right to purchase his lieutenant-colonelcy he voluntarily 
 ceded, to his great honour, that he might not damnify 
 two other officers. Nevertheless, he was made a full 
 colonel in 1854, and but that at his own request and to 
 serve his own purposes he procured a postponement, he 
 would have been gazetted a major-general in the begin- 
 ning of 1856 ; he actually attained this rank in July 
 of the following year. He was thus a major-general 
 after forty-two years' service ; had he chosen he would 
 have reached that rank after less than forty-one years' 
 service. Forty-one years looks a long time ; but many 
 of his contemporaries of not unequal distinction who 
 became major-generals about the time he did, did so 
 after longer service. Sir Colin Campbell served forty-six 
 years for his Leah. Sir Abraham Roberts, Sir Frederick's 
 father, became a major-general after fifty-one years' 
 service ; General Law, a purchase officer who had been 
 in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, reached that rank in 
 1859 after fifty years' soldiering ; General Eden, who 
 had served at Waterloo and in Burmah, and had bought 
 his regimental steps, after forty-seven years' service ; Sir 
 William Eden, also a purchase officer, after forty-eight ; 
 and General George Macdonald, who had soldiered all 
 over Europe, had been riddled by bullets at Waterloo, 
 and had purchased his majority, did not reach the rank 
 of major-general till he had served full fifty years. These 
 are names taken at random ; but they show conclusively 
 that Havelock, non-purchase officer as he was and suffer- 
 ing though he did by exchanges, was fairly fortunate in 
 having attained the rank of a general officer with forty- 
 two years' service. 
 
 As to the alleged neglect of his merits, it has to be
 
 HIS CAPTAINCY 17 
 
 pointed out that for an officer of the lower grades in the 
 Royal army India in Havelock's days afforded very few 
 opportunities. It was the Company's officers who ruled 
 provinces when still subalterns, conducted diplomatic 
 missions, were "politicals" whom generals in the field 
 obeyed. Burnes, Outram, Henry Lawrence, Nicholson, 
 Durand, Edwardes, Pottinger, Arthur Connolly, D'Arcy 
 Todd these were all John Company's men. To a senior 
 officer of the King's service staff appointments of value 
 were open, but the subaltern or the junior captain could 
 not be much else, outside his regiment, than an aide-de- 
 camp or brigade-major ; and in regard to such appoint- 
 ments interest was all in all. Havelock is said to have had 
 no interest ; yet during his Indian service he cannot be 
 accused of having wasted his energies over lavishly in 
 regimental duty. He was a subaltern in India for six- 
 teen years ; ten of which were spent in staff employ of 
 one kind or other. After he got his captaincy in 1838, 
 he was continuously in staff employ until he ceased to be 
 nominally a regimental officer, with the single exception 
 of four months spent with his regiment, when he growled 
 audibly at being relegated to " the oversight of the shirts 
 and stockings of No. 4 company of H.M.'s 13th Light 
 Infantry." This has not greatly the aspect of " pining 
 under cold neglect," but rather of exceptional recognition. 
 It may be questioned if such a record could be shown 
 of any other officer of English troops of Havelock's time.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AFGHANISTAN 
 
 THE year which saw Havelock a captain, was also the 
 year which saw Lord Auckland's misguided engagement 
 in that Afghan contest, the awful disasters of which were 
 but nominally avenged during his successor's term of 
 office. Havelock, save for a short term in the quiet 
 period of our tenure of Cabul, was in Afghanistan through- 
 out the occupation. He marched in with Keane's army ; 
 he marched out with Pollock's army of Retribution ; 
 his name is linked with the story of the defence of 
 Jellalabad by the " illustrious garrison." His Afghan 
 career therefore claims to be recounted in some detail, for 
 which he himself has furnished in part the materials ; 
 but in the first instance a brief outline of the earlier 
 events of this melancholy period may not be thought 
 out of place. 
 
 There is a weird resemblance between the two acts of 
 our Afghan drama, the period from 1838 to 1842, and 
 the period from 1878 to 1880. As in the second so in 
 the first, the pretext for our aggression was our jealousy 
 of Russian approaches toward our Indian frontiers ; as 
 in the first so in the second, our expenditure of blood, 
 treasure, and toil was utterly wasted. In 1838 the 
 Ameer of Afghanistan was Dost Mahomed, a prince of
 
 CHAP, n THE GENESIS OF THE AFGHAN WAR 19 
 
 strong character, who for twelve years had made good 
 his throne against all comers. An English emissary, the 
 gallant and enthusiastic Burnes, had been on a mission 
 to the Dost at his capital, and found him willing to 
 eschew all overtures from other powers and to throw in 
 his lot with the English. But Lord Auckland had given 
 himself to another policy. Under unhappy influence he 
 threw over Burnes, chose to mistrust the Dost, picked 
 Shah Soojah out of the dust of Loodhianah to use him 
 as a tool and a puppet, and determined to replace in the 
 Bala Hissar the weak-minded and untrustworthy exile 
 whom years before the Afghan nation had cast out as 
 a hissing and a reproach. In vain did Burnes attest the 
 good faith of the Dost; his representations went for 
 nothing against the prejudices which had been instilled 
 into Lord Auckland, and in the face of the appearance 
 at Cabul of a Eussian envoy. There was some reason 
 in the project of sending succour to Herat, besieged by 
 the Persians acting under Eussian influence ; but when 
 the siege of that place was raised in September 1838, 
 there ceased to be any valid objective for the expedi- 
 tion. But Lord Auckland had concluded the Tripartite 
 Treaty with old Eunjeet Singh the famous ruler of the 
 Sikhs, and with the wretched Shah Soojah. He had 
 committed himself yet further by publishing a manifesto 
 in which Durand has said "the words 'justice and 
 necessity ' were applied in a manner for which there is 
 fortunately no precedent in the English language," and of 
 which Sir Henry Edwardes remarked that "the views and 
 conduct of Dost Mahomed were misrepresented with a 
 hardihood which a Eussian statesman might have envied." 
 The army intended for the invasion of Afghanistan,
 
 HA VELOCK 
 
 as originally constituted, was to consist of about sixteen 
 thousand soldiers ; the Bengal quota ten thousand strong, 
 the Bombay quota six thousand ; the whole to be com- 
 manded by Sir Harry Fane, the Commander-in-Chief. 
 In addition there was Shah Soojah's levy of native 
 troops recruited in India, officered by Europeans and 
 maintained at the charge of the Indian Government ; all 
 told, this force amounted to some four thousand, so that 
 the entire strength of the troops destined for the in- 
 vasion of Afghanistan did not fall short of twenty 
 thousand men. The nearest way to Cabul lay across 
 the Punjab, but it was judged politic to avoid the 
 Sikh territory, and the prescribed route was down the 
 left bank of the Sutlej to its junction with the 
 Indus, down the left bank of the Indus to the crossing- 
 place at Roree, and from Sukkur across the Scinde 
 and northern Belooch provinces over Quettah and the 
 Pisheen valley to Candahar; thence by Khelat-i-Ghilzi 
 and Ghuznee to Cabul. This was a line of advance 
 excessively circuitous, immensely long, full of difficulties, 
 and equally precarious as to supplies and communica- 
 tions. Before the concentration at Ferozepore was 
 consummated, tidings reached the Governor -General of 
 the raising of the siege of Herat, whereupon it was 
 decided to reduce the strength of the Bengal contingent 
 by one-half, the other half to stand fast at Ferozepore 
 as a reserve. The command of the marching contingent 
 Fane deputed to Sir Willoughby Cotton. 
 
 That officer Havelock describes as the patron to 
 whom he had been indebted for previous good offices, 
 and he was again to be of service. Havelock had been 
 disappointed of the expected post of brigade-major in
 
 ii RUNJEET SINGH'S " PET TIPPLE " 21 
 
 Sale's brigade, and had resigned himself to making the 
 campaign as a regimental officer. But Cotton gave him 
 a temporary billet as postmaster to his division, and 
 when at Ferozepore he got the command of the whole 
 marching column, and became entitled to a second aide- 
 de-camp, he appointed Havelock to the post. There 
 was an interlude at Ferozepore of reviews and high 
 jinks with the astute, debauched old Runjeet Singh ; of 
 which proceedings, in his narrative of the expedition, 
 Havelock gives a detailed and graphic account, dwelling 
 with extreme disapprobation on Eunjeet's addiction to a 
 "pet tipple," strong enough to lay out the hardest 
 drinker in the British camp, but which the old reprobate 
 quaffed freely without turning a hair. On December 
 10th 1838, Sir Willoughby Cotton began the long 
 march which was not to terminate at Cabul until 
 August 6th 1839. The advance to the passage of the 
 Indus was uneventful. It was chiefly through the 
 territories of the Nawab of Bawalpore, an independent 
 Sikh State. The Nawab proved a most obliging and 
 gentlemanly person ; he entertained the leaders of the 
 expedition in his capital, amusing them with marvellous 
 shikar stories ; and he kept the commissariat liberally 
 supplied. But when at Subzulkote the column entered 
 the territory of the Scindian Ameer of Kyrpore, empty 
 promises took the place of cordial assistance. The 
 Bengal contingent crossed the Indus by a bridge of boats 
 linking Eoree with Sukkur, and moved on to Shirkar- 
 pore. Sir John Keane, commanding the Bombay 
 troops, having landed near the mouth of the Indus, 
 marched up the right bank of the great river, 
 assumed the supreme command of the whole
 
 22 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 force, and relegated Cotton to the command of the 
 Bengal Infantry Division. Meanwhile the Bengal 
 troops had been suffering greatly in crossing the desert 
 region of Cutch Gundava, losing a great part of their 
 already inadequate transport. Havelock does not dilate 
 on difficulties encountered in the Bolan pass, regarding 
 which Kaye is copious and emphatic; and he found 
 flowers decking the wide expanse of the ill-reputed 
 Dushte-be-daulat the "desert of misery." But at 
 Quettah no supplies were found, none were procurable 
 from the vicinity, those brought up with the column 
 were all but exhausted, and during the delay enforced 
 by Keane's orders, Cotton had to put his people on 
 famine rations. Keane arrived at Quettah on April 6th, 
 on the following day the advance on Candahar began, and 
 the force reached that capital on the 27th. It had been 
 a slow but not a bloody march. Havelock writes : 
 " Hitherto our task has been escorting, not campaigning, 
 but this pacific duty has been performed under arduous 
 circumstances, exposure to the vicissitudes of climate, 
 fatigue, and deficiency of food and water." 
 
 Shah Soojah did not secure much popularity in the 
 southern capital of Afghanistan ; the Douranee Sirdars 
 who took his side had to be bribed to do so. The army, 
 suffering severely from sickness, was compelled to halt at 
 Candahar till the ripened crops furnished supplies for 
 the advance to Cabul, which began on June 27th, the 
 day on which died old Runjeet Singh, " the Lion of the 
 Punjab." The historic fortress of Ghuznee, two hundred 
 and seventy miles distant from Candahar, was approached 
 on July 20th ; on the following day Cotton and Have- 
 lock, riding to the front, saw the gray walls and lofty
 
 ii GHUZNEE THE COUP DE MAIN 23 
 
 citadel rising from out the foliage of the surrounding 
 gardens. Ghuznee was reported a place of great 
 strength, and a reconnaissance in force directed against 
 its southern face appeared to confirm this reputation. 
 It was full of troops, commanded by young Hyder 
 Khan, the son of the Dost ; the garrison seemed in 
 heart, and the artillery practice against the reconnoitring 
 force Havelock describes as " by no means despicable." 
 He comments very severely on Keane's conduct in having 
 left the siege train behind at Candahar, after it had been 
 laboriously dragged from Ferozepore across the desert 
 and up the passes. The truth is that Keane seems to 
 have known very well what he was about. Major Todd 
 and Lieutenant Leech, who had seen Ghuznee, had re- 
 ported to him as to its defences in terms which he 
 regarded as justifying him, in the scarcity of draught 
 animals, in leaving the siege guns in Candahar. An 
 inspection by his engineers confirmed the reports of the 
 officers mentioned, and he saw his way to winning 
 Ghuznee by a coup de main. Havelock, having freed his 
 military mind on the subject of the siege train, frankly 
 owns Keane's stroke to have been "one of the most 
 spirited and successful attempts in the annals of the 
 British in Asia." 
 
 This was what Keane did. He had become aware 
 that of the four gates of Ghuznee three had been built 
 up, the Cabul gate alone remained in use, and was 
 closed only by the massive wooden doors. In the gusty 
 darkness of the early morning of the 23rd, he placed his 
 field guns in battery on the heights opposite the northern 
 face of the fortress. The gardens under the Avail of 
 this face he filled with skirmishers ; a detachment of
 
 24 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 marksmen was detailed to make a false attack on the 
 southern face. Near the middle of this northern face 
 was the Cabul gate, outside which, close up but well in 
 cover, had been disposed a storming party with its 
 supports. The storming party commanded by Colonel 
 Dennie of the Thirteenth Light Infantry, was composed 
 of the light companies of the four European regiments. 
 The main column consisted of two European regiments 
 and the support of another, the whole commanded by 
 Brigadier Sale; the native regiments constituted the 
 reserve. All those dispositions were completed by three 
 A.M., and, favoured by the noise of the wind and the 
 darkness, without alarming the garrison. 
 
 At that hour the artillery opened fire. The skir- 
 mishers underneath the height whence the guns blazed, 
 engaged in a brisk fusillade ; the rattle of Hay's marks- 
 mens' fire was heard from the south. The garrison sprang 
 to the alert. The northern rampart became a sheet of 
 flame, and everywhere the cannonade and musketry fire 
 waxed in noise and volume. Suddenly, as the day was 
 beginning to dawn, a dull sound was heard by the head 
 of the waiting column, scarce audible elsewhere because 
 of the boisterous wind and the din of the firing. A 
 pillar of black smoke shot up from where had been the 
 Cabul gate, now a shattered ruin. The engineers, 
 Durand and Macleod, had crept across the bridge in the 
 darkness, had piled bags containing 900 Ibs. of powder 
 up against the massive portal, had fired the hose, and 
 had retired unhurt. 
 
 The bugle sounded the advance. Dennie carried his 
 stormers with their first rush into the dark and smoking 
 cavity, to meet hand-to-hand opposition from the
 
 ii THE STORM AND CAPTURE OF GHUZNEE 25 
 
 resolute Afghans, who had already recovered from their 
 surprise : Havelock vigorously recounts what followed. 
 
 Nothing could be distinctly seen in the narrow passage, 
 but the clash of sword-blade against bayonet was heard on 
 every side. The little band had to grope its way between 
 the yet standing walls in darkness, which the glimmer of the 
 blue light did not dissipate but rendered more perplexing. 
 But it was necessary to force a passage ; there was neither 
 time, nor space, indeed, for regular street firing, but in its 
 turn each loaded section gave its volley, and then made way 
 for the next, which, crowding to the front, poured in a deadly 
 discharge at half -pistol shot among the defenders. Thus 
 this forlorn hope won gradually their way onwards, till at 
 length its commander and their leading files beheld, over 
 the heads of their infuriated opponents, a small portion of 
 blue sky, and a twinkling star or two ; and then, in a 
 moment, the headmost soldiers found themselves within the 
 place. ^Resistance was overborne ; and no sooner did those 
 four companies feel themselves within the fortress than a 
 loud cheer which was heard beyond the pillars announced 
 their triumph to the troops outside ! Sale, following with 
 the main column, had a hand-to-hand fight with an Afghan, 
 in which he killed his man but was himself wounded. The 
 supports and reserves poured in ; the gates of the citadel 
 were carried ; and soon from its summit British flags were 
 flying. There was much hard fighting within the walls 
 before the resistance was crushed down. Five hundred 
 Afghan dead were found inside the place ; outside many 
 more fell under the sabres of Keane's cavalrymen. Akbar Khan 
 and fifteen hundred of his garrison were prisoners. A great 
 booty of provisions, horses, and arms fell to the conquerors, 
 whose loss in the assault amounted to eighteen killed and one 
 hundred and sixty-five wounded. 
 
 Keane experienced no further opposition on his way 
 to Cabul, the vicinity of which was reached on August 
 6th. The Dost would fain have made a stand but his 
 people deserted him en masse, and he rode away toward
 
 26 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 the Hindoo Koosh pursued unsuccessfully by Outram. 
 On the 7th Shah Soojah was escorted in full pomp 
 through the streets of Cabul to the Bala Hissar. Have- 
 lock riding in the procession, " did not hear the noisy 
 acclamations of a British or an Athenian mob, but the 
 expression of countenances indicated ready acquiescence, 
 or something more, in the new state of things." 
 
 Shah Soojah was on the throne, Afghanistan seemed 
 fairly tranquil, and the army of the Indus was broken 
 up. The Bengal division was to winter in Afghanistan, 
 and the local command had been assigned to Sir 
 Willoughby Cotton; but pending the arrival in India 
 of a new Commander-in-Chief his services were re- 
 quired there, and he and Havelock journeyed down the 
 Khyber to Peshawur. They remained in Peshawur 
 until the beginning of December, when the former was 
 remanded to the command in Afghanistan. Cotton had 
 a very high opinion of Havelock and urged him to 
 return with him to Cabul, offering him, in addition 
 to the position of aide-de-camp he already held, the 
 newly sanctioned post of Persian interpreter on his 
 staff. Havelock had reason to bewail the error he 
 made in not accepting the offers of his chief ; and 
 he charged himself with ingratitude as well as with 
 folly. Certainly in declining them Havelock was 
 actuated by no selfish motives. He was writing a 
 book on the military operations in Afghanistan, not for 
 honour and glory but for gain, and gain for a sacred 
 purpose. " I am too old for fame," he wrote to his 
 friends in Serampore. " I hear that Murray would give 
 a good price if the work were despatched speedily," he 
 had determined to publish in London. " Money is the
 
 II THE STILL-BIRTH OF HA VELOCICS BOOK 27 
 
 sole inducement ; bare lucre for my boy's education the 
 only object." So he hurried down country, finished his 
 book, had it set up in type at Serampore, and despatched 
 the printed matter to London, where it was published by 
 Colburn in two small volumes. Alas, he had sacrificed 
 the military opportunities offered him; and had lost 
 time, labour, and money. There was no " lucre " in the 
 book ; it was still-born. Intrinsically it did not deserve 
 the ignoble fate. The volumes can be read to-day with 
 interest and pleasure. It is true that the sentences are 
 ramrods ; the paragraphs subdivisions of soldiers in heavy 
 marching order moving close locked up ; each chapter 
 an advance in parade order made in slow time, with the 
 " Observations " at the end standing for the stately and 
 dignified salute. It is curious that Havelock's writing 
 for publication should be so stiff and pedantic, while his 
 private letters are bright, easy, lucid, and often humorous. 
 They have not the fervid brilliancy and graphic charac- 
 terisation of poor Burnes' correspondence, which often 
 has long stretches of sustained inspiration ; nor the in- 
 cisiveness, muscularity, and depth and clearness of insight 
 that mark the letters of his friend George Broadfoot. 
 Havelock's limitations stand defined on the surface of his 
 writings, private as well as public; he marks himself 
 with his own pen the soldier-man who can have no pre- 
 tension to be the soldier-statesman. But his letters are 
 always good reading ; in some of them there is a light 
 play of fancy which surprises one in the author oi the 
 Campaigns in Ava and the War in Afghanistan. Yet 
 the latter book, there is little doubt, would have made 
 its way, but that there was scant home interest in the 
 "military promenade" enacted in an obscure corner of
 
 28 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 Asia. Then, too, it was a trifle stale. Havelock pub- 
 lished no more books. His project for a narrative of 
 the final period in Afghanistan and of the defence of 
 Jellalabad was successfully discountenanced by Broad- 
 foot for reasons good ; and later a stricture by Herbert 
 Edwardes caused the discontinuance of a memoir of 
 Broadfoot when half completed. 
 
 Leaving Serampore in June 1840, Havelock began his 
 return journey to Cabul in charge of a detachment of 
 recruits. At Ferozepore he joined General Elphinstone, 
 who was on his way to assume the chief command in 
 Afghanistan on Sir Willoughby Cotton's retirement, and 
 who attached Havelock to his staff in the capacity of 
 Persian interpreter. The poor general was a brave and 
 not incapable officer, but he was so great a martyr to 
 chronic gout as to be physically unfit for any exertion. 
 The travellers reached Cabul about the beginning of 1841, 
 when Havelock found the military conditions extremely 
 unsatisfactory, and the political situation yet worse, 
 although Macnaghten professed full confidence. In Octo- 
 ber he was preparing to leave Cabul to take up the gover- 
 norship of Bombay ; General Elphinstone had begged to 
 be relieved, " unfit for anything " as he told Broadfoot 
 " done up body and mind." In a spirit of false economy 
 the Ghilzie tribes commanding the passes between Cabul 
 and Jellalabad had been docked of half their subsidies. 
 They had performed their contract to keep the passes 
 open and safe with great fidelity, and the mails to and 
 from the low country were as regular as those between 
 Calcutta and Patna. Now, incensed at the reduction, 
 they retaliated after their manner, blocked the passes, 
 and betook themselves to plunder. Sale's brigade
 
 II SALE'S BRIGADE QUITS CABUL 29 
 
 was on the eve of its return to India, and a native 
 regiment belonging to it, with some cavalry and artillery 
 and a detachment of George Broadfoot's sappers, were 
 sent in advance on the errand of clearing the passes. 
 Colonel Monteath and his force were attacked and com- 
 pelled to halt at Bootkhak, one march out. Sale was im- 
 mediately ordered out with the Thirteenth (Queen's) and 
 some artillery. The Thirteenth was Havelock's regiment, 
 with which he had seen no fighting since Burmah, and he 
 got permission from General Elphinstone temporarily to 
 join Sale. On October 12th Sale moved to Bootkhak, 
 picked up Monteath's force, pushed with it through the 
 Khoord Cabul pass, encountering serious opposition, left 
 Monteath beyond the pass, and fought his way back to 
 Bootkhak to obtain reinforcements and transport. He had 
 been severely wounded, and he sent Havelock, whom he 
 had made his staff-officer, back into cantonments to urge 
 expedition. Strengthened by a second native regiment 
 and other details the brigade pushed on to Tezeen, 
 through seventeen miles of defiles every foot of which 
 was contested. At Tezeen a convention was patched up 
 with the Ghilzies on the footing of the restoration of their 
 allowances, and Sale thought himself therefore justified 
 in sending back the native regiment and details which 
 had' constituted his latest reinforcement. Havelock 
 was anxious to return to Cabul with this body, but the 
 wounded Sale, finding him indispensable, gave him the 
 firm order to remain with him, and accepted all re- 
 sponsibility. The Ghilzies broke faith and harassed the 
 brigade all through the passes to Gundamak, not a little, 
 as Broadfoot acknowledges, to the demoralisation of both 
 British and native soldiers. Broadfoot was a very frank
 
 30 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 correspondent, and spoke his mind with great freedom. 
 This was the opinion he expressed at this time of Have- 
 lock : " Among our good officers, first comes Captain 
 Havelock. It is the fashion, especially in his own corps, 
 to sneer at him ; his manners are cold, while his religious 
 opinions (Baptist) seclude him from society ; but the 
 whole of them together would not compensate for his 
 loss. Brave to admiration, imperturbably cool, looking 
 at his profession as a science, and, as far as I can see or 
 judge, correct in his views." This was "praise from Sir 
 Hubert," for Broadfoot was a severe critic. 
 
 At Gundamak, where the brigade arrived on October 
 3rd, Sale had instructions to await orders from Cabul. 
 While halted there he received news of the murder of 
 Burnes and of the despondency and disorganisation 
 prevalent in the Cabul cantonment. Sale's military 
 superior directed his return to Cabul, if he could with 
 safety leave his sick and wounded with the detachment 
 of irregulars garrisoning Gundamak. A council of war 
 was held in which Havelock took a leading part, 
 although, not being a commanding officer, neither on 
 this nor in any subsequent council had he a vote. He 
 argued very forcibly against a return to Cabul. The 
 council decided against going back and determined 
 instead to go forward to Jellalabad, which was regarded 
 as an eligible point d'appui on which a relieving force 
 might move up, and a retiring force might move down. 
 
 The brigade quitted Gundamak on Nov. llth, leaving 
 in the cantonment there a quantity of camp equipage 
 under charge of the Afghan irregular corps garrisoning 
 the place. Next day that corps mutinied, looted the 
 baggage, burnt the cantonment, and forced the officers
 
 ii JELLALABAD AS A FORTRESS 31 
 
 left at Gundamak to fight hard to effect their escape. 
 In the more open country between Futtehabad and 
 Jellalabad the hillmen made themselves exceedingly ob- 
 noxious, so that at length Broadfoot persuaded Oldfield 
 to charge them with his cavalry, Broadfoot engaging 
 to support with his sappers. Oldfield cut up sixty or 
 seventy of the enemy ; while Broadfoot swept the hills 
 clear of assailants. The same night the brigade encamped 
 under the walls of Jellalabad, and next day entered 
 the place. An inspection showed the works surrounding 
 the town to be indefensible against a vigorous assault 
 in their existing condition. But it was decided to hold 
 the place ; Broadfoot, as garrison engineer, undertaking 
 to restore its defences so as to render them secure 
 against Afghan attacks. 
 
 Broadfoot had undertaken an arduous task. The 
 enceinte of Jellalabad was greatly too extensive for the 
 small force of defenders. Its tracing was vicious 
 in the extreme ; it had no parapet to speak of ; the 
 ramparts were so dilapidated that there were roads 
 across and over them into the country ; the fire -zone 
 was cumbered with ruined structures affording near 
 cover to the enemy. And the enemy were already 
 encircling the position so menacingly that the work 
 of repair could not be commenced. They swept the 
 Avails with their fire, and in derision their braves 
 danced to the music of a bagpipe on an adjacent eleva- 
 tion, which was thenceforth known as Piper's Hill. 
 But the Afghans did not stand before the sortie which 
 Colonel Monteath executed on the 15th. They fled with 
 a heavy loss ; supplies then began to come in from the 
 adjacent country, and Broadfoot was able to begin the
 
 32 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 work of repairing the fortifications. His sappers, a 
 strange corps of Hindustanees, Goorkhas, and Afghans 
 of every tribe, were workmanlike, valiant, disciplined, and 
 loyal. With provident forethought he had exacted by 
 sheer masterfulness from the Cabul stores a supply of 
 entrenching tools which proved simply the salvation of 
 the Jellalabad garrison. All hands worked vigorously, 
 and the repairs were well forward when on the 29th 
 the Afghans came down again and opened fire on the 
 place. Ammunition was short in the garrison not above 
 one hundred and fifty rounds per man and the force at 
 the head of which Colonel Dennie sallied out had strict 
 orders to husband their cartridges. Nevertheless he 
 punished the Afghans severely, and as the result of this 
 spirited repulse the garrison enjoyed a period of repose. 
 At the end of the year came a disheartening letter 
 from Pottinger in Cabul, confirming the rumour already 
 current of the murder of the Envoy and of the virtual 
 capitulation entered into by the Cabul force on the plea 
 of starvation and consequent imperious necessity. On 
 January 8th 1842 Sale received from Cabul an official 
 communication signed by Pottinger as " political," 
 and by General Elphinstone as chief military officer, 
 dated December 29th. It was brought in by three 
 Afghans of consequence, which tended to show that 
 it was written under duress ; and its terms confirmed 
 that impression. This humiliating document set forth 
 that the British authorities at Cabul had found it 
 necessary to conclude an agreement for the evacuation of 
 Afghanistan, in pursuance of which the brigade occupying 
 Jellalabad was ordered to begin an immediate retreat 
 on India, leaving the fortress guns in the hands of
 
 ir THE ANNIHILATION OF THE CABUL FORCE 33 
 
 a new governor of Jellalabad appointed by the ruling 
 power in Cabul, and also the stores and baggage for 
 which the brigade might not have transport. " Every- 
 thing," so ran this instruction, " has been done in good 
 faith ; you will not be molested on your way ; and to the 
 safe-conduct which Akbar Khan has given I trust for 
 the passage of the troops under my immediate orders 
 through the passes." Sale summoned his commanding 
 officers to a council of war, which was unanimous in 
 favour of disobeying the humiliating mandate. Broad- 
 foot, with Havelock at his back, contended vigorously that 
 there was no force in an order by a superior officer who 
 being no longer a free agent issued it under duress ; and 
 Sale was outspoken in his repudiation of the abandon- 
 ment of Jellalabad. No doubt he was stiffened in this 
 resolve by recently received intelligence that Colonel 
 Wild, with reinforcements from India, was already at 
 Jumrood on his march up the passes. 
 
 But disastrous tidings came thick and fast. The 
 news from Cabul was most ominous. A letter received 
 on January 10th reported the British people there to 
 be in the most deplorable condition, completely at the 
 mercy of their enemies ; another reaching Jellalabad 
 on the 12th, stated that the cantonments had been 
 abandoned and the march commenced, but that the mass 
 of forlorn wayfarers were detained at Bootkhak, hemmed 
 in by the horsemen of Akbar Khan. And finally, about 
 2 P.M. of the following day January 13th the worst 
 apprehensions were more than fulfilled by the arrival of 
 Dr. Brydon, 1 the sole survivor, save a few prisoners and 
 
 1 Dr. Brydon, who was a military surgeon of the Bengal service, 
 must have had strange memories in his retirement on his Ross-shire 
 
 D
 
 34 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 some native stragglers, of the sixteen thousand who had 
 marched from the Cabul cantonment on the dreary 
 morning of January 6th. Havelock, an eye-witness of 
 Brydon's arrival, thus describes the scene. 
 
 About 2 o'clock 011 the 13th January some officers were 
 assembled on the roof of the loftiest house in Jellalabad. 
 One of them espied a single horseman riding towards our 
 walls. As he got nearer it was distinctly seen that he wore 
 European clothes, and was mounted on a travel-hacked 
 yaboo, 1 which he was urging on with all the speed of which 
 it yet remained master. A signal was made to him by some 
 one on the walls, which he answered by waving a private 
 soldier's forage cap over his head. The Cabul gate was then 
 thrown open, and several officers rushing out received and 
 recognised in the traveller who dismounted, the first, and it 
 is to be feared the last, fugitive of the ill-fated force at Cabul 
 in Dr. Brydon. He was covered with slight cuts and con- 
 tusions, and dreadfully exhausted. His first few hasty 
 sentences extinguished all hope in the hearts of the listeners 
 regarding the fortune of the Cabul force. It was evident 
 that it was annihilated. Countenances full of sorrow and 
 dejection were immediately seen in every corner of Jellala- 
 bad ; all labour was suspended ; the working parties recalled ; 
 the assembly sounded ; the gates were closed, and the walls 
 and batteries manned, and tbe cavalry stood ready to mount. 
 The first impression was that the enemy were rapidly follow- 
 ing a crowd of fugitives in upon the walls, but three shots 
 only were heard ; and when the effervescence in some 
 
 slieep-fann, where I well remember him a quiet, rather silent man, 
 much beloved among the neighbouring shepherds and crofters, whose 
 ailments he cared for professionally but gratuitously. He had 
 surely supped full of horrors during those dreadful seven days in 
 the Afghan passes ; but fifteen years later there was for him a rere- 
 supper of danger and misery inside the Lucknow Residency. He 
 was of the garrison which endured the memorable siege and made 
 the memorable defence of that position, during which he was shot 
 through the back while sitting at dinner in Mr. Gubbins's house. 
 A. F. : Hill pony.
 
 TI ALAS! THE BUGLE SOUND RALLIES NONE 35 
 
 measure subsided not an Afghan could be discovered. But 
 the recital of Dr. Brydon filled all hearers with horror, grief, 
 and indignation. 
 
 Broadfoot took out some of his sappers, on the 
 supposition that the massacre was proceeding close at 
 hand, but was recalled. On coming in he found " the 
 gates shut, and the general and all the officers over the 
 Cabul gate ; the poor general looking out with a spj-- 
 glass Cabul-ward." A bonfire was burnt at night on a 
 bastion, and the buglers every half hour for three nights 
 sounded the advance. But the sound rallied none 
 from out the long valley of slaughter. Broadfoot was a 
 man of prompt decision. He did not share the hope of 
 early assistance from Wild's force, and he was by no 
 means sure of the fortitude in extremity of Sale and his 
 political adviser Macgregor. As he came back into 
 Jellalabad with his sappers he thought out the problem ; 
 he climbed the archway of the Cabul gate, sought out 
 Havelock, and desired him to impress on the general 
 that unless he were resolutely prepared to hold the 
 place to the last extremity, that very night was the 
 time for his retirement. Sale's answer was that he 
 was firmly decided to hold on, and he announced to 
 the Commander-in-Chief his resolve to persevere in a 
 most determined defence, relying on the promise of 
 early relief. 
 
 But no early relief came; Wild's brigade failed to 
 penetrate the Khyber ; Sale was informed of its defeat, 
 and told that the Jellalabad garrison had no recourse but 
 to work out its own salvation. On the back of those 
 sombre tidings there came to Macgregor from Shall 
 Soojah, the still-extant puppet-monarch, a curt letter,
 
 36 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 evidently written under dictation. It ran : "Your people 
 have concluded a treaty with us ; you are still in Jella- 
 labad; what are your intentions'? Tell us quickly." 
 
 In face of the ill news from Peshawur, Sale's resolve 
 to hold Jellalabad to the last extremity had collapsed. 
 He allowed Macgregor to consider certain proposals 
 from Akbar Khan, who was in the vicinity ; and 
 then he called a council of war which assembled at 
 his quarters on January 27th. Probably there has 
 never been in the military history of our nation a more 
 momentous and interesting assemblage of the kind. On 
 its decision pivoted our prestige in India ; perhaps even 
 our tenure of India. The proceedings of this " Jellalabad 
 parliament," as Broadfoot calls it, were recorded by 
 Havelock in his capacity of Sale's staff-officer. The 
 record, and all the papers produced during the debates, 
 remained in his possession until the armies of Pollock 
 and Nott returned to India after the evacuation of 
 Afghanistan. The documents were then taken from 
 Havelock and destroyed, with a view to spare the 
 reputation of General Sale. Aware of this destruction, 
 Broadfoot in 1843, when his memory of the transactions 
 was still fresh, wrote a detailed narrative of them, which 
 he sent to Havelock that he might note "any points 
 erroneously stated, distinguishing between what you 
 may merely not remember, and what you know I am 
 mistaken in." Havelock replied that Broadfoot's 
 memoranda " constitute a fair and correct statement of 
 what occurred." This invaluable document is printed 
 for the first time in the admirable biography of Major 
 Broadfoot, 1 published by his nephew in 1888. 
 1 Major W. Broadfoot, R.E.
 
 H THE JELLALABAD PARLIAMENT 37 
 
 It happened to the writer to visit Jellalabad on 
 Christmas day 1878, in the company of Major Bailey of 
 the Rifle Brigade who had been a sergeant in Have- 
 lock's regiment during the siege of 1841-2. Major 
 Bailey pointed out the scene of the historic council of 
 war. Sale's headquarters were just inside the Cabul 
 gate on the left as one enters. A quadrangular building 
 of stone, one story high, surrounds a pretty garden court 
 with a fountain in the centre. In the spacious raised 
 forehall or vestibule, of which the front is a trellis of 
 wrought woodwork up which creepers twine, the council 
 held its discussions. It was midwinter, but the meet- 
 ings were in the daytime, and the winter sun is very 
 hot in Jellalabad. On the day of our visit before sun- 
 rise the water was frozen solid in the chilhimchee ; at 
 noon it was hotter than it ever is in England. Within 
 the same twenty-four hours a man of Sir Sam. Browne's 
 division was killed by sunstroke ; another was frozen to 
 death. 
 
 At the head of the long table sat Sale, lame still from 
 his Khoord Cabul wound ; bluff and hasty, an excellent 
 soldier, brave as a lion, but out of the battlefield not of 
 strong resolution, and what he originally may have had 
 broken by the continual dictation of " politicals." By 
 him was his particular " political " of this period, Captain. 
 Macgregor, a well-meaning man, but unendowed with 
 the constancy of his nation. Havelock and Wade, 
 Sale's staff-officers, were present in that capacity, but 
 neither had a vote. The commanding officers stood or 
 sat around the table on which Havelock wrote and 
 Macgregor had his papers. Colonel Dennie of the 
 Thirteenth was a valiant and single-hearted soldier, 
 
 85961
 
 38 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 nervous beyond measure under responsibility, and during 
 this period a boding and unstrung pessimist. Colonel 
 Monteath of the Thirty-fifth N.I. was a very capable officer, 
 of considerable culture, pompous of speech " his usual 
 declamation," in Havelock's words, "having something 
 of the character of prose on stilts " wearing a wig 
 to hide his baldness, and concerned beyond all other 
 things that the artificiality of his chevelure should not 
 be detected. Captain Backhouse, of the artillery, was 
 a very gallant and efficient officer, his chief attribute a 
 grim and trenchant humour; his diary, could it be 
 published, which is impossible because of the extremely 
 strong expressions with which it is rife, would afford 
 a vivid picture of the inner life of the Jellalabad 
 period. Oldfield, commanding the cavalry, was full of 
 dash and vigour in the field ; save for one vehement and 
 characteristic outbreak he took little part in the debates. 
 Of Captain Abbott, like Backhouse a gunner, there is 
 nothing to be said but that he was an experienced and 
 meritorious officer, on the yielding side in the main 
 question debated by the council, and apparently endowed 
 with humour of a saturnine kind. Captain George 
 Broadfoot was immeasurably the master-spirit of the 
 memberhood. He had a compelling force of character, 
 and a great intolerance of everything ignoble and un- 
 worthy. When not yet thirty-nine he fell in the heart 
 of the fierce fighting at Ferozeshah, he was already among 
 the foremost Anglo-Indians of his time ; had he lived 
 longer he would have gone further. 
 
 Sir Robert Sale opened the proceedings of the council 
 by saying that he had called the officers together to 
 consult on a matter on which Captain Macgregor and
 
 ii BROADFOOTS NOBLE WRATH 39 
 
 he were agreed, and the details of which the latter 
 would explain. From the first the deliberations and 
 discussions were characterised by great excitement. 
 Macgregor began by stating his conviction that they had 
 nothing to hope from the Government. Reserving his 
 right to act as he thought proper, he was willing to hear 
 the officers' opinion regarding offers he had received from 
 Akbar Khan (then at Lughman) to treat for the evacua- 
 tion of Afghanistan ; and he laid before them a reply to 
 Shah Soojah's curt letter, to which he desired their 
 assent. That reply professed the garrison's readiness to 
 quit Jellalabad on Shah Soojah's requisition, the place 
 being held only for him, but named certain conditions : the 
 exchanging of hostages ; the restoration of the British 
 prisoners and the hostages in exchange for the Afghan 
 hostages on the arrival of the force at Peshawur; an 
 escort commanded by one of the princes to conduct the 
 force thither " in safety and honour " with arms, colours, 
 and guns ; and assistance in the matters of supplies and 
 carriage. Both Sale and Macgregor intimated that 
 they were resolved to yield and negotiate for a safe 
 retreat. 
 
 Then Broadfoot arose in his wrath. He maintained 
 that the Government, although their measures Avere 
 weak, had given no grounds for a belief that they had 
 abandoned the Jellalabad force to its fate. General 
 Sale contradicted him, and in the heat of debate quoted 
 the terms of the "French letter." 1 Macgregor denied 
 that its terms were so strong as the general had said. 
 
 1 A letter written in French which had been received from the 
 Indian Government ; neither the original nor any copy has been 
 allowed to remain extant.
 
 40 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 Then Broadfoot insisted on its production ; it seems it 
 had been held back when the other papers bearing on the 
 subject had been produced and read. It was read, and 
 its terms were found as Sale had said. Then there 
 was a general outburst of indignation "which knew 
 no bounds" against the Governor - General and the 
 Government, including the Commander- in -Chief, but 
 chiefly the Governor - General ; Backhouse especially 
 breaking out in vehement explosion. Broadfoot, driven 
 from his contention of non-abandonment by the Govern- 
 ment, urged that a new Governor-General was on his 
 way out, aiid now that the Duke of Wellington was 
 again in office the maintenance of a feeble Avar policy 
 Avas impossible ; but he argued in vain, and by the in- 
 temperance of his language gave his adversaries, Dennie 
 and Abbott, some advantage over him. So he proposed 
 an adjournment, which Avas agreed to. In departing 
 Colonel Monteath concurred with Broadfoot as to the 
 duty of holding out, and "quoted some not inappropriate 
 poetry." 
 
 The same night Broadfoot had a conference Avith 
 Havelock, Avho was Avith him heart and soul, but dis- 
 approved of the Avarmth of his language, and suggested 
 that he should put his vieAvs temperately on paper. To 
 every Avord so written Havelock agreed, "and during 
 the subsequent meeting occasionally intimated his ad- 
 hesion to these views, but he had no vote." 
 
 When the council met next day Dennie and Abbott 
 opened a fire of ridicule on Broadfoot, hinting that his 
 passion overcame his judgment. Monteath avoided 
 him gloomily, and Avas gained over by Macgregor in a 
 long conversation. Broadfoot got a hearing for his
 
 ii BROADFOOT AT BAY 41 
 
 paper, and its points were argued in succession. Sale 
 and Macgregor renewed their allegation that the Govern- 
 ment had abandoned them, now that Wild had failed. 
 They urged the impossibility of holding out much 
 longer that later retreat would be impracticable, and 
 that the plan now proposed was safe and honourable ; 
 Macgregor's assurance of Afghan good faith being so 
 confident as to convince most of the members. Broad- 
 foot, on the other hand, contended that they could hold 
 Jellalabad as long as they liked " could colonise, in 
 fact " and also could retreat at discretion. He reiter- 
 ated the improbability of total abandonment by the 
 Government ; he denied vehemently that they held Jella- 
 labad for Shah Soojah, and challenged their right to 
 surrender it except by order of the Indian Government. 
 The question of exchanging hostages was keenly 
 debated. Broadfoot held Afghan hostages to be utterly 
 worthless in their hands, so long as the enemy held their 
 hostages and prisoners. Sale said if he were attacked 
 he would execute a hostage. Broadfoot's crushing retort 
 was that the enemy would hang two of the captive ladies 
 before Sale's face for every hostage he executed. He 
 opposed the giving of hostages as disgraceful. Colonel 
 Monteath said nobody would go. Broadfoot replied he 
 would go if ordered, as a soldier under discipline, but if 
 the capitulation was once agreed to, he would hold 
 himself free to act on the first shot in violation of it. 
 Then for once Oldfield lifted up his voice in the discus- 
 sion. He spoke to the point : " I for one will fight here 
 to the last drop of my blood, but I plainly declare that 
 I will never be a hostage, and I am surprised that any 
 one should propose such a thing, or think that an
 
 42 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 Afghan's word is to be taken for anything." Oldfield's 
 outbreak carried weight. The proposal to treat for a 
 surrender was carried, Oldfield only voting with Broad- 
 foot against it ; but the stipulations regarding hostages 
 were omitted. 
 
 Broadfoot still continued to advance objections, or 
 rather modifications. He proposed, but in vain, that the 
 prisoners should be demanded before departure. Then 
 he urged, that if evacuation were resolved on, it should 
 be conducted as an independent military operation, not 
 degradingly under escort ; and he propounded a feasible 
 plan of execution, but the matter dropped. Finally, 
 he objected to certain phrases in the letter to Shah 
 Soojah as too abject. They were altered; the letter 
 was written out, signed by Macgregor, and despatched 
 to Cabul. When the votes had been taken, and the 
 gathering was breaking up, he had the last word. He 
 ironically congratulated his brother officers on the figure 
 they should cut if a relieving force should arrive just as 
 they were marching out. Dennie protested that in this 
 case he would not go. Broadfoot retorted that since 
 they were honest men and kept faith he would be made 
 to go. Whereupon there was merriment. 
 
 Dennie, when the council had broken up, rashly 
 revealed its resolve to evacuate the place. Havelock 
 rushed at him, entreating him to silence for the sake of 
 maintaining the spirits of the soldiers. More practically 
 Broadfoot contributed to that end by immediately set- 
 ting the whole garrison to dig a ditch round the fortifi- 
 cations. By and by the answer came back from Cabul : 
 " If you are sincere in your offers, let all the chief 
 gentlemen affix their seals." During the interval Broad-
 
 43 
 
 foot's arguments had told on the majority of the council. 
 When it met again he was supported by all its members 
 except Sir Robert Sale and Captain Macgregor, who 
 remained obstinately blind to the lesson of the Cabul 
 disaster. A reply Avas sent which did not convey a 
 continuation of the negotiation ; the Jellalabad council 
 of war was dissolved, and the credit of its resolve not to 
 comply with the humiliating proposal of Sale and Mac- 
 gregor belongs to Broadfoot, who was firmly though 
 unostentatiously supported by Havelock. There was 
 thenceforth no more talk of surrender, nor was the 
 courage of the garrison daunted even when the earth- 
 quake of February 19th shook the newly repaired 
 ramparts into utter ruin. Broadfoot inspired the garrison 
 with his indomitable energy, and, in Havelock's words, 
 " by the end of the month the parapets were entirely re- 
 stored, the Cabul gate rendered serviceable, the bastions 
 restored or filled in, and every battery re-established." 
 The soldiers, invigorated by fine air and enforced tem- 
 perance the rum was long since done were in admir- 
 able condition. "A long course of sobriety and labour," 
 he remarks, "has made men of mere boys of recruits, 
 and brought the almost raw levy which formed two-thirds 
 of the array of the Thirteenth to the firm standard of 
 Roman discipline." 
 
 General Pollock was known to be making energetic 
 preparations for forcing the passes between Peshawur 
 and Jellalabad. But he did not expect to reach the 
 latter place before the end of April ; and the garrison 
 had been on half rations from soon after the new year. 
 Havelock's estimate was reduced rations, chiefly of grain, 
 till April 13th, contrivances for ten days longer, and
 
 44 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 after that inevitable starvation. However, on April 1st, 
 a sally resulted in the acquisition of some five hundred 
 sheep, which contributed to restore the situation. 
 Jellalabad had been invested more or less closely by 
 Akbar Khan since February 15th, and, in consequence 
 of the non-evacuation of the place, large reinforcements 
 to him were threatened from Cabul. There was sharp 
 fighting on several days of March, always in favour of 
 our people; and with the accession of the meat supply 
 Havelock tried hard to stir Sale to raise the siege by the 
 garrison's own exertions as the result of a bold attack 
 on Akbar. Sale shrank from the responsibility. On 
 April 6th the Afghan prince fired a salute in honour of 
 a supposititious victory over Pollock in the lower passes. 
 Then the senior officers plainly told Sir Robert that they 
 were resolved on attacking Akbar. Thus braced he was 
 fain to consent, and the plan of attack for the following 
 day was drawn up by Havelock. Three infantry columns 
 marched silently out at dawn of the 7th Dennie com- 
 manding the centre, Monteath the left, each five hundred 
 strong ; Havelock, in the absence of Broadfoot severely 
 wounded on March 24th, commanding the right column 
 a company of the Thirteenth, another of Sepoys, and 
 a detachment of Broadfoot's sappers, in all three hundred 
 and fifty bayonets. General Sale was in command of 
 the whole force. Akbar, reputed six thousand strong, 
 was drawn up in front of his camp about two miles 
 from Jellalabad, his flank on the Cabul river. He had 
 a post in " the patched up fort," a mile and a quarter 
 nearer, held by three hundred picked men. Havelock 
 gave this fort the go-by and pushed on through the 
 skirmish fire against Akbar's main body. But Sale
 
 ir THE " CROWNING MERCY" 45 
 
 ordered Dennie to carry the fort. Thus delay arose, 
 the guns had to be sent for, the Thirteenth suffered 
 some loss, and poor Dennie was killed. By Sale's orders 
 Havelock had halted, and he formed square against 
 a threatened cavalry attack, with a detached flanking 
 party under cover. Down came Akbar's horse, fifteen 
 hundred strong, on Havelock's firm square. Their chief 
 rode straight on the bayonets but was not followed 
 home ; and a steady fire drove the horsemen off with 
 severe loss. Havelock had a narrow escape. When 
 outside the square he was thrown by his horse, and was 
 rescued from the Afghan swords just in the nick of time. 
 Having moved on he was again charged with a like 
 result; Backhouse brought up his guns, and Havelock 
 and he entered the Afghan camp as Akbar abandoned it. 
 The other columns came up and co- operated ; the 
 Afghans were swept clean out of their position, their 
 cannon four of which had been ours were taken and 
 their whole camp was burned. Akbar, by 7 o'clock on 
 this April morning, had been utterly defeated in the open 
 field by the troops whom he had boasted of blockading. 
 There was no more annoyance, no more scarcity. 
 The garrison of Jellalabad, after a siege of five months, 
 had wrought out its own relief. Pollock, laden with 
 unneeded supplies, reached Jellalabad a fortnight after 
 Havelock's "crowning mercy," and was played into 
 camp by the band of the Thirteenth to the tune, " Oh, 
 but ye've been lang o' coming." Pollock would have 
 made Havelock his Persian interpreter, at Sale's request, 
 but the Commander-in-Chief had designated him for the 
 post of Deputy- Adjutant-General of the infantry division 
 commanded by General M'Caskill.
 
 46 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 It was not until August 20th that Pollock moved 
 forward on Cabul. There was a halt at Gundamak till 
 September 7th, while the Mammoo Khel tribe were 
 being harried relentlessly in retribution for their cruelties 
 of January. Next day the hillmen were driven from 
 the Jugdulluck pass, and Pollock cleared the defile without 
 serious loss. Akbar sent one of his prisoners to negotiate 
 with intent to stay the advance on the capital, but in 
 vain. Then he determined on a final struggle, for he too 
 was a hero after his fashion. He sent his prisoners into 
 the fastnesses of the Hindoo Koosh, and gathered his 
 adherents in and about the ravine of the Khoord Cabul 
 pass, there to fight out the quarrel. But Pollock astutely 
 halted on the opener ground of Tezeen, short of the 
 Khoord Cabul. Akbar thought him daunted, abandoned 
 his vantage ground, and moved down into the Tezeen 
 valley. The battle was fought over the unburied bodies 
 of Elphinstone's slaughtered soldiers. Pollock's men, 
 as they trode perforce on their dead comrades and saw 
 their bodies built up in breastworks covering the 
 Afghans, were in a white heat of fury, and panted for 
 revenge. They took it. Under the cavalry sabres a 
 fresh layer of dead cumbered the ground of the valley ; 
 the infantry swept the hill faces at the bayonet point. 
 Broadfoot's bloodthirsty Goorkhas, better cragsmen than 
 the Afghan hillmen themselves, slaughtered them to the 
 very mountain tops. The victory was complete, and two 
 days later, on September 14th, Pollock quartered his 
 force in the desolated cantonment of Cabul. Immediately 
 he despatched Richmond Shakspeare, at the head of 
 six hundred horse, in hot quest after the convoy of 
 prisoners; Sale followed with the Thirteenth. Their
 
 ii THE RESCUE OF THE PRISONERS 47 
 
 bribed custodian had ceased to guard them, and they 
 were already free and on their way to Cabul when 
 Shakspeare met them. Four days afterwards Sale 
 greeted his wife and daughter; and on the 21st the 
 prisoners were brought into the cantonment. Havelock 
 had a nephew among them, one of the Ghuznee prisoners. 
 He was searching for his relative when a " tall figure, 
 clad in an Afghan dress, with a beard of months, called 
 out : ' Here I am, Uncle ! ' " 
 
 Nott's army from Candahar reached Cabul three 
 days after Pollock's advent, having experienced some 
 sharp fighting by the way. The Kohistanees, living to 
 the north of Cabul, had been very murderous at the 
 time of the general rising, and M'Caskill's division was 
 sent to punish them by destroying Istalif, their beautiful 
 little fortress-capital. M'Caskill appears to have been 
 more of a sensible man than of a skilled soldier; he 
 entrusted, we are told, the entire management of this 
 expedition to Havelock, who describes succinctly and 
 lucidly the progress and issue of the attack. 
 
 The enemy's position in gardens and enclosures backed 
 by a town, the flat roofs of which on the mountain side were 
 occupied by riflemen, was strong, and its defenders numerous 
 and full of audacity ; but the advance of one column, aided 
 by the manojuvres of another, quickly dislodged them. The 
 ground would not permit the use of artillery, but the pace of 
 the infantrymen was so good that the Afghans could not face 
 them in the vineyards, and once thrown into confusion, could 
 never rally. Our troops, indeed, behaved everywhere well, 
 and there was far less of outrage of every kind, and above all 
 to the women, than is seen ninety-nine times out of a hundred 
 in cases of towns and cities stormed. 
 
 It was a clever little affair, for which M'Caskill
 
 48 HAVE LOCK CHAP, n 
 
 got the Bath and Havelock naturally nothing. Istalif 
 was burnt, its trees were rather wantonly cut down, and 
 the adjacent villages were destroyed. On October 16th 
 the armies of Pollock and Nott began the return inarch 
 to India, taking the Khyber route. Lord Ellenborough 
 was waiting for them at the bridge-head on the British 
 side of the Sutlej. On December 17th, the earliest to 
 cross, "the illustrious garrison of Jellalabad" denied 
 across the bridge. " I crossed," wrote Havelock, " in 
 the suite of Sir Robert Sale, borrowed for the hour as a 
 part of the triumphant pageant with which India's ruler 
 greeted him who was truly regarded as, under Provi- 
 dence, its preserver. Thus auspiciously terminated my 
 four years' connection with Afghanistan." The expres- 
 sion applied to Sale was more than hyperbolical, 
 especially when emanating from one who knew what 
 Havelock knew; but Havelock had been Sale's staff- 
 officer, and he had a habitual good word for superior 
 officers to whom he belonged.
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 GWALIOR AND THE PUNJAB 
 
 IN the shower of promotions which descended copiously 
 on the army whose return from Afghanistan Lord 
 Ellenborough greeted with so great effusion, Havelock 
 did not participate. He went forth toward Afghanistan 
 a captain in 1838 ; a captain he came out in the end of 
 
 1842. The only souvenir given him of his service 
 beyond the Indus was what he called "a bit of red 
 ribbon ; ; he was made a C.B, for his prominent share 
 in the defeat of Akbar Khan outside Jellalabad on 
 April 7th, 1842. When the Ferozepore ceremonials 
 were finished he reverted to regimental duty, and for 
 three months concerned himself with " the oversight of 
 the shirts and stockings of No. 4 Company of H.M.'s 
 Thirteenth Light Infantry." From April to October 
 
 1843, he was on leave at Simla with Mrs. Havelock. 
 Near the end of his stay there he got his majority 
 without purchase, and never subsequently did a stroke 
 of regimental duty. Immediately on his promotion he 
 was made Persian interpreter on the staff of the new 
 Commander-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Gough, whose camp he 
 joined at Cawnpore in the end of October, in time to 
 participate in the short Gwalior campaign. 
 
 E
 
 50 HA VELOCK 
 
 The Afghan disasters had sensibly altered the tone of 
 the native states in their relations with the British raj. 
 The Mahratta state of Gwalior had a mercenary army 
 of a strength quite disproportioned to its requirements, 
 its revenue, and its population. It consisted of thirty 
 thousand regular infantry, ten thousand cavalry, and two 
 hundred " guns, and Avas commanded and disciplined by 
 officers of European descent. The troops, conscious of 
 their strength, had the mastery in the state, resisted the 
 reduction of their numbers, and constituted a standing 
 menace on our frontier. A conspiracy, resulting in the 
 expulsion of the Eegent and the withdrawal of the 
 British Resident, gave Lord Ellenborough an opportunity 
 of which he readily availed himself; and he resolved 
 to crush the powerful military force which, quartered 
 within sixty-five miles of Agra, threatened his line of 
 communication with the regions farther west. 
 
 The campaign was short but bloody. Sir Hugh 
 Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, accompanied by Lord 
 Ellenborough, marched into the Gwalior territory from 
 the north at the head of twelve thousand men ; General 
 Grey with seven thousand, invaded it from the south. 
 The plan of campaign, as Havelock pointed out, was 
 essentially vicious, since it accorded to the Mahratta 
 army, stronger than both the British armies together, 
 the interior lines. But the Mahrattas fortunately had 
 no capable general, as Sir Hugh Gough probably knew ; 
 and they amiably subdivided their strength, sending 
 fourteen thousand men to oppose Gough, and seven 
 thousand to confront Grey. Had Gough been opposed 
 by the mass of the Gwalior army he would most prob- 
 ably have been beaten ; as it was, fighting with twelve
 
 in A PICNIC THAT BECOMES A BATTLE 51 
 
 thousand men against fourteen thousand, he gained a 
 victory only after a most stubborn contest. 
 
 A reconnaissance sent out by Gough on December 
 28th, found the Gwalior army in a strong position 
 at Chounda, a few miles beyond his headquarters at 
 Hingona. On the following morning the British army 
 moved forward to the attack. The campaign was 
 regarded in the light of a pleasant picnic ; Gough and 
 his staff - officers held the Mahrattas a contemptible 
 rabble who might be relied on to fly at the first shot. 
 General Churchill, the quartermaster, who expiated his 
 bombast with his life, lightly observed that the only 
 weapon he should need weuld be a horsewhip. The 
 arrangement was to breakfast at Maharajpore, a village 
 intermediate between Hingona and Chounda. It is 
 needless to mention that no second reconnaissance was 
 thought necessary. The troops marched forward with- 
 out scouts; the Governor - General and a number of 
 ladies who were the guests of his camp, were with the 
 head of the column on elephants. Suddenly a round 
 shot carried off the ear of an elephant on which one of 
 the ladies was mounted, and confusion ensued. The 
 Mahrattas, very much to their own detriment, had 
 during the night advanced into Maharajpore seven 
 battalions and twenty cannon, and had entrenched their 
 position there ; so that for Lord Ellenborough and his 
 ladies there was no breakfast in Maharajpore that 
 morning. Gough had to rearrange all his dispositions 
 in a hurry, and the battle which ensued was character- 
 ised as one in which everybody and everything were 
 out of place. The heavy guns were away in the rear, 
 and our light field artillery was silenced by the admir-
 
 52 HA VELOCK 
 
 ably served heavy ordnance of the Mahrattas. Gough 
 had recourse to his customary expedient, a direct ad- 
 vance of infantry on a position unsubjected to a pre- 
 liminary artillery preparation, but in justice to him it 
 must be said that on this occasion he accompanied 
 the direct advance by a turning movement. Littler's 
 division moved to the storm of the battery and the 
 village ; to Valiant's brigade was entrusted the task of 
 turning the enemy's Chounda position. The Mahratta 
 guns were fought as long as a gunner was left ; then the 
 Mahratta infantry fought it out with ours. In the course 
 of their turning movement Valiant's people stormed 
 three successive lines of entrenchments under a heavy 
 cannonade. Then while they fell on the flank, Littler's 
 soldiers assailed the main position in front, and it was 
 carried after fighting which caused Gough the loss of 
 nearly one thousand men ; "a loss," he frankly owned, 
 " infinitely beyond what I calculated upon. Indeed, I did 
 not do justice to the gallantry of my opponents." The 
 Mahrattas were completely defeated, with a loss of fifty- 
 six guns and many standards. The day of Maharaj- 
 pore was also the day of Punniar ; in which latter battle 
 Grey gained a very neat and complete victory, at much 
 less proportionate cost than Gough had to pay for his 
 Maharajpore success. These two simultaneous battles 
 ended the campaign. The Gwalior army, reduced to nine 
 thousand men, was to be watched by a " contingent " of 
 ten thousand men officered by Britons, and maintained, 
 according to our method, at the cost of the Gwalior state. 
 Lord Ellenborough, having covered himself with glory 
 by " moving about with great intrepidity under a shower 
 of bullets, distributing money and oranges among the
 
 in WINS HIS BREVET LIEUTENANT-COLONELCY 53 
 
 wounded," was back in Calcutta within two months, 
 and busy, according to his wont, in composing and pub- 
 lishing grandiloquent manifestoes. 
 
 Havelock received his brevet lieutenant-colonelcy for 
 Maharajpore, when he had been a soldier for twenty- 
 eight years not particularly slow promotion as pro- 
 motion went then. He had thoroughly earned his 
 brevet ; it was no empty compliment as a member of 
 the Commander-in-Chief's staff. In the final struggle 
 of the frontal attack against the Chounda entrench- 
 ments, the Thirty-ninth (Queen's) and the Fifty-sixth 
 N.I., regiments of the same brigade, were named as 
 having specially distinguished themselves. That dis- 
 tinction the native battalion unquestionably owed to 
 Havelock. Marshman thus describes the episode. 
 
 The Fifty-sixth had been advancing, but at so slow a pace 
 as to exhaust the patience of Gough. " Will no one get that 
 Sepoy regiment on?" he exclaimed. Havelock undertook 
 the office, and riding, to its head, inquired the name of the 
 corps. " It is the Fifty-sixth Native Infantry." "I don't 
 want its number," he replied ; "what is the native name?" 
 " Lamboorun-ke-pultan Lambourn's regiment." Then he 
 took off his hat, and facing the regiment, he addressed it by 
 its native name in the native tongue ; and in a few compli- 
 mentary and cheering words, reminded it that it was under 
 the eye of the Comrnander-in-Chief. He then led it up to 
 the batteries, and afterwards remarked " that whereas it had 
 been difficult to get the regiment forward before, the difficulty 
 now was to restrain its impetuosity." 
 
 The most conscientious of men in all private affairs, 
 Havelock's code of political morality was of the directest 
 " might makes right " type. Had he been an American 
 politician, he would have been heart and soul with 
 Andrew Jackson's axiom that " to the victors belong the
 
 54 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 spoils." In a letter to Durand regretting that the retri- 
 bution Pollock inflicted on Afghanistan was so tame, 
 he wrote: "I hold the ultra, and perhaps irregular 
 opinion of the expediency of keeping Afghanistan alto- 
 gether, in the way of complete subjugation, after having 
 once come there." This view of the subject reduces the 
 results of successful invasion to first principles, and its 
 adoption would render needless stupid diplomatic con- 
 gresses for the readjustment of territory on the conclusion 
 of great wars. How staunch Havelock was to his doctrine 
 is evinced in the following quotation from a letter he 
 wrote after Maharajpore : " As regards politics, I was at 
 first angry enough at the old raj (of Gwalior) not being 
 smashed outright; and in a conversation with the 
 Governor-General over the grave of General Churchill 
 who had fallen in the action told him with a mag- 
 niloquent emphasis that this ought to have been a war 
 of subjugation. " 
 
 After the Gwalior campaign Havelock spent the least 
 laborious two years of his life on Sir Hugh Gough's 
 staff, at Simla, at Calcutta, and on tours of inspection 
 with his chief from military station to military station. 
 At Simla he enjoyed much intimate intercourse with 
 his closest and most appreciative friend, Major George 
 Broadfoot, whom Lord Ellenborough at the close of the 
 Afghan war had sent to Burmah to fill there a very im- 
 portant civil appointment, and whom Lord Ellenborough's 
 successor, Sir Henry Hardinge, recalled to India in 
 September 1844 to undertake the duty of Political 
 Agent for the North-West frontier, at the time the most 
 important post at the Governor - General's disposal. 
 Broadfoot toiled hard and skilfully in his delicate and
 
 in THE ANARCHY OF THE PUNJAB 55 
 
 responsible political position. On the morning of 
 Moodkee, when he warned the Governor-General that 
 in the dense cloud of dust rising to the sky a Sikh army 
 was marching to the attack, the ambidextrous man 
 added : " My political functions are over, and the care 
 of the frontiers henceforward belongs to the bayonet." 
 Four days later Broadfoot lay dead in the trench of a 
 Sikh battery, shattered with wound on wound ; and his 
 sorrowing friend Havelock was in the heart of his fourth 
 campaign a campaign on a larger scale than any in 
 which he had previously shared. The battle of Feroze- 
 shah was the turning-point of the first Sikh War. 
 
 Our old ally Bunjeet Singh, the strong ruler of the 
 Punjab, had died when the Army of the Indus was 
 on its march to Cabul. He was succeeded by his weak 
 son Khurruk Singh, who died in 1840, notwithstanding, 
 or because of, physic composed of pounded emeralds. 
 His successor and reputed half-brother, Sher Singh, was 
 murdered with his son in 1843. On his death, Duleep 
 Singh, a child of five, a nominal son of old Runjeet, was 
 proclaimed Maharajah, and maintained on the throne 
 by the vigour and audacity of his mother, Ranee Jind 
 Kowur, better known as Jindun, whom Sir Henry 
 Hardinge called "the Messalina of the Punjab," and 
 who ultimately died in obscurity in Kensington. Be- 
 fore Duleep Singh's accession the Sikh army had lapsed 
 into a condition of insubordination, and indeed of open 
 mutiny. It had ceased to obey orders from the Govern- 
 ment, and acted under the direction of its punchayuts 
 or regimental committees, which were elected by the 
 men, and Avhich decided on all important questions, such 
 as what pay the army should demand, where it would
 
 56 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 serve, and what officers it would recognise. Later those 
 committees practically decided questions of government 
 and policy, and appointed or dismissed the nominal 
 ministers of the realm. Most armies in such conditions 
 would have deteriorated in efficiency, but the army of 
 the Khalsa, as events proved, retained in the anarchy 
 which its abuse of power caused and maintained the 
 full measure of its soldierly attributes. In a belief that 
 the Sikh army could hold its own against the once- 
 dreaded British arms the committees were fortified by 
 inductive reasoning. For the Sikhs had humbled the 
 Afghans, and taken from them the Douranee province of 
 Peshawur ; the Afghans, according to universal native 
 reckoning, had baffled the English and had certainly 
 destroyed a whole Feringhee army. Therefore the 
 Sikhs could beat the English. The premises were fairly 
 accurate, and the syllogism had a very tempting aspect 
 of completeness. The anarchy of the Punjab and the 
 masterfulness of the Khalsa army at length grew to such 
 a height in the last months of 1845, that the Ranee 
 Jindun, realising the risk of the situation to her son and 
 herself, resolved on an attempt to pluck the flower of 
 safety out of the nettle danger. In the language of 
 Herbert Edwardes : " Finding that it was hopeless to 
 oppose the army, the Ranee wisely yielded ; encouraged 
 its excesses; called its madness reason ; and urged it on 
 in the hope of guiding it to destruction. History scarcely 
 records a conception more bold and able." The troops 
 were hounded on to the enterprise of crossing the Sutlej 
 by the argument that the Durbar treasury was empty 
 and that the soldiers must look to British spoil for their 
 aggrandisement. Over the tomb of Runjeet a solemn
 
 ni THE MARCH TOWARD 7^HE SUTLEJ 57 
 
 oath of mutual fidelity was sworn, and the army pledged 
 itself to the immediate invasion of British India. 
 
 During one long critical year George Broadfoot 
 abode on our frontier watching and intent, as the skilful 
 physician watches in a patient the threatened develop- 
 ment of disease. The sagacity, the wisdom, the self- 
 restraint, and the maintenance withal of the dignity 
 of the power he represented, which marked Broadfoot's 
 conduct during this eventful period, kindle the warmest 
 admiration and intensify the regret for his premature 
 although glorious death. Nor was the Governor-General 
 other than equal to the duties of a crisis so serious. 
 Lord Ellenborough, when recalled, had amassed over 
 sixteen thousand men in the garrison-places of our 
 North- West; Sir Henry Hardinge had increased the 
 number to thirty thousand in the stations nearest the 
 frontier, with a reserve of ten thousand more at Meerut. 
 Lord Ellenborough's sixty -six guns had been increased by 
 his exertions to ninety-nine. It was with a wise reluc- 
 tance to provoke hostilities that Hardinge refrained from 
 a display of military strength in the vicinity of the 
 Sutlej ; and that the garrisons behind it were unostenta- 
 tiously filled with men and material of war ; and with 
 a frontier of so great length it was good strategy also 
 to refrain from scattering troops in the attempt to 
 picket it. In his unhurried progress Sir Henry 
 Hardinge did not reach Umballah until December 3rd. 
 The Commander-in-Chief living at Umballah on the 
 hair-trigger as he was, had coolly issued invitations 
 for a ball, which the route forced him to cancel. There 
 was some momentary trouble as to the rationing of the 
 Meerut force on its way to the front, in case it should
 
 58 HA VELOCK 
 
 have to be ordered up. This the Commissary-General, 
 after the manner of Commissary-Generals, said might be 
 arranged in the course of six weeks. " Six weeks ! " 
 exclaimed Hardinge " it must be done in five 
 days ! " and turning to Broadfoot said, " You must do 
 it ! " In his quiet way Broadfoot replied : " Well, it is 
 rather sharp work, but it shall be done if possible;" 
 and it proved to be possible. Then Abbott had a long- 
 gallop on the spur to Kossoulie in the hills, to warn the 
 two European regiments there for the field at a few 
 hours' notice. On the night of December 9th, when the 
 Govern or -General was one march beyond Umballah, 
 Broadfoot received tidings that the Sikhs had begun to 
 cross the Sutlej. Immediately orders went to dough at 
 Umballah Havelock in his suite to advance ; and he 
 moved out on the 12th with the Umballah force about 
 seven thousand strong, and pressed on by forced marches. 
 Hardinge himself rode to Loodianah, garrisoned the fort 
 there with the infirm men of Wheeler's brigade, and 
 ordered that officer with his five thousand hale soldiers 
 and twelve guns to strike down into the direct road at 
 Busean, and cover the depot of supplies gathered there, 
 pending the coming up of Gough and the Umballah force. 
 The junction was effected on December 16th ; all super- 
 fluous baggage was weeded out ; and twelve thousand 
 men in light marching order hurried toward the Sutlej. 
 After crossing the river a large body of Sikhs under 
 Tej Singh remained in a position threatening Ferozepore ; 
 the bulk of the Khalsa army, the full strength of which 
 subsequent information showed to have been about thirty- 
 five thousand men, moved eastward about twelve miles to 
 the village of Ferozeshah, which Lai Singh, who was in
 
 in THE MORNING OF MOODKEE 59 
 
 command, set about entrenching and fortifying. On the 
 17th, when the approach of the British army was re- 
 ported, in the belief that it consisted only of the troops 
 from Loodianah the Sikh commander moved out a 
 force of all arms half way toward Moodkee, on the not 
 wholly unlikely chance of being able to catch the Ferin- 
 ghees at unawares. In the early morning of the 18th 
 he had an advance party in the village of Moodkee. 
 
 On that same morning Gough's army was toiling 
 forward to complete a forced march of twenty-one miles. 
 Broadfoot, scouting in advance, came on the Sikh detach- 
 ment in Moodkee. Too weak to force it to develope its 
 strength, he reported its presence, when Gough formed 
 order of battle and moved forward. The Sikh detach- 
 ment evacuated Moodkee, which the British occupied 
 about noon, and the exhausted and thirsty soldiers lay 
 down to await the arrival of the baggage. About three 
 P.M. Broadfoot, -who was lunching with the Commander- 
 in-Chief, received a scrap of paper. Glancing at it he 
 exclaimed, " The enemy are upon us ! " galloped away 
 to the front, and soon returned with confirmation of 
 the words. Some were inclined to discredit him, 
 attributing to skirmishers the cloud of dust on the 
 horizon. "That dust," retorted Broadfoot, "is the Sikh 
 army ! " and he was right. Gough, as at Maharajpore, 
 was completely taken by surprise ; as then, he now 
 adopted the hasty offensive as the readiest method of 
 retrieval. The Sikhs, halting in a position among copses 
 and sandhills, gave him time to hurry his wearied troops 
 into a rough formation effected under fire from the 
 enemy's twenty-two cannon. It was not completed until 
 four P.M., when only an hour of daylight remained.
 
 60 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 Gough's cavalry, attacking both flanks, drove back 
 the Sikh horsemen and laid bare the infantry and 
 artillery. The British guns were gallantly handled, 
 Brookes advancing them up to the edge of the 
 jungle under a hail of bullets and grape; but they 
 were light field pieces, and most of the Sikh cannon 
 were 12-pounders. As in most of Gough's battles, the 
 brunt of the fighting fell on the infantry, which, under 
 the unsubdued fire from the Sikh batteries moved up 
 to close quarters. The punishment was so severe as to 
 stagger one of the European regiments, but Gough with 
 his staff opportunely rode to its head and led it 
 forward. A native regiment broke and fell back; 
 Havelock was sent to rally it, and succeeded by the 
 taunt that "the enemy was in front, not in the rear." 
 The Sikh infantry and gunners fought with remarkable 
 obstinacy ; but bayonet pressure on their front and 
 cavalry sabres on their flanks at last shook them, and 
 they retreated leaving seventeen guns in the hands of 
 the victors. "Night alone," wrote Gough, "saved them 
 from worse disaster." He had gained his victory, but it 
 was not a triumph to boast of. The British loss was two 
 hundred and fifteen killed and six hundred and fifty- 
 seven Abounded ; but the Sikhs were not accountable for 
 all this slaughter. Mr. Currie thus wrote to Lord 
 Ellenborough : " Night soon closed in ; we were in a low 
 tree jungle, and the dust was excessive ; all this added 
 to the confusion. The troops got pell-mell together, and 
 it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe, or to 
 tell where any one was; in the confusion our troops 
 fired upon one another. Twice was I with Sir Henry 
 under a heavy and destructive fire of grape and musketry
 
 MOODKEE 6 1 
 
 from our own guns; and I am satisfied, and so is Sir 
 Henry, that half the casualties at Moodkee were from 
 the fire of our own people." 
 
 Among the slain were gallant old Sale and Sir J. 
 M'Caskill, Havelock's old Istalif chief. Havelock 
 escaped unhurt, but had two horses shot under him. His 
 old Afghanistan charger "Feroze " was killed by a round 
 shot. Broadfoot remounted him on a pony, which was 
 presently wounded. Broadfoot set him on horseback 
 yet again, with the remark that " it was a waste of 
 horseflesh to mount him." 
 
 There were some twenty-five thousand Sikhs, with 
 eighty or ninety guns, in an entrenched position ten miles 
 off at Ferozeshah; several thousands more, not much 
 farther distant, were threatening Ferozepore. After the 
 experience at Moodkee of the fighting qualities of the 
 Khalsa soldiery, Gough and Hardinge must have realised 
 that their prospect was the reverse of brilliant. The 
 army remained at Moodkee until the morning of the 21st 
 unmolested, though in expectation of an attack it had 
 stood under arms during many hours of the 19th. On 
 that evening there had arrived a welcome reinforcement 
 the two European regiments from the hills hurried up 
 by Abbott, a native infantry regiment, and four heavy 
 guns. The advance on Ferozeshah was made on the 21st, 
 all wounded, sick, baggage, and provisions being left at 
 Moodkee, protected by two regiments of native infantry. 
 The march was not direct on Ferozeshah, but to a point 
 about three miles south of that place, where a junction 
 was effected with the force of six thousand men which 
 Sir John Littler had brought out from Ferozepore, 
 evading skilfully the Sikh force Avatching the station.
 
 62 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 Littler was fairly punctual at the rendezvous, and 
 the junction was officially reported to have been com- 
 plete at half-past one, within about a mile and a half of 
 the Sikh position. The attack did not begin until after 
 three, so that some unexplained delay must have occurred, 
 exceptionally unfortunate on the shortest day of the year. 
 The British force was formed in four divisions, of which 
 Gilbert's had the right, Wallace's the centre, and Littler's 
 the left ; Sir Harry Smith's division constituted the 
 reserve. Gough's total strength was about seventeen 
 thousand three hundred men, with sixty-nine field guns : 
 the four heavy guns recently arrived do not appear to 
 have been used. The Sikh entrenched position was 
 assaulted on the southern and western faces, where the 
 entrenchments were strongest and the batteries most 
 formidable ; but those were the faces nearest respect- 
 ively to Moodkee and Ferozepore. 
 
 Ferozeshah was a blundering butcherly battle, of the 
 old-fashioned, confused, slaughtering sort, of which Fon- 
 tenoy is. the type. The divisions did not fall on simul- 
 taneously. Littler's was the first to engage, its objective 
 the enemy's west face. Under a crushing fire it advanced 
 steadily to within one hundred and fifty yards of the 
 batteries, and the order to charge was then given. It was 
 obeyed, but not with the vigour which alone could achieve 
 success. One of the European regiments first halted 
 and then wheeled about, it was alleged by order of its 
 brigadier, when within fifty yards of the entrenchment ; 
 it had lost seven officers and seventy-six men. In vain did 
 Littler exert himself to retrieve the situation ; his attack 
 had failed, and the division withdrew out of shot and 
 took no further part in the fighting. The two divisions
 
 FEROZESHAH 63 
 
 assailing the south face of the entrenched position found 
 themselves overlapping it on both flanks. The troops, 
 anxious to confront a foe, crowded in upon the centre 
 and thus masked their own guns, exposing also denser 
 masses to the destructive fire of the Sikh artillery. But 
 the assault was pressed resolutely home, and in a 
 measure succeeded. The Sikhs made a desperate re- 
 sistance, and their batteries had to be carried at the 
 bayonet point at a ghastly expenditure of life. Driven 
 from their cannon they fell back into an interior 
 position around their camp and maintained there a steady 
 musketry fire. Isolated attacks nevertheless penetrated 
 some distance into their camp, which was set on fire in 
 places. The Third Light Dragoons l covered themselves 
 Avith glory. They rode at a Sikh battery, silenced it 
 by killing the gunners, and dashing into the Sikh camp, 
 swept through it from end to end, clearing for them- 
 selves a bloody path. They emerged flushed with 
 success, but they brought not back whole numbers ; in 
 their wild charge they had lost sixty killed and ninety 
 Avounded. Then came darkness and chaos. " Men of all 
 regiments and all arms were mixed together ; generals 
 were doubtful of the fact or the extent of their own 
 success, and colonels knew not what had become of the 
 regiments they commanded, or of the army of which 
 they formed part." Sir Harry Smith's division in the 
 darkness drifted away out of ken to a village two miles 
 distant. A staff- officer, assuming the army defeated, 
 ordered several regiments back to Ferozepore, and was 
 actually obeyed by a considerable portion of the force. 
 But the chiefs had stronger nerves and stouter hearts. 
 
 1 Now the Third Hussars.
 
 64 HA V BLOCK 
 
 The troops were gradually drawn back into a position about 
 four hundred yards outside the entrenchments, Avhere 
 were collected the remnants of Gilbert's and Wallace's 
 divisions. Some order was restored, the two divisions 
 Avere combined into one, and the exhausted, hungry, and 
 thirsty soldiers had some rest. But it was much broken. 
 The Sikhs returned to their batteries, manned some guns, 
 and opened fire. Sir Henry Hardinge had to send two 
 regiments to charge the battery ; its guns were spiked, 
 and a measure of quietude was thus attained. But it 
 was truly a night of horrors ; the Sikhs were massacr- 
 ing the wounded abandoned in their position ; among 
 the sound men the wounded who had been brought out 
 lay groaning in the bitter cold, for there were no field 
 hospitals. There were those who counselled retreat ; but 
 of that the chiefs would not hear. They resolved 
 without hesitation that the attack must be at once 
 resumed in the morning. Hardinge, Gough, Havelock, 
 and the staff spent most of the night in visiting the 
 soldiers and inspiriting them with cheery words. It is 
 recorded of an Irish soldier that he said of Sir Henry : 
 " Sure he talked to us as to ladies in a drawing-room, so 
 quiet and polite." Yet his heart must have been very 
 heavy. " Another such battle would shake the Empire " 
 were his words to Havelock. 
 
 And another such battle seemed inevitable, for the 
 Sikhs had virtually recovered the whole of their en- 
 trenched camp. But they had suffered in morale from 
 the fighting of the previous afternoon and evening. In 
 the night they broke into licence and insubordina- 
 tion. There had been stormy counsels and bitter re- 
 crimination, riot, mutiny, and desertion. Lai Singh the
 
 in THE RETRIEVAL OF FEROZESHAH 65 
 
 nominal general had fled ; his military chest and tents 
 had been plundered. Before daybreak the British com- 
 bined division had been moved up to the edge of the 
 Sikh entrenchment; at dawn it arose, delivered its 
 assault, took and cleared the batteries, penetrated to the 
 village of Ferozeshah, and then wheeling to the left, 
 swept the whole entrenched camp clear of enemies. 
 This achieved, the British troops were masters of the 
 entire position, of seventy-three guns, of many standards; 
 the line halted as on parade, and the victorious soldiers 
 cheered their leaders as they rode along their front. 
 There were yet critical moments when Tej Singh brought 
 up his cohorts of horse and field of artillery, and made 
 an essay to retrieve the Sikh fortunes. Had he known 
 that the British tumbrils were empty, his efforts might 
 have been stronger ; but when he saw Lai Singh's camp 
 in full possession of the troops who were showing him 
 so bold a front, he desisted and withdrew. 
 
 Ferozeshah, then, was won ; the cost of the victory, 
 six hundred and ninety -four killed and seventeen 
 hundred and twenty- one wounded; fifty -six officers 
 were slain, among them some of the best men of the 
 army. The loss of Broadfoot was irreparable. Have- 
 lock escaped skaith, although he continually had ex- 
 posed himself without stint. 
 
 The tide of invasion had been stemmed, and on the 
 second day after Ferozeshah not a Sikh soldier remained 
 on the left bank of the Sutlej ; but in the two battles 
 which had wrought this result Sir Hugh Gough had 
 lost a fifth of his effective strength and had exhausted 
 his ammunition. The Sikh Durbar made no overtures, 
 and the war had to be prosecuted ; but reinforcements, 
 
 F
 
 66 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 supplies of military stores, and a siege train had to be 
 brought up from the distant arsenal of Delhi. Pend- 
 ing their arrival the army had to remain in inactivity. 
 The Sikhs took advantage of its inaction to threaten 
 the British station of Loodianah. Sir Harry Smith, 
 sent to cover it, suffered on his march somewhat severe 
 handling ; but was presently able to retaliate with vigour 
 by winning the victory of Aliwal. But Aliwal did not 
 quell the fighting spirit of the gallant Sikhs. Under the 
 eyes of the supine British army they set themselves to 
 the preparation of a defensive position on the left bank 
 of the Sutlej, encircling the village of Sobraon. This field- 
 work consisted of a series of semicircular entrenchments 
 of which the river was the base ; its exterior profile, sur- 
 rounded by a deep ditch, measured two and a half miles. 
 This strong place was defended by sixty -seven heavy 
 guns and thirty-five thousand soldiers, mostly of the 
 Sikh regular army. A bridge of boats connected it with 
 a reserve entrenchment on the Punjab side, whose 
 batteries commanded the flanks of the main stronghold. 
 It was not until February 8th that the heavy ordnance 
 and ammunition reached the British camp. Under 
 cover of a heavy fog Gough next morning put his cannon 
 into position, and disposed his troops in accordance with 
 his scheme of operations. The western end of the en- 
 trenchment where it impinged on the river was judged 
 the fittest point of attack, since an entry there would 
 take in reverse the greater part of the fortified semi- 
 circle; and General Dick's division Avas assigned to 
 assail this point. The centre and right divisions, under 
 General Gilbert and Sir Harry Smith respectively, were 
 directed to make feigned attacks at other points.
 
 SOBRAON 67 
 
 The fog rose at seven, and the cannonade began. 
 The Sikh guns gave shot for shot, and held their own 
 against Gough's artillery. The British chief was to learn, 
 as the Russians did at Plevna, how little the most vigor- 
 ous and sustained cannonade can effect against solid and 
 well-planned earthworks. At nine he had made no im- 
 pression on the enemy's position, and his ammunition was 
 running short. If the Sobraon defences which he had 
 passively allowed to be constructed were to be taken at 
 all, he had to recognise that they must be taken with the 
 bayonet. That was Gough's favourite weapon, and he sent 
 on his infantry, covered by what remained of the missiles 
 which were the food of his great guns. Dick's division 
 moved in admirable order on its appointed objective, 
 crossed the ditch, and stormed the rampart. But it ex- 
 perienced the fiercest opposition and was repulsed over 
 and over again. Fresh regiments sent in reinforcement 
 had also to recoil, the losses were severe and the chances 
 of success were becoming unpromising. It became neces- 
 sary to convert the feints of the other two divisions 
 into real attacks. The Sikhs were ready also for those. 
 After a desperate struggle in which it lost nearly seven 
 hundred men in half an hour, Gilbert's division succeeded 
 in carrying the central entrenchments and batteries. Sir 
 Harry Smith had to fight hard and lose severely before 
 he was master of the left section. Simultaneously Dick 
 was able to penetrate ; but still the work of the British 
 soldiers was only half done. The Sikhs, huddled together 
 in their camp, fought every foot of ground. Sir Henry 
 Hardinge had written of Ferozeshah that he " did not 
 admire Sepoy fighting." He must have mentally re- 
 tracted the stricture when he saw the little Goorkhas of
 
 68 HAVE LOCK 
 
 the Sirmoor and Naseeree battalions and the tall high- 
 caste Sepoys of the Bengal regiments vying in valour with 
 each other and with their white comrades. The Sikhs 
 would take no quarter ; brave old Shem Singh, calling on 
 his warriors of the Khalsa to die fighting for the Gooroo, 
 Hung himself on the British bayonets, he and his valiant 
 followers. But discipline prevailed. The battling Sikhs 
 were forced back on the bridge, which traitors had broken 
 down ; preferring death to surrender they plunged into 
 the swollen river and were drowned in hundreds, scourged 
 as they drowned by the fire of Gough's horse artillery. 
 It was estimated that at Sobraon the Sikh loss was eight 
 thousand ; the British was severe, amounting to two 
 thousand three hundred and eighty-three ; but Sobraon 
 was the final and decisive battle of the war. By noon 
 not an unwounded Sikh remained on the left bank of 
 the Sutlej. All the Sikh artillery, stores, and munitions 
 were left in the hands of the victors. Hardinge hurried 
 forward the invasion of the Punjab with electrical energy, 
 and in three days the whole army with all its followers 
 and belongings had crossed the river. But the war was 
 over. Henry Lawrence, who had been appointed 
 Broadfoot's successor, was right when he assured the 
 Governor-General on the afternoon of Sobraon that not 
 another shot would be fired. 
 
 Havelock in this battle had his usual fortune. He was 
 in the heart of it, escaped unhurt, and had his horse shot 
 under him. It was a narrow escape, for the ball struck the 
 saddle-cloth within an inch of his thigh. Through the 
 campaign he filled a subordinate although useful and re- 
 sponsible position on Sir Hugh Gough's staff; in his next 
 fight, eleven years later, he was to command a division.
 
 CHAPTEK IV 
 
 PEACE-TIME AND PERSIA 
 
 IN the preceding chapter the battles of the Gwalior and 
 the first Sikh campaigns have been described in some 
 detail, although Havelock shared in them in a com- 
 paratively subordinate capacity, because they were the 
 school in which he took lessons in actual war con- 
 ducted on a scale of some magnitude. He was a very 
 modest pupil, and permitted himself no self-illusion, 
 " I entered on this campaign," he wrote after Sobraon, 
 " fancying myself something of a soldier. I have now 
 learnt that I know nothing. Well ! I am even yet 
 not too old to learn." The parting with an erroneous 
 belief is of itself an invaluable lesson ; but spite of 
 his own self - depreciating disclaimer, the Sutlej 
 campaign must have been worth more than that 
 to such a man as Havelock. It could not but have 
 afforded to one of his acute military perception 
 examples worth following, and more instances of what 
 to avoid ; that he specially profited by the latter, his 
 leadership in the Mutiny time is full of illustration. 
 Meanwhile in his comments he was very loyal to his 
 chiefs. His vindication of their conduct, if not unim- 
 peachable, is specious enough. It had been put forward 
 that on Littler's junction Gough should have remained
 
 70 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 on the defensive at Moodkee, barring the threatened 
 march of the Sikhs on Delhi until the arrival of re- 
 inforcements should give him a predominant advantage. 
 "But," argued Havelock, "though such a plan offered 
 great advantages, the nature of our original defence of 
 the frontier rendered it hardly feasible, for it would have 
 hazarded the safety of Ferozepore with its indifferent 
 entrenchments guarded by only one regiment, and 
 of its defenceless town garrisoned only by another." 
 Replying to the charge of recklessness in assailing 
 the Sikh position in Ferozeshah so late in the 
 day and after an exhausting march, he declaims 
 vigorously : 
 
 Not attack on the afternoon of a long march ! It was 
 one of those cases in which it would have been better to have 
 attacked at midnight, rather than not to have anticipated 
 the junction of the two armies. No sacrifice was too great 
 to defeat that operation. Every risk must be run and every 
 fatigue endured to attain such an object in war. Nor must 
 it be forgotten that though Sir Hugh Gougb's army after a 
 harassing march was not in the best condition for so serious an 
 encounter, its condition would not bave been improved by a 
 bivouac through a nigbt of bitter cold, without food, water, 
 or shelter ; during which time the Sikb army of Ferozepore 
 might have joined that of Ferozesbab and thus diminished 
 the cbance of success. 
 
 There was in the nature of things little of action for 
 Havelock during the decade of peace -service which 
 followed the Sutlej campaign. Hitherto it is chiefly 
 his character as a soldier, the delineation of which the 
 narrative has permitted. A few pages of extracts from 
 his correspondence and other writings during his years 
 of peace may not now be out of place, as aiding to the com- 
 prehension of what manner of man he was in other
 
 iv THE SIKH LEADERS SKETCHED 71 
 
 relations of his simple, earnest God-fearing life. During 
 this period he wrote a great deal for publication in 
 Anglo-Indian periodicals, and his letters to his friends 
 are of the good, old-fashioned, descriptively copious kind 
 which a quick postal service and the telegraph wire have 
 abolished. The contrast is remarkable between the ease, 
 picturesqueness, and vivacity of his correspondence and 
 the laboured stiffness of his books. 
 
 After the war he accompanied the Governor-General 
 and the Commander-in-Chief to the capital of the Punjab, 
 and he gives life-like sketches of the Sikh leaders whom 
 he had the opportunity of seeing in the course of the 
 ceremonies at Lahore. 
 
 As Maharajah Gliolab Singh is no more to be seen but as 
 an independent sovereign, I may as well describe to you the 
 ruler of Jummoo, now lord of the mountains from Mundee to 
 Cashmere. His dress is remarkably plain, even slovenly, but 
 the chequered volume of his life is to be read in his astute 
 and glozing countenance. If a painter sought to embody all 
 the smooth cunning of Asiatic intrigue in one face, he would 
 throw away his sketches as soon as he saw that of Gholab 
 Singh, cease to draw on his imagination, and limn the 
 features of the Rao Sahib, as the Lahore people call him, with 
 minute fidelity. He would feel that he never could surpass 
 the mock humility, the insinuating smile, the pride subdued 
 by cunning, of the physiognomy before him. Rajah Lai 
 Singh is a man of low extraction. He is the Orloff or 
 rather I should say the Potemkin of the Punjab. He is 
 marked with the small-pox, and is rather what we should call 
 in England an ugly dog ; but tall and graceful, with a 
 winning smile which shows constantly an indifferent set of 
 teeth, and an insinuating manner. He has no reputation for 
 talent ; but his position in the affection of the Ranee will 
 make him Vizier. Dewan Deena-nath will look after the 
 State finances ; he is a heaven-born mahajun (trader) and 
 banker. His countenance resembles the rectangular columns
 
 72 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 of a Hindoo account-book. Tej Singh is of small stature, and 
 his lineaments, which are more scarred by small-pox than 
 those of Lai Singh, are not pleasing, but he is the best 
 soldier of all the Sirdars. Runjour Singh, for whose benefit 
 Sir Harry Smith established an " &ole de natation " at the 
 ghaut near Aliwal, is an ass, and looks like one. He is 
 young, and of that order of mind which will not improve. 
 
 At Lahore Havelock met Sir Charles Napier, of whom 
 he writes : " He was very courteous, and chatted about 
 my brother Will, whom all Peninsular soldiers know, 
 and dear old Sir Robert Sale, and the volunteers of the 
 Thirteenth, who fought so gallantly in Beloochistan. 
 It is impossible to conceive without seeing it, a frame so 
 attenuated and shattered, and yet tenanted by a living 
 soul, as this old soldier's. He speaks readily and fluently, 
 and will if spared and again actively employed, shine 
 more and more in, I think, the second rank of com- 
 manders." 
 
 From Lahore Havelock returned to Simla in the 
 suite of the Commander-in-Chief. He naturally ex- 
 pected after good service on the headquarter staff in 
 three battles, that his chief would have recommended 
 him for one of the vacancies caused by the casualties of 
 the war. But his name was not put forward. It has 
 been hinted that Gough took umbrage at his de- 
 clining to write the history of the war in China 
 which Sir Hugh had conducted. The Governor-General 
 exerted himself in Havelock's favour and obtained 
 from the Horse Guards his nomination to the post 
 of Deputy Adjutant- General of Queen's troops in 
 the Bombay Presidency. He sailed from Calcutta 
 with his old friend Sir George Clerk, who had been 
 appointed GoA r ernor of Bombay ; and on arrival
 
 iv TRANSFER OF SERVICE TO BOMBAY 73 
 
 assumed the duties of his office which he continued 
 efficiently to fulfil for three years. Yet once again 
 he found himself under the command of his old chief 
 Sir Willoughby Cotton, who soon after Havelock's 
 arrival was appointed Commander-in-Chief on the 
 Bombay side. For the first time the state of his health 
 began to disquiet him. He had drunk of a well at 
 Ferozeshah which he believed to have been poisoned, 
 and the water of which his horse refused. And he had 
 " liver " the disease of the old Anglo-Indian. He was 
 advised to take furlough to England after his twenty- 
 seven years of service in India. 
 
 So far as will and duty [he wrote] are concerned, to 
 England I should go. But as for the means of going, 
 difficulties accumulate around me day by day. I shall not 
 be out of the hands of the Simla Jews before February next. 
 The expenses of living and marching here, though conducted 
 with the utmost economy, are necessarily heavy, and Harry 
 and Joshua 1 have to be provided for and educated. More- 
 over I lost by fourteen hours' illness my lamented horse 
 " Magician " for which I gave fourteen hundred rupees last 
 year on the Sutlej, and how he is to be replaced I know not. 
 So that, if there were not an overruling Providence to untie 
 knots, it would be Macbetb's case : " There is no flying 
 hence, nor tarrying here. " 
 
 His health became worse in the spring of 1848, when 
 he wrote, " I feel sure that I cannot remain another year 
 in India without running the greatest risk of leaving poor 
 Hannah 2 and my five boys without a sixpence in the world 
 but my major's pension of 70 a year, and 1000 in the 
 funds." He had indeed taken his passage home in April, 
 but resigned it, determining "with God's help to try 
 and spend another year in India, a year of the strictest 
 1 His sons. - Mrs. Havelock.
 
 74 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 self-denial and economy for my children's sake." The 
 Punjab was disquieted and the second Sikh war was 
 already threatening. Before April was out it had 
 virtually begun Avith the Mooltan insurrection, and in 
 November Gough was on the Chenab, and Havelock's 
 elder brother, Colonel William Havelock of the Twelfth 
 Dragoons, fell at the head of his wild charge across 
 the Eamnuggur sands. Henry burned to participate in 
 the campaign. The new year had come, Mooltan had 
 surrendered, and Gough's army lay paralysed by the 
 havoc of Chillianwallah, when Havelock allowed himself 
 to hope that the chance to take a hand in the fighting 
 had at last come to him. He had exchanged from the 
 Thirteenth into the Thirty- ninth, and from the Thirty- 
 ninth into the Fifty-third, in which latter regiment he 
 was now the second major. In the beginning of Feb- 
 ruary 1849 he read in the papers that the Fifty-third 
 was about to be ordered into the field, and later he 
 heard that it was already on the march. Sir Willoughby 
 Cotton gave him permission to vacate for the time his 
 staff appointment, and he started with all speed for the 
 Punjab. On March 12th, when between Indore and 
 Agra, there came to him from headquarters a peremptory 
 order to return to his post, and a reprimand for having 
 left it without orders from Lord Gough. His reading of 
 the reason for the remand was that " he was not Avanted 
 as a Major, and would not be appointed as a Brigadier," 
 to Avhich latter position his army rank gave him a claim. 
 The truth is that he was not wanted in any capacity, 
 since on February 20th the decisive battle of Goojerat 
 had been fought, and the Avar was over. So Havelock 
 had his journey for nothing, Avith a scolding thrown in.
 
 iv ON HOME FURLOUGH 75 
 
 In April 1849 Mrs. Havelock was compelled to sail 
 for England with her family. Her husband still re- 
 mained in India in the practice of economy and abstemi- 
 ousness ; but in the autumn he was peremptorily ordered 
 away lest worse things should befall him ; and travel- 
 ling overland he reached Plymouth, where his family 
 were in residence, in the beginning of November. There 
 he remained till early in 1850, his health gradually im- 
 proving, notwithstanding that he found the Devonshire 
 climate " relaxing and enervating even in winter." He 
 paid a visit to Lord Hardinge, and another to the rela- 
 tives of George Broadfoot in Eegent's Park, was elected a 
 member of the "Senior," and was presented at the March 
 levee by the Duke of Wellington himself, of whom he 
 gives an affecting sketch as he saw and heard him at the 
 banquet given by the East India Company's Directors to 
 Lord Gough on April. 
 
 In looking at the Duke of Wellington, and listening to 
 his speech, nearly all that we have read of the ruined powers 
 of Marlborough, after his first paralytic seizure, seemed to be 
 realised. I never witnessed so affecting a spectacle of ruined 
 greatness. He is so deaf that he seemed to me to utter 
 prolonged inarticulate sounds without being aware of it. He 
 begins, but rarely concludes a sentence, and when he breaks 
 off in a period, the spectator doubts from his manner whether 
 he will commence another, or fall down apoplectic in the 
 next effort to begin one. 
 
 Of England the England of 1850 the absentee for 
 thirty years records varied impressions. 
 
 England appears to me to be more intensely aristocratic 
 than ever. The great changes are, the rapidity of communi- 
 cation by locomotives, the extraordinary increase of the power 
 of the press, the improved morality and decency of habits 
 of the middle and lowest classes, and the accumulation of
 
 76 HA VELOCK 
 
 unions for the promotion of industry, comfort, and decidedly 
 of religion. Into the midst of this society, a conqueror old 
 or young, a Lord Gough or a Major Edwardes, drops suddenly, 
 becomes, as formerly, a nine days' wonder, but the mercurial 
 surface of society will not long retain the impression. The 
 wealthy and the great are entirely wrapt up in themselves 
 and their own interests. Avarice is the great idol, greater 
 even than fame just now. 
 
 His old Charterhouse friends Norris and Hare were 
 prompt and hearty in their renewal of intercourse with 
 him, and he rejoiced in being remembered after all the 
 long years. Norris was now Sir William, living in re- 
 tirement after a long judicial career in the Colonies. 
 Hare, who wrote to him as " Phlos," was an Archdeacon, 
 and rector of Hurstmonceaux. Havelock and his wife 
 paid a visit to Norris at Barrow Green where Arch- 
 deacon Hare was a guest also, and the three old Car- 
 thusians no doubt had much pleasant converse about 
 old Dr. Raine and his stern discipline, and of living and 
 dead comrades the latter greatly in the majority of 
 those days of their boyhood. Norris's goodwill went 
 beyond words and hospitality to deeds ; for he lodged 
 the purchase for Havelock's substantive lieutenant- 
 colonelcy. But the deposit was made too late. Have- 
 lock writes. 
 
 Byrne had already come under an engagement to retire, 
 and Major Mansfield l had, as I am informed, unconditionally 
 paid him all the money over and above the regulation price. 
 When I became aware of this of course I was in a dilemma. 
 It woiild have been hard upon poor Byrne, who is about 
 half a degree more broken than myself, to stop the purchase 
 at this stage, and if I had taken the lieutenant-colonelcy, it 
 would have been at the expense of Major Mansfield, who had 
 
 1 The late Lord Sandhurst.
 
 iv REGAINING HEALTH IN EUROPE 77 
 
 without reservation paid heavily for it iii hard cash, and 
 would not have got it after all. So I suppose that I shall 
 see a youth of some sixteen years standing in the army 
 gazetted over my head as lieutenant-colonel. Major Mans- 
 field is, I aiu told, a clever man and a good officer. I was 
 purchased over, as I used to say, by three sots and two 
 fools, so I presume I must persuade myself that it is a 
 pleasant variety to be superseded by a man of sense and 
 gentlemanly habits. 
 
 By reason of this consideration for others Havelock 
 never was a substantive lieutenant-colonel, and he had 
 to wait three years longer before a brevet gave him the 
 rank of full colonel. 
 
 The Duke of Wellington had already given his eldest 
 son 1 a commission in the line, and one of the East 
 India Directors, whom he found very civil and appre- 
 ciative, nominated his second son Joshua to a Bombay 
 cadetship. The chairman took him down to an Addis- 
 combe examination, which interested him very much, 
 and at which he met Frederick Abbott, Herbert Edwardes, 
 and many old acquaintances. England and visits to 
 Schwalbach, Ems, and Kissingen, had done much to 
 restore his health. Havelock was now fifty-six, but he 
 owned that he had no longer active disease of any kind, 
 and ate, drank, slept, and walked like a man of forty. 
 
 Much of the summer he spent quietly at Bonn with 
 his family, gradually gaining strength. When there he 
 made some interest unsuccessfully to be named one of 
 the Queen's aides-de-camp, an appointment which would 
 have given him his colonelcy without hindering him 
 from serving in India. Leaving his family at Bonn he 
 
 1 Now Lieut. -General Sir Henry M. Havelock -Allan, Bart., 
 K.C.B., V.C.
 
 78 HAVE LOCK 
 
 journeyed deviously toward Trieste, visiting by the way 
 the battlefields of Leipzig and Prague, and the galleries 
 of Dresden and Vienna; and he was back in Bombay in 
 December 1851, when he took up his old appointment 
 on the staff. He held it until the spring of 1854, when 
 Lord Hardinge gave him the appointment of Quarter- 
 master-General of the Queen's troops in India, which 
 brought him back to Bengal and to the staff of the 
 Commander-in-Chief. The appointment to-day is scarcely 
 such a bed of roses as it was when Havelock filled it. 
 "My duties," he wrote, "are literally nil. My work 
 averages two returns and two letters per mensem " ; for 
 which arduous services he was paid nearly 3000 per 
 annum. A few months later, by the promotion of 
 Colonel Markham to the rank of Major-General, he 
 succeeded to the higher and more responsible office of 
 Adjutant-General, in which he had probably more pay, 
 and certainly a good deal harder work. It was a five 
 years' appointment, and better than a major-generalship 
 without assurance of employment, so he was able to 
 avert a threatened promotion to that rank, which would 
 apparently have made the adjutant - generalship un- 
 tenable. In the beginning of 1857 he was again on the 
 Avar-path ; and it may be permissible to quote a few 
 sentences of a letter to Mrs. Havelock from her husband, 
 written at the close of his last period of peace-service. 
 
 I am cut to the heart by the poor account you still give 
 of your health, but I trust your projected trip to Switzerland 
 will, by God's blessing, give you strength again, and that 
 you will many years be enabled in His good providence to 
 watch over our two dear girls' and George's education. God 
 knows how my heart yearns to see you all again ; but my 
 duty is here, and I have several difficulties. If by God's aid
 
 iv THE PERSIAN WAR 79 
 
 I can surmount them all, I shall at the end of my three 
 years' labour and self-denial, feel entitled to look upon you 
 again. God grant that it may be in health, tranquillity and 
 competency ; and if it be His pleasure, let you and I have 
 one more happy meeting on earth ; if not, a far happier in 
 heaven ! 
 
 Lord Canning, as Governor-General of India, declared 
 war against Persia on November 1st, 1856. The im- 
 mediate casus belli was the capture of the city of Herat 
 by Persian troops. Sir James Outram, then on sick 
 leave in England, was offered and accepted the command 
 of the Anglo-Indian army of invasion Math the local 
 rank of Lieutenant -General ; and he reached Bombay 
 on December 22nd. The Bombay authorities had got the 
 order for preparation considerably in advance of the 
 declaration of war ; and so prompt had they been that 
 within four days of the receipt on November 9th of the 
 instructions for the despatch of troops, the flagship with 
 the headquarters and main body of the First Division 
 of the expeditionary force sailed from Bombay for the 
 Persian Gulf. Major-General Stalker was in command 
 of the land forces consisting of five thousand six hundred 
 and seventy men ; there was a squadron of eight war- 
 steamers of the Indian navy, and the troops, followers, 
 and stores were transported in seven steamers and thirty 
 sailing-vessels. General Stalker made no delay. By 
 December 8th, under cover of the fire of the squadron, 
 his whole force was landed at and near Bushire, and 
 next morning the fort of that name was carried after 
 some sharp fighting. Next day after a cannonade of 
 four hours the guns of the fleet silenced the batteries 
 of the town of Bushire ; the garrison surrendered, and
 
 So HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 Bushire and its armament were in Stalker's possession 
 without the loss of a man. 
 
 On reaching Bombay Outram immediately applied 
 for the services of Havelock to command the Second 
 Division then in course of formation. General Anson 
 gave permission, and full of eagerness Havelock quitted 
 Agra for Bombay on January 12th, 1857. By dint of 
 constant and rapid travelling in a springless mail-cart he 
 arrived there on the 21st with a black eye and sorely 
 bruised face, the result of a spill during his break-neck 
 journey. Outram with the mass of the Second Division 
 had left Bombay two days before Havelock's arrival, and 
 reaching Bushire on January 21st immediately took the 
 offensive. The dawn of February 8th disclosed to the 
 British troops the Persian army in position near the 
 village of Kooshab. It was a very short thing ; our 
 infantry never got within reach of an unwounded Per- 
 sian soldier. The cavalry and horse artillery routed the 
 enemy with great slaughter. 
 
 Havelock missed Kooshab. Owing to necessary re- 
 pairs to the engines of his steamer he could not leave 
 Bombay till January 29th, and did not land at Bushire 
 until February 15th. Mohumra, a fortified town at the 
 confluence of the Karan river with the Shat-ool-Arab or 
 Lower Euphrates, seemed to present a favourable object- 
 ive. It was reported a very strong place, with heavily 
 armed ramparts of solid earth twenty feet thick and 
 eighteen high, mounting heavy guns commanding the 
 Shat-ool-Arab, and garrisoned by some thirteen thousand 
 Persian troops. Outram's departure on this enterprise 
 was delayed first by the death of General Stalker and 
 again by the death of Commodore Ethersey. At last,
 
 iv THE CAPTURE OF MOHUMRA 81 
 
 leaving General Jacob at Bushire, he joined the squadron 
 and the trooper-steamers it convoyed on March 22nd 
 at the rendezvous off the mouth of the Euphrates. The 
 force embarked consisted of about four thousand nine 
 hundred men including two cavalry regiments and two 
 troops of horse artillery. On the evening of the 24th 
 the expedition anchored three miles below Mohumra, its 
 fortifications well in sight. Outram adopted in the main 
 the plan of operations which Havelock had drawn up. 
 A day was spent in reconnoitring and preparations. 
 The transhipment of the troops into the lighter and 
 unarmed craft was effected during the following night. 
 At daylight of the 26th a mortar battery opened fire 
 on the Persian works. At seven A.M. the war- vessels 
 steamed into position under an unreturned fire. At 
 the signal their guns opened, and for two hours hurled 
 ceaseless shot and shell into the place, shattering the 
 Persian batteries and crushing down their fire. Then 
 the troop-laden steamers came up the river to the point 
 of debarkation, Havelock leading in the Berenice with 
 the Ross-shire Buffs aboard. While the debarkation 
 was in progress a shell from one of the war-ships blew 
 up the principal magazine of the enemy and intensified 
 their confusion. The troops were promptly formed, and 
 led by Havelock advanced through the date groves on 
 the Persian entrenched camp, while the seamen from the 
 squadron occupied the forts. The camp was found empty ; 
 its panic-stricken occupants had fled. There was pur- 
 suit by a detachment of native horse, but the bulk of 
 the cavalry were not landed in time to be of service. 
 Three days later an expedition went a hundred miles 
 up the river to see seven thousand Persian troops run 
 
 G
 
 82 HA VELOCK 
 
 away at the mere sight of it, and on April 5th news 
 came that peace with Persia had been signed at Paris ; 
 so that the war, if it could be called a war, was over. 
 It had lasted six months, and cost England and India 
 about two millions sterling.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FROM BOMBAY TO CAWNPORE 
 
 THE peace with Persia was most opportune. Already 
 before its conclusion the clouds that presaged the awful 
 storm of Mutiny Avhich Sir Charles Napier had fore- 
 told and averted eight years before, were ominously 
 gathering over the Bengal Presidency. In the middle 
 of March General Anson, the Commander-in-Chief, had 
 written to Havelock of the general disaffection among 
 the sepoys, and of the open mutiny of the Nineteenth 
 Native Infantry at Berhampore. Lord Elphinstone, the 
 Governor of Bombay, a far-sighted and vigorous man, 
 had early recognised the gravity of the impending 
 crisis, and when in the beginning of April he informed 
 Outram of the conclusion of peace with Persia, he 
 made the pressing request to that chief that he should 
 send back to India without a moment's delay all the 
 European troops of his command. Acting on the dis- 
 cretion permitted him by the Governor-General Outram 
 promptly fulfilled this urgent requisition; and the 
 disintegration of the army of Persia set Havelock free 
 to return to India. Taking with him the officially 
 recorded thanks of Sir James Outram for " the zealous 
 and valuable assistance he has afforded at all times," 
 Havelock left Mohumra on the 16th, and reached Bom-
 
 84 HAVE LOCK 
 
 bay on May 29th; to hear there, in his own words, "the 
 astounding intelligence that the native regiments had 
 mutinied at Meerut, Ferozepore, and Delhi; and that 
 Delhi was in the hands of the insurgents, while disaffec- 
 tion seemed to be spreading throughout the Upper Pro- 
 vinces." With the break-up of his division his acting 
 rank of Brigadier had ceased ; he was Colonel Havelock 
 again, the Adjutant-General of Queen's troops in Bengal. 
 As such, his proper place was with the Commander-in- 
 Chief, then believed to be marching on Delhi. In reality 
 poor General Anson was already dead of cholera at 
 Kurnal, but the ill news had not reached Bombay ; and 
 Havelock was anxious to hurry to his post by the most 
 direct land route. The risks of such a journey were so 
 obvious that Lord Elphinstone peremptorily forbade it ; 
 and Havelock had to submit to follow the two Queen's 
 regiments of the Persian army, which had already 
 been hurried off by sea to Calcutta without landing at 
 Bombay. He left Bombay on June 1st, in the Erin 
 steamer bound for Galle, in the hope of catching there 
 the Calcutta mail steamer from Suez "prepared," he 
 wrote, " to give Lord Canning and Birch strong advice, 
 if they consult me. This is the most stupendous con- 
 vulsion I have ever witnessed, though I was in the thick 
 of Cabul affairs." 
 
 The Erin was wrecked on the Ceylon coast, and 
 Havelock had a narrow escape from being drowned. It 
 was night when she struck ; the surf was very heavy, 
 the Lascar crew were panic-stricken, and the ship was 
 momentarily expected to go to pieces. But with dawn 
 came canoes from the shore, and all on board were safely 
 landed. Havelock's earnest representations kept the
 
 v INTRODUCTION TO LORD CANNING 85 
 
 Europeans from the spirit-room, and the debarkation was 
 thus orderly and creditable. He tersely summed up the 
 situation: "The folly of man threw us on shore; the 
 mercy of God found us a soft place near Caltura." 
 He reached Madras on June 13th to learn there 
 of General Anson's death, and that Lord Canning 
 had ordered up to Calcutta with all speed Sir Patrick 
 Grant, 1 the Madras Commander -in -Chief, to assume 
 the direction of the military operations which the 
 situation in the Bengal Presidency rendered necessary. 
 Grant and Havelock were old friends and comrades 
 in war time as well as peace time ; and Grant well 
 knew how able a soldier was the man who had ridden 
 by his side at Maharajpore and Moodkee. Havelock 
 seems to have thought himself called upon to return to 
 Bombay and there join Sir Henry Somerset who was 
 at the head of the Bombay army, and whose seniority 
 gave him a claim to succeed Anson in the supreme 
 command. But Lord Canning in the exercise of his 
 discretionary power had chosen Sir Patrick as acting 
 Commander - in - Chief ; and so duty chimed in with 
 inclination to carry Havelock to Calcutta. The Fire 
 Queen conveyed the two old comrades up the Bay 
 of Bengal into the Hoogly ; they reached Calcutta on 
 June 17th, and Sir Patrick made haste to present 
 Havelock to Lord Canning, with the curt business- 
 like introduction : " Your Excellency, I have brought 
 you the man ! " Circumstances hindered Sir Patrick 
 Grant from carving his name deeply on the tablets of 
 the Mutiny annals ; but in all the record of honest and 
 
 1 Now Field -Marshal Sir Patrick Grant, G.C.B., Governor of 
 Chelsea Hospital.
 
 86 HA VELOCK 
 
 steadfast duty on which that venerable soldier can look 
 back, the most memorable service he has been able to 
 render to the Empire was his strenuous recommendation 
 of Havelock for an independent field command. 
 
 Lord Canning did not hesitate to act on the advice 
 tersely given him by Grant. The commission he en- 
 trusted to Havelock the arduous task he assigned him 
 cannot be adequately comprehended without some 
 brief explanation of the crisis which the staunch old 
 soldier was bidden to confront. Events had marched 
 with fell rapidity since Havelock had said farewell to 
 Lord Elphinstone on the Apollo Bunder of Bombay. 
 When Grant and he landed at Calcutta the tidings await- 
 ing them were that throughout all the region between 
 Allahabad and Agra the British authority was extinct, 
 save where a sore-beset garrison were still maintaining a 
 desperate defence at Cawnpore, and where at Lucknow 
 Henry Lawrence was standing at bay against the swelling 
 masses of Oude insurgents. So melancholy is the story 
 of Cawnpore that one is fain to shun the telling of it ; 
 but a brief summary of it cannot be avoided. One of 
 the most important military posts in India, the connect- 
 ing link between Allahabad and the up-country stations 
 of Agra and Delhi, the Mutiny time found it without an 
 European regiment and garrisoned by over three thousand 
 sepoy troops. The general in command, Sir Hugh Wheeler, 
 was an old and distinguished soldier who had seen much 
 Indian service as a "sepoy officer," and for whom it 
 was hard to believe that mutiny was among things pos- 
 sible. Apart from the conviction of his mind, there 
 must have been with Sir Hugh no little feeling of the 
 heart in the matter, since he had allied himself in mar-
 
 v WHEELER'S ENTRENCHMENT 87 
 
 riage with one in Avhose veins flowed Eastern blood. He 
 spoke Hindustanee like a native ; he had dwelt among 
 natives the greater part of his life ; he had led sepoy 
 troops to victory half a century and more before this 
 eventful summer ; and it was not wonderful that he 
 should long refuse to believe in the possibility of 
 treachery. But the assured spread of disaffection among 
 the sepoys compelled him to resort to some precautions. 
 He determined to erect within the cantonments a place 
 of refuge in time of need, should that time come. The 
 magazine formed a ready-made fortress with inexhaustible 
 store of munitions. But Wheeler chose another position, 
 which could not have been worse adapted for its purpose 
 if his enemies themselves had chosen it. Almost in the 
 centre of the plain which the military cantonment sur- 
 rounded there stood a couple of single-storied barracks 
 surrounded by verandahs, known as the dragoon hos- 
 pital. Sir Hugh inexplicably selected as the centre of 
 his operations those structures, built of thin brick hardly 
 bullet-proof, and straw -thatched ; and enclosed them 
 within a mud entrenchment but four feet in height, and 
 so thin that at the crest it was not bullet-proof. No 
 proper batteries were constructed, and mere gaps in the 
 parapet, exposing both guns and gunners, were left to 
 serve as embrasures. 
 
 Orders were given for this miserable contrivance to 
 be provisioned for twenty-five days. The service was 
 neglected, and it was carried out after the manner of 
 unsupervised native contractors, peas and flour forming 
 the staple of the very insufficient supplies. What else 
 was provided in the shape of beer, wine, and preserved 
 meats was sent in chiefly by the regimental mess com-
 
 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 mittees, who did not believe implicitly iu official cater- 
 ing. In the danger the recognition of which was 
 gradually growing on him, Wheeler appealed for rein- 
 forcement to Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow ; and not 
 in vain. An appeal was also made to the Nana Sahib, 
 the Maharajah of Bithoor, who was soon to earn a malign 
 immortality as the arch-fiend of the Mutiny ; and the 
 Nana with hollow friendliness came in promptly with a 
 detachment of his troops, and undertook the protection 
 of the treasury and the magazine. 
 
 The women and children, with the non-combatants, 
 had been sent into the improvised entrenchment so early 
 as May 22nd, but the sepoy regiments did not break 
 into open mutiny until the night of June 4th. The 
 Nana Sahib took control of them, diverted them from 
 their purpose of marching to Delhi, and persuaded them 
 that the weak entrenchment on the Cawnpore maidan 
 was better game. With curious punctilio he sent a 
 letter to Sir Hugh Wheeler, in the early morning of 
 June 6th, intimating his intention forthwith to attack 
 the British position. It was a rude surprise to our hap- 
 less people. They had been sanguine of the belief that 
 the sepoys were hastening toward Delhi, and they had 
 begun to anticipate an easy water-passage down to Alla- 
 habad and safety. Alas, quite other things were to befall 
 them, worse things than the greatest pessimist among 
 them was despondent enough to apprehend. 
 
 The urgent summons sped through the cantonment 
 for all our countrymen yet tarrying outside to rally with- 
 out delay into the entrenched position. There was no 
 time for a hasty breakfast, or to gather a change of 
 clothes. The feeble posts were manned and the local
 
 THE DEVILRY IN FULL SWING 
 
 commands assigned. Behind the mud wall a sorry com- 
 pany of a thousand souls or thereabouts was congregated. 
 Of these four hundred and sixty-five were men of all 
 ages and professions. The women numbered about two 
 hundred, and there were as many children. While the 
 officers and men stood to their positions all round the 
 low wall of the entrenchment, the women and children 
 abided the bursting of the storm within the frail shelter 
 of the hospital or under the verandahs. When all the 
 arrangements had been made, the chaplain collected what 
 congregation chose to gather round him, and kneeling 
 down in the midst solemnly committed the little band 
 of Christian people into the hand of the God of their 
 fathers. The sullen roar of a surging mass of men broke 
 in on his concluding sentences. All rushed forth, and 
 lo ! the horizon Avas lurid with the smoke and fire of the 
 advancing devastation. The sepoy march was delayed 
 a while for the sake of plunder, murder, and fire-raising ; 
 but two hours after the chaplain had uttered his amen, 
 the balls were crashing through the fragile Avails of the 
 barracks, Avounded men were groaning in their agony, 
 and the terrified screams of Avomen and children Avere 
 rending the air. By the afternoon the devilry was in 
 full SAving. 
 
 As the visitor to Cawnpore of to-day drives from the 
 rail Avay station to the European cantonments, there comes 
 into view at a bend in the road a broad, flat, treeless 
 .expanse. This plain lies in an environment of foliage, 
 above the greenery of Avhich, on the south-eastern side, 
 are seen the upper balconies and flat tops of a long range 
 of barracks built in detached blocks. Near the centre of
 
 90 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 this level space there now stands the Memorial Church, 
 encircled by its graveyard. This structure is built on 
 the site of the old dragoon hospital, which was the very 
 heart of the agony of the siege. The outline of the 
 world-famous earthwork is almost wholly obliterated ; 
 only in places can it be dimly discerned by brick -dis- 
 coloured lines, and here and there a low- raised trace on 
 the smooth maidan. Mingled emotions of amazement, 
 pride, pity, wrath, and sorrow must move the pilgrim to 
 this shrine of British valour, endurance, and constancy. 
 The heart swells and the eyes fill as, standing with all 
 the scene of the heroism lying under one's eyes, he 
 recalls the incidents of the glorious, piteous story. The 
 blood stirs when one remembers the buoyant valour of 
 the gallant Moore, who, " wherever he passed left men 
 something more courageous and women less unhappy " ; 
 the reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Dela- 
 fosse, the deadly rifle of Stirling, the quiet devotion of 
 Jervis. And a great lump grows in the throat as one 
 bethinks him of the pathetic constancy and the awful 
 sufferings of the women ; of British ladies going bare- 
 foot and giving up their stockings as cases for grapeshot ; 
 of the hapless gentlewomen, " unshod, unkempt, ragged 
 and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with 
 drought and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear 
 that they were widows " ; of some among those tender, 
 well-born women who brought forth babes in plight far 
 worse than that of the gipsy tramp at home whose hour 
 of travail comes to her as she lies under a hedge, since 
 for them the pains of maternity were aggravated by 
 privation and imminent danger, the hope and joy which 
 the humblest mother feels in that hour quenched for
 
 v THE GREAT GRAVE OF THE DEFENDERS 91 
 
 them in despair. It is not within the consecrated ground 
 of the Memorial Church graveyard, where sleep their 
 long sleep the dead of the siege. When it began there 
 was an empty well outside the entrenchment under the 
 shadow of No. 4 barrack ; three weeks later, when the 
 siege ended, this well was the sepulchre of two hundred 
 and fifty British people. With daylight the battle raged 
 around the Avell mouth ; Avhen night came and the wel- 
 come darkness, the slain of the day were borne thither 
 with stealthy step and scant attendance. Now the well is 
 filled up, and over it has been built a monument with the 
 legend graven on its face : " In a well under this enclosure 
 were laid by the hands of their fellows in suffering the 
 bodies of men, women, and children, who died hard by 
 during the heroic defence of Wheeler's entrenchment 
 when beleaguered by the rebel Nana." And underneath : 
 " Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when 
 one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. But 
 mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the Lord." Among the 
 crosses round the monument's base is one to the memory 
 of stout-hearted yet tender-hearted John MacKillop of 
 the Civil Service, the hero of another well. From it 
 came the garrison's sole water supply, and it was a 
 target also for the rebel artillery, so that the appearance 
 of a man with a pitcher by day, and by night the creak- 
 ing of the tackle, were the signals for a shower of grape. 
 But John MacKillop, "not being a fighting man, 
 made himself useful," in his own modest words, as 
 captain of the well, till a grape-shot sent him to that 
 other well, thence never to return. 
 
 Days grew into weeks, and the iron hail beating on 
 the wasted garrison never relented. Of the gallant
 
 92 HA VELOCK 
 
 sorties made, of the fierce assaults repulsed, there is no 
 room to tell. But for their wives, their sisters, and 
 their little ones, the men-folk might at any time have cut 
 their Avay out through the sepoy rabble ; had this been 
 impossible they would have resisted to the last ex- 
 tremity. But the misery of the women and the child- 
 ren moved the master-spirits of the defence to listen 
 to overtures from the rebel chief. And a soldier-author 
 of note, whom his countrymen delight to honour, has 
 permitted himself to asperse the defenders of Wheeler's 
 entrenchment as a " faint-hearted garrison ! " 
 
 The distance from the entrenchment to the ghaut on 
 the Ganges where lay the boats which our countrymen 
 expected were to convey them down stream to safety, is 
 barely a mile. Think of that forlorn doch-an-doris, the 
 cup of cold water in which the hapless band pledged 
 each other, ere they quitted the place where sufferings so 
 cruel had been so nobly endured ! Moore led the way 
 with an advance guard of a handful of his regulars. The 
 elephants, carts, and dlwolies followed, with the women 
 and children, the sick and wounded the hurts of the 
 last bandaged with strips of women's clothing and frag- 
 ments of shirt sleeves. And then came the fighting men. 
 A martinet would have stood aghast at them, for, save 
 for a regimental button here and there, he would have 
 found it hard to recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched 
 squad for British soldiers. But let who might incline to 
 disown those war-Avorn men in their dingy rags, their 
 foes knew them for what they were ; and made way for 
 the white sahibs marching firmly, each man with rifle 
 on shoulder and the fearless glance in the hollow eye. 
 A path leaves the road close to the bridge spanning a
 
 v THE GHAUT OF THE SLAUGHTER 93 
 
 rough irregular glen, and skirting the dry bed of the 
 nullah, touches the river close to the old temple. It was 
 by this path that our people passed down to the deadly 
 snare that had been laid for them at the "Slaughter 
 Ghaut." There can be none to whom the details of the 
 massacre are not familiar. Strange contrast between 
 the turmoil and devilry of it, and the quiet of the all but 
 solitude of the spot to-day ! Sole relics of the great 
 crime are the dints of the bullets on the mouldering 
 riverside temple, under the shadow of which a dhdbie 
 is washing the linen of a sahib in the stream that once 
 was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no 
 monument here no superfluous memorial of the awful 
 tragedy. The man is not to be envied whose eyes are 
 dry, and whose heart beats its normal throb, while he 
 stands here alone by the Ganges' brink at the Suttee 
 Chowra Ghaut. 
 
 It had been better for them in the end had all our 
 hapless people perished there together, and so been put 
 out of their misery. But as the slaughter progressed, 
 the Nana, moved whether by pity or by craft, sent 
 orders that none of the men-folk should be left alive, but 
 that no more women and children should be slain. So 
 what of those remained were gathered together on the 
 bank, some sorely wounded, some half drowned, drip- 
 ping with the water of the Ganges and begrimed with its 
 mud, and were despatched under escort to the Nana's 
 headquarters. As they plodded past the entrenchment 
 with its awful memories, and on across the plain, " I saw," 
 testified an onlooker, "that many of the ladies were 
 wounded. Their clothes had blood upon them. Two
 
 94 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 were badly hurt and had their heads bound up with 
 handkerchiefs. Some were wet, covered with mud and 
 blood, and some had their dresses torn; but all had 
 clothes. I saw one or two children without clothes. 
 There were no men in the party, but only some boys of 
 twelve or thirteen. Some of the ladies were barefoot." 
 One may see the two rooms to-day in which the 
 hundred and twenty women and children were huddled 
 after that march from before the presence of one death 
 into the presence of another. Their numbers were 
 swollen later by the women and children who had been 
 in the only craft that had got away from the ghaut, 
 the boat which had been defended so stoutly by Vibart, 
 Delafosse, Moore, and Thomson, and which had 
 been at last captured some way down stream. It had 
 been for its passengers a turbulent departure from 
 the Suttee Chowra Ghaut ; it was a yet more fearful 
 returning. "They were brought back," testified a wit- 
 ness; "sixty sahibs, twenty-five mem sahibs, and four 
 children. The Nana ordered the sahibs to be separated 
 from the mem sahibs, and shot by the First Bengal Native 
 Cavalry. . . . ' Then,' said one of the mem sahibs, ' I 
 will not leave my husband. If he must die, I will die 
 with him ! ' So she ran and sat down behind her hus- 
 band, clasping him round the waist. Directly she said 
 this, the other mem sahibs said, ' We also will die with 
 our husbands ' ; and they all sat down each by her hus- 
 band. Then the husbands said, 'Go back,' but they 
 would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered the soldiers, 
 and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." . . . 
 
 Later, they were moved from the two rooms in the 
 Savada House to the " Beebeeghur," a hovel near the
 
 v NEILL THE PIONEER 95 
 
 river, and there they were to linger in squalor, wretched- 
 ness, and indignity for yet a few days longer. 
 
 In the preliminary portion of the task which he 
 was to undertake, Havelock had the advantage of a 
 vigorous and capable pioneer, in the brave and ill- 
 fated Neill. That officer had reached Calcutta from 
 Madras on May 23rd, bringing with him the fine regiment 
 of which he was the chief, the First Madras Fusiliers, 
 familiarly known as "The Lambs." Neill was an Ayr- 
 shire man, with a leaven in him of the old Cameronian 
 sternness and ruthlessness ; endowed with great energy 
 and much force of character, but of somewhat unequal 
 temperament. In the prime of mature manhood, he 
 had been a soldier for thirty years of the forty-seven he 
 had lived ; nor was his service wholly Indian, for he had 
 been in the Crimea as an officer of the Turkish Con- 
 tingent. So prompt was he that before he had been in 
 Calcutta twenty-four hours he had started a detachment 
 of his Lambs up country by water. A second followed 
 by railway next evening, and relays went off by each 
 succeeding train. By June 3rd he was in Benares with 
 a company of his regiment, where with grape and En- 
 field bullets he swept a mutinous sepoy regiment off 
 the parade-ground and out of their lines, cowed the 
 turbulent and fanatic city, appointed big Jim Ellicot of 
 The Lambs to the post of hangman-in-ordinary, and 
 kept him at his duty without stint and without remorse. 
 Apprehensive of danger at Allahabad, he had despatched 
 thither on the 5th a subaltern and fifty of the Fusiliers. 
 With its strong fortress and great arsenal, Allahabad 
 was invaluable as the base for all future operations to
 
 96 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 the west, the north, and the south. Akbar's great citadel, 
 commanding the junction of the Jumna with the Ganges, 
 was of more value to us intrinsically than was Delhi 
 itself ; and we had lost it but for the heroic constancy 
 of an ex-sergeant who had earned his commission, and 
 was in command of a Sikh regiment of irregulars garrison- 
 ing the fortress. On the night of June 6th, the sepoy 
 regiment in the Allahabad cantonments broke into 
 mutiny, butchered fourteen of their officers, fired the 
 cantonments, and threw open the jails. A company of 
 the regiment was on guard at the main gate of the 
 fortress ready to give admittance to their mutinous 
 comrades, when the colonel, having escaped with bare life 
 from the slaughter in the cantonments, galloped into the 
 fort, and bade Brasyer turn out his Sikhs and disarm 
 the sepoys on the gate. The Sikhs were in a ferment 
 of disaffection, but Brasyer quelled them. Standing 
 over the magazine with a red-hot iron in his hand, he 
 swore by Nanac, Ram Das, Govind, and all the other 
 Gooroos of the Sikhs, that if his men did not promptly 
 fall in and obey his orders he would blow the regiment to 
 the Sikh equivalent of Hades. This trenchant argument 
 prevailed ; the Sikhs calmed themselves into submission 
 to the behests of a chief so masterful ; the sepoys on the 
 gate were disarmed; the handful of invalid gunners from 
 Chunar manned the cannon on the ramparts, and the 
 fort of Allahabad was saved, at all events for the 
 moment. 
 
 Arnold arrived on the following day, too late to do 
 more than help to strengthen the position. Neill could 
 not leave Benares until the 9th, when, having taught 
 that city and its vicinity a grim lesson, he started for
 
 v THE PERIL OF ALLAHABAD 97 
 
 Allahabad with forty of his Lambs. Conveyance was 
 unobtainable, and two days and two nights of cruel heat 
 and fatigue were spent on the journey. Five soldiers 
 died of sunstroke on the way, and two more in the 
 boat crossing the Ganges. Neill was so exhausted that 
 his men had to rally him by splashing water over him 
 in the mile-long tramp over the burning sand up to the 
 Watergate of the fort. The joyous salute to him from 
 the guard ashe entered was, "Thank God, sir, you'll 
 save us yet ! " 
 
 The mutineers were beleaguering the fortress. Neill 
 promptly broke up their investment. For five days the 
 rabble and rascaldom of Allahabad had been plundering 
 and wrecking city and cantonments ; chaos reigned for 
 miles around the fort Neill, strengthened by reinforce- 
 ments, swept the mutineers and mudmashery out of city, 
 suburbs, and villages ; and on the fourth day after his 
 arrival the magistrate, emblem of the restored civil 
 power, reopened cutcherry amidst empty houses and silent 
 streets. The soldiers kept getting drunk on plundered 
 spirits sold them by Brasyer's Sikhs. Neill flogged a 
 man, and issued an order that he would flog every man 
 of the force if the wholesale drunkenness continued. 
 But there were then, and are still, soldiers whom the 
 certainty of death, not to speak of the threat of a flogging, 
 will not deter from drink. So Neill overbade his men 
 with the Sikhs, and bought up all the liquor in their 
 possession. Then, lest they should purvey more, he 
 sent them into quarters outside the fort. Finally, he 
 collected or destroyed all the drink that was to be found 
 in the deserted warehouses ; and so in great measure he 
 cured drunkenness in Allahabad fort. 
 
 H
 
 98 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 By the time he had made elbow- room for himself 
 about Allahabad, tidings had reached him of the hapless 
 situation of the Cawnpore garrison and of the danger 
 threatening Lucknow; and he vigorously engaged in 
 preparations for a further advance. A sanguine and 
 eager man, he had written to Sir Henry Lawrence on 
 the 18th, and again on the 23rd of June, intimating his 
 intention to despatch immediately a force of four hundred 
 Europeans and three hundred Sikhs for the relief of 
 Cawnpore. Had that force left Allahabad on the 23rd, 
 it must have reached Cawnpore too late, even with forced 
 marches and the very improbable absence of interrup- 
 tion; for Cawnpore is one hundred and twenty-five 
 miles from Allahabad, and the destruction of Wheeler's 
 garrison was perpetrated on the 27th. 
 
 But insuperable hindrances interposed ; and by reason 
 of them the earliest detachment was not to start until the 
 30th. The railway line from Allahabad to Cawnpore 
 had been partly constructed ; forty miles of it indeed, 
 as far as Lohanga, had been completed. But the 
 Allahabad mutineers had torn up permanent way, burnt 
 rolling-stock and station, and smashed the engines with 
 cannon fire. They had swept off the sixteen hundred 
 draught bullocks which the transport officers had labori- 
 ously collected, destroyed stores, carts, and tents, and 
 scared away the contractors and their people. Neill had 
 to begin afresh the work of preparation and reorganisa- 
 tion. He laboured zealously, and he worked wonders to 
 furnish equipment for the expeditionary force which he 
 knew by this time that another chief than he was to com- 
 mand, in spite of a furious although fortunately brief 
 outburst of cholera among his troops, and in dire lack
 
 v HAVELOCK'S COMMISSION 99 
 
 of the all-indispensable native followers, who stood aloof 
 terror-stricken from the chastising Englishmen. Because 
 of his knowledge of the supersession his loyal ardour in 
 the cause abated not ; but there is the undertone of dis- 
 appointment in his message to Lord Canning, " We are 
 getting on well here, laying in grain and collecting 
 carriage for Brigadier-General Havelock's brigade." 
 
 Lord Canning has been reproached for slowness of 
 decision. He certainly did not ponder long over the 
 question of availing himself of Havelock's services. It 
 was on June 17th that Sir Patrick Grant, pre- 
 senting his old comrade, had said, " Your Excellency, 
 I have brought you the man ! " Next day but one 
 Colonel Havelock was re - commissioned Brigadier - 
 General, 1 and received his instructions such instruc- 
 tions as it was then possible to give him. They 
 directed that " after quelling all disturbances at Alla- 
 habad, he should lose not a moment in supporting Sir 
 Henry Lawrence at Lucknow and Sir Hugh Wheeler at 
 Cawnpore ; and that he should take prompt measures for 
 dispersing and utterly destroying all mutineers and 
 insurgents." The momentous value of swift action was 
 earnestly dwelt on. " It was not possible at the instant 
 to give him any more precise or definite instructions ; he 
 must necessarily be guided by circumstances, and the 
 Commander-in-Chief had entire confidence in his well- 
 
 1 Colonel Malleson repeatedly styles Havelock Major-General at 
 a time when he was not even Brigadier-General, but simply Colonel. 
 He was not gazetted Major-General. till September 29th (two 
 months before his death), the commission being ante-dated July 
 30th. Havelock first signed "Major-General" on November 16th 
 1857, not quite a fortnight before his death.
 
 ioo HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 known and often proved high ability, vigour, and judg- 
 ment." Havelock promptly illustrated his obedience to 
 the injunction of rapid action. A few days sufficed him 
 to select his staff-officers and make all his arrangements ; 
 he left Calcutta on June 25th. Before starting he 
 impressed on the military authorities at the capital the 
 wisdom of utilising water-carriage for the subsequent 
 conveyance of troops up country, thus releasing for 
 the service of his column the cart and bullock transport 
 of the Grand Trunk Eoad; "feeling confident that unless 
 every measure were adopted in anticipation to render 
 the column- thoroughly and instantly efficient in its 
 transport, delay Avould occur at a moment when every 
 hour was precious and pregnant with the fate of our 
 countrymen." He assured himself also of an efficient 
 spy -service by obtaining permission to make free 
 use of secret -service -money in payment of good in- 
 formation ; with which accordingly he was always well 
 supplied. 
 
 He and his staff- officers travelled by rail as far as 
 Eaneegunge ; thence by road-dawk, with a few infantry- 
 men on the top of the gharries. The little cwVecje was 
 toiling up the Grand Trunk Road between Raneegunge 
 and Benares on the 27th, the travellers unwitting that 
 on that morning was being perpetrated the massacre 
 of the Cawnpore garrison. At Benares, where there 
 were troops belonging to him, Havelock assumed com- 
 mand of his brigade; hurried forward Maude and his 
 handful of gunners ; assigned the detachment that 
 was to stand fast in protection of Benares ; and leaving 
 that city on the evening of the 29th, reached Alla- 
 habad in the early morning of the 30th, and sat
 
 THE VOLUNTEER CAVALRY 
 
 down to breakfast with Neill, whose " high qualities," 
 he wrote later to Sir Patrick Grant, " I cannot 
 sufficiently praise." 
 
 Neill had at length succeeded in equipping for the 
 march an advance column consisting of four hundred 
 European soldiers (Madras Fusiliers and Eighty-fourth), 
 three hundred of Brasyer's Sikhs, some troopers of 
 Native Irregular Cavalry, and a couple of 9-pounder 
 guns manned by invalid artillerymen from Chunar. 
 He had entrusted the command of it to Major Eenaud 
 of his own regiment, a capable and zealous soldier, 
 with orders to advance on Cawnpore, inflicting as 
 he marched stern retribution on all suspected of guilty 
 complicity in mutinous designs. The departure of 
 this force was set for the afternoon of the 30th. 
 Havelock arrived in time to wish Eenaud godspeed as, 
 full of ardour, he led forth this vanguard of the reliev- 
 ing army. He himself had hoped to follow Eenaud 
 with a stronger force so early as July 4th, but he was 
 delayed for three days longer by impediments in the 
 way of its organisation and equipment. The period of 
 enforced delay was well utilised. Finding himself desti- 
 tute of any cavalry on which he could rely the Native 
 Irregulars were very doubtful Havelock had asked 
 permission to form a corps of volunteer cavalry, consist- 
 ing of " officers of regiments which had mutinied, or had 
 disbanded; of indigo -planters, of patrols, of burnt-'out 
 shopkeepers; in short, of all who were willing to join 
 him." The request was acceded to, and he succeeded in 
 raising a gallant little band who did most brilliant service 
 under the command of Captain Lousada Barrow of the 
 Madras Cavalry, the father of one of the finest officers
 
 102 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 the British cavalry has ever known, whose recent un- 
 timely death must be fresh in universal memory. Many 
 of the soldiers had been hurried up country in cloth- 
 ing wholly unfitted for the fierce heat of an Indian 
 summer, and their general made great exertions to 
 provide them with attire more suited to a march with 
 the thermometer above 100 ; but nevertheless many 
 men left Allahabad in their woollen tunics, and the 
 Seventy -eighth Highlanders fought every battle of the 
 campaign in their woollen doublets. 
 
 All ranks glowed with the ardent hope of being able 
 to succour "Wheeler's beleaguered people ; but that hope 
 was doomed to sudden extinction. In the small hours 
 of July 1st an officer rode in from Renaud's column, with 
 the miserable tidings of the utter destruction of the 
 Cawnpore garrison. In the afternoon a couple of spies 
 who had witnessed the massacre brought to Havelock 
 confirmation of the dismal intelligence, of the truth of 
 which he convinced himself by a searching cross-examina- 
 tion. Acting on his conviction, and awake to the danger 
 to which Renaud might be exposed in pursuing the 
 instructions he had carried from Allahabad, the General 
 sent him the wise order to stand fast at Lohanga, where 
 he then was forty miles out from headquarters. Colonel 
 Neill on the other hand regarding the reports from 
 Cawnpore as a device of the enemy, was eager that 
 Renaud should push forward, and took it upon himself 
 to telegraph to the Commander-m-Chief a remonstrance 
 against the orders of his superior officer, and the causeless 
 delay he considered they involved. Sir Patrick Grant 
 replied that if the disastrous news from Cawnpore was 
 credited Renaud's force was to be halted until supported
 
 V ON THE ALLAHABAD PARADE-GROUND 103 
 
 by Havelock's ; but Renaud was nevertheless instructed 
 to move forward, and he accordingly advanced cautiously 
 to the vicinity of Kagan, about twenty miles short of 
 Futtehpore. 
 
 The brigade orders for July 7th announced that the 
 main column would march on the afternoon of that 
 day. The baggage, cut down to the lowest limits, was 
 placed in position ; and as fast as the transport came in, 
 which it continued to do until half-past three, all hands 
 were on fatigue duty distributing it on the various convey- 
 ances. At length all preparations were complete ; and 
 at four o'clock Dick Pearson of the Eoss-shire Buffs, 
 the General's field-bugler, sounded the "General Parade." 
 The regimental buglers took up the sound, and the 
 component parts of the little army fell in. Numerically, 
 it was the reverse of a mighty host that stood in line on 
 this Indian parade-ground in the sudden splash of hot rain 
 that hissed again as it fell. All told, there were barely 
 a thousand British soldiers on parade ; of natives the 
 muster consisted of one hundred and fifty true men of 
 Brasyer's Sikhs, and some thirty of Palliser's Irregular 
 horsemen, by no means true men. The full strength of 
 " Havelock's Ironsides," as the brigade came to be called, 
 never amounted on any parade or in any battle to fifteen 
 hundred men all told. I annex l the " field-state " on 
 
 1 Field-state, morning 12th July 1857 (Futtehpore); Europeans, 
 1404, Natives, 561. 
 
 R.A. 76 
 64th 435 
 78th 284 
 84th 191 
 
 Madras Fus. 376 
 Sikhs 448 
 Vol. Cav. 20 
 Xat. Irreg'rs 49 
 
 3d Oude 46 
 Det. Bengal j 22 
 Art. Invalids / "" 
 Golnndaze 18 
 
 Total 1965
 
 104 HAVE LOCK 
 
 the morning of the action of Futtehpore, its first fight, 
 fought on July 12th, after Renaud's force had joined the 
 main column. Excluding headquarter staff there were 
 present for duty nineteen hundred and sixty-five men, 
 of whom fourteen hundred and four were Britons, five 
 hundred and sixty-one natives. 
 
 But the fighting value of this little array was not to 
 be reckoned by counting the files. Better soldiers have 
 never trod this earth. They fought right on, against 
 enormous odds, through the fierce cruel heat of the 
 Indian summer, falling by the bullet or in the meUe, 
 struck down by sunstroke, slain by cholera and fevers, 
 worn by hardship, till when Havelock and Outram 
 crossed the Ganges in September on their conquering 
 advance upon Lucknow, not above two hundred and fifty 
 of the " Ironsides " remained in fit condition to partici- 
 pate in the victorious expedition. Such havoc had been 
 wrought among them in the short space of twelve weeks ! 
 And still the gallant remnant were to earn fresh laurels, 
 and die as freely as ever on the bloody path to the 
 Bailey Guard Gate of the Lucknow Residency. 
 
 The right of the line, in virtue of time-honoured pre- 
 scription, was held by the Royal Artillery. This arm 
 of the service was represented by the battery of Field 
 Artillery which the gallant Maude commanded. He 
 had hurried from Ceylon with but thirty regular 
 artillerymen, had made up his strength of gunners by 
 recruiting from the Sixty-fourth fifty-four infantrymen 
 who knew something of artillery duty, and had drawn 
 his guns, ammunition, and material from the arsenal of 
 Allahabad. That the battery could do splendid service 
 was soon to be proved, but as it showed on parade, the
 
 v THE ROSS-SHIRE BUFFS 105 
 
 critic accustomed to the proverbial smartness of our 
 artillery would have been apt to jeer at it. The gun- 
 teams consisted of wretched undersized bullocks, unused 
 to the work and wholly unsuited for it ; the orders to 
 the native drivers had to be communicated through an 
 interpreter. On the left of the artillery was ranked 
 what of cavalry the brigade possessed ; the twenty badly 
 mounted volunteers officers of native regiments that 
 had been disbanded, planters, and civil servants whom 
 Captain Barrow commanded. What of uniformity this 
 handful of horsemen possessed consisted mainly in their 
 uniformity of zeal and valour. Then came the infantry 
 of the brigade. In front of the Sixty-fourth sat its 
 acting chief, Major Stirling, on his gray Arab, justifiably 
 proud of the fine regiment he commanded. The Sixty- 
 fourth and their general were not strange to each other; 
 the regiment had been with Havelock in the recent 
 Persian campaign, and he had seen reason to think 
 well of it. On the left of the Sixty-fourth stood four 
 companies of the Seventy - eighth Highlanders, the 
 Eoss-shire Buffs; under the command of their grand 
 old fighting colonel Walter Hamilton, whom his 
 men knew and loved as "Wattie." The adjutant of 
 the regiment was that Herbert Macpherson whom his 
 countrymen later were to admire (and, alas ! to mourn) 
 as a skilful and successful commander in Afghanistan 
 and Egypt. The Ross-shire Buffs in the Mutiny time 
 was a remarkable regiment ; it was Scottish to the 
 back-bone, Highland to the core of its heart. Its ranks 
 were filled with Mackenzies, Macdonalds, Tullochs, 
 Macnabs, Eosses, Gunns, and Mackays. The Christian 
 name of half the Grenadier Company was Donald. In
 
 io6 HAVELOCK 
 
 some of the companies Gaelic was the tongue most in 
 common use. The regiment as a whole had the charac- 
 teristics of the race which chiefly manned its ranks. It 
 could glow with the Highland fervour; it could be 
 sullen with the Highland dourness; it was disciplined 
 yet opinionative ; it was proud with that grand regi- 
 mental self-respect which people who prefer to use a 
 foreign language call esprit de corps. 
 
 On the left of the Seventy-eighth was a small detach- 
 ment of the Eighty-fourth ; a regiment which could 
 boast of service under Wellington in the Peninsula and 
 the south of France. No regiment participated more 
 than the Eighty-fourth in both the glory and the tragedy 
 of the Mutiny. Brought from Rangoon when disturb- 
 ance first began, it was sent up country in May by 
 instalments, and parcelled out where the need seemed 
 most urgent. Fifty of its men were of Wheeler's garrison 
 in the Cawnpore entrenchment, and shared the fate 
 which befell it. Fifty more were of the besieged in the 
 Residency of Lucknow. Two companies were of " Have- 
 lock's Ironsides " throughout those twelve weeks' hard 
 fighting; and the regiment formed part of the force which 
 under Havelock and Outram effected the " first relief " 
 of Lucknow. 
 
 Like the Eighty-fourth, the Madras Fusiliers had thus 
 early the blood of comrades to avenge, for a sergeant's 
 party of the " Blue Caps " had perished in the Cawnpore 
 entrenchment and in the subsequent massacre that had 
 reddened the Ganges. It was but a weak detachment 
 that represented the regiment at Havelock's first brigade 
 parade, for the mass of the corps was forward with 
 Renaud (with whom also were some of the Eighty-
 
 v JOHN COMPANY'S EUROPEANS 107 
 
 fourth), and with Spurgeon on the steamer that had 
 quitted Allahabad on the 3rd on its up-stream voyage of 
 flank-covering duty. In volume and variety of service 
 the Madras Fusilier regiment took the right of the line 
 in John Company's little European army. Its colours 
 were blazoned with a long list of victories, from Arcot 
 to Ava, from Plassey to Pegu. John Company and 
 his army exist no more, and the grand old corps 
 which served with Havelock is transmogrified by the 
 wise men into " The Royal Dublin Fusiliers." 
 
 The Company's European troops had a marked indi- 
 viduality. Warley, their recruiting depot at home, was 
 open to all to the gentleman who had gone to the dogs 
 as to the deserter from a regiment of the royal army ; no 
 questions were asked so long as the recruit was a proper 
 man and passed the doctor. Once out in India, they for 
 the most part abandoned all idea of ever seeing home 
 again, and took for their motto : " Let us eat and drink 
 especially drink, for to-morrow we die." And die they 
 did pretty freely, for arrack and bazaar rum do not 
 contribute to longevity in the climate of India. But 
 Warley fed the stream, and sanatory notions had not 
 great vogue out in the East ; so the " God-forgotten," 
 as they were wont to call themselves, rattled merrily on, 
 playing with death as if life were a skittle ground. 
 Splendid fighting men they were, good campaigners, 
 amenable to the kind of discipline under which they 
 lived, soldiers trustworthy in every respect if kept away 
 from drink so long as they remained in the East, and 
 not worth their salt when they left it. When the Com- 
 pany's rule came to an end, and its European troops 
 came home by shiploads and re-enlisted by sections in
 
 io8 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 the Queen's service, they turned out among that gracious 
 Lady's worst bargains. 
 
 The extreme left of the line was held by one hundred 
 and fifty of Brasyer's Sikhs of the Ferozepore regiment ; 
 their chief, with three hundred of his men, was forward 
 with Eenaud's column. Brasyer's men were of fine 
 physique and excellent fighting quality, and they hated 
 the sepoys with a hatred as intense to the full as that 
 which animated the bosoms of the Europeans. 
 
 The parade duly set, there rode on to the ground, 
 with his scanty staff behind him, the chief who was to 
 lead the little force to deathless renown. For Havelock 
 the long dreary night of stagnation and suppression 
 was done ; the dearest wish of his longing heart was 
 gratified the dream of his early life, the ambition of 
 his maturity an independent command of soldiers in 
 the field. Hoping against hope through the years, his 
 hair had whitened, his fine regular features had sharp- 
 ened and the small spare figure had lost the supple- 
 ness, though not the erectness, of its prime ; but his eye 
 had not waxed dim, neither, at sixty -two, and after 
 forty-two years of soldiering, thirty -four of which were 
 Indian service, was his natural force abated. He was the 
 man of greatest military culture then in India. Nor was he 
 a mere theorist the " soldier over only a paper country," 
 Avhom Lord Wolseley objurgates. On the contrary, he 
 was a veteran of war, very few of whose contemporaries 
 had seen so much fighting. In Burmah he had been in 
 the field from Rangoon to Pagaan. He had taken part in 
 hill warfare in the passes of the Khoord Cabul and Jug- 
 dulluck. He had graduated in sortie-leading and defence- 
 work as a prominent member of the "illustrious garrison"
 
 v HAVE LOCK'S CHARACTER 109 
 
 of Jellalabad. At Maharajpore he had helped to beat a 
 Mahratta army ; at Moodkee, Ferozeshah, and Sobraoii, 
 he had fought against the old battalions of the Khalsa in 
 their full flush of warlike pride. The dust of his Persian 
 campaign was still in the crevices of his sword hilt. 
 
 The old "saint" had held fast by his earnest piety 
 through evil as through good report. In the independ- 
 ence of man that his new position had given him, he 
 rested all the more humbly on the arm of the God of 
 battles. " May God give me wisdom " he had written to 
 his Avife the day after his appointment "to fulfil the 
 expectations of Government and to restore tranquillity 
 in the disturbed districts." Never did he congratulate 
 his soldiers on a victory they had won without ascribing 
 the success of their arms to the favour of Him who 
 holds the issue of battle in the hollow of His hand. 
 But in the ordinary intercourse of military life he did 
 not obtrude religion. Lieutenant (now Colonel) Morland, 
 his Provost-Marshal, remembers but two occasions on 
 which his chief made a religious allusion in his hearing. 
 Morlaud intimated to him that he was about to read the 
 burial service of the Church of England over the remains 
 of poor Beatson, the Adjutant - General of the force. 
 "Do," replied the old Baptist, "I shall be there and 
 listen to what is a very beautiful service." Again 
 Morland as Provost-Marshal informed the General that 
 he was about to hang a native artilleryman for maraud- 
 ing. Havelock was ever reluctant to sanction capital 
 punishment. Morland told him the man was taken 
 red - handed in his uniform and deserved his fate. 
 "Then," said the chief with a sigh, "that shall be my 
 justification before my God."
 
 no HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 Some men thought him pompous in manner, and 
 given to stand on his dignity. Certainly in official 
 intercourse he was formal and austere; and he could 
 not tolerate an officer who tried to argue with him. 
 The blunt testimony of one in his command is that " he 
 was always as sour as if he had swallowed a pint of 
 vinegar, except when he was being shot at, and then he 
 was as blithe as a schoolboy out for a holiday." "Sour" 
 is a misapplied expression ; but questionless he was at 
 times irascible. He must be an angel whose temper is 
 not impaired by three -and -twenty years' service as a 
 subaltern, and there were occasions when the old chief 
 threatened arrest rather abruptly. In social intercourse 
 he unbent, and if still somewhat distant, was kind and 
 amiable. He hated red-tape, and the propensity, which 
 he ascribed more especially to the Company's officers, of 
 voluminous report- writing. "They," he said, "are all 
 good officers as long as they are burning cartridge-paper 
 in the field, but no sooner are they done with that than 
 they are wasting qmres of foolscap in their tents." The 
 universal testimony is that "officers and men had the 
 fullest confidence in him as a leader, willingly performed 
 every duty that he ordered, and would have followed 
 him anywhere." 
 
 Havelock was a profound admirer of Napoleon, and 
 followed in practice that great soldier's method of making 
 high-flown speeches to his men, and publishing addresses 
 whose phrases savoured of bombast. I venture to believe 
 that the British soldier of the best type not only is not 
 thrilled by such appeals, but that they kindle in him 
 some resentment and even contempt. And I further 
 believe that Havelock had a suspicion of this occasional
 
 HIS ADDRESS TO THE TROOPS 
 
 result of his eloquence, and that among the best evidences 
 of his qualifications for leadership was the ready magnetic 
 tact with which, while indulging his propensity, he could 
 by a happy word get at the hearts of men who were 
 adamant to oratorical bunkum. 
 
 The staff that rode with him on to the parade-ground 
 consisted of officers of well -approved merit. A north- 
 country man himself, Havelock had gone yet farther 
 north for his staff officers; save his son Henry, a 
 subaltern of the Tenth Foot, who was his aide-de-camp, 
 they were all Scotsmen. Lieutenant-Colonel Fraser Tytler 
 was his quartermaster-general ; Captain Stuart Beatson 
 was his ad jutant- general ; Captain M'Bean was his 
 commissary. 
 
 The bright sparkle of tardily-gratified desire was in 
 his eye, as the noble old Christian soldier rode forward 
 when the " present arms " was over. " Soldiers ! " said 
 he, his voice ringing loud and clear along the line, and 
 into the throng of scowling natives gazing on the scene 
 from the distance " Soldiers, there is work before us. 
 We are bound on an expedition whose object is to restore 
 the supremacy of British rule and avenge the fate of 
 British men and women. Some of you I know others 
 are yet strangers to me ; but we have a common aspira- 
 tion which knits us together as one man. Seventy- 
 eighth and Sixty-fourth, I have commanded you in 
 Persia, and I know the stuff you are made of ; I know 
 you will give me no cause to waver in the implicit 
 confidence I have in you " ; and so on, a trifle frothily. 
 The Sixty-fourth cheered him lustily ; Colonel Hamilton 
 of the Seventy-eighth contributed his "hurrah," and 
 turned in his saddle as if to stimulate his men to join in
 
 HA VELOCK 
 
 the cheer. But they remained grimly unresponsive, and a 
 mutter ran along the ranks. They did not need and they 
 did not relish adjurations to brave deeds ; they had other 
 and worthier incitements. The clansmen knew of white- 
 haired old men and bent old women, and of Highland 
 lasses too, far away in the clachans and among the glens 
 and about the lochsides of the north country ; and in 
 their mind's eye they saw the tattered copy of the Inver- 
 ness Courier circulating from shealing to shealing, and the 
 proud glances flashing through the tears when news of 
 the Eoss-shire Buffs was read aloud. They had been 
 reared among traditions of Maida and Fontenoy ; broken 
 old veterans had told them in Gaelic how the kilted 
 men routed the French with their fierce rush on the 
 Egyptian sand, and clung to the stirrup-leathers of the 
 charging Greys at Waterloo. The silence of the High- 
 landers now was not because they were unemotional ; 
 but because their emotion lay too deep to be stirred 
 by platitudes. Havelock understood the mood, and 
 knew how to humour it. As riding along the line he 
 passed the Colonel of the Highlanders, he said to that 
 officer, " Your men like better to cheer when the bugle 
 sounds ' Charge,' than when it sounds ' General Parade.' 
 We'll try their throats by and by." The few cordial 
 words went straight to the hearts of the Highlanders. 
 The centre company heard them and broke into a 
 fervent cheer, the flank companies took their comrades' 
 word and followed suit. Havelock's face became radiant ; 
 but his fine tact deterred him from the mistake of acknow- 
 ledging the enthusiasm he had evoked. 
 
 The column had scarcely cleared the environs of 
 Allahabad when the clouds opened and the rain came
 
 v THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 113 
 
 down in torrents. Sodden with the wet, the men tramped 
 on through the deepening mud of the Grand Trunk 
 Road ; although they carried no knapsacks they soon 
 began to fag, for they were out of practice in marching, 
 and it was the season of the Indian year which is most 
 enervating to people of our northern race. It was the 
 season of the fierce Indian summer, when from morning 
 until sundown the heavy mats of constantly moistened 
 cuscus grass swathe and darken the verandahs of the gentle- 
 folk, and when the soldier, after the brief parade in the 
 gray dawn, is not allowed to quit his barrack until dusk. 
 The white man who braves the Indian summer sun does 
 so at the risk of his life ; and this should be ever pre- 
 sent in the minds of those who read how in the Mutiny 
 time our soldiers marched and fought, how our tenderly 
 nurtured countrywomen suffered every deprivation, were 
 subjected to squalor and exposure unspeakable, under a 
 sun whose beams were as deadly as the sepoy bullets. 
 
 Eight miles had been covered when the order was given 
 to halt for the night in a mango tope on the roadside. 
 Wet and weary, the soldiers huddled under the slight 
 shelter of the trees to Avait for the tents that came not ; 
 for even in this short first march the miserable draught 
 cattle had fallen behind. But after a time the rum 
 came up, and after their dram the men made shift to 
 spend the night on the saturated earth. Next day and 
 the following and the day following that again, the 
 column advanced by easy marches of eight miles each. 
 Havelock believed that the Cawnpore garrison had been 
 exterminated ; and that he was justified in the leisurely 
 progress which at once spared and inured his soldiers. 
 But on the fourth day out he found urgent necessity for 
 
 I
 
 ii4 HAVE LOCK' CHAP. 
 
 accelerating his advance. Renaud sent him back the 
 information that the Cawnpore mutineers were reported 
 to be rapidly moving down toward him in great strength. 
 Those tidings were confirmed by Havelock's own 
 spies. He recognised that prompt and strenuous exer- 
 tion was requisite to avert danger from Renaud's ad- 
 vance column, out there alone and unsupported, a long 
 day's march in front of him. Nearly half its strength, 
 about eight hundred all told, consisted of Sikhs whose 
 fidelity was not fully assured; of its four hundred 
 Europeans a number were mere recruits; the loyalty 
 of its detachment of native cavalry was strongly sus- 
 pected and half its gunners were natives. He had been 
 informed that the force from Cawnpore was reckoned at 
 about three thousand five hundred regular sepoys, strong 
 in artillery, and swollen by a mass of irregular levies. 
 Yet he would not order Renaud to fall back ; the moral 
 effect of the retrograde movement would be injurious. 
 He determined to overtake him by a forced march, and 
 then to press on and get face to face with the rebel army 
 as early as might be. Starting in the early morning of 
 the llth, he marched fifteen miles under a burning sun 
 to Arrapore. There he allowed a few hours' rest, and 
 at midnight the column was again on the move. An 
 hour later in a flood of moonlight its advance guard and 
 the headquarter were defiling through Renaud's ranks 
 drawn up on either side of the road ; the bagpipes of the 
 Highlanders struck up "The Campbells are Coming," 
 which strenuous melody the Lambs strove in vain to 
 droAvn with their ringing cheers of welcome ; and after 
 a short halt, the night march was resumed, Renaud's 
 men at the head of the column. Sixteen long miles from
 
 v THE FIRST CANNON BALL 115 
 
 Arrapore had been covered and the sun was high when 
 at seven o'clock the weary little army halted on the 
 camping-ground of Belinda, some four miles short of 
 the town of Futtehpore. 
 
 The halt was on a low ridge commanding a view of 
 the Grand Trunk Eoad some distance ahead, and of 
 the broad plain on either side of it. Great pools of 
 water were thickly studded over this plain, and swamps 
 extended some distance on either side of the road. The 
 General having dismounted a little way up the road, 
 was sitting under a tree waiting for his breakfast. 
 Tytler had gone to the front on a reconnaissance, taking 
 with him Barrow's handful of volunteer horsemen. The 
 troops were resting on the slope, waiting for the tents and 
 baggage to come up ; some rubbing melted fat on their 
 blistered feet, others cooling their chafes in the pools ; 
 many more too dead beaten to do anything but lie still. 
 The cooks of messes were busy preparing breakfast, the 
 commissariat having already come up. 
 
 The chief was questioning two spies sent in by Tytler, 
 when suddenly a round shot came bowling along the 
 road, struck the ground within half a dozen yards of 
 where he sat, whitened him with its dust, and trundling 
 on smashed one of the camp kettles of the Sixty-fourth. 
 In the instant the cooks left their kettles where they 
 hung ; the weary sprang briskly up, the barefooted men 
 pulled their highlows on over the chafes and blisters, 
 and in two minutes' time the whole force was getting 
 under arms. There was no need, now that an enemy 
 was assuredly in the front, for the bugles to sound the 
 " assembly." They did sound as Havelock, rising to his 
 feet, sent Morland to the front through the cannon balls
 
 1 1 6 HA VEL CK CHAP. 
 
 now ricochetting pretty freely down the road, to bid 
 Tytler fall leisurely back. Presently that officer and his 
 escort were visible in the distance returning at a canter ; 
 behind them a great horde of native horse brandishing 
 their tuhcars and filling the air with insolent shouts. 
 All of a sudden every sowar drew rein as if with one 
 impulse, the yells ceased, the tulwars flashed no longer 
 in the sun. They had seen the serried lines of bayonets 
 crowning. the long ridge. They had expected to find 
 only Kenaud's little column in their front, and lo ! before 
 them was an array whose strength was greatly more 
 formidable. 
 
 For the prompt infantry were already in rank ; drawn 
 up in line of companies forming quarter distance columns, 
 the Madras Fusiliers on the right, the Seventy-eighth 
 constituting the right centre, the Sixty-fourth the left 
 centre, Brasyer's Sikhs forming the left. Tytler re- 
 ported to the chief, who had walked forward to meet 
 him ; then an aide-de-camp rode to Major Stirling, and 
 presently one hundred men of the Sixty-fourth armed 
 with Enfield rifles moved forward several hundred yards 
 into a copse on the left of the Grand Trunk Road, which 
 bisected the centre of the position. This disposition 
 made, the order was given that the men should lie down 
 without breaking their formation and get what rest they 
 could until the course of events should develope itself. 
 Havelock was wily. If the mutineerswere engaging them- 
 selves in a mere ebullition that should presently expend 
 itself, he would gratify his anxious desire to give his 
 harassed soldiers rest : if they meant more serious busi- 
 ness, his inertness of the moment would foster their 
 audacity. It seemed that they did mean business.
 
 v FUTTEHPORE 117 
 
 Their horsemen moving aside uncovered infantry in 
 formation ; they brought cannon into action and threat- 
 ened a flanking movement. Havelock was not going 
 to stand this sort of thing. To use his own words, " It 
 would have injured the morale of my troops to permit 
 them to be thus bearded ; so I determined at once to 
 bring on an action." 
 
 He lost no time in giving effect to his resolution. 
 Maude was bidden hurry his battery forward on the 
 Trunk Road to the edge of the copse held by the 
 Enfield riflemen of the Sixty-fourth, 1 silence the sepoy 
 guns in his direct front, and then, diverging through the 
 swamp on his left, gain a flanking position and push up 
 to point-blank range. This he accomplished in the most 
 dashing fashion, running his pieces up to within two 
 hundred yards of the hostile infantry. The infantry 
 pressed forward in support through the swamps and 
 inundation, their advance covered by Enfield skirmishers. 
 Renaud on the right carried a commanding knoll, 
 whence the fire of his Enfields swept back the 
 enemy's left. The sepoy guns on the road had been 
 remanned, and confronted the advancing Seventy-eighth. 
 " At the double forward ! " was Hamilton's word 
 of command; his men obeyed him with a ringing 
 slogan. The sepoy gunners and their supports did 
 not wait for the onslaught ; but abandoned their guns 
 and fled when as yet their assailants Avere not within 
 a hundred and fifty yards of the battery. Leaving the 
 guns where they stood the Highlanders, who by this rush 
 
 1 The Madras Fusiliers were armed throughout with the Enfield 
 rifle, and to them fell most of the skirmishing. The flank com- 
 panies only of the Sixty -fourth and Seventy-eighth had the Enfield ; 
 the Sikhs had the old Brown Bess.
 
 u8 HAVELOCK 
 
 had thrown themselves forward out of the alignment, 
 advanced more leisurely through swamp and copse, till 
 at length they were within fire of the garden enclosures 
 outside the town of Futtehpore. Here the enemy ap- 
 peared inclined to make a stand under cover of the 
 Avails, but their hearts failed them when the Enfield 
 bullets began to patter, and they hurried off in retreat. 
 And now the entrance of the town was within sight, 
 blocked, however, by a barricade formed of carts, tum- 
 brils, and logs. The Sixty-fourth had caught up with 
 the Seventy-eighth, and the right flank of the one and 
 the left flank of the other were on the road together, 
 with a straight run in. The barricade was carried with 
 a rush ; the "honours easy " between the light company 
 of the Highlanders and the grenadiers of the Sixty- 
 fourth. Inside the town there was some little 
 hand-to-hand fighting, for the Sepoys dodged about 
 among the houses and had to be driven out. A 
 cart-load of rupees had been upset in the street 
 and the sight of the silver tempted men to dally ; 
 others straggled in search of food and drink. By some 
 mistake a bugler sounded the "halt" on the farther 
 side of the town, which occasioned further delay, and 
 meanwhile the mutineers were reforming beyond it. 
 Palliser's Native Irregulars were sent to the front, but 
 behaved so badly that Havelock next day disarmed 
 and dismounted them, assigning their horses to 
 Barrow's volunteers. Palliser 1 himself rode headlong 
 into the hostile ranks, was dashed from his horse, and 
 would have been cut to pieces but for the devotion of 
 his ressaldar, who lost his own life in saving that of his 
 
 1 Now Sir C. H. Palliser, K.C.B.
 
 v THE ORDER OF THANKS 119 
 
 leader. With some delay the artillery and riflemen toiled 
 once more to the front, and their fire soon put the enemy 
 to final and irretrievable flight. For our people it had 
 been an all but bloodless victory ; twelve British soldiers, 
 however, had been slain by the sun. What Fort Donelson 
 was to the North in the American Civil War, Futtehpore 
 was to us in the Mutiny struggle. It was the first action 
 with the rebel soldiery in which our arms were successful 
 the first beating that the mutineers received in the 
 open field. And it was Havelock's first battle in which he 
 was his own general. The tidings of Futtehpore sped 
 through India, gladdening the hearts of the British 
 people, bidding the natives take note that the rule of the 
 sahib-log was still masterful. In due time the news of 
 it went home, and the name of Havelock was hailed in 
 palace and in cottage. 
 
 He was justifiably proud of the good day's work ; 
 humility and thankfulness wrestling with the pride. 
 The same night he wrote to his wife : " One of the 
 prayers oft repeated throughout my life has been 
 answered, and I have lived to command in a general 
 action. . . . The enemy sallied and insulted my camp. 
 . . . We fought, and in ten minutes' time the affair was 
 decided. . . . But away with vain glory ! Thanks to 
 Almighty God who gave me the victoiy. I captured in 
 four hours eleven guns, and scattered the enemy's whole 
 force to the winds." Naturally he was out next morning 
 with an Order of Thanks to his troops. Not content with 
 congratulating them on the success, he must needs 
 catalogue the various elements which he regarded as 
 contributing to it. Much as if he were a scientific 
 chemist detailing an analysis, but in more grandiose
 
 120 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 phrase, he attributed the victory " to the fire of British 
 Artillery, exceeding in rapidity and precision all that 
 the Brigadier has ever witnessed in his not short 
 career; to the power of the Enfield rifle in British 
 hands; to British pluck, that great quality which has 
 survived the vicissitudes of the hour, and gained in- 
 tensity from the crisis ; and to the blessing of Almighty 
 God in a most righteous cause." Sir John Kaye 
 finds in these ascriptions "a sort of Cromwellian many- 
 sidedness. " 
 
 The town of Futtehpore because of its evil deeds 
 was given over to plunder and the firebrand. The 13th 
 was a halt day for much-needed rest. The march of the 
 14th was unopposed; but about daybreak of the 15th, 
 Barrow's horsemen scouting in advance, when near the 
 village of Aong came suddenly on an entrenchment 
 thrown up across the road, behind which were a couple 
 of guns and the enemy in considerable force. As the 
 horsemen galloped back with this information they were 
 folloAved by round shot, and by a body of sepoy infantry 
 who took possession of a hamlet several hundred yards in 
 advance of their main position, and from it opened a 
 lively musketry fire. Havelock promptly made his dis- 
 positions. To Tytler he assigned the command of a 
 strong advance force about one-third of the column ; 
 he himself with the main body remaining to protect the 
 baggage which the hostile cavalry, hovering on both 
 flanks, were threatening. Tytler, rapidly forming his 
 detachment under fire, gave Renaud the word to go with 
 two companies of his Fusiliers at the hamlet held by the 
 enemy. He and his men carried it at the double ; but 
 the gallant Renaud never charged more. A sepoy bullet
 
 v THE MARCH TO THE PANDOO NUDDEE 121 
 
 smashed his thigh, and he died of the wound the day 
 after the column marched into Cawnpore. While Renaud 
 was clearing the Paudies out of the hamlet, Maude had 
 come up with the artillery, and a few rounds drove 
 away from the entrenchment its defenders, who left their 
 guns as they fled. One of those guns was found curiously 
 wrecked. While the gunner had been ramming home, 
 a shot from one of Maude's pieces had come along, 
 killed the gunner, smashed the rammer, and jammed 
 itself with the utmost neatness into the muzzle of the 
 gun, which it had split up to the very touch-hole. While 
 the fighting in front had been in progress, the rebel 
 cavalry had repeatedly tried to cut in on the main body 
 and plunder the baggage, but had been steadily repulsed, 
 and they now in a panic galloped after the infantry, 
 throwing away in their flight arms, looted jewellery, and 
 even money. The road all the way from Aong to the 
 Pandoo Nuddee was strewn with abandoned tents, carts, 
 baggage, and military stores. 
 
 The little affair at Aong with the march that preceded 
 it, would have been a fair day's work, but the chief was 
 to exact from the willing soldiery more marching and 
 more fighting before the sun should set. A few miles 
 farther forward the Grand Trunk Road crossed the 
 Pandoo Nuddee by a fine stone bridge. The river was 
 in full flood and of course unfordable ; Havelock had no 
 pontoon train and in the midst of a hostile population 
 there was no hope of boats ; should the bridge go his ad- 
 vance on Cawnpore would be indefinitely retarded. And 
 now during the two hours' halt permitted for much- 
 needed food and rest, his spies brought to the General 
 the tidings that the enemy had rallied in a fortified
 
 122 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 position on the farther side of the bridge, of which one 
 of the arches had been mined. Not a moment was to 
 be lost. The preparations for breakfast were abandoned. 
 The tired and hungry soldiers cheerfully obeyed the 
 bugle call, and resumed the toilsome march under a 
 vertical sun, stepping out with a will. After a two hours' 
 tramp the advance guard suddenly came under artillery 
 fire, and fell back by order. A short reconnaissance 
 showed that the enemy were fully prepared to dispute 
 the passage of the river. Then "officers' call" was 
 sounded, and the general in his curt but lucid manner, 
 explained to his subordinates his dispositions for the 
 attack. 
 
 The inherent viciousness of the entrenched bridge-end 
 position held by the mutineers was discernible at a 
 glance. The Pandoo was margined on the side ap- 
 proached by us by a high precipitous bluff. The river 
 made a bend outwards, as it were, toward the advancing 
 Britons, and just at the apex of the salient was the bridge. 
 The road to it ran down a ravine scarped by nature 
 through the bluff, and to right and left of this ravine 
 were two other ravines, nearly parallel with the central 
 one but converging somewhat toward the bridge. On 
 the rebel side, in the bosom of the bend, was a fine 
 alluvial tract, in the entrenchments on which were a 
 24-pound gun and a 25-pound carronade commanding the 
 bridge and the road beyond it. 
 
 A detachment of Enfield riflemen of the Madras 
 Fusiliers moved down each of the lateral ravines, lined 
 the banks, and opened a hot fire on the enemy's gunners 
 and their cavalry supports. Maude, permitted to carry out 
 his own suggestion, proceeded to envelope the entrench-
 
 v THE WINNING OF THE BRIDGE 123 
 
 ment in a concentric artillery fire, posting three guns at the 
 head of the central ravine, two at the head of the right, 
 and three at the head of the left. The main body remained 
 in reserve lying down on either side of the road, the 
 enemy's cannon shot whistling over the soldiers as they 
 lay. Not all, however, of the missiles were thus harmless. 
 A restless fellow of the grenadier company of the Seventy- 
 eighth was utilising a little hillock as a pillow, and 
 chaffing his comrades for not making themselves as com- 
 fortable as he had done. He was a dead man next moment. 
 A round shot lit on his head and smashed it to a jelly. 
 Havelock was close by. He took a long look at what 
 remained of poor Laurence, and then remarked : " His 
 was a happy death, grenadiers. He died in the service 
 of his country." The anticlimax came from somewhere 
 down the line : " For masel', sir, gin ye've nae objections, 
 L wad suner bide alive i' the service o' ma cuntra ! " 
 
 Suddenly, from near the crown of the bridge there 
 was a flash, a puff of white smoke, and then the dull 
 heavy thud of an explosion. 
 
 " There goes the bridge ! " was the universal shout of 
 disappointment. But the bridge was not gone. The 
 explosion had blown away only a piece of the parapet 
 and a segment of the roadway. The smoke had scarcely 
 drifted away Avhen Maude had his guns forward on the 
 water's edge, and was smashing shrapnel right into the 
 thick of the sepoys at point-blank range. Almost 
 simultaneously Stephenson and his Fusiliers, cheering 
 vehemently as they dashed forward at the double, threw 
 themselves on the bridge, and were across it and 
 bayoneting the rebel gunners before they had time to 
 run away. The Highlanders followed deploying at
 
 124 HA V BLOCK CHAP. 
 
 speed as they crossed, but there remained no enemy to 
 deal with. The horsemen had galloped off leaving the 
 gunners to their fate. Most of the latter were slain where 
 they stood; those taken alive were heaved into the 
 turbid current of the Pandoo Nuddee and there was an 
 end of them. The British loss in the two affairs of this 
 day was about thirty killed and wounded. 
 
 Havelock pushed his command a mile beyond the 
 bridge, and then a halt was made. The fellows had 
 been marching and fighting all day in the blazing sun, 
 and were dead beaten. The damage to the bridge 
 delayed the arrival of the commissariat cattle, and it was 
 so late when they were killed and the meat cooked that 
 the men were past their appetite. By morning, so hot 
 had been the night, most of the meat was spoiled and 
 was thrown away. From the afternoon of the 14th 
 until about noon of the 16th, all the sustenance that the 
 majority partook of was a scanty meal of biscuits and 
 porter. 
 
 The relentless reveille roused in the small hours the 
 still tired soldiers from their tentless bivouac. When 
 the regiments had formed up in the moonlight, the 
 General addressed them. This time he had something to 
 say that went straight to every heart. He had heard, 
 he said, that there were still alive in Cawnpore two 
 hundred and more women and children of our race who 
 had escaped the massacre of June 27th. " With God's 
 help," shouted the old chief, his head bared and his 
 hand on his sword and there was a sob in the ring of 
 the voice of him " with God's help, men, we shall save 
 them, or every man of us die in the attempt. I am 
 trying you sorely, men," he continued ; " but I know the
 
 v THE NAN A AT BAY 125 
 
 stuff you are made of; think of our women and the 
 tender infants in the power of those devils incarnate ! " 
 
 The soldiers replied to their leader with three ringing 
 cheers ; and then, not waiting for the word of command, 
 went " fours right " and took the road. The morning 
 broke on the hottest day since the advance had begun ; 
 but there was no nagging. Steadily and doggedly the 
 men tramped on under the burning sun. Now and 
 then a poor fellow threw up his arms, and dropping his 
 musket fell heavily to the ground. His comrades 
 picked up the victim of the ruthless heat and placed 
 him by the wayside out of the line of march ; and then 
 closing up mechanically, pressed on in that sullen, silent, 
 determined manner which was the characteristic of this 
 day's dreadful march. 
 
 Toward noon, after a tramp of some sixteen miles, 
 the sorely wearied little army reached the village of 
 Maharajpore, and the welcome "halt" was sounded. 
 Barrow's volunteer cavalry went forward on a recon- 
 naissance and presently sent in two loyal sepoys who, 
 faithful among the faithless, were on their way to us, 
 the bearers at the risk of their lives of invaluable intel- 
 ligence. They had marched with the rebels from Cawn- 
 pore, had spent the night in their camp, and had noted 
 minutely all their dispositions of the morning. What 
 they had to tell Havelock was this 
 
 The Nana himself was in our front, come out with 
 five thousand men and eight guns to play his last stake. 
 Near the hundred and twentieth milestone from Alla- 
 habad, the branch-road leading rightward to Cawnpore 
 leaves the Grand Trunk Road. The Nana's army was 
 in position about eight hundred yards beyond the fork,
 
 126 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 its front extending about a mile and a quarter in 
 crescent form, the centre occupying the space between 
 the two roads, the wings prolonged beyond on either 
 side, thus 'V". Its left, which reached to within a mile 
 of the Ganges, rested on an entrenched village standing 
 among trees on elevated ground, and defended by three 
 24 -pounders. Its centre was covered by swampy 
 ground, and by a low lying hamlet, on the edge of 
 which, commanding the Trunk Road, were a 24-pound 
 howitzer and a 9 -pounder in an entrenchment. In 
 front of its right was a village in a grove of mango-trees 
 surrounded by a mud wall, through embrasures in which 
 loured the muzzles of two 9-pounders. In the anticipa- 
 tion that the attacking force must advance by the 
 Trunk Road up at least to the fork, all the artillery 
 was laid to sweep that spot, and the ranges had been 
 measured and marked. The rebel infantry was massed 
 along the line in support of the guns, and a regiment of 
 mutineer cavalry occupied open ground in rear of the left. 
 A direct frontal attack on such a position held in 
 strength so great would have been rash to desperation. 
 Havelock wisely resolved on a turning movement. As- 
 siduous questioning of villagers convinced him that his 
 most eligible objective was the enemy's left flank, not- 
 withstanding the tactical unsoundness involved in un- 
 covering his communications and his baggage, which 
 latter he was to leave under guard at Maharajpore. The 
 temptation to manoeuvre for his foes' left flank was a line 
 of groves that promised in considerable measure to mask 
 a turning movement in that direction. So he summoned 
 his commanding officers, and for an hour or so Havelock 
 was to be seen on the summit of a little sandy elevation
 
 v THE MARCH TO THE BATTLE 127 
 
 upon which he had scratched with his sword-point some- 
 thing that looked like a mathematical problem, lecturing 
 with much emphasis and fluency to his assembled subor- 
 dinates. Having by the aid of this diagram explained 
 his projected tactics, not forgetting to observe that he 
 was following old Fritz's celebrated Schrdge Stellung 
 at Leuthen and elsewhere, and having satisfied himself 
 by questions and answers that his intentions were 
 thoroughly understood, he sent the officers back to 
 their respective commands, and the troops fell in. 
 
 The three hours' halt had rested them somewhat. 
 Also they had eaten, they had drunk, and, to tell the 
 truth, some of them had got as nearly as possible drunk. 
 The Madras Fusiliers and some of the Sixty-fourth had 
 discovered in a swamp by the wayside sundry barrels of 
 porter, the derelicts of some unrecorded convoy. Of 
 course there was a rush on so welcome a find; can- 
 teens were filled, mouths were clapped to bung-holes, 
 the ends of casks were stove in, and thirsty soldiers 
 drank of the porter-puddles formed on the ground. The 
 commissariat officer had a hard struggle to secure part 
 of the prize for the common good, but was able to 
 recover enough to go round the rest of the force in 
 moderation, and a great reinvigoration was the result. 
 Copious porter on empty stomachs had considerably over- 
 invigorated the Lambs; and when they fell in their 
 formation was rather unsteady. Probably there was a 
 good deal of porter in their vehement cheeiing as they 
 marched off up the road at the head of the column, fol- 
 lowing Barrow's scouting troopers ; but of their keenness 
 for fighting there was no question, and with a five miles' 
 march before them they would be as steady as churches
 
 128 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 by the time business should begin. Behind the Fusiliers 
 moved off in succession the Seventy-eighth, the Sixty- 
 fourth and Eighty-fourth combined, and the Sikhs; 
 the guns in the intervals between the regiments, 
 whose formation was in columns of subdivisions. 
 A steady tramp of three miles brought the force to 
 within half a mile of the fork. Barrow's horsemen, 
 acting on instructions, held straight forward toward 
 the enemy's centre, commissioned to simulate the in- 
 tention of a frontal attack on the part of the entire 
 force, while the leading company of the Fusiliers, in 
 furtherance of the deception, opened a skirmish fire on 
 either side of the road. But the column engaging in the 
 turning movement which Havelock had devised, wheeled 
 to its right and pressed steadily on behind the friendly 
 screen of mango-trees, its objective point the upland be- 
 tween the enemy's left flank and the river. About half 
 the required distance was traversed Avithout detection ; 
 then a gap in the trees betrayed the movement, and the 
 enemy's artillery fire, which Barrow's people had been 
 skilfully drawing, was diverted on the exposed flank of 
 the column. Several casualties occurred in the Seventy- 
 eighth and Sixty-fourth, but not a shot was fired in 
 reply. As the soldiers marched steadily and silently 
 on, the strains of familiar home-tunes played in mockery 
 by the bands of the revolted sepoy regiments, came to 
 them on the light wind ; and as they listened to " Auld 
 Lang Syne " and " Cheer, Boys, Cheer," the faces grew 
 set and stern, and lurid fury possessed every heart. 
 The enemy were slow to discern the meaning of the 
 movement which our people were executing; kit at 
 length it flashed on them as the head of the column
 
 v THE CHARGE OF THE HIGHLANDERS 129 
 
 emerged on their flank from behind the cover of the 
 groves. Their left wing made a hurried effort to change 
 front to meet the impending attack, and their three big 
 guns of that wing had been moved and had already opened 
 fire in their new positions before the British regiments 
 had completed their wheel into line. That accom- 
 plished, the force at once began its advance in direct 
 Echelon from the right, the leading regiment, the Seventy- 
 eighth, flanked on either side by four guns ; the Madras 
 Fusiliers spread athwart the whole front in skirmishing 
 order. But our light pieces were ineffectual to silence 
 the rapidly and skilfully served big cannon of the foe. 
 And he was rushing to his threatened left yet more 
 cannon ; troops from his centre were hurrying thither, 
 and his new front was in swift formation. Our 
 troops had been temporarily halted, and were lying 
 down while Maude's gunners were trying ineffectually 
 to beat down the fire of the sepoy cannon. It was 
 an intensely critical moment one of those moments 
 which test the true man of action. Havelock gave 
 Hamilton the word ; one keen glance to the front from 
 under his shaggy eyebrows, and the old colonel shouted 
 the order, "The Eoss-shire Buffs will advance; quick 
 march ! " 
 
 Silent, grim, imperturbable, the Highlanders strode 
 steadily on, with the long springing stride only to be 
 learnt on the heather. Five minutes brought them 
 within eighty yards of the sepoy cannon, and through 
 the smoke they could dimly see the faces of the strain- 
 ing gunners and of the infantry supports. Then old 
 "AVattie," with his sword in the air and his face all 
 ablaze with the fighting blood in him, turned in his 
 
 K
 
 130 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 saddle, shouted " Charge ! " and bade the pipers strike 
 up. Wild and shrill burst forth over that Indian plain 
 the scream of the northern music. But louder yet, 
 drowning it and the roar of the artillery, rang out that 
 Highland war-cry that has so often presaged victory to 
 British arms. The clansmen were on and over the guns 
 ere the gunners had time to drop their linstocks and 
 ramming rods ; they were in on the supports with their 
 bayonets at the charge, and the foremost supports were 
 down where they stood, for time did not serve them to 
 break and run. Mad with the ardour of battle, every 
 drop of Highland blood afire in every vein, the Ross- 
 shire men crashed right through the village and cleared 
 it before they dropped out of the "double." They had 
 crushed the enemy's left, taken its guns, and sent a great 
 mass of sepoys whirling to the rear. But their chief- 
 needed more work at their hands. In the village 
 which was the centre of the enemy's position was the 
 big howitzer from between which and our people the 
 Highlanders had driven the defenders of the left, so 
 that the great gun had now free range against us. 
 Havelock galloped up to the Highlanders, who were 
 reforming behind a causeway leading up to a little 
 bridge, and pointing with his sword toward the belching 
 howitzer, shouted "Now, Highlanders, another charge 
 like the last wins the day ! " The General could not 
 complain that day of the lack of a responsive cheer. 
 Impatiently restrained by their officers till a rough 
 formation had been effected, they burst out from behind 
 the causeway as a Highland stream comes tearing down 
 a glen, and swept everything before them with resistless 
 force. Havelock himself led their charge. The howitzer
 
 v " GIVE POINT, LADS!" 131 
 
 was taken, the position was carried, the village beyond 
 it was rushed, the enemy's centre shared the fate of its 
 left; and the breathless Scots halted unwillingly in 
 obedience to the bugle call. 
 
 The native troops, expelled from their position, were 
 falling back in disorder along the Trunk Eoad, their 
 retreat covered by the sowars of the Second Cavalry, who 
 had previously assailed in vain the square hurriedly 
 formed to receive them by the Madras Fusiliers in 
 rear of the shattered left. As the Highlanders carried 
 the centre, Barrow's horsemen came cantering up the 
 Trunk Road, burning with impatience for an opportunity 
 to use their swords. The General shook his head when 
 Barrow pleaded for permission to go at the sowars with 
 his handful; and then he rode off to join the Sixty- 
 fourth and Eighty-fourth, who, with the Sikhs, had 
 swept on to attack and smash the rebel right, and capture 
 the guns in position there. Captain Beatson, the 
 adjutant-general, had been attacked by cholera early in 
 the day. He was a dying man, although he did not 
 know it ; he was buried two days after the force entered 
 Cawnpore. Unable to mount his horse, he had gone 
 into action on a tumbril, following Barrow's little detach- 
 ment. While the general was gone Beatson saw an 
 opening for the horsemen, and gave Barrow his head. 
 Barrow threw away his cigar, gathered up his reins, 
 called out to his handful " Come on !" and dashed up the 
 road at score. His little band, their heart a good deal 
 better than their dressing, galloped hard on his heels, 
 cheering as they charged. " Give point, lads ; damn cuts 
 'and guards ! " roared Barrow as he skewered a havildar 
 who confronted him, and then burst into the thick of the
 
 132 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 sowars. The meUe was brief but furious ; when it ended 
 the sowars were in full flight, and there was not a clean 
 sword blade in Barrow's command. His men had been 
 fighting to a gallery, and as they rode back, not with full 
 numbers, they were greeted by the infantry with ringing 
 plaudits, and by Havelock's words of praise "Well 
 done, gentlemen volunteers; I am proud to command 
 you ! " 
 
 So ended the first phase of the combat ; but the day 
 was not yet won. The mutineers had fought and run 
 away, but they did not wait till " another day " on which 
 to fight again. The fugitives from their shattered left 
 and centre had united, and were now holding in force 
 with a couple of guns a village about a mile in rear 
 of their original position. Maude's gun -teams were 
 utterly exhausted, and the guns had to be left behind 
 with Barrow's horsemen to cover them ; the captured 
 cannon were parked near the Trunk Road under the 
 guardianship of Brasyer's Sikhs. These dispositions 
 completed, the British infantry moved forward, the way 
 lying through deep -ploughed fields, great stretches of 
 which were under water. Almost at once the force 
 came under artillery fire from the village in and about 
 which the enemy had rallied. More than half the distance 
 had been slowly traversed, and the soldiers were begin- 
 ning to lag in their weariness to "hang" in the way that 
 overwrought troops are apt to do in the face of heavy 
 fire. Havelock had not soldiered for forty years without 
 having come to know the nature of the soldier from the 
 crown of his shako down to his ammunition boots. He 
 rode out to the front, pulled up, smiled genially at a 
 cannon shot that missed him by a hair's breadth, and
 
 v THE LAST STAND OF THE NANA 133 
 
 cheerily cried, much as if the affair in hand were a game 
 of bowls " Come, who is to take that village, the High- 
 landers or the Sixty-fourth 1 " The challenge stirred the 
 fire of regimental rivalry ; eyes flashed, backs straight- 
 ened; the spirit became willing and the flesh was no 
 longer weak. The two regiments raced at the village 
 abreast, and without a check in their pace drove the 
 enemy into it, through it, and out of it at the farther 
 side. The Madras Fusiliers cleared and occupied the 
 outlying copses on the right. 
 
 All resistance seemed now over. There was a halt 
 for reorganisation after the village-fight, and then the 
 troops resumed the advance. It lay up a low rise, the 
 clumps of trees dotted about which interfered with the 
 view to the front. The column crowned the slope, to 
 encounter all of a sudden a fierce fire, and to confront 
 a startling and ominous spectacle. Right in its path, 
 distant a short half mile, a great mass of rebel soldiery 
 stood athwart the Cawnpore road, the broad front of 
 the array stretching far to right and left. In front of 
 its centre a 24 -pound gun was in rapid action; 
 two smaller pieces on the flank were being served not 
 less energetically. A flutter of banners overhung the 
 rebel cohorts. Clamorous shouts, clang of cymbals, 
 blare of bugles, roll of drums, filled the air with a medley 
 of din in the intervals of the roar of the guns. Amid 
 the throng was seen moving hither and thither a richly 
 caparisoned elephant, carrying a howdah the gilding of 
 which flashed in the slanting sun-rays. Of that howdah 
 the occupant was the Nana, who had stiffened his courage 
 to attempt by his presence to inspire with constancy the 
 fresh levies he had led out for a final resolute stand
 
 134 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 against the white men coming on with so much to 
 avenge. 
 
 The soldiers were sore spent, the guns were a mile in 
 the rear, the enemy's fire came strong, and the officers 
 did not wait for the general's permission to bid their 
 men halt and lie down. It is a trying situation for 
 soldiers over whom the revulsion from the strain and 
 excitement of battle is gradually creeping, to lie supine 
 listening to the cannon shot whizzing over them. 
 Gaining audacity from our immobility, the mutineer 
 cavalry were moving round on the flanks, and the 
 infantry had begun to develope an aggressive intention. 
 Still Maude and his guns came not ; the men began to get 
 restless, and the grumblers were growling in their beards 
 that enough had been done for the day. The sun was 
 on the horizon and the shadows were already deepening. 
 The issue of the day was trembling in the balance. 
 
 Havelock had his finger on the pulse of his command. 
 Invaluable as would be its co-operation, he durst not 
 wait for the arrival of his artillery. Riding out to the 
 front on a pony his charger had been shot under him 
 he reined up with his face to his soldiers and his back 
 to the cannon fire; then he spoke in the calm, high- 
 pitched voice that carried so far. And this was what he 
 said : 
 
 " The longer you look at it, men, the less you will like 
 it. Rise up. The brigade will advance, left battalion 
 leading ! " 
 
 The left battalion was the Sixty - fourth. What 
 happened is best told in Havelock's own words : " The 
 enemy sent round shot into our ranks until we were 
 within three hundred yards, and then poured in grape
 
 v AFTER THE BATTLE 135 
 
 with such precision and determination as I have 
 seldom witnessed. But the Sixty-fourth, led by Major 
 Stirling and by my aide-de-camp, who had placed himself 
 in their front, were not to be denied. Their rear showed 
 the ground strewed with wounded ; but on they steadily 
 and silently came ; then with a cheer charged and cap- 
 tured the unwieldy trophy of their valour. The enemy 
 lost all heart, and after a hurried fire of musketry gave 
 way in total rout. Four of my guns came up, and com- 
 pleted their discomfiture by a heavy cannonade ; and as 
 it grew dark the roofless barracks of our artillery were 
 dimly descried in advance, and it was evident that 
 Cawnpore was once more in our possession." 
 
 So fast fell the night that the troops following the 
 leading regiment were chary of firing lest they should 
 injure friends as well as foes. Indeed the General 
 narrowly escaped a volley, when having ridden some 
 distance to the front, he and his staff came back at a 
 gallop to call the Highlanders forward. And so ended 
 the battle of Cawnpore ; in which eleven hundred British 
 infantrymen, twenty horsemen, a scratch battery of field 
 guns, and three hundred Sikhs, fighting under a deadly 
 sun, wholly discomfited and put to utter rout a native 
 army five thousand strong, superior in number and 
 weight of guns, relatively stronger in cavalry than even 
 in infantry, all arms trained and disciplined by British 
 officers, and holding a position skilfully chosen and 
 strongly entrenched. 
 
 The pursuit of the flying enemy was maintained for 
 half a mile, and the force halted on the edge of the 
 maidan of Cawnpore. The battle-ardour was spent and 
 the soldiers became conscious of their utter exhaustion.
 
 136 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 They languidly piled arms and then dropped in sections 
 Avhere they stood, falling asleep on the bare ground, 
 careless of food or tents. Since the morning they had 
 marched twenty miles, and then fought for four hours 
 in one of the hottest days of the Indian summer. Food 
 and tents were still far behind at Maharajpore, and were 
 not up till next morning. The General supped on half a 
 biscuit from his son's haversack and a mouthful of porter 
 from a bottle Colonel Tytler had in his holster. He 
 called to him the officers of the Seventy-eighth, and told 
 them and bade them tell their men, that he had never 
 seen a regiment behave more gallantly and steadily, and 
 that if he lived to be offered the command of a regiment 
 he would beg to be given the Ross-shire Buffs. If the 
 officers yawned while they thanked him, it was not 
 because they did not value the compliment ; it was quite 
 in vain that night that they tried to communicate to their 
 men the appreciation of the chief. About midnight there 
 was a sudden alarm. Fagged out as the men were, they 
 mechanically struggled to their feet and fell into their 
 places, still dazed with sleep. But it was a false alarm, it 
 was not the enemy; indeed it was a welcome friend, the rum. 
 The commissary immediately made an issue ; comforted 
 greatly the men resumed their bivouac, and the silence of 
 deep sleep again pervaded the little force. The reveille, 
 sounding before dawn, awoke it to a cruel shock. There 
 ran along the ranks the awful bruit that the Avomen and 
 children in Cawnpore had been massacred in cold blood 
 while the battle had been raging the previous afternoon. 
 It was but too true that the ghastly deed of blood had 
 been enacted, but the slaughter had been perpetrated 
 not while our men Avere Avinning the battle of Cawnpore,
 
 v THE SLAUGHTER IN THE BEEBEEGHUR 137 
 
 but late in the afternoon of the previous day. Bala Rao, 
 the Nana's brother and his general at the Pandoo 
 Nuddee bridge, had galloped off the field with a bullet 
 wound in his shoulder, and brought the news to the new- 
 made Peishwah that the Feringhee soldiers had forced 
 the passage of the Pandoo and were in full march on 
 Cawnpore. Whether "in rage, in fear, or in bestial 
 cruelty " may never be known, or at whose instance the 
 resolution was taken for the immediate slaughter of the 
 helpless prisoners cooped in the Beebeeghur. It was 
 from the Nana that the order came to kill and spare not ; 
 he saw the few men who were among the captives 
 brought out and done to death. Then a firing party of 
 sepoys received orders to fire on the women and children 
 through the doors and windows of their prison house. It 
 was told of those sepoys to their credit that the task set 
 them was not to their taste, and that they intentionally 
 fired high. So for the work of slaughter butchers were 
 summoned from the bazaars, who with knives and 
 swords fell upon the women and children. Next 
 morning the dead and the dying were dragged out 
 of the shambles, stripped, and thrown pell-mell into an 
 adjoining well. 
 
 Havelock has been blamed for not entering Cawnpore 
 on the night of the battle. The physical exhaustion of 
 his command made this an impossibility. But even if 
 the troops had not been utterly done up, an attempt to 
 do so would have been unjustifiable, no matter how 
 pressing the incentive. What with detachments and the 
 losses of the battle, his available strength was diminished 
 to eight hundred men. Many of his wounded were 
 lying where they had fallen, and the hostile cavalry were
 
 138 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 hovering around the battle-field. His infantry was 
 almost out of ammunition, and the reserve of it was miles 
 in the rear with the baggage. Cawnpore was full of armed 
 enemies who, if they had fled from the field, might be 
 reckoned on to have heart enough left for street fighting. 
 To lead his force in the darkness into the narrow and 
 intricate streets of Cawnpore would have been to court 
 destruction. And I hold it all but certain that before 
 he allowed his troops to bivouac Havelock had already 
 heard of the massacre of the women and children, 
 although he refrained from publishing the sad intelli- 
 gence until he should receive confirmation of its truth. 
 
 Daylight disclosed to the brigade that it stood on the 
 edge of the broad plain on whose face lay the canton- 
 ments and the city of Lucknow. In front were the long 
 lines which had been the quarters of the revolted native 
 troops, and beyond, the roofless artillery barracks. On 
 the left the Savada House, in which the Nana had lived 
 during the siege of Wheeler's entrenchment, raised its 
 square form above the trees. The General had sent 
 Tytler out with a reconnoitring party, and while the 
 force waited the return of this expedition, some of the 
 Highlanders wandered to the Savada House, where 
 Tantia Topee, the Nana's lieutenant, had kept his head- 
 quarters, so it was said, until within a few hours. The 
 lair was still warm the rooms were littered with arms 
 and papers, and on a table in the verandah was a service 
 of coffee-cups, which had probably contained the last 
 refreshment swallowed by the man of blood before he 
 rode away. Strolling down to the end of the garden 
 the men came upon a richly furnished tent embowered 
 among foliage, and over against it a pavilion which, to
 
 v WHAT WAS FOUND AT THE WHITE HOUSE 139 
 
 judge by the costly shawls and pretty nicknacks that 
 remained, had been a harem. Wandering hither and 
 thither, on the outlook chiefly for drink and loot, the 
 men came suddenly on the corpse of a white girl. It lay 
 among the shrubs at the back of the White House, 
 and apparently had been thrown from a window ; but it 
 was not the fall that had killed the fair-haired girl. 
 The rough soldiers tenderly straightened the still supple 
 limbs, and having hollowed a shallow grave in the loose 
 earth of the garden, reverently interred the body of their 
 ill-fated countrywoman. Old Macnab, the patriarch of 
 the grenadier company, was at the grave-head, the tears 
 in his eyes as he groped in his Scriptural lore for an 
 appropriate text or two ; his comrades stood around with 
 frowning brows and clenched fists, more prone to curse 
 than to follow the Applecross man in his somewhat 
 mangled quotations from Scripture, when a sudden 
 and deafening report crashed upon their ears. The 
 ground trembled as if shaken by an earthquake, and 
 looking westward the men saw a huge cloud of white 
 smoke rising in the air. They hurried back to the 
 bivouac, where the order had just been given for all to 
 get under arms. Presently Tytler came galloping in 
 from his reconnaissance, and brought the tidings that the 
 rebels had entirely evacuated the city and its environs. 
 The loud concussion just heard had been the explosion 
 of the great magazine which a party of rebel cavalry had 
 been left behind to blow up. A thrill went through the 
 ranks when the slaughter of the captives was confirmed 
 beyond a doubt. 
 
 After breakfast the troops marched forward into the 
 cantonments. The tents of the Seventy-eighth only had
 
 140 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 come up, and the other regiments were temporarily 
 quartered in the deserted huts of the native lines. The 
 Seventy -eighth moved farther on, passing as they 
 marched the shattered remnants of Wheeler's entrench- 
 ment, and encamped near a tank between it and the 
 canal. When the guards had been set and the routine 
 dispositions made, men began to break bounds. Some 
 made off toward the town in quest of loot and drink ; 
 others went out to inspect and wonder at the battered 
 earth-bank behind which their countrymen had made a 
 defence so gallant. Yet others sought, as pilgrims to 
 a shrine, the scene of the slaughter of the women and 
 children. Perhaps the first to engage in this mournful 
 quest were three men of the Seventy -eighth. The 
 vicinity of the theatre and the assembly rooms seemed 
 almost entirely deserted ; only here and there a swarthy 
 face glowered at them from a corner or from an upper 
 window. Presently they reached the entrance of a 
 compound, about which flitted weirdly two or three 
 shrinking cowering natives. These huddled in a little 
 knot as the soldiers approached, anxious seemingly to 
 attract their attention to something, but too terrified to 
 come close and explain their meaning. Pointing their 
 lean arms in the direction of the little bungalow inside 
 the compound, they kept uttering the word Sahib 1 
 Sahib ! in a loud whisper, and beckoning timidly as if 
 they wished, yet half dreaded, that the soldiers should 
 enter the compound. The Scots did so. As they 
 strode up toward the low flat-roofed bungalow by the 
 narrow path trodden in the long rank grass of the com- 
 pound, the whispering knot of natives gazed on them 
 with pallid faces. The leading soldier of the three
 
 v THE WELL OF CAWNPORE 141 
 
 crossed the threshold and entered one of the rooms. 
 Next moment he came rushing out, his face ghastly, his 
 hands working convulsively, his whole aspect, as he 
 strove in vain to gasp out some articulate sound, 
 evidencing that he had seen some dreadful sight. His 
 comrades went in, and their hearts stood still in the 
 presence of the tokens of the awful tragedy. A dead 
 silence abode there in all the place there was no living 
 thing. But the matting with which the floor was laid 
 oozed spongily under their tread, for it was soaked with 
 blood. Wherever there was a depression there stood a 
 pool of blood, slowly soddening into the matting. The 
 floor was strewn with pitiful relics broken ornaments, 
 scraps of blood -dabbled dresses, children's pinafores, 
 leaves of the Bible, fragments of letters, babies' shoes 
 but why prolong the catalogue of the woeful tokens 
 of the devilry that had been enacted within those four 
 low walls ! . . . Long and silently, with wet eyes and 
 quivering lips, did the soldiers stand gazing on this 
 horror. But what had been done with the victims of 
 the pitiless slaughter? As the pale soldiers turned 
 away without speech, actuated by the common im- 
 pulse to make the ghastly search, they noticed that 
 from the handles of the doors hung torn strips of women's 
 clothing, the pitiful, futile expedient to hinder the 
 entrance of the slayers. As they came out on to the 
 verandah, shuddering to notice the red imprint their 
 footsteps left, they observed that the pillars were 
 smeared with blood about the base. From this sign, 
 the trail, broad and well denned, blazoned with its tell- 
 tale stains, led across the courtyard to the brink of a 
 well, into which when the soldiers looked, they found
 
 142 HAVE LOCK CHAP, v 
 
 it full nearly to the lip full of the hacked and mangled 
 dead bodies of British women and British children. 
 
 Was it any wonder that when the men carried back 
 with them to camp a long heavy tress of golden hair 
 cut clean through as if by the slash of a sharp sword, 
 and showed this token of devilish ruthlessness to com- 
 rades who had been fighting, and marching, and starving, 
 and straining that this thing might not be ; was it any 
 wonder, I ask, that those soldiers swore to exact a 
 merciless retribution, as with a hell of hate and fury 
 and lust for revenge seething in every heart, they stood 
 around the dead yet eloquent witness to their oath ?
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE 
 
 THE exertion of the march and the excitement of the 
 battle were over for a time now that Cawnpore was 
 reached ; and the inevitable reaction affected both leader 
 and led. The shadow of the awful well was on the 
 little band, they and the massacred dead of their race 
 alone here in the midst of countless enemies. The 
 cholera had broken out among the troops. The hos- 
 pital tents were full of groaning wounded, and the 
 dhoolies were still bringing in more from the adjacent 
 battle-field. The sullen silence of the camp was broken 
 only by mournful sounds, as the bagpipes wailed " The 
 Flowers of the Forest " in front of the burial parties 
 escorting to the grave the dead of the battle. The 
 General had the consciousness of arduous work well 
 done, of having won a memorable victory. He was 
 justified in writing : "I consider Cawnpore as my best 
 fight, not only on account of its results, but because it 
 was won, by God's blessing, non vi sed arte " ; and the 
 little touch of half-deprecating self-complacency " You 
 see I am becoming my own trumpeter in my old age " 
 has both its humour and its pathos. But there was for 
 him not alone the fresh memory of the brilliant past, 
 but the realisation of the sombre present, and the boding
 
 144 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 of the uncertain future. As he entered Cawnpore the 
 faithful spy Ungud had come to him with the sad tidings 
 of the death of Sir Henry Lawrence. Between him 
 and the dead man there had been a long and close 
 friendship. Havelock had found great joy in the hope 
 and belief that he was pressing on to the succour of 
 Lawrence, beleaguered in the Lucknow Residency, and 
 had written him from Allahabad a letter to that effect ; 
 but Lawrence was already in the grave when that letter 
 was written. Nana Sahib was reported to be holding 
 Bithoor with forty-five guns and five thousand men. 
 Helped by those sombre influences, the reaction that 
 had affected his soldiers had temporary sway over his 
 high soul. Marshman tells how, 
 
 As lie sat at dinner with his sou on the evening of the 
 17th, his mind appeared for the first and last time to be 
 affected with gloomy forebodings, as it dwelt on the probable 
 annihilation of his brave men in a fruitless attempt to 
 accomplish what was beyond their strength. After musing 
 long in deep thought, his strong sense of duty and his con- 
 fidence in the justice of the cause, restored the buoyancy of 
 his spirit ; and lie exclaimed, " If the worst comes to the 
 worst we can but die with our swords in our hands ! " 
 
 It may perhaps be doubted whether he ever did after 
 this time recover in full the buoyancy of his spirit. 
 His worn frame had been severely strained in the march 
 from Allahabad ; that he was far from feeling assured of 
 continued good fortune there is evidence ; and probably 
 Henry Havelock's spirit culminated when on the night 
 of the victory of Cawnpore he bivouacked joyously, 
 " though without dinner, my waterproof coat serving 
 me as a couch on the damp ground." 
 
 However, there were no Nana and no N ana's host at
 
 vi EXCESSES IN CAMP 145 
 
 Bithoor, as Major Stephenson discovered when he led a 
 reconnaissance in force on that place, burnt down the 
 palace, blew up the magazine, and hauled back to Cawn- 
 pore twenty cannon which the Nana had abandoned. 
 From depression the soldiers had swung into intoxica- 
 tion, plunder, and rapine. The town was full of drink and 
 loot, and the men broke into excesses with such fervour 
 that the General declared the marauding in his camp 
 exceeded the disorders of the period when Nana Sahib 
 had sway. He announced, and declared it "no idle 
 threat," that the provost-marshal had orders to hang up, 
 in their uniform, all British soldiers caught plundering. 
 The drunkenness he curbed by setting his commissary 
 to buy up the drink, but for which expedient, as he ex- 
 plained to Sir Patrick Grant, " it would require one-half 
 my force to keep it from being drunk up by the other 
 half, and I should scarcely have a sober soldier in 
 camp." But the most effectual measure to stop both 
 drunkenness and marauding was to get his force out of 
 Cawnpore as early as possible on that enterprise which 
 lay before him on the Oude side of the Ganges. As a 
 contribution toward the success thereof Neill, now 
 Brigadier-General, opportunely brought him up a rein- 
 forcement of two hundred and twenty-seven men, mostly 
 young soldiers of the Madras Fusiliers, as well as some 
 small instalment of ammunition and stores which, with 
 other unattainable needs, Havelock had urgently requisi- 
 tioned from the Pandoo Nuddee. Neill had made no 
 delay ; indeed, under orders from Sir Patrick Grant, 
 he had left Allahabad before Havelock's requisition could 
 have reached him there; for the requisition was forwarded 
 on the 15th, and Neill reached Cawnpore on July 
 
 L
 
 146 HAVELOCK 
 
 20th. Before crossing into Oude the General planned, 
 armed, and all but finished an advantageously situated, 
 entrenched, and fortified work commanding the river, 
 sufficiently large to accommodate, and sufficiently strong 
 to protect in case of need, the garrison of some three 
 hundred men who were all he could spare to hold Cawn- 
 pore during his absence. The command there he 
 entrusted to General Neill. 
 
 There is no space here for a detailed narrative of the 
 siege and defence of Lucknow ; nor is it needed, since 
 the story is among the most memorable in the annals 
 of our race. Already in April Sir Henry Lawrence, the 
 Chief Commissioner of Oude, was aware that mischief 
 was brewing among the native troops of his province. 
 In and about his capital these, regulars, irregulars, and 
 police, numbered nearly ten thousand. His garrison of 
 European soldiers consisted of one regiment about seven 
 hundred strong, and a weak company of artillerymen. 
 By the end of June all Oude was in revolt, and on 
 the 30th seven thousand mutinous sepoys were marching 
 on Lucknow. Sir Henry preferred to take the initiative 
 rather than wait to be attacked ; and on that morning 
 he moved out to Chinhut to oppose the rebel advance 
 with a force about seven hundred strong, of whom only 
 three hundred were Europeans. The heat exhausted 
 the latter, many of his natives deserted, and he was 
 defeated with the loss of about two hundred men and 
 a portion of his artillery. The results of this reverse 
 were the occupation of the city, the uprising of its 
 turbulent population, and the immediate investment of 
 the Residency position. His secondary post in the Muchee
 
 vi THE RESIDENCY OF LUC KNOW 147 
 
 Bawn fortress -arsenal Lawrence considered it wise to 
 abandon, and it was blown up with its contents of guns 
 and ammunition at midnight of July 1st, its garrison 
 retiring into the Eesidency. The long siege had begun. 
 The space of ground which bears and will bear to all 
 time the title of the Eesidency of Lucknow, is a some- 
 what elevated plateau irregular in surface and in con- 
 tour, of which the highest part was occupied by the 
 Residency mansion, the circumjacent area being studded 
 irregularly with public buildings and with the houses 
 of the principal civilian officials of the province. These 
 were built of brick and were fairly strong, but in the 
 laying out of this purely civilian headquarter there 
 had been no pretence of fortification, and it was simply 
 enclosed and that partially by a low weak wall. The 
 lofty buildings of native Lucknow commanded it on 
 three sides at the shortest of short range, some indeed 
 forming part of its boundary. After Sir Colin Campbell 
 brought aAvay the garrison in November the Eesidency 
 lapsed into the hands of the mutineers, who held it 
 till the reoccupation in the following March. They 
 pulled down some of the already shattered buildings, 
 and left their fell imprint by desecrating the graves 
 in Avhich brave hands had laid the dead of the siege. 
 When quiet returned the Eesidency, its commemorative 
 features uninterfered with, was laid out as a garden, and 
 flowers now bloom on soil once wet with the blood 
 of heroes. The accumulated rubbish has been 
 removed ; the shot - shattered buildings are stayed 
 from crumbling further; tablets indicate the posts 
 and specially memorable spots ; and the pilgrim, 
 map in hand, may identify all the inanimate features
 
 148 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 of the defence. As one enters the precincts through 
 the Bailey Guard Gate, the pathway leads to the scarred 
 and riven front of the Residency house, surmounted 
 by the shot -torn tower over which, through all the 
 evil days, 
 Ever upon, the topmost roof our banner of England blew. 
 
 The forethought of Lawrence had in some measure 
 made preparation for the ordeal the garrison was to 
 undergo. He had been accumulating provisions and 
 ammunition, he had given attention to the water supply ; 
 he had set his engineers to erect defences and con- 
 struct batteries, and, with over-tenderness for native holy 
 places, he had done something toward opening out a fire- 
 zone round the position. But when the investment 
 commenced the defences were very insufficient and far 
 from complete. In many places there was nothing really 
 deserving the name of an obstacle. The artillery of the 
 garrison, however, was not inadequate, consisting as it 
 did of twenty-five guns, mostly guns of position, and of 
 eleven mortars ; against which the investing force had 
 thirty-three pieces in battery. The garrison at the 
 beginning of the siege was sixteen hundred and ninety- 
 two strong, of whom nine hundred and twenty-seven 
 were Europeans and seven hundred and sixty -five natives. 
 During the eighty-seven days of siege up to the first 
 relief, it lost in killed, 1 of Europeans three hundred and 
 fifty and of natives one hundred and thirty-three ; and 
 of the latter two hundred and thirty deserted, making 
 a total loss of seven hundred and thirteen. There re- 
 mained, then, of the original garrison, when relieved 
 by Havelock and Outram on September 25th, a total 
 1 I presume the dead of sickness are included.
 
 vi LOSSES OF THE GARRISON 149 
 
 number of nine hundred and seventy-nine (inclusive of 
 sick and wounded), of whom five hundred and seventy- 
 seven were Europeans and four hundred and two were 
 natives. The loss in officers had been forty-one military 
 and two civil officers, and one assistant-chaplain. 1 Details 
 regarding the number of the women and children who 
 shared the fortunes of the siege are singularly confused. 
 Colonel Malleson states that of ladies there were sixty- 
 eight, and that of children there were sixty-six. It is 
 not clear whether he means to include all females, or to 
 exclude from his count those who did not come into the 
 category of "ladies." Trotter gives the same figures 
 as Malleson, but has "women" where Malleson has 
 " ladies," and so seems to include all the female adults. 
 But in his letter to General Havelock of August 16th 
 Colonel Inglis writes : " I have upwards of one hundred 
 and twenty sick and wounded, and at least two hundred 
 and twenty women and about two hundred and thirty 
 children. Marshman, again, states that when the first 
 Relief reached Lucknow, "the number of women and 
 children in the Residency amounted to seven hundred." 
 Outram, writing on October 2nd, says: "The sick and 
 wounded, women and children, amount to upwards of 
 one thousand." Gubbins bewails the trade losses sus- 
 tained by the European merchants whose stocks suffered 
 in the siege, and contributes exact statistics regarding 
 the male persons of the garrison, but makes no mention of 
 the number of women and children. Incidentally he re- 
 marks : "The chief sufferers from sickness were the child- 
 ren. Everything was against them. Since neither fresh 
 air nor suitable food could be given them, the poor little 
 
 1 The figures are Gubbins's.
 
 ISO HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 creatures sickened and died in numbers. Some parents 
 who had two or even three children in good health when 
 the siege began, had not one left when it ended." Ap- 
 parently Inglis's figures should be accepted, at least 
 approximately. 
 
 The besiegers opened their artillery fire on July 
 1st. One of their first shells, fired from a howitzer 
 lost at Chinhut, exploded in the exposed room of the 
 Residency house in which Sir Henry Lawrence sat. He 
 would not move into a less dangerous apartment, and on 
 the following morning a second shell crashed into the 
 room, exploded, and wounded him mortally. After two 
 days of great agony he died, with his last accents sum- 
 marising his career in the sentence he desired should be 
 his sole epitaph : " Here lies Henry Lawrence who tried 
 to do his duty." As was his steadfast wont he had done 
 his duty by the garrison which thus early had lost him. 
 It was Lawrence's provident forethought that alone 
 made the defence of Lucknow a possibility ; but for 
 which, in all human certainty, the fate of the Lucknow 
 garrison would have been that of the hapless people of 
 Wheeler's entrenchment. In accordance with Law- 
 rence's deathbed instructions Colonel Inglis of the 
 Thirty-second regiment assumed the military command, 
 held it with skill and credit to the end, and when the 
 evacuation of the shattered Residency occurred, he, who 
 had directed the long and staunch defence, bowed 
 Outram out, and closed the gate of the Bailey Guard as 
 he followed/ 
 
 From that first day of July until September 25th 
 shot and shell scarce ever ceased to rain on the 
 lonely garrison. During that period four fierce assaults
 
 vr THEIR GALLANT CONDUCT 151 
 
 in great force were made and were hurled back. The 
 passive defensive was by no means adhered to. Sortie 
 Avas made on sortie, never without purpose, and seldom 
 without its attainment. The enemy mined assiduously. 
 Not less assiduous were our people in countermining, 
 and subterranean fights occurred when gallery broke into 
 gallery. In our military literature there is no more 
 simply effective piece of writing than the modest and 
 pathetic record of the defence officially presented by the 
 soldier who commanded it. 1 
 
 I can conscientiously declare my conviction [so runs 
 Colonel Inglis's report], that few troops have ever undergone 
 greater hardships. They have been exposed to a never- 
 ceasing musketry fire and cannonade. They have experienced 
 the alternate vicissitudes of extreme wet and of intense heat, 
 and that, too, with very insufficient shelter from either, and 
 in many places without any shelter at all. In addition to 
 having had to repel real attacks, they have been exposed 
 night and day to the hardly less harassing false alarms which 
 the enemy constantly raised. . . . The whole of the officers 
 and men have been on duty night and day during the eighty- 
 seven days which the siege bas lasted. . . . All ranks and all 
 classes, civilians, officers, and soldiers, have borne an equally 
 noble part in our labours. All have descended into the 
 mines, all have together bandied the shovel for the interment 
 of the putrid bullock, nd all, accoutred with musket and 
 bayonet, bave relieved each otber on sentry without regard 
 to the distinctions of rank, civil or military. If proof were 
 wanting of the desperate nature of tbe struggle ... I 
 would point to the roofless and ruined houses, to tbe 
 crumbled walls, to the exploded mines, to tbe open breaches, 
 to the shattered and disabled guns and defences, and to tbe 
 long and melancholy list of tbe brave and devoted officers 
 and men wbo have fallen. 
 
 1 Written, it is understood, by Mr., now Sir George E. W. Couper, 
 Bart., K. C.S.I., C.B.
 
 152 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 And the report tells of cholera, and fever, and small- 
 pox, and dysentery, of the mortality among the women 
 and children, of the "patient endurance and the Chris- 
 tian resignation evinced by the women of this garrison, in 
 the struggle which has made many of them widows and 
 their children fatherless." Every man, no matter how 
 high souled and resolute, has his weak point. Colonel 
 Inglis's weak point as chief of the Lucknow garrison was 
 his undue nervousness on the subject of rations. In 
 this matter he was an unquestionable alarmist, and some 
 of his letters to Havelock harping on it one can sin- 
 cerely wish had never been written. 
 
 The Ganges was rolling in swift and swollen volume, 
 boats and boatmen were most difficult to procure in the 
 scantiest numbers, and it was after a week of almost 
 incredible difficulties overcome by the energy and per- 
 severance of Tytler and his assistant Moorsom, that, on 
 the evening of the 28th July Havelock's little army, with 
 its stores and munitions, stood assembled, at Mungulwar, 
 a strong and elevated position six miles inland on the 
 Oude side of the Ganges. 
 
 Perhaps in prosaic modern times no forlorner hope 
 has ever gone forth than this handful of men. The task 
 it was essaying was to fight its way through some forty- 
 five miles of hostile territory, studded with strong 
 places strongly held, and, as a final effort, to penetrate 
 through the heart of a great hostile capital swarming 
 with many thousand armed enemies, possessing a numer- 
 ous artillery manned by skilled and resolute gunners 
 trained by European officers. And this task was being 
 undertaken by a force not fifteen hundred strong all told,
 
 vi ADVANCE INTO OUDE 153 
 
 of whom not quite twelve hundred were Europeans. It 
 was a force poorly equipped, possessing but two small 
 troops of raw cavalry mostly infantrymen selected by 
 the General, put on horseback and incorporated with 
 Barrow's little group of volunteers ; its artillery consist- 
 ing of ten small pieces inadequately manned and dragged 
 by bullocks. The health of the little force was unsatis- 
 factory. The Cawnpore episode of dissipation had 
 already predisposed many a frame to cholera ; and the 
 stimulus which the hope of saving the women and 
 children had imparted was now gone. In its place 
 was a fixed gloomy crave for vengeance. The blaze 
 of fierce wrath had gone down ; but the red coal was 
 aglow in the heart of every man, not to be dulled but 
 by profuse shedding of blood. 
 
 The soldiers, ignorant of the obstacles, were confident 
 of success. It may be questioned whether their leader, 
 resolute as he was to strain every energy, shared the 
 confidence of his men. In military phrase, he " showed 
 a good front." After the battle of Cawnpore he had 
 told the soldiers that he had confidence in the future if 
 they but supported him by their efforts and if their 
 discipline were equal to their valour. But to the 
 Commander-in-Chief he used other terms. In writing to 
 Sir Patrick the day before he moved, he said : " The 
 chances of relieving Lucknow are hourly multiplying 
 against us. ... The difficulties of an advance to that 
 capital are excessive. Communications . . . and in- 
 formation . . . convince me of the extreme delicacy and 
 difficulty of any operation to relieve Colonel Inglis. It 
 shall be attempted, however, at every risk." This is not 
 the language of a man confident of a successful issue.
 
 154 HAVELOCK 
 
 Silently and mechanically the little army formed up 
 at daybreak of the 29th, and marched some three miles 
 to near Onao. But sharp fighting had to precede the 
 winning of Onao. A village lined either side of the 
 road, a little distance in front of the entrance of the 
 town. Before the village the enemy were in force, 
 occupying a strong garden wall ; the village itself was 
 swarming with fully armed desperadoes. The position 
 could not be turned because of the inundations on both 
 sides ; there remained but to force it by direct advance 
 along the high road. The task was assigned to the 
 Highlanders and the Madras Fusiliers always staunch 
 brethren in arms. They had formed for the advance 
 when the order came to wait for the artillery. Mean- 
 while the sepoy fire struck down some half dozen of 
 the Highlanders, the fusillade was not abating, and there 
 were no signs of the guns. Colonel Hamilton rode off 
 to appeal to the General. " Remove them out of range 
 till the guns arrive," was the chief's instruction. 
 " Pray, sir, let them go at the place and have done with 
 it ! " urged Hamilton, and the General gave permission. 
 Then the Highlanders and the Lambs went pell-mell 
 at the garden wall. A tearing fire met them as they 
 ran forward. Jack Sparrow of the Scots was the first 
 man on the wall ; but he was down in an instant, with 
 a bullet through his head and another in the breast. 
 Tom Halliday of the Lambs was the second, and he 
 too went back with a bayonet thrust through the throat. 
 Others fell before the men in a body stormed the garden 
 wall, and a rush on the village followed. It did not 
 take long to teach the soldiers that those fierce and 
 resolute men of Oude were very different antagonists
 
 vi ONAO 155 
 
 from the Poorbeah sepoys and flaccid Bengalees they 
 had brushed out of their path on the other side of the 
 Ganges. Every house in the village was loopholed, and 
 seething full of fanatics maddened with Ihang. Lieu- 
 tenant Bcgle led some of his men to attack the nearest 
 house. As he burst open the door a native flew at his 
 throat, and actually fastened his teeth in his jaw. Bogle 
 smashed in his face with the hilt of his claymore and 
 darted forward. He ran on a bayonet point. His men 
 bore him out, then came back, carried the house with 
 a rush, bayoneted its inmates and fired it. The flames 
 spread right and left ; the defenders of the contiguous 
 houses fought like wild cats while they roasted. Each 
 house in succession had to be stormed, and quarter was 
 neither asked nor given. There was a two-gun battery 
 at the head of the street, which fired steadily, served b}^ 
 the smart Oude gunners. The two leading regiments were 
 up to the hilt in the house-to-house fighting, so the Sixty- 
 fourth came up at the double ; there was a miscellaneous 
 rush through the cross fire from the loopholed village- 
 houses, and the guns were taken. So presently was 
 the village by dint of the extermination of its defenders. 
 The main body then marched through it, on to a 
 piece of dry ground between it and the town of Onao, 
 which lay a little to the right off the road. The enemy 
 had made their stand at the village and Onao had not 
 been held ; but they had discerned their error and 
 were visible in the distance moving down to occupy the 
 place. It was all-important to hinder them; and the 
 General rapidly pushed his troops forward on the road, 
 leaving Onao on the right, until they reached an opportune 
 oasis in the desolation of inundation. Here they were
 
 156 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 between the enemy and the town, and were rapidly de- 
 ployed, the guns in the centre and on the flanks, trained 
 on the road to which the advancing foes were confined by 
 the deep water on either side. The latter advanced in 
 solid bulk, and with great show of resolution. Have- 
 lock interposed no hindrance. At length they halted 
 and opened fire. Then Maude blazed into the throng of 
 them with grape at point-blank. The smitten front 
 recoiled, but the mass behind had still the forward 
 impetus, and a frantic turbulence of confusion resulted. 
 In the futile attempt at deployment, men and guns 
 were alike engulfed. The dense body wavered, and then 
 broke headlong to the rear. The British guns thundered 
 after them ; the skirmishers, wading to the waist, 
 poured bullets into their flanks. But the sepoy cannon 
 stood fast The gunners of the Oude force, the finest 
 native artillery in India, clung to their guns like bull- 
 dogs. Run they would not, and the Madras men shot 
 them down as they fought round their beloved pieces to 
 the last gasp. And so, with the capture of fifteen guns 
 and the slaughter of about five hundred rebels, ended 
 the combat of Onao. For lack of transport the captured 
 guns had to be burst and abandoned ; it was unfortunate 
 that they were only imperfectly wrecked. 
 
 After a halt and a meal the force advanced six 
 miles to the outskirts of Busseerutgunge, a walled town 
 intersected by the high road ; the entrance defended 
 by a strong turreted gateway covered in rear by a tall 
 loopholed house, and protected in front by a battery in 
 an entrenchment. A simple frontal attack on defences 
 so strong had a very forbidding aspect ; so the General 
 ordered his artillery to converge its fire on the gateway
 
 vi BUSSEERUTGUNGE 157 
 
 defences, while the Sixty-fourth were despatched to the 
 left on the errand of turning the town. At the moment 
 when this movement had measurably progressed, and 
 when the artillery preparation apparently had obtained 
 good results, the Seventy-eighth and Madras Fusiliers 
 were sent at the gateway, the Eighty-fourth and Sikhs 
 being held in reserve. After a momentary check, the 
 trench, battery, and gateway were carried with a rush, 
 and the enemy were hurled back through the town 
 and out of it, the tide of disorganised infantry, broken 
 squadrons of cavalry, fugitive batteries, elephants, and 
 bullocks rolling in wild confusion along the road 
 beyond the town. Had the Sixty -fourth completed 
 their prescribed turning movement, the defeat would 
 have been signal. But that regiment had "hung" 
 on the way, to afford another illustration of the axiom 
 that the longer soldiers are allowed to look at arduous 
 work in front of them the less they like it. Young 
 Havelock dashed up to the laggard regiment with 
 the message from his father : " If you don't go at the 
 village I'll send men that will, and put an everlasting 
 disgrace on you ! " Whereupon a private soldier named 
 Paddy Cavenagh, stung by the burning sense of shame, 
 threw himself single-handed on the enemy, cursing his 
 comrades with bitter Irish malisons as he sped, and was 
 literally hacked to pieces fighting like a wild cat in the 
 heart of a turmoil of enemies. The shedding of valiant 
 Paddy's blood warmed that of his comrades, but their 
 tardy valour did not avail to retrieve the opportunity 
 their previous sluggishness had let slip. Havelock was 
 wroth, and Havelock's wrath had a biting edge. There 
 was a sentence in his order of the following day which
 
 158 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 did not stimulate the wonted cheers on the Sixty- 
 fourth's parade : " Some of you " such were the incisive 
 words "fought yesterday as if the cholera had seized 
 your minds as well as your bodies." 
 
 But the old chief was fonder of words of a different 
 tenor. After the fight he was riding back from posting 
 his pickets. The twilight was closing in, and the weary 
 men of the Seventy-eighth and the Fusiliers had thrown 
 themselves down in their tracks, littering the roadway 
 as one may see on a country road at home a drove of 
 recumbent cattle when the drovers have ceased to urge 
 their charge forward. Havelock's way lay through this 
 improvised bivouac. His horse stumbled over an out- 
 lying man who rolled aside with a curse. But the oath 
 died on his lips as he looked up and saw through the 
 increasing darkness the white moustache and bright 
 eye. Springing up, he shouted 
 
 "Make way for the General ! " 
 
 From man to man the cry ran with a strange spasm 
 of enthusiasm as the soldiers drew to either side, leaving 
 a lane down the centre for their leader. His worn face 
 lit up with a proud and pleased glow. Rising in his 
 stirrups, he shouted in his mellow voice 
 
 " You've done that right well to-day already, my lads !" 
 
 The genial words struck right to the hearts of those 
 rough tired soldiers on the Busseerutgunge causeway. 
 The crabbedest man in the grenadier company of the 
 Seventy-eighth bared his head as he shouted, "God bless 
 the General ! " and the rugged prayer ran down the lines 
 like a feu de joie, as the upright spare figure on the wiry 
 horse disappeared into the gloom. 
 
 The consciousness of victory cheered the camp that
 
 vi HAVELOCK DECIDES TO RETREAT 159 
 
 night in spite of the heavy losses of the day ; eighty- 
 eight had been killed and wounded, and nearly as many 
 disabled by cholera, fatigue, and sun. But for the 
 General there was no blitheness : and when on the 
 morning of the 30th he looked the situation in the face 
 in cold blood, he recognised how surcharged was it with 
 complications. Onao and Busseerutgunge had used up 
 one-sixth of his European fighting force, and one-third of 
 his gun ammunition ; he had accomplished but one-third 
 of the distance between the Ganges and Lucknow. He 
 might count on at least equal resistance along the other 
 two -thirds. On this assumption, he would reach the 
 outskirts of Lucknow with some six hundred bayonets 
 and no gun ammunition ; and would then have to fight 
 his way through the city to the Eesidency. His sick and 
 wounded already absorbed all the available carriage ; 
 there was not an empty dhooly in the camp. He was 
 aware of a large force hovering on his left, which might 
 at any moment strike him in flank and rear when he 
 should be up to the hilt with the enemy in his front, 
 and which was certain at all events to cut off his com- 
 munication should he penetrate farther into the bowels 
 of the hostile territory. Marshman says that he had re- 
 ceived intelligence of the Dinapore mutiny, and had to 
 take into his calculations the consequent complications 
 in his rear and the inevitable detention of his anxiously 
 expected reinforcements. But apart from that possible 
 increment to his burden, he found in the overwhelmingly 
 adverse conditions enumerated ample grounds for the re- 
 luctant resolution to fall back on Mungulwar, evacuate his 
 sick and wounded to Cawnpore, and wait for substantial 
 reinforcement and the replenishment of his ammunition
 
 160 HAVE LOCK 
 
 waggons. One realises with what a bitter pang he 
 must have submitted to walk in this path of inexorable 
 duty. There was every incentive to shut his eyes to 
 that duty and to elect for recklessness. A weaker man 
 would have yielded to the temptation; Havelock, as 
 beseemed the true soldier and the unselfish man, nobly 
 put it from him. Next day he marched his force back 
 to Mungulwar. 
 
 One must feel for him from the heart as he saw, 
 when the soldiers paraded next morning, that the gallant 
 fellows fell in with their faces, as a matter of course, 
 toward Lucknow; and as he listened to the not loud 
 but deep murmur that ran through the ranks when the 
 retreat became apparent. The column tramped back to 
 Mungulwar in a dogged gloom. On the down-hearted 
 men the cholera took a great grip. There could hardly 
 have been recognised in the dispirited, dejected regi- 
 ments that slouched into the old position at Mungulwar, 
 the troops who on the day before but one, full of dash 
 and buoyant with enthusiasm, had fought almost from 
 the rising of the sun till the going down of the same. 
 
 From Mungulwar on the 31st Havelock informed 
 Neill by letter of his retreat and the reasons which had 
 actuated it. Neill replied next day in a letter of a tone 
 surely as dictatorial, insolent, and insubordinate, as ever 
 an inferior officer ventured to use to his superior. 
 This is strong language ; what of the letter there is 
 room to quote will justify it. Neill wrote : 
 
 I deeply regret that you have fallen back one foot. 
 The effect on our prestige is very bad indeed. . . . All 
 manner of reports are rife in the city that you had returned 
 to get more guns, having lost all you took away with you.
 
 A T EILL'S LETTER 161 
 
 In fact the belief among all is, that you have been defeated 
 and forced back. It has been most unfortunate your not 
 bringing back any of the guns captured from the enemy. 
 The natives will not believe that you captured one. The 
 effect of your retrograde movement will be very injurious to 
 our cause everywhere. . . . You talk of advancing as soon as 
 reinforcements reach you. You require a battery and a 
 thousand European infantry. . . . (The guns) will detain 
 you five or six days. As for the infantry they are not to be 
 had, and if you wait for them Lucknow will follow the fate 
 of Cawnpore. . . . You ought not to remain a day where 
 you are. . . . You ought to advance again, and not halt 
 until you have rescued, if possible, the garrison of Lucknow. 
 . . . Return here sharp, for there is much to be done between 
 this and Agra and Delhi. 
 
 Anglo-Indian authors whom one must respect such 
 men as Kaye, Malleson, and Trotter permit themselves 
 the most fervent expressions in regard to Neill's virtues 
 and prowess. Here are a few rapturous expressions 
 from Malleson : " Neill was a very remarkable man. 
 By the law of desert he stands in the very front rank 
 of those to whom the Indian Mutiny gave distinction. 
 It is impossible to put any one above him. Not only 
 did he succeed in everything he undertook, but he suc- 
 ceeded when the cases were all but desperate." And 
 again : " In the early days of the Mutiny, when every 
 one from highest to lowest seemed utterly abroad, Neill 
 suddenly appeared on the scene, and by his prompt 
 decision and quick energy had in a moment stayed the 
 plague." This is hero-worship with a vengeance. I too 
 am a hero-worshipper ; but I make it a rule to recognise 
 the godhead before I go down on my knees. What were 
 Neill's exploits ? He hurried up country : drove the 
 budmash population out of Allahabad and its vicinity 
 
 M
 
 162 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 promptly and vigorously ; he was active and successful 
 in gathering in the supplies which enabled Renaud's and 
 Hav clock's columns to move thence; he brought reinforce- 
 ments up to Havelock in Cawnpore smartly and oppor- 
 tunely ; he straightened out the camp at Cawnpore after 
 Havelock crossed into Oude, put down plundering, and 
 introduced order into the city and bazaars ; and he was 
 killed when bravely leading his brigade through the 
 streets of Lucknow. "Neill," writes Colonel Malleson, 
 "only required opportunity to become great." Pos- 
 sibly ; but the opportunity not occurring, the above is a 
 fair summary of the good work he did. He most griev- 
 ously mismanaged the disarmament of the Benares 
 sepoys. At Allahabad he went behind his superior 
 officer on the spot in telegraphing direct to the 
 Commander - in - Chief urgent expostulations against 
 Havelock's orders to Renaud that the latter should 
 halt Havelock had not marched out of Alla- 
 habad five days when Neill, apprehensive of an 
 attack on his fortress, was importuning him to send 
 back the Sikhs and the pensioner-gunners. I decline to 
 sicken the reader with the horrible details of his treat- 
 ment of natives when in command at Cawnporej the 
 most callous must shudder at his deliberate extinction 
 of the hope of heaven in the hearts of fellow-creatures 
 howsoever atrocious their crimes. The day after he took 
 over the Cawnpore command he telegraphed to the 
 Commander-in-Chief "All well here. I will hold my 
 own against any odds " ; and in his journal five days 
 later occurs the entry, " If the Forty-second (mutineers) 
 are within reach I will deal them a blow that will- 
 astound them." These be "brave 'orts." Next day he
 
 vi HA VEL OCK S ANSWER 1 63 
 
 wrote to Havelock the letter I have quoted from. Three 
 days later, when Havelock was on the eve of starting on 
 his second attempt for Lucknow, Neill, averring that 
 there Avas a threatening gathering of insurgents at 
 Bithoor, entreated that Havelock should disperse the 
 same before commencing his march ; a diversion and 
 delay into which the latter emphatically declined to be 
 beguiled. "When I finally advanced, resolving if pos- 
 sible to win," so Havelock wrote to Sir Patrick Grant, 
 " General Neill sent me the most pressing representations 
 regarding his danger from the Saugor troops" the 
 mutinous Forty-second whom he was to "astound." And 
 it was the writer of the truculent letter of July 31st who 
 eighteen days later, the conditions meanwhile not having 
 very materially changed, telegraphed thus to the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief : "Nothing can be done toward Lucknow 
 from here until reinforced. An advance now with re- 
 duced numbers, and those seriously weakened from 
 exposure and fatigue, would be madness." 
 
 Havelock was not the man to accept tamely his sub- 
 ordinate's slap in the face. He answered Neill's letter 
 in terms of merited rebuke. Characterising it as " the 
 most extraordinary letter he had ever received," he thus 
 continued : 
 
 There must be an end to these proceedings at once. I 
 wrote to you confidentially on the state of affairs. You send 
 me back a letter of censure of my measures, reproof and 
 advice for the future. I do not want and will not receive 
 any of them from an officer under my command, be his ex- 
 perience what it may. Understand this distinctly, and that 
 a consideration of the obstruction that would arise to the 
 public service at this moment alone prevents me from taking 
 the stronger step of placing you under arrest. You now 
 stand warned. Attempt no further dictation.
 
 164 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 On his return to Mungulwar Havelock had tele- 
 graphed to the Commander-in-Chief : "I am reduced to 
 thirteen hundred and sixty-four rank and file; 1 could not 
 therefore move on Lucknow with any prospect of success. 
 If I amspeedily reinforced by one thousandmore European 
 infantry and Olpherts's battery complete, might resume 
 march toward Lucknow." Yet on August 4th he recom- 
 menced his advance. All the conditions were more ad- 
 verse than when his consideration of them at Busseerut- 
 gunge had enforced his retirement. Cawnpore was more 
 seriously threatened. The Dinapore mutiny had dis- 
 turbed his communications down country, and arrested 
 indefinitely the flow of reinforcements. Cholera had been 
 playing havoc among his troops at Mungulwar. The 
 edge of their dash had worn off they were not yet, in 
 Tytler's phrase, "cowed by the numbers opposed to them 
 and the constant fighting," but the retirement had taken 
 the heart out of them. The only additions to his strength 
 were Olpherts's half battery, two 24-pounders, and a 
 company of the Eighty-fourth, so that all told his march- 
 ing-out strength was barely fourteen hundred, an inferior 
 force in numbers as in morale to that which he had led 
 out from Mungulwar a week before. And this inferior 
 force he was conducting against an enemy inspirited by 
 his previous retirement. 
 
 What impelled Havelock to undertake this second 
 attempt, branded as it was with the birthmark of certain 
 failure ? I can discern no other incentive than the malign 
 influence of Neill's letter operating, perhaps uncon- 
 sciously, on a high-strung temperament, made the more 
 sensitive by disappointment following on an inspiriting 
 1 This number included his Sikhs.
 
 vi DIFFICULTIES OF THE SITUATION 165 
 
 sequence of brilliant successes. Be this as it may, Have- 
 lock went forth a second time on the afternoon of August 
 4th. The first advance had been a very forlorn hope ; 
 this one differed in that it was forlorn of any hope. On 
 the morning of the 5th he found himself again in front 
 of Busseerutgunge. His troops fought surprisingly well, 
 and the place was forced ; but the enemy carried off 
 their artillery, and falling leisurely back into another 
 fortified position, showed there a bold front. 1 The 
 casualties were light, but men were dying fast of cholera, 
 and the halt after the fighting was mainly spent in dig- 
 ging graves for its victims. Tidings had arrived of the 
 revolt of the Gwalior Contingent, and of its advance to 
 within a few marches of Cawnpore. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine that so experienced a soldier 
 as Havelock should not have recognised the futility 
 of this second movement before it was engaged in ; it is 
 impossible to believe that now, with the enemy he had de- 
 feated gathered again menacingly in his front, and those of 
 his troops not writhing in the throes of cholera busied in 
 interring those who had died of it, he was not convinced 
 of its utter failure. He was not a "council of war" 
 general, else he would not have done so much fighting. 
 But he was not wholly self-centred. " The only three 
 staff-officers in my force," to use his own words, " whom 
 I ever consult confidentially, but in whom I entirely 
 confide," were Tytler his Quartermaster-General, Crom- 
 melin his chief Engineer, and his son who served as 
 his Adjutant-General. These officers he called together 
 
 1 Ty tier's summary of the day's work was : ' ' The whole trans- 
 action was most unsatisfactory, only two small guns, formerly 
 captured by us, and as we thought destroyed, being taken."
 
 166 HA VELOCK 
 
 after the action, and so he informed the Commander- 
 in-Chief " they unanimously were of opinion that an 
 advance on Lucknow must involve the loss of the force." 
 In using the word " unanimously " which his biographers 
 have naturally adopted, Havelock strained a point. He 
 ignored the dissent of his vehement and impulsive 
 son. That officer thus describes the incident : " The 
 fact is that I voted for advancing at all hazards. Tytler 
 and Crommelin, Tytler especially, took me to task 
 severely about this, saying that I was prepared to sacri- 
 fice the whole force, and the interests of British India, 
 rather than compromise my father's and my own repu- 
 tation by a retreat, Tytler particularly urged : ' You 
 must recollect that this is more than a personal question. 
 However galling it is to the General and you to retire, 
 you must have regard to the interests of the Govern- 
 ment.' Crommelin agreed with him strongly, and my 
 father then said, 'I agree with Tytler.' " 
 
 So once again the little force trudged back to 
 Mungulwar, whence Havelock immediately telegraphed 
 to the Commander - in - Chief : "I must prepare your 
 Excellency for my abandonment, with great grief and 
 reluctance, of the hope of relieving Lucknow." He 
 expressed at the same time his intention of remaining 
 to the last moment in the Mungulwar position, 
 hoping against hope for an opening which would 
 enable him to be of some service to the beleaguered 
 garrison. But Neill's cry of "wolf" from Cawnpore 
 became more and more loud, so that Havelock had to 
 believe that there must be something in it, and felt con- 
 strained to abandon Mungulwar and recross the Ganges. 
 The llth had been appointed for that task, when he
 
 vr MORE FIGHTING 167 
 
 learned that a large hostile force was again at Busseerut- 
 gunge, in attitude to harass him in the act of crossing. 
 To avert this, and that he might quit Oude with victory 
 on his banners, he marched to near Busseerutgunge 
 yet a third time, gained a third success to which the 
 Highlanders and Madras Fusiliers chiefly contributed, 
 captured two guns which he turned on the enemy, and 
 sent them whirling in rout up the road, too battered to 
 rally in time to molest him while crossing the river. At 
 the cost of thirty of his own people killed and wounded 
 two hundred of the enemy had gone down. On August 
 13th, the morning after the fight, he retraced his steps; 
 and by nightfall of the following day without a single 
 casualty the whole force was across the river in Cawnpore. 
 The cholera, bad enough while the force had been in 
 the field, raged yet more fiercely among the worn soldiers 
 after their return to Cawnpore. On the 15th August 
 there were ten cases in one regiment ; of fourteen 
 hundred British soldiers three hundred and thirty-five 
 lay disabled by sickness or wounds. The chief surgeon 
 reported that if the ratio of casualties continued, in six 
 weeks there would be no fighting men left; and he 
 urgently recommended repose. But no repose was 
 possible while four thousand mutinous sepoys were 
 gathered ominously at Bithoor, not sixteen miles from 
 the city. On the errand of dealing with them Have- 
 lock marched out before daybreak on the 16th. He 
 found the sepoys of five infantry regiments, and the 
 sowars of two cavalry regiments, with a couple of guns 
 and a number of the Nana's retainers occupying a 
 strong defensive position on the terrain in front of the 
 Nana's palace. The infantry were mostly in detached
 
 1 68 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 entrenchments in the midst of high standing crops, 
 and there were strong supports in a couple of en- 
 trenched villages in rear of the flanks. Utilising his 
 superiority in artillery he had fourteen guns, some of 
 them of large calibre the General made his men lie 
 down while he cannonaded the sepoy position, supple- 
 menting the gun fire by a steady fusillade from Enfield 
 rifles. But the artillery projectiles had little effect on 
 the earthworks, and he had to send forward his infantry. 
 Everywhere the enemy made a strenuous resistance ; the 
 Madras Fusiliers on the extreme right were opposed at 
 close quarters by the mutinous sepoys of the Forty-second, 
 bayonets were actually crossed, and sixty of the sepoys 
 had fallen before the Madras men prevailed. Under 
 stress of the bayonet the enemy fell back into the 
 villages, and held them in the face of a renewed artillery 
 fire. Their two guns were so staunchly served that 
 Havelock's infantry had to be sent at them, and the guns 
 and villages were taken only after a stubborn fight. The 
 enemy's defeat was complete, with a loss of over two 
 hundred and fifty killed and wounded ; the British loss 
 was heavy between fifty and sixty killed and wounded, 
 besides twelve slain by the sun, which was also very 
 deadly on the return march on the following day. 
 
 On his return to Cawnpore Havelock read in the 
 Gazette of August 5th, the appointment of Major-General 
 Sir James Outram to the "military command of the 
 united Dinapore and Cawnpore Divisions," and there- 
 fore of his own constructive supersession by that officer. 
 I use the term "constructive supersession," because 
 Havelock did not hold, nor ever had held, the command 
 of "the Cawnpore division," but was simply a Brigadier-
 
 VI THE FORTUNE OF WAR 169 
 
 General commanding a field force, with a very elastic 
 commission. His rank did not entitle him to the com- 
 mand of a territorial division, such as was the Cawnpore 
 division when the Mutiny broke out, with the Oude 
 brigade command subordinate to it. Wheeler, the 
 Major-General commanding the division, had perished, 
 and after his death there was a temporary hiatus in the 
 command ; but that dislocation did not in principle im- 
 pair the military order of things. As a consequence of 
 Havelock's brilliant exertions, and with the advent of 
 some reinforcements and the assurance of more, the 
 situation was improving so far as in their opinion to 
 warrant the authorities in filling up the vacant divisional 
 command ; the more especially as they had at disposal 
 in Outram an officer of the requisite rank and of proved 
 distinguished capacity both as a soldier and as a civilian 
 administrator conversant with the political conditions of 
 Oude, that province of the Cawnpore divisional com- 
 mand which was now to be the chief theatre of fighting 
 and of possible negotiation. Major-General Outram was 
 simply the successor of Major-General Wheeler in the 
 divisional command of a region wherein was operating 
 the brigade which Brigadier - General Havelock com- 
 manded, and which he was still to continue to command ; 
 it being at such a time not only important but indis- 
 pensable that the official who was the Chief Commis- 
 sioner of Oude should wield the chief military authority 
 in and about his province. Hence there was in 
 Outram's appointment no specific or technical superses- 
 sion of Havelock, although it must be admitted that it 
 carried a virtual supersession. It may have been because 
 of the former circumstance, or it may have been through
 
 170 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 an oversight in the departmental confusion in Calcutta, 
 that no intimation of Outram's appointment was sent to 
 Havelock, and that he should have learnt it only from the 
 Gazelle. There certainly is no trace of intentional slight 
 or discourtesy toward him in the communications that 
 reached him from his official superiors. On the con- 
 trary, their language is that of unstinted commendation 
 of his merits and full approval of his every act. 
 
 One reads in histories and biographies vehement 
 vituperation of Havelock's supersession. The old soldier 
 himself knew too well in what risk, in virtue of what 
 may be called the military nature of things, the officer 
 of lower rank habitually lives of being superseded by the 
 officer of higher rank, to feel aggrieved by the commis- 
 sion assigned to Outram. That he suffered disappoint- 
 ment may be assiimed ; but even of that feeling he gives 
 no sign, whether in public correspondence or in any 
 private letters that have been printed. Supersession in 
 virtue of higher rank or seniority, irrespective of proved 
 merit, is of everyday experience. Havelock himself, 
 fifteen years earlier, had seen the chief of the illustrious 
 garrison of Jellalabad absorbed into Pollock's command, 
 and had he lived twelve years longer, would have become 
 aware of the supersession of the ever victorious Roberts 
 by Sir Donald Stewart. In the moment of his Vimiera 
 victory Sir Arthur Wellesley was superseded twice over. 
 During the Franco -German war Werder was doing 
 brilliant service in Eastern France, when old Manteuffel 
 came down with the Seventh Army Corps and ranked 
 him in the superior command. But indeed instances 
 might be cited indefinitely. Almost in the very hour 
 of Outram's appointment Sir Colin Campbell superseded
 
 VI AN ERROR OF JUDGMENT 171 
 
 Sir Patrick Grant in the Commandership- in -Chief. 
 Havelock himself had superseded Neill. A man of 
 another nature than Havelock, Neill chafed under the 
 supersession, and was not loyal to the man who had 
 come in above him. Neill's chief laudator acknowledges 
 that "he had felt deeply his supersession by Havelock 
 and he disliked him." Havelock, better disciplined as 
 higher natured, was prompt to welcome his old comrade, 
 and ardent in preparation for his arrival. 
 
 But meanwhile he was to fall into a serious error of 
 judgment. After the. battle of Cawnpore he had re- 
 solved to recommend his son for the Victoria Cross 
 because of his conduct in a particular phase of that action. 
 The son acted with praiseworthy discretion. " Lieu- 
 tenant Havelock, fearing that his father might be sus- 
 pected of partiality, prevailed on him to suppress the 
 telegram which he had prepared for the Commander-in- 
 Chief." * That gallant young officer doubtless had the 
 justifiable confidence of finding or making subsequent 
 opportunities for earning the coveted distinction, which 
 no suggestion of partiality nor any intrinsic complica- 
 tion could affect. After the General's return from 
 Bithoor he forwarded a recommendation for the Cross in 
 favour of another officer, and without the knowledge 
 of his son, who was not aware of the circumstance until 
 after his father's death, he added in the same telegram 
 a similar recommendation in favour of Lieutenant Have- 
 lock, describing the act which he regarded as meriting 
 the honour in the following terms : 
 
 In the combat at Cawnpore lie was my aide-de-camp. The 
 Sixty-fourth regiment had been much under artillery fire, from 
 
 1 Marshman, p. 362.
 
 172 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 which it had severely suffered. The whole of the infantry 
 were lying down in line, when, perceiving that the enemy 
 had brought out their last reserved gun, a 24-pounder, and 
 were rallying around it, I called up the regiment to rise and 
 advance. Without any other word from me, Lieutenant 
 Havelock placed himself on his horse in front of the centre 
 of the Sixty-fourth, opposite the muzzle of the gun. Major 
 Stirling, commanding the regiment, was in front dismounted ; 
 but the Lieutenant continued to move steadily on at a foot 
 pace on his horse. The gun discharged shot, till the troops 
 were within a short distance, when they fired grape. In went 
 the corps, led by the Lieutenant, who still steered steadily 
 on the gun's muzzle, until it was mastered by a rush of the 
 Sixty-fourth. 
 
 Several very delicate questions are suggested by this 
 narrative, taken in conection with other comments by 
 General Havelock on the same incident. If the regi- 
 ment was being adequately led by its own officers 
 on this service of exceptional danger, Lieutenant 
 Havelock's interposition, uninvited by the officer com- 
 manding, was needless and superfluous, indeed from 
 the point of view of the regiment, a liberty. The 
 General was on the spot; in position for judging 
 of the manner in which its officers were engaging in 
 the conduct of the regiment. Lieutenant Havelock, 
 the General testifies, placed himself at its head with- 
 out any suggestion from him. The fair inference is 
 that the General did not notice any deficiency in the 
 regimental leadership demanding extraneous stimulus. 
 If it be suggested that such deficiency may have 
 manifested itself after the regiment was beyond close 
 view of the General, the remark occurs that Lieutenant 
 Havelock had taken post in advance of a manifestation 
 which he could not well have foreseen. If it was the
 
 vi THE VICTORIA CROSS 173 
 
 case that the regimental officers were quite equal to their 
 duties, and that therefore Lieutenant Havelock's self- 
 tendered services were superfluous, it is clear that such 
 services, however much gallantry that officer unques- 
 tionably did evince, could not entitle him to the 
 Victoria Cross since they contributed to no useful 
 purpose. If this is not so, then it follows that in every 
 action any aide-de-camp who may for the moment have 
 nothing particular to do, and who survives the perfor- 
 mance, can earn the Cross by riding into fire in front of 
 the nearest advancing regiment. 
 
 On the other hand, if the regimental leading of the 
 Sixty-fourth was from the outset and throughout feeble, 
 confused, and destitute of spirit, Lieutenant Havelock's 
 prompt spontaneous interposition was most opportune, 
 his retention of his position at its head of signal value, 
 and his whole conduct deserving of the Victoria Cross, 
 the ratio of the need for his display of gallantry in- 
 ferentially constituting the measure of default in the 
 regimental officefhood. 
 
 It may be said at once, then, that General Havelock's 
 recommendation of Lieutenant Havelock for the Victoria 
 Cross involved the inefficiency, to his mind, of the regi- 
 mental leadership ; no other construction can be found 
 in the terms of the commendatory recital quoted. But 
 the General had bestowed unreserved and unstinted praise 
 on the Sixty-fourth for its conduct in this advance. The 
 language of his despatch may be referred to on page 134. 
 In his Order he thus addressed the force as a whole, 
 making no exceptions : " Soldiers ! your General is 
 satisfied and more than satisfied with you. He has never 
 seen steadier or more devoted troops ; " and his specific
 
 174 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 adjuration to the Sixty-fourth ended thus : " Your fire 
 was reserved till you saw the colour of your enemies' 
 moustachios this gave us the victory." And further he 
 successfully recommended for promotion the officer com- 
 manding the Sixty-fourth ; so testifying to leader as well 
 as to led. 
 
 On a subsequent page will be found recorded that most 
 brilliant and heroic deed of valour performed by Lieu- 
 tenant Havelock at the Charbagh bridge, which evoked 
 from Outram the importunity that General Havelock 
 would accept his recommendation of that officer for the 
 Cross, and his regret should " a morbidly selfish delicacy," 
 withhold the reward " to which he has so unmistakably 
 established a first claim." General Havelock accordingly 
 recommended his son, and also Captain Maude. The 
 Victoria Cross was conferred on Lieutenant Havelock in 
 terms of his father's recommendation because of his con- 
 duct at Cawnpore. As might have been expected, when 
 the Gazette reached India the officers of the Sixty-fourth 
 took the matter up very warmly, justly feeling that the 
 recommendation and its terms reflected on them. They 
 forwarded a complaint on the subject to Sir Colin 
 Campbell, then Commander-in-Chief in India. Sir Colin's 
 comments were strong but just; they are eminently 
 worthy the attention of every commanding officer and of 
 every staff-officer. When the Gazette appeared containing 
 the Lucknow honours recommended by General Havelock, 
 it became apparent that while his recommendation of 
 Maude had been honoured, that in favour of Lieu- 
 tenant Havelock had been disregarded. Had the 
 General been alive he could not but have felt the 
 omission ; but it may be assumed that the significance
 
 vi AN ORDER OF THE DAY 175 
 
 of it was meant to be general rather than personal. A 
 gallant man's name should be most closely associated 
 with his most gallant deed; and, but for his father's 
 affectionate error, Lieutenant Havelock's cool serviceable 
 heroism at the Charbagh bridge would have been the 
 act of valour which gained him his Victoria Cross. 
 
 On the day of his return from Bithoor, the General 
 published the last order of the day that was to emanate 
 from his pen. As a fair specimen of his style in the 
 composition of this sort of lucubration, in which he was 
 the unconscious pioneer of a more modern school, it 
 may be worth while to quote the order in full : 
 
 The Brigadier -General congratulates his troops on the 
 result of their exertions in the combat of yesterday. The 
 enemy were driven with the loss of two hundred and fifty 
 killed and wounded, from one of the strongest positions in 
 India, which they obstinately defended. They were the 
 flower of the mutinous soldiery, flushed with the successful 
 defection of Saugor and Fyzabad, yet they stood only one 
 short hour against a handful of soldiers of the State, whose 
 ranks had been thinned by sickness and the sword. May 
 the hopes of treachery and rebellion be ever thus blasted ! 
 And if conquest can now be attained under the most trying 
 circumstances, what Avill be the triumph and retribution of 
 the time when the armies from China, from the Cape, and 
 from England shall sweep through the land ! Soldiers ! in 
 that moment your privations, your sufferings, and your 
 valour will not be forgotten by a grateful country. You 
 will be acknowledged to have been the stay and prop of 
 British India in the time of her severest trial. 
 
 It must be admitted that whether by virtue of his 
 magniloquent proclamations or in blunt disregard of 
 them, the soldiers whom Havelock commanded had 
 fought throughout the campaign now ended with splen-
 
 1 76 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 did valour and staunchness. He could look back on an 
 unbroken series of successes. Between July 12th and 
 August 16th, both days inclusive a period of thirty-six 
 days he had engaged in two pitched battles and seven 
 more or less stubborn combats, and been uniformly 
 successful, in every instance save one conclusively so. 
 The record of few commanders can show so full and so 
 close a sequence of unchequered victory. 
 
 The month that elapsed between the battle of Bithoor 
 and the arrival at Cawnpore of Sir James Outram, was for 
 Havelock and his force a period of comparative quiescence. 
 The ravages of cholera were gradually mitigated, and 
 presently he was able to send back to Allahabad a sick 
 convoy of two hundred and forty invalids. He had his 
 anxieties ; the revolted Gwalior Contingent was looming 
 in the distance in one direction ; in another and not so 
 distant, he knew of large forces assembling at Fur- 
 ruckabad. He wrote to Sir Colin Campbell that 
 were he reinforced to a minimum strength of two 
 thousand he could defeat those aggregations in detail. 
 In his urgency for reinforcements in order that he 
 might be doing something, he permitted himself to 
 write a strange thing : " If," he said, " reinforce- 
 ments cannot be sent me, I see no alternative but 
 abandoning for the time the advantages I have gained 
 in this part of India, and retiring on Allahabad." It is 
 indeed passing strange to find his refrainment from 
 this step applauded by certain encomiasts as not less 
 admirable and meritorious than his conduct in the field. 
 The expression of intention may have been a brutum 
 fulmen, emitted in the burning anxety for reinforcements. 
 Even on this construction, Havelock did himself grave
 
 vi WAITING AT CAWNrORE 177 
 
 injustice ; had he abandoned Cawnpore his reputation 
 would have suffered. Cawnpore was the point d'appui 
 of the whole region between Allahabad and Agra; for 
 the time its retention in our hands was of more im- 
 portance in a military sense than the relief of Lucknow. 
 " No alternative " ! He had but to look across the 
 Ganges to Lucknow to find his alternative in the con- 
 duct of its staunch garrison. But a few days earlier he 
 had written to Inglis : " Hold out to the last ; when 
 further defence becomes impossible cut your way out 
 to Cawnpore." It was for him to practise what he 
 preached incumbent on him all the more in his easier 
 conditions. Inglis was holding the fort with some five 
 hundred habile Europeans. Havelock's able-bodied 
 strength in European soldiers was never under eight 
 hundred, with a well fortified position into which to fall 
 back if hard pressed. Inglis must have smiled bitterly 
 at the instruction to cut his way out, hampered as 
 he was with some three hundred sick and wounded, and 
 with some four hundred and fifty women and children. 
 It was Havelock's duty, as it was Inglis's duty, to hold 
 his post while tenable ; and should the time have come 
 for him to cut his way out, that recourse would have 
 remained to him unencumbered by woman or child. 
 But he could have relied on being relieved before things 
 had come to that pass with him. It was fortunate, 
 then, that he did not carry out the retirement which he 
 averred to be compulsory. Reinforcements did not 
 reach him until a month later ; meanwhile he remained 
 in Cawnpore wholly unmolested.
 
 CHAPTEE VII 
 
 LUCKNOW AND THE MANGO-TREE 
 
 OUTRAM arrived at Cawnpore at dusk on September 15th. 
 Havelock and he met with great cordiality. They were 
 old comrades of peace-time and of war-time. Havelock's 
 opinion of Outram had been illustrated in his emphatic re- 
 presentation to General Anson that Outram was the man 
 of all men for the command of the Persian expedition. 
 What Outram thought of Havelock had been evinced 
 in his requisition of the latter as one of his divi- 
 sional commanders. They had parted four months 
 before on the banks of the Euphrates, at the close of a 
 campaign in which success had been achieved with little 
 loss and without severe exertion ; they were reunited 
 now on the threshold of an enterprise which promised 
 to be both bloody and arduous. On the morning after 
 Outram's arrival was published his famous order, so full 
 of self -abnegating chivalry, in which he waived his 
 superior military rank, and left the command in the 
 hands of Havelock until the relief of Lucknow should 
 have been accomplished. It is due to the memory both 
 of Outram and of Havelock that the terms of this order 
 should be set out in all their unique generosity. It 
 ran thus-:
 
 'Village 
 
 .V, ..:,;,. 
 
 Kote 
 
 IJere theForce halted to allow the 
 rear to doge up. 
 
 2 General Nedi Jailed here. 
 
 3 Spot where Hie ihree Generals . Sir 
 Colin Campbell. SirJamfs Outram. 
 and Sir Henry Savtlock met on the 
 evening of WNoi-embei: 
 
 Reference 
 Route taken by General Sarelocki 
 
 Route of Sir Colin CampbeUf force 
 on, the J4* J5* isl 
 
 Zondon, Stan/brcb Geoq 1 EstaK
 
 CHAP, vir OUTRAM'S GENEROSITY 179 
 
 The important duty of relieving the garrison of Lucknow 
 had been first entrusted to Brigadier-General Havelock ; and 
 Major-General Outram feels that it is due to that distinguished 
 officer, and to the strenuous and noble exertions which he 
 has already made to effect that object, that to him should 
 accrue the honour of the achievement. Major -General 
 Outram is confident that the great end for which Brigadier- 
 General Havelock and his brave troops have so long and 
 gloriously fought, will now under the blessing of Providence 
 be accomplished. The Major-General therefore in gratitude 
 for and admiration of the brilliant deed of arms achieved by 
 Brigadier-General Havelock and his gallant troops, will 
 cheerfully waive his rank in favour of that officer on this 
 occasion, and will accompany the force to Lucknow in his 
 civil capacity as Chief Commissioner of Oude, tendering his 
 military services to Brigadier-General Havelock as a volunteer. 
 On the relief of Lucknow the Major-General will resume his 
 position at the head of the forces. 
 
 Havelock thus made his grateful and modest acknow- 
 ledgments : " Brigadier -General Havelock, in making 
 known to the column the kind and generous determina- 
 tion of Major-General Outram to leave to it the task of 
 relieving Lucknow and of rescuing its gallant and endur- 
 ing garrison, has only to express his hope that the troops 
 will strive, by their exemplary and gallant conduct in the 
 field, to justify the confidence thus reposed in them." 
 
 The little army which Havelock commanded and in 
 which Outram rode as a volunteer, numbered three 
 thousand one hundred and seventy -nine soldiers all told. 
 It was constituted and composed as follows : 
 
 The First Infantry Brigade was commanded by Neill, 
 and consisted of his own regiment the First Madras 
 Fusiliers, the Fifth (Northumberland) Fusiliers, and the 
 Eighty-fourth with two companies of the Sixty-fourth 
 attached. Colonel Hamilton of the Seventy-eighth, with
 
 i8o HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 the rank of Brigadier, commanded the Second Infantry 
 Brigade ; made up of his own regiment, the Ninetieth 
 Light Infantry, and Brasyer's Sikhs. The Artillery 
 Brigade consisted of Maude's battery, Olpherts's battery, 
 and Eyre's battery of 1 8-pound ers; Major Cooper in 
 command of the whole. Barrow was the Cavalry Chief, 
 having under him his own horsemen, and Lieutenant 
 Johnson's Irregular Cavalrymen (Native). Captain 
 Crommelin was Chief Engineer. 1 Havelock's staff con- 
 sisted of Lieutenant -Colonel Eraser Tytler, Quarter- 
 master-General, whose assistants were Captain Maycock 
 and Lieutenant Moorsom ; of his son Lieutenant Henry 
 M. Havelock, Adjutant-General: and of his aides-de-camp 
 Lieutenants Charles Havelock and Hargood. The 
 garrison left behind to hold Cawnpore consisted of head- 
 quarters of the Sixty-fourth and details of convalescents, 
 in all some four hundred men, under the command of 
 Colonel Wilson of the Sixty-fourth. 
 
 Crommelin's floating bridge was laid with so great 
 expedition that it was ready on the 19th; and on that 
 day the column crossed to the Oude bank, from which the 
 enemy were driven after a half-hearted resistance. Next 
 day Eyre's heavy cannon, which had been covering 
 the crossing, came over, and in the early morning of 
 September 20th the column began its advance in a 
 dismal deluge of rain. 
 
 1 The details of the force were as follows 
 
 European Infantry .... 2388 
 
 ,, Volunteer Cavalry . . 109 
 
 Artillery .... 282 
 
 Sikh Infantry .... 341 
 
 Native Irregular Cavalry ... 59 
 
 3179
 
 MUNGULWAR 181 
 
 The enemy were found massed in considerable force 
 in a strong position before the village of Mungulwar. 
 Havelock, ever partial to a flank movement, took ground 
 to the left, and while his artillery was silencing the fire 
 of the enemy's guns he pushed the head of his infantry 
 column through the swamps round their right toward 
 their rear. A well-timed advance against their front 
 consummated their discomfiture, and they fled in pre- 
 cipitate rout. Barrow's horsemen had been riding in 
 advance of the turning column, and took up the pursuit 
 with ardent vigour, Outram and Barrow galloping at 
 their head. Outram, in the temporary character of a 
 cavalry volunteer, developed an eccentricity in the choice 
 of his weapon. ' He wore a sword, but he never drew it. 
 His arm was a stout gold-topped malacca cane, which 
 he was wont to wave about his head in a demonstra- 
 tive fashion, putting it to purposeful use as a laculum 
 on Pandy heads and backs when opportunity served. 
 He rode a gigantic Australian horse which had a 
 clumsy bison -like manner of galloping, but withal 
 such a turn of speed that the square -shouldered 
 compact man on its back was ever well out in the 
 forefront of the rush. Close behind him came Barrow, 
 unflinching in his set faith that there was nothing, 
 from breaking a square to storming a fortress, that 
 well -led cavalry could not accomplish. In loose order 
 the squadron galloped on behind their leaders, a trooper 
 now and then momentarily checking his speed to sabre 
 a fugitive skulking in the long grass. " Close up and 
 take order ! " was the command as a turn in the road dis- 
 closed right ahead a dense body of rallied sepoys. In upon 
 them dashed the horsemen, cutting fiercely as they pressed
 
 1 82 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 through the mass, Outram's malacca in full play. It was 
 in this hand-to-hand fighting that a trooper captured the 
 colours of a revolted sepoy regiment, severing at the wrist 
 the hand of the native soldier who carried it. Pursued 
 and pursuers swept intermingled along the road to near 
 Busseerutgunge, in front of which two guns came into 
 action from behind an entrenchment, firing alike on 
 friend and foe. Barrow recognised an opportunity to 
 support his axiom. Hastily forming a front rank, he 
 rode straight at the guns. Taking his horse hard by the 
 head, he crammed it at the earthwork and lit on the 
 further side among the sepoy gunners. His followers 
 were not all so dexterous, but enough of them somehow 
 got into the position to kill the gunners and capture the 
 guns. Continuing their advance, the cavalry rode 
 through Busseerutgunge, well remembered by Havelock's 
 old hands as the scene of three stubborn fights, and 
 halted beyond at the great serai. It was not until the 
 afternoon that, sodden with the continuous rain, the 
 wearied infantry arrived, the earliest comers of whom 
 found quarters in the serai; the rearward people had 
 to put up with a comfortless bivouac. 
 
 The second day's march, which was quite unopposed, 
 brought the column to Bunnee on the Sye, where the un- 
 expected discovery was made that the retreating mutineers 
 had not destroyed the bridge over that unf ordable stream. 
 Its further bank presented the strongest position between 
 the Ganges and Lucknow, and it was studded with well- 
 constructed battery emplacements, but those were empty 
 and the guns had been thrown into the river. Toward 
 the end of the march there broke upon the ears of the 
 advancing soldiers the constant dull booming of the
 
 vii INSIGHT OF LUCKNOW 183 
 
 guns in Lucknow, and the step of the leg-weary and 
 footsore grew brisker at the sound as the ranks mechanic- 
 ally closed up. When the halting-ground was reached 
 Havelock fired a royal salute, in the hope that as he 
 heard the Lucknow artillery, so the sound of the cannon 
 fired by their countrymen marching to succour them 
 might reach the Eesidency and cheer the hearts of its 
 garrison ; but the wind set the wrong way the distance 
 was sixteen miles and it turned out that the chief's 
 kindly intention was not gratified. At noon on the 
 23rd the column had marched over ten miles without 
 opposition; and the soldiers, panting for a fight, were 
 grumbling at the disappointment. But their leaders 
 had the confident expectation that the day's march was 
 not to have a peaceful ending. And presently the 
 cavalry, who were in advance, became spectators of an 
 interesting scene. From a slight eminence the beautiful 
 grounds of the Alumbagh, with its fine palace and park- 
 like environs, met the eyes of the scouting troopers. 
 The scenery was charming in the extreme, but there 
 was a feature of it which violated the tranquillity of its 
 beauty. Eight athwart the front, its centre on high 
 ground, its left resting on the Alumbagh, and its right 
 behind a swamp, stretched the long line of the hostile 
 array. At a signal from the scouts Tytler galloped 
 to the front, the column meanwhile halting. After a 
 keen survey he rode back to report to his chief the 
 enemy's dispositions, and that, including the cavalry 
 force on their right, he estimated their strength at 
 little under twelve thousand men. Tytler had bidden 
 the cavalry fall back, so as to escape needless exposure 
 to the fire of two guns which had got their range,
 
 184 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 Havelock's dispositions were quickly made. The 
 column had been marching right in front. He reversed 
 the order, bringing up the second brigade which, while 
 the first halted for the time, Hamilton led away to the 
 left front, the route lying through deep ditches, through 
 swamps, and over heavy ground. Eyre's heavy battery 
 was brought up along the road and opened on the 
 enemy, to crush the fire from guns which had come 
 into action in some topes in advance of their position, 
 and the first shot from which had struck down three 
 officers of the Ninetieth Regiment. Olpherts was de- 
 spatched toward the left front to cover the movement 
 of the second brigade. At a stretching gallop, with some 
 volunteer cavalry in front of it, the horse battery dashed 
 up the road past the halted first brigade, which cheered 
 loudly as the cannon swept by, Neill waving his cap and 
 leading the cheering. On the left of the road there was a 
 great deep trench full of water, which had somehow to 
 be crossed. Led by Barrow the cavalry escort plunged 
 in and scrambled through, and then halted to watch how 
 Olpherts would conquer the obstacle. " Hellfire Jack " 
 was quite equal to the occasion, and his men were as 
 reckless as himself. With no abatement of speed the 
 guns were galloped into the great trough. For a 
 moment there was chaos a wild medley of detachments, 
 drivers, guns, struggling horses, and splashing water; and 
 then the guns were out on the further side, nobody and 
 nothing the worse for the scramble, all hands on the 
 alert to obey Olpherts's stentorian shout, "Forward 
 at a gallop ! " On our left, which had been extended 
 so as to overlap the enemy's right, the marching and 
 fighting was done in knee-deep water. Outflanked on
 
 vii CAPTURE OF THE ALUMBAGH 185 
 
 their right, and their centre and left crushed by the 
 fire of Eyre's heavy guns, the rebel army began to break. 
 But there obstinately remained in action on the road 
 one of their guns, which was admirably served by the 
 well-trained gunners of the Oude force, and whose fire 
 had bowled over several of Johnson's Irregular horse- 
 men. Jack Johnson was an extremely practical young 
 man. With a dozen of his troopers at his back he 
 galloped up the road a good thousand yards out to the 
 front, rode straight on the obnoxious gun, sabred the 
 gunners, pitched the ammunition into the ditch and the 
 gun after the ammunition, and then cantered quietly 
 back till he met the main body on its advance. In all 
 this campaign there was no pluckier action. 
 
 The right and centre of the enemy were routed, but 
 the enclosed space of the Alumbagh was still held, and 
 two guns withdrawn from the open field were firing 
 briskly from embrasures in its wall. By Havelock's 
 order Neill advanced a wing of the Fifth Fusiliers to 
 silence those and clear the enclosure. As the Fusiliers 
 drew near the guns ceased to give fire. The Northumber- 
 land men stormed the wall and swarmed in through the 
 embrasures, to find a fierce fight raging around the pieces. 
 Captain Burton of the Seventy-eighth had carried with 
 his company the main gate of the Alumbagh enclosure, 
 rushed in, and taken in reverse the men at the guns and 
 the supporting sepoy infantrymen; the Highlanders 
 were arguing the point with them very peremptorily, 
 when the Fusiliers came in and struck into the discus- 
 sion. Ten minutes later there was not a native in the 
 Alumbagh. Barrow and Outram led the horsemen in 
 pursuit of the flying enemy, and the chase was continued
 
 i86 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 nearly to the Yellow House, near the Charbagh 
 bridge. Outram in his malacca-practice was singularly 
 reckless of himself ; and twice in the course of the day 
 his life had been saved by young Havelock. As he 
 was returning from this last pursuit a despatch was 
 handed him. His face flushed as he read the contents, 
 and then he galloped off to Havelock with the news. 
 Presently the troops were formed in a rough square, 
 and in the pelting rain Outram bared his head as in 
 ringing accents he told the glad tidings that Delhi was 
 once more in British hands.' The cheering was so loud 
 that it might almost have reached the Residency, and it 
 caused the enemy to open a hot artillery fire, which 
 they maintained all night, and indeed throughout the 
 next day and the subsequent night. No tents were up, 
 no food was forthcoming, and the Delhi news was needed 
 to put heart into the weary hungry men in their drench- 
 ing bivouac. There was one other comfort; the grog 
 arrived, and at Neill's sensible suggestion an extra ration 
 was served out. The General gave himself little rest, 
 devoting himself assiduously to such dispositions as 
 might best repel a night attack. 
 
 But for a skirmish in the morning there was no 
 fighting on the following day, the 24th, which was 
 devoted to such rest as the constant fire from the 
 enemy's guns allowed, and to the completion of the 
 arrangements for the morrow's advance to the Resi- 
 dency. The short delay was amply permissible, since 
 a letter from Colonel Inglis, dated September 16th, 
 and brought to Havelock on the 19th by the faithful 
 Ungud, did not convey that the Lucknow garrison were 
 in desperate straits. It was not until the 24th that the
 
 vn PLANS FOR THE ADVANCE 187 
 
 route to be taken in making for the Residency was 
 settled. Havelock's original scheme was full of promise. 
 He had brought up canal boats from Cawnpore intend- 
 ing to bridge the Goomtee, and fetching a compass by 
 its left bank to the north-west of the -city, to have 
 seized the bridges which were in close proximity to 
 the Residency position, so that he would have at once 
 comparatively unhindered access thereto, and attain the 
 advantage of being on the enemy's communications 
 while not altogether forfeiting his own. This circuit, 
 wholly through open country, he regarded as infinitely 
 preferable to an advance by a complicated route through 
 the streets of a great city seething full of armed enemies. 
 And should the withdrawal of the Residency garrison 
 appear practicable, he advocated the same route for the 
 conduct of that operation. If Sir Colin Campbell had 
 adopted Havelock's scheme of approach in the second 
 relief operations his force would have been saved its 
 heavy losses. Outram overruled the project on the 
 ground that the heavy rain had made the country im- 
 practicable for artillery; but its abandonment was a 
 disappointment to Havelock. He subsequently wrote : 
 "I had hoped great results from this plan; but it 
 was doomed never to be tried." The direct route from 
 the Charbagh bridge right through the native town to 
 the Residency was not to be thought of ; the attempt to 
 follow it would simply entail the extermination of the 
 column. There remained a compromise which, involving 
 though it did inevitable heavy loss, nevertheless was 
 the only alternative left. The first operation was the 
 forcing of the Charbagh bridge, the further bridge-end 
 of which was known to be strongly entrenched, and to
 
 1 88 HA VEL O CK CHAP. 
 
 contain a six-gun battery sweeping the bridge, the 
 vicinity of which was commanded by lofty houses loop- 
 holed and barricaded. Assuming this obstacle carried, 
 the only route beyond regarded as practicable was by a 
 winding lane skirting the left bank of the canal, and 
 thence by a sharp turn to the left through the group 
 of fortified palaces and bazaars, covering a large area 
 to the east of the Residency and extending up to its 
 very gates. A prospect this truly the reverse of bright, 
 which Havelock and Outram had to face. 
 
 It was arranged that the sick and wounded, with the 
 hospital, the baggage, and the food and ammunition 
 reserves, were to be left at the Alumbagh under the 
 protection of about three hundred of the European troops, 
 chiefly footsore men, commanded by Major M'Intyre of 
 the Seventy-eighth. The soldiers carried sixty rounds 
 of ammunition, an equal reserve to accompany the force 
 on camels. Havelock prevailed on Outram to consent 
 that Eyre's 24-pounders should go on with the column. 
 
 The morning of September 25th broke fair, although 
 gloomy. Havelock, as was his custom, had risen before 
 dawn, performed his devotions, written some private 
 letters, and was sitting in the open air breakfasting 
 with his personal staff, when Outram joined him to 
 discuss some final alterations in the arrangements. As 
 the two chiefs bent over the table studying the map, 
 a round shot struck the ground within five yards and 
 ricochetted over their heads. Meanwhile the troops 
 having breakfasted, were getting under arms. There 
 might have been some skulking this morning had men 
 been in the mind to skulk. The sergeants of com- 
 panies, acting on their orders, were shouting, " Fall out,
 
 THE ADVANCE BEGINS 
 
 all you men that are footsore or sick ! " ; but many 
 added the taunt " And all you f elloAvs whose heart 
 isn't good, as well ! " Whosoever heard this, were he 
 ever so stiff or footsore, were he shivering with ague or 
 burning with fever, took his place in the ranks with his 
 comrades, could he make shift anyhow to put one foot in 
 front of the other. It is true that over a hundred more 
 men than had been intended were left behind in the 
 Alumbagh, but this was owing to the omission to with- 
 draw in time the rearward pickets. At half-past eight 
 the " advance " sounded, and the bugle - notes were 
 drowned in a cheer. Outram led with the first brigade, 
 Avhich was headed by Maude's battery supported by 
 two companies of the Fifth Fusiliers ; Havelock accom- 
 panied the second brigade, which followed the first. 
 The head of the column was barely past our advanced 
 picket, when it found itself the focus of musketry fire 
 from front and both flanks, and raked by two guns in 
 action near the Yellow House. The gallant Maude swept 
 this opposition out of his path, and fared resolutely 
 forward. " But for his nerve and coolness," in Outram's 
 words, "the army could not have advanced." The 
 struggle cost him one -third of his strength. Some 
 distance beyond the Yellow House the road after a slight 
 bend makes straight for the Charbagh bridge spanning 
 the canal, this straight section not over two hundred 
 yards long. Now there is not a house in the vicinity ; 
 the Charbagh garden has been thrown into the plain 
 and the steep banks of the canal are all but bare. But 
 then the scene was very different. On the Lucknow 
 side the native city came close up to the bridge and 
 lined the canal. The tall houses to right and left of the
 
 igo HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 bridge on the Lucknow side were full of musketeers. 
 Across the road, at the Lucknow end of the bridge, there 
 was first a breastwork, and behind it was a solid earthwork 
 battery armed with six guns one a 24-pounder, all trained 
 on the bridge and all crammed to the muzzle with grape. 
 Outram with the Fifth Fusiliers had gone off on a detour 
 to the right to clear the Charbagh garden, and then, on 
 gaining the canal bank, to bring a flanking fire to bear 
 on the defences at the bridge-head. Thrown forward 
 along the bank to the left of the bridge was a company 
 of the Madras Fusiliers under Lieutenant Arnold, trying 
 to beat down the musketry fire from the tall houses on 
 the other side of the canal. Maude had two of his guns 
 there was room only for two out in the open in the 
 throat of the bit of straight road leading to the bridge, 
 answering to the best of his power the fire of the rebel 
 battery. Behind, close by, in the bent part of the road, 
 the Madras Fusiliers were lying down under cover of 
 the wall. In a bay of the Charbagh garden-wall stood 
 Neill, waiting for the effect of Outram's flank movement to 
 make itself felt, and young Havelock, mounted, was on the 
 other side of the road somewhat in advance. Matters 
 were at a deadlock. Outram made no sign. Maude's 
 gunners were all down ; he had repeatedly been assisted 
 by volunteers from the infantry behind him, and now 
 he and his subaltern Maitland were each doing bom- 
 bardier's work. Maude called out to young Havelock 
 that he could not fight his guns much longer. Have- 
 lock rode across to Neill through the fire, and in his staff 
 capacity urged on the latter the need for an immediate 
 assault. Neill "was not in command; he could not 
 take the responsibility ; and Outram must turn up
 
 vir THE CHARBAGH BRIDGE 191 
 
 soon." Then Havelock turned and rode away along 
 the road toward the rear, bent on the perpetration of 
 what under the circumstances might be called a pious 
 fraud. His father the General was far to the rear with 
 the second brigade, but the son, after a suspiciously short 
 disappearance round the bend, came back at a gallop, 
 rode up to Neill and saluting with his sword, said, 
 " You are to carry the bridge at once, sir." Neill, 
 acquiescent, replied, "Get the regiment together then, 
 and see it formed up." At the word, and without wait- 
 ing for the regiment to rise and form, the gallant and 
 ardent Arnold sprang up from his advanced position 
 and dashed on to the bridge, followed by the nearest 
 of his skirmishers. Havelock and Tytler, as eager as 
 Arnold, set spurs to their horses and were alongside of 
 him in a moment. Then the hurricane opened. The 
 big gun swept its iron sleet across the bridge in the face 
 of the devoted band. Arnold dropped, shot through both 
 thighs. Tytler and his horse went down with a crash. 
 The bridge was swept clear save for young Havelock, 
 erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting to 
 the " Lambs " to come on, and for a Fusilier corporal, 
 Jakes by name, who as he rammed a bullet into his 
 Enfield, remarked to Havelock with cool cheerfulness, 
 " We'll soon have the beggars out of that, sir!" And 
 Corporal Jakes was a true prophet. Before the big gun 
 could be loaded again, the Fusiliers were on the bridge in 
 a headlong mass ; they were across it ; they cleared the 
 barricade, they stormed the battery, they bayoneted the 
 sepoy gunners where they stood. The Charbagh bridge 
 was won ; but at the cost of a heavy loss. 
 
 The charge of the Madras Fusiliers won for the
 
 192 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 column its thoroughfare over the canal. Promptly the 
 regiments crossed in steady sequence, and then imme- 
 diately turned sharp to the right along the left bank. 
 The Seventy-eighth was an exception; that regiment, 
 having crossed the bridge, was detached with orders to hold 
 the end of the direct Cawnpore road, cover the crossing 
 till everything had passed, and then to follow the column 
 as its rearguard. The main body, having followed for 
 nearly two miles the narrow and crooked lane by the 
 canal side, diverged in a northerly direction near the 
 Dilkoosha bridge, maintained that direction until close 
 to the Secundrabagh, and then, turning sharp to the 
 left moved on westward in the direction of the Residency, 
 still nearly two miles distant. No opposition to speak 
 of was encountered until the head of the column was in 
 the narrow throat between the Motee Munzil and the 
 Mess House. Here there was some desperate fighting, 
 and the heavy guns had to be brought into service before 
 the way was opened up. When the column was enabled 
 to move on into the comparatively open space beyond, 
 it came under flanking fire from a battery in front of the 
 Kaiserbagh, and suffered heavily. After much tribula- 
 tion the leading regiments reached comparative shelter 
 in the precincts of the Chutter Munzil Palace, and halted 
 there temporarily while the rearward troops strung out 
 behind were running the gauntlet of fire through which 
 their comrades had already passed. Both Havelock and 
 Outram were with the advance. 
 
 While the main column had been faring thus far, the 
 Seventy-eighth Highlanders, in the performance of the 
 duty assigned them at the Charbagh bridge, were 
 having very stirring experiences. For a while they
 
 VH GALLANTRY OF THE HIGHLANDERS 193 
 
 were unmolested, and they employed the interval 
 of leisure in flinging into the canal the captured 
 bridge - battery and its ammunition. Then the 
 natives came pouring down the Cawnpore road upon 
 them with demoniac yells; and for three hours the 
 Highlanders, alone and unsupported, maintained a fierce 
 fight against overwhelming numbers. About a hundred 
 yards up the road there was a little temple which the 
 sepoys occupied, and from it as well as from right and 
 left plied the Scots with a galling musketry fire. Captain 
 Hastings sprang to the front calling for volunteers. In 
 the instant Herbert Macpherson was on one side of him 
 and Webster on the other, half the regiment at their 
 backs. There was a rush up to the temple, and a 
 desperate hand-to-hand fight raged around it and inside 
 it. The garrison held it stoutly, and it was taken by 
 storm ; some of its defenders were slain where they stood, 
 the rest were pitched out of windows or over parapets. 
 After an hour's hard fighting the enemy, failing to drive 
 the Highlanders from the temple, rattled up three brass 
 guns and swept the road with their fire. For a time 
 our fellows had to keep in shelter and let the Pandies 
 blaze away, for the long-continued wet had so swelled 
 their cartridges that they would not go into the barrels 
 of the guns. But Lieutenant Havelock, who was the 
 staff- officer superintending at the bridge, opportunely 
 sent up a fresh supply, and the time had come for active 
 measures. The stalwart Webster stepped out, and 
 thundered 
 
 " Who's for these infernal guns 1 " 
 
 From a hundred throats came the answering shout 
 
 "I'm for the guns !" 
 
 O
 
 194 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 Far in advance of the ruck of comrades swept on 
 the ardent Webster, vociferating vehement language 
 as he sped. Armed with a great cavalry sabre he 
 despised the "regulation spit he made the weapon 
 whistle round his head as he reached the guns, and 
 brought it down on the head of a sepoy gunner just as 
 his linstock was at the touch-hole. When the combat 
 was finished the gunner's corpse was examined ; Web- 
 ster's sabre had cut him down almost to the collar-bone. 
 The strong arm was soon to be powerless, for before 
 nightfall Webster was lying on his face near the Bailey 
 Guard Gate with a bullet through his brain. The 
 enemy in flight up the road with Herbert Macpherson 
 on their skirts, and the guns taken, a formal procession 
 was formed with piper Campbell at its head, the guns 
 were dragged in triumph to the canal and hurled into its 
 waters. By this time the last waggon was across the 
 bridge, and young Havelock intimated that the High- 
 landers were now free to bring up the rear. As he 
 spoke he fell with a bullet through his arm. The 
 enemy had again come down, and had to be beaten 
 back yet again before the position could be quitted. 
 
 This occasioned delay, and when the Highlanders 
 started they had lost all touch of the main body and 
 were in effect an independent force for the time being. 
 The regiment followed for some distance the narrow 
 canal-side road, along which the last waggon had moved 
 out of sight. By and by, when the canal side had been 
 left and when the advance was near a great serai, the 
 trail was lost. In front was a blazing bungalow, from 
 about Avhich and from the brick kilns on the right came 
 some musketry fire. There were two roads. With a
 
 vii HARD FIGHTING 195 
 
 blunt straight-forwardness of purpose the Seventy-eighth 
 took the road known to be the more direct, chancing 
 whether or no it might be the more arduous. They 
 turned off to the left along the narrow street of the 
 Huzuratgunge quarter, from the tall houses lining 
 which a steady fire rained down upon them and in- 
 flicted heavy loss. As the regiment struggled along 
 this dismal path, Ensign Kerby, carrying the Queen's 
 colour, was shot down. As he fell the colour was 
 grasped by a bandsman named Glen, from whom it was 
 wrested by Sergeant Eeid. A few paces further, and 
 Sergeant Reid was struck. Then the colour passed to 
 Assistant-Surgeon Valentine M'Master, who continued 
 to carry it until the regiment halted. While the High- 
 landers were traversing this infernal defile, there was in 
 their ears an interminable din of firing on their right 
 and right front. It was not alone the rattle of musketry 
 which they heard that noise was so constant with them 
 on their own path that a distant bicker might have gone 
 unheeded but there was the deep-throated roar of the 
 big guns to tell them that their comrades, if they were 
 conquering at all, were not achieving an uncontested 
 victory. And, strangely, the Highlanders seemed to be 
 gaining on, nay in a measure to be overlapping the 
 locality whence the boom of the guns came loudest. 
 Steadily advancing, they all of a sudden emerged into 
 a great open area, to find themselves on the flank of an 
 entrenched battery in action in front of a vast and 
 gaudy building. That structure was none other than 
 the Kaiserbagh the palace of the Kings of Oude and 
 the battery, manned by Oude gunners, was firing 
 athwart the open at soldiers of the British main column
 
 196 HAVE LOCK 
 
 as they emerged from the gut between the Motee Munzil 
 and the Mess House. Without waiting to look closely 
 into the situation, the Highlanders dashed into the battery, 
 killed most of the gunners, and were able roughly to spike 
 some of the guns. Then they had leisure to look about 
 them. To their amazement they found that because of 
 the shorter route they had taken through Huzuratgunge, 
 they were actually now about parallel with the head of 
 the main column, instead of being in the rear of its rear. 
 Pressing on through a bevy of maddened cavalry horses 
 and a dropping fire, the Highlanders debouched into a 
 court of one of the palaces, in great measure sheltered 
 from the sepoy fire which raged vehemently everywhere 
 else. Here were the chiefs of the little army. On his 
 big " waler " sat Outram, a plash of blood across his face, 
 one arm in a sling, the malacca cane still grasped in 
 the hand of the sound limb. Havelock on foot his horse 
 had been shot was walking up and down on Outram's 
 near side with short nervous steps, halting now and 
 then as if to emphasise his words, for the debate between 
 the two generals seemed w'arm. All around them at 
 a little distance were officers, and outside of the circle 
 so formed were soldiers, guns, wounded men, bullocks, 
 camels, and the confusion of a surging tide of disorganisa- 
 tion pouring into the court. 
 
 The point of discussion between the chiefs is in- 
 volved in some obscurity. It is certain that Havelock 
 was resolute to push on immediately, to follow the main 
 street leading up to the Bailey Guard Gate, and to 
 reach the Residency and relieve the anxiety of the 
 garrison before the fast-approaching night should fall. 
 Both in his despatch and in a private letter Havelock
 
 vii THE CHIEFS IN DEBATE 197 
 
 states that Outram desired to halt for the night short of 
 the Residency ; in his despatch he states that it was 
 "within the courts of the (Motee) Mahal" Outram pro- 
 posed to pass the night; in the private letter he sub- 
 stitutes for the Motee Mahal "the palace of Fureed 
 Baksh." The discrepancy is material. About half the 
 column Avas already considerably beyond the Motee 
 Mahal, its return to which would have occasioned fresh 
 loss. . For the Mahal, he must have meant to write 
 the Chutter Munzil, in the environs of which the leading 
 half already was, and to which the Fureed Baksh was 
 in immediate juxtaposition. Outram's biographer writes : 
 " Outram proposed a short halt l to enable the rearguard, 
 etc. to come up. The whole force by that time, he 
 reasoned, Avould have occupied the Chutter Munzil in 
 security ; and from that post communication with the 
 Residency could be effected through the intervening 
 palaces ; less brilliantly perhaps, but with less exposure 
 of life than by the street. At the same time, if the 
 latter alternative were preferred, he was ready to act as 
 guide, a duty he could conscientiously undertake from 
 previous acquaintance with the locality." 
 
 A gallant soldier now living has narrated to the 
 writer the account which Outram himself gave him of 
 this discussion. Outram did urge the halt, and for the 
 reasons which his biographer speaks of. Finding Have- 
 lock bent on immediate advance, and knowing through 
 what a tempest of fire the advance along the street 
 must pass, he urged the alternative of advancing on 
 the Residency by the route traversing the successive 
 courts of the palaces, confident that little molestation 
 1 The italics are mine. [A. F.]
 
 198 HA VELOCK 
 
 would be met with by this line, since the enemy 
 would be holding the main street in anticipation of our 
 advance along it. Havelock would not consent. "There 
 is the street," said he ; " we see the worst we shall be 
 slated, but we can push through and get it over." 
 Outram continued: "Then my temper got a little the 
 better of me and I replied, ' Let us go on, then', in God's 
 name ! ' ' : And he added, " I have often since asked 
 myself whether I should not then and there have re- 
 sumed command ; and whether I should not have said : 
 ' Havelock, we have virtually reached the Residency, 
 and I now resume.' " 
 
 Well, they went on in God's name. The argument 
 ended, Hav clock's staff- officers took their orders and 
 rode away with them. The honour of leading the 
 advance was assigned to the Highlanders ; Brasyer's 
 Sikhs to follow them. Havelock and Outram, with the 
 staff-officers, rode up to the head of the Highlanders. 
 The word was given, the advance began, and presently 
 the foremost soldiers entered the narrow street which led 
 with several sinuosities up to the Bailey Guard Gate of the 
 Residency. Then, from side streets, from the front, from 
 every window and balcony, from the top of every house, 
 there poured a constant stream of bullets upon the men 
 doggedly pushing forward, savage at their inability to 
 return evil for evil. For except where now and then a 
 section facing momentarily outward, got a chance to 
 send a volley into the teeth of the mass holding the 
 head of a cross alley, there was little opportunity of 
 retaliation. The natives, sepoys and townspeople, en- 
 sconced on the flat roofs, fired down into the street and 
 then drew back to load hurriedly that they might fire
 
 vii THE STREET OF DEATH 199 
 
 again. The very women, in the passion of their hostility, 
 plied muskets some of them, others hurled down on the 
 passing soldiery stones and pieces of furniture. One 
 woman stood on a parapet with a child in her arms, 
 disdaining in the madness of her hate to take cover; 
 and yelled and hissed Hindoo maledictions till, having 
 lashed herself into ungovernable fury, she hurled her 
 babe down upon the bristling bayonet - points. The 
 Highlanders spared her but the Sikhs behind them had 
 no compunction, and the wretched woman, riddled with 
 bullets, fell on the roadway with a wild shriek. A 
 downward shot crashed through Sandy M'Grath's back, 
 and he fell. But he was not wounded so sore but that 
 on hands and knees he made shift to crawl forward for 
 over a hundred yards, till a second bullet struck him 
 dead. In the foremost company of the Highland 
 regiment were two staunch comrades, named Glandell 
 and M'Donough, Irishmen and Catholics among the 
 Scots and Presbyterians. In this street of death 
 M'Donough's leg was shattered by a bullet. He fell, 
 but he was not left to lie. His stalwart chum raised the 
 wounded man, took him on his back, and trudged on 
 with his heavy burden. Nor did the hale man thus en- 
 cumbered permit himself to be a non-combatant. When 
 the chance offered him to fire a shot, Glandell propped 
 his wounded comrade up against some wall, and would 
 betake himself to his rifle while it could be of service ; 
 then he would pick M'Donough up again, and stagger 
 cheerily onward, till the well-deserved goal of safety was 
 reached. The cruel ordeal of fire had been endured for 
 a distance of over fifteen hundred paces, when from the 
 leaders and staff-officers in front there ran down the
 
 HA VELOCK 
 
 column an electric shout. For through the fast-gathering 
 twilight had been descried the battered arch of the Bailey 
 Guard Gate, whence came an answering shout of glad 
 welcome. Ay, and through the hoarse bass of that cry 
 there was audible a shriller note, which told the strug- 
 gling soldiers that their countrywomen also were 
 greeting and encouraging them. The horsemen gave 
 spur; the men on foot lost their weariness and kept 
 pace with their mounted leaders. For a few moments 
 the folk of the garrison looked out on " a confused mass of 
 smoke " ; but then there was a glimpse through the smoke 
 of officers on horseback, and battling infantrymen in 
 their shirt-sleeves. " And then all our doubts and fears 
 were over ; and from every pit, trench, and battery ; 
 from behind the sandbags piled on shattered houses ; 
 from every post still held by a few gallant spirits ; even 
 from the hospital, rose cheer on cheer." With a final 
 rush the head of the column was at the Bailey Guard 
 Gate. But it was now a gate but in name ; earth had 
 been piled up against it from the inside, and there was 
 no thoroughfare under its battered archway. In the low 
 wall to the proper left of the gate-house was a ragged 
 embrasure, whence there loured the sullen muzzle of 
 the big gun from which "Jock" Aitken, the stalwart 
 captain of the guard, had steadily hurled death on his 
 assailants. Aitken and his loyal sepoys hauled back 
 the big piece. Outram rode at the embrasure, but his 
 waler baulked at the rugged ascent to its lip. There 
 was a scramble and a shout among the foremost of the 
 Highlanders, and rider and horse were inside, hoisted 
 bodily through the embrasure by stalwart arms. Have- 
 lock and his staff followed, and then through the breach
 
 vn THE JOY OF 7^HE GARRISON 201 
 
 rushed in the eager soldiers, powder - grimed, dusty, 
 bloody ; the moment before raging with the stern 
 passion of the battle, now melting in tenderness. And 
 all around them as they swarmed in, crowded a multi- 
 tude throbbing with glad welcome. There were the 
 fighting men of the garrison, and the civilians whom the 
 siege had made into soldiers ; and women weeping tears 
 of joy down on the faces of the children for whom they 
 had all but ceased to hope aught but death. There 
 were gaunt pallid men whose hollow eyes shone weirdly 
 in the torchlight, and whose thin hands trembled with 
 weakness in the sinewy grip of the Highlanders ; the 
 wounded and sick of the siege, those such of them 
 as were not in the grave -who had crawled out from the 
 hospital up yonder to welcome their deliverers. The 
 hearts of the Highlanders waxed very warm as they 
 clasped the outstretched hands, exclaiming, " God bless 
 you ! " " Why, we expected to have found only your 
 bones ! " " And the children are living too ! " and many 
 other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. From the 
 steps of Dr. Fayrer's house the ladies of the garrison 
 came down among the soldiers, shaking them enthusi- 
 astically by the hand; and the children clasped the 
 shaggy men round the neck, as in truth did some of 
 the mothers. "The big rough - bearded soldiers were 
 seizing the little children out of our arms, kissing them 
 with tears rolling down their cheeks, and thanking God 
 that they had come in time to save them from the fate 
 of those at Cawnpore. We were all rushing about to 
 give the poor fellows drinks of water, for they were 
 perfectly exhausted ; and tea was made down in the tyk- 
 hanah (the underground rooms), of which a large party
 
 202 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 of tired thirsty officers partook, without milk and sugar, 
 and Ave had nothing to give them to eat. Every one's 
 tongue seemed going at once with so much to ask and 
 to tell, and the faces of utter strangers beamed upon 
 each other, like those of dearest friends and brothers." 1 
 Such were the scenes which justified Lord Canning's 
 words in writing of General Havelock : " Rarely has a 
 man been so fortunate as to relieve by his success so many 
 aching hearts, and to reap so rich a reward of gratitude." 
 "We had nothing to give them to eat," writes the 
 lady from whose pathetic book the above quotation is 
 taken. The garrison of the Residency, it is true, were 
 still a long way from the final boot-eating recourse when 
 Outram and Havelock reached them. The fighting men 
 were receiving three-quarter rations and the non-com- 
 batants about half; but the ration was the barest meat and 
 flour, both of poor description. Other articles of food 
 had been exhausted, save what little still remained of 
 private stores, and those were being for the most part 
 reserved for the hospital and the children. Havelock 
 wrote that on the night of his entry he was " regaled not 
 only with beef cutlets, but with mock -turtle soup and 
 champagne." It was a great occasion ; no doubt the lean 
 calf was killed, and Mr. Gubbins, whose guest the General 
 was, " spread himself " with momentary lavishness. But 
 Gubbins was not the man to fare sumptuously while his 
 fellow men and women starved. He had providently 
 laid in a great store of supplies " of sorts " before the 
 siege commenced ; he was, in nautical phrase, the " best 
 found " person in the garrison. But he filled his house 
 with refugees from outlying stations who had come in 
 1 A lady's diary of the siege.
 
 vii THE COMMISSARIAT 203 
 
 with nothing but what they stood up in ; he was generous 
 to families in need of what he had to give, and the 
 doctors never applied to him in vain for medical com- 
 forts for the hospital and for sick women and children. 
 Most probably it was Gubbins's sherry that kept General 
 Havelock alive until the second relief. "I dine with 
 him once a week " wrote the General, " and he sends me 
 excellent sherry, without which, the doctors tell me, I 
 should not pull through." Gubbins quartered in his 
 house the wounded Tytler, the General's wounded son, 
 and the sick Major Eyre. To what straits the Lucknow 
 garrison were reduced may be estimated by some details 
 recorded by Gubbins. Brandy fetched 16 per dozen; 
 before the Second Eelief it had risen to 2 : 10s. per bottle. 
 Beer 7 per dozen. A small tin of soup sold for 
 2 : 5s. 
 
 General Havelock, declining Mr. Gubbins's invitation 
 to be his guest, took \\p his quarters in the house of Mr. 
 Ommanney the judicial commissioner, who had died of his 
 wounds in the early days of the siege. General Outram 
 and his chief -of -staff Colonel Napier, 1 both wounded, 
 became inmates of the house of their old friend Dr. 
 Fayrer 2 the residency surgeon, who placed them on beds 
 opposite each other in the long room of his residence. 
 Fayrer's "Europe stores" had long before been con- 
 sumed, and the newcomers had to share the scant and 
 strictly " ration " fare of the household chupatties and a 
 makeshift and scanty stew of flour and gun -bullock 
 beef. Outram was a restless patient. " Oh, d n the 
 arm ! " was his abrupt answer to solicitous inquiries as to 
 
 1 The late F. M. Lord Napier of Magdala. 
 - Now Sir Joseph Fayrer, K. C.S.I.
 
 204 HAVE LOCK CHAP. 
 
 his wound; he was infinitely more concerned about 
 requisitioning Mrs. Fayrer's services to mend the "in- 
 and-out" bullet-holes in his coat-sleeve. 
 
 That Havelock erred in not accepting Outram's recom- 
 mendation of delay, and in forcing forward into the 
 Residency with a part of his strength, seems unquestion- 
 able. The reasons put forth for the haste he made, consid- 
 ered impartially, prove of little weight. Colonel Inglis's 
 letters, it has been urged, permitted him no doubt that 
 the garrison Avas reduced to the greatest straits. But 
 Colonel Inglis's last letter to Havelock dated September 
 16th, and received on the 19th, told him ; "I shall be quite 
 out of rum for the men in eight days, but we have been 
 living on reduced rations, and I hope to get on till about 
 1st prox. If you have not relieved us by then we shall 
 have no meat left." Therefore on September 25th, on 
 the evening of which day Havelock entered the Residency, 
 the garrison had been without rum for twenty-four 
 hours, and still had meat fo. several days ; of grain there 
 was no real lack. And if there had been actual 
 starvation Havelock's entry could not have alleviated 
 the situation, since he did not bring in an ounce of 
 supplies. Again, it is said he was actuated by the 
 knowledge that the garrison was exposed to imminent 
 danger from mines that might be sprung by the enemy 
 at any moment. It is true that subsequent examination 
 proved that extensive mines had been excavated. But 
 they were found uncharged ; Inglis's last letter made no 
 mention of anxiety about mines, and Havelock could not 
 have known of them, but was only apprehensive of them. 
 He ordered no search for mines on the night of his entry 
 it was not until later that they were discovered ; it
 
 vii THE ADVANCE CONSIDERED 205 
 
 cannot therefore be claimed that his haste averted the risk 
 of their being exploded, but rather indeed exposed the 
 force he brought in to participation in the havoc their 
 explosion might cause. Another argument for his 
 urgency is put forward in the realisation on his part 
 of the danger of the desertion of the native troops 
 forming part of the garrison, under the disappoint- 
 ment occasioned by an apparent check in the advent 
 of reinforcements. Those natives had been staunch 
 in the face of the strongest temptations to desert, 
 when the prospect of assistance from without was all but 
 mythical ; their defection would have been passing 
 strange after they had heard the roar of the British 
 cannon close at hand. General Havelock further is 
 alleged to have "dreaded, since Colonel Inglis had stated 
 that in its enfeebled state the garrison would be unable 
 to resist a determined assault, lest the insurgents, find- 
 ing the relieving column apparently brought to a stand- 
 still, should by one vigorous onslaught overpower the 
 defenders of the Residency." What Colonel Inglis had 
 written was that he would find it "difficult," not im- 
 possible, to repulse a determined assault ; he had endured 
 and overcome frequent difficulties of that nature, and it 
 was improbable that he should now succumb with relief 
 almost within shouting distance. But General Havelock 
 could scarcely have failed to realise that the opposition 
 he had been experiencing during his advance must have 
 greatly relieved the pressure on the garrison, and that if 
 the enemy undistracted had been unable to overwhelm 
 it, there was small likelihood now of that achievement 
 by a sudden rally on the part of mauled and fugitive 
 troops. Yet further he must have recognised his own
 
 206 II A VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 ability to frustrate any such attempt, from the temporary 
 position in the palaces which Outram advocated. 
 
 The truth is that Outram's self-abnegating chivalry 
 was magnificent, but it was not war. " All's well that 
 ends well," and the relieving column did reach Lucknow. 
 But Outram's fine generosity placed him in a false and a 
 very awkward position. He had been appointed to the 
 command of the Cawnpore division. In his discretion 
 he might have been technically justified in despatching 
 Havelock in command of the relieving force, while he 
 remained at Cawnpore or went elsewhere. But accom- 
 panying that force, he had no military right to denude 
 himself of the responsibility inherent in his superior 
 rank. Had the expedition failed his position would 
 have been very serious. It might have been laid to his 
 charge that he had gratified his generosity at the expense 
 of his duty his duty to his country, his duty to the 
 gallant troops at whose head was his place, his duty to 
 the beleaguered garrison. As it was, it is not easy to 
 escape from the melancholy conclusion that Outram 
 might have averted the waste of blood incurred in the 
 inarch up the street to the Eesidency. 
 
 How needless was that bloodshed was evinced in the 
 experience of the remainder of the column. When the 
 two leading regiments headed by Havelock and Outram 
 had started on their bloody path, the force behind them, 
 with which were most of the guns, began to move 
 forward in their track. Soon the advance was arrested 
 by deep trenches cut across the road, which the heavy 
 guns could not pass. At this crisis Lieutenant Moorsom, 
 who knew every inch of the ground, and who while 
 Havelock and Outram were discussing had been sent
 
 vii THE REAR GUARD BROUGHT UP 207 
 
 forward to ascertain whether the thoroughfare by the 
 palace fronts was clear of obstacles, returned from his 
 expedition of investigation. Havelock had not waited 
 for his return, else the tidings which he brought back 
 would surely have averted the bloody advance along the 
 deadly street. But Moorsom was in time to save the 
 following regiments from that dire experience. Under 
 his guidance the column altered its direction, and he led 
 it in comparative immunity by a sheltered yet more 
 direct route past the palaces, through the abandoned 
 Clock Tower battery, straight to the Bailey Guard Gate, 
 which the head of the column reached while the High- 
 landers were still in the warmth of fraternisation with 
 the garrison. By midnight most of the infantry and 
 some of the guns constituting the column which had 
 followed Moorsom were inside the Residency defences, 
 with scarcely any mishap to bewail save the great loss of 
 General Neill, who had been killed when expediting the 
 defile through a narrow archway, while the force he was 
 directing was as yet pursuing the original route and 
 before Moorsom had taken charge. It is a fair inference 
 that had Havelock's impatience permitted him to wait 
 for Moorsom's return from the errand on which he him- 
 self had sent him and the delay thus incurred would 
 have been brief, he might have reached the Residency 
 with the Highlanders and Sikhs at the cost of very 
 trifling loss. 
 
 Havelock normally was the reverse of a rash man ; 
 and he was far above the sinfulness and clap-trap folly 
 of fighting "to the gallery." Probably jarring occurrences 
 had disturbed his equipoise. Outram, it is true, had 
 waived his rank in Havelock's favour ; but it was part
 
 208 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 of the awkwardness of the situation which Outram's gen- 
 erosity had created for himself, that in doing this he had 
 scarcely accomplished a devolution of his responsibility. 
 Probably it was in recognition of this that he came to 
 construe rather widely the "tender of his military 
 services to General Havelock as a volunteer." He was 
 not the centurion of the hour, and the acting centurion 
 he had loosened from being under authority in relation 
 to him ; but nevertheless he occasionally said unto the 
 centurion, Do this ; and the centurion for the most part 
 did it. But the doing of it irked him ; and the irksome- 
 ness grew upon him, till at last the centurion would 
 have his own way, and was given it "in God's name." 
 
 So far from attempting an assault on the Residency, 
 the rebel host had been temporarily cowed by the 
 punishment received from the relieving column, and not 
 a shot was fired after nightfall. In the night Lieutenant 
 Johnson went out with led horses to bring in wounded 
 men, and found no trace of an enemy in any direction. 
 A rearguard consisting of part of a regiment with two big 
 guns had been left in the Motee Munzil to give the hand 
 to the Seventy-eighth, which, as the reader knows, had 
 come on by another route, and needed no assistance. With 
 this rearguard were a number of wounded and stragglers. 
 If, in the quiet night of the 25th, the order had been 
 sent it to come in, it could have done so without molesta- 
 tion and at leisure. But no such order was sent, and 
 it was left in its isolation with the result that the enemy, 
 rallying with the morning and recognising its forlornness, 
 assailed it with great fury and inflicted on it heavy loss. 
 General Outram took over the command on the morning 
 of the 26th, and in the course of the day Colonel Napier
 
 OUR LOSSES 209 
 
 marched out a succouring force ; but it was not until the 
 early morning of the 27th that the rearguard was 
 brought into the Residency. The responsibility was 
 not with Havelock for the earlier volunteer scratch ex- 
 pedition which Bensley Thornhill led out on the errand 
 of bringing in the wounded from the Motee Munzil. 
 The disaster that befell it how the procession of 
 wounded went astray, how in that pen thenceforward 
 known as Dhooly Square some forty helpless wounded 
 were done to death, some by the dagger, some roasted to 
 death in their wantonly fired dhoolies ; how nine gallant 
 men fought staunchly for most of a day and a night in 
 striving to fend off demons from their helpless comrades, 
 of that awful and glorious episode the details cannot 
 here be given. 
 
 In his official despatch General Havelock states the 
 loss of the division from the crossing of the Ganges up 
 to the evening of September 26th, when the casualties 
 of the relief operation ceased, to have been five hundred 
 and thirty-five officers and men killed, wounded, and 
 missing. Of this number the Seventy -eighth High- 
 landers lost one hundred and twenty-six, somewhat over 
 one in three. Colonel Malleson's figures, which he re- 
 garded as official, are more serious. He gives the total 
 loss in killed and wounded to the 26th inclusive, as five 
 hundred and sixty-four. The rearguard casualties he 
 puts at sixty-one killed and seventy-seven missing : since 
 the latter were all killed as a matter of course, the total 
 loss of the rearguard he makes out to have been one 
 hundred and thirty-eight; the entire losses of the 
 relieving operation by his reckoning thus amounting 
 to seven hundred and two. Colonel Malleson has fallen 
 
 P
 
 HAVELOCK 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 into error in this matter. Havelock's despatch is dated 
 September 30th, when particulars of all the casualties 
 had been made up ; he had no temptation to minimise 
 the losses even on the impossible hypothesis that he 
 might have been capable of falsifying returns, and the 
 total amount of loss which he states is the accurate sum 
 of the following authenticated details. 
 
 KILLED AND 
 
 
 
 
 
 WOUNDED. 
 
 
 
 MISS1XVU. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Killed. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 V- 
 
 O 
 
 UEOIJIENT. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ~g 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 E 
 
 tc 
 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 f e 
 
 sE 
 
 1 
 
 1 * 
 
 g 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 O 
 
 S 
 
 & 
 
 
 O 
 
 * 
 
 H 
 
 O 
 
 Staff .... 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 Madras Fusiliers 
 
 13 
 
 11 
 
 24 2 
 
 35 
 
 37 
 
 61 
 
 H. M.'s 5th Fusiliers 
 
 7 
 
 16 
 
 23 2 
 
 29 
 
 31 
 
 54 
 
 H. M.'s 64th Foot . 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 H. M.'s 84th Foot . 
 
 2 9 
 
 9 
 
 20 
 
 4 
 
 24 
 
 28 : 48 
 
 78th Highlanders 
 
 2 37 
 
 6 
 
 45 
 
 6 
 
 75 
 
 81 126 
 
 H. M.'s 90th Light Infantry 
 
 11 
 
 26 
 
 37 3 
 
 46 
 
 49 
 
 86 
 
 Sikh Regt. of Ferozepore . 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 7 
 
 37 
 
 37 
 
 44 
 
 Volunteer Cavalry 
 12th Native Irr. Cavalry . 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 
 4 3 
 4] 
 
 11 
 
 8 
 
 14 
 
 18 
 12 
 
 Artillery .... 
 
 2 
 
 15 
 
 7 
 
 24 
 
 2 
 
 22 
 
 24 
 
 48 
 
 Native ditto 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 5 |; 
 
 12 12 17 
 
 Total . . : 10 109 
 
 77 
 
 196 30 309339 
 
 535 
 
 The advent into the Residency of the column led by 
 Havelock and Outram is known in history as the First 
 Relief of Lucknow. It was no relief that had arrived, 
 but simply a reinforcement. Outram had believed that 
 a " decided success " would have been followed by " an 
 immediate restoration of British ascendency in Oude." 
 He may have been right ; but the modified success of 
 merely forcing a way into the Residency produced
 
 OUTRAM TAKES COMMAND 
 
 among the mutinous sepoys only the panic of a single 
 night. So it behoved him to look the situation in the 
 face, in the full consciousness of having to reckon with 
 persistent and fierce hostility. He had left a scant force 
 in a very precarious position at the Alumbagh ; he had 
 left there all his baggage and his convoy of stores and 
 supplies ; he and the force which had followed Havelock 
 and him into the Eesidency had come in literally with 
 nothing but what they stood up in their sole edible 
 contribution to the scanty resources of the original 
 garrison the bullocks which had hauled their guns and 
 ammunition waggons. Those resources he believed to 
 be more attenuated than was afterwards ascertained to 
 be the case. He found in the garrison sick, wounded, 
 women and children, numbering upwards of one thou- 
 sand. He had neither carriage wherewith to evacuate 
 this helpless accumulation nor force sufficient to protect 
 the convoy could he form one. He intimated his de- 
 termination in those circumstances to withdraw from 
 Lucknow with the bulk of the relieving force, " having 
 first made arrangements for the safety of the garrison 
 by strengthening it with all but four of his guns, and 
 leaving behind him the Ninetieth Regiment ; destroying 
 all the enemy's works, exploding their mines, and 
 breaking up the ground so as to render future mining 
 difficult ; and also demolishing the houses commanding 
 the entrenchments. The remainder of the force," he 
 continued, " will make its way back to Cawnpore." 
 He had designated Brigadier Inglis as the com- 
 mander of the reinforced garrison; had drafted a 
 farewell order addressed to it, and fixed the second 
 or third day of October for his departure. Why
 
 212 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 he abandoned this intention I find nowhere definitely 
 explained. 
 
 It does not appear that it was impossible for him to 
 retire on Cawnpore. He need not necessarily have gone 
 out by the way he had come in. With lightened and 
 diminished wheel transport he might have made the 
 circuit Havelock had originally recommended, crossing by 
 the iron bridge, and getting immediately into the open, 
 where his fifteen hundred disciplined troops could have 
 repulsed any attack. The obstacle of the Goomtee 
 might have been overcome by marching down stream 
 till boats were found in riverside villages, or by pre- 
 arrangement through messengers with the Alumbagh 
 people to escort Havelock's canal boats under cover 
 of night to a point about Budiabad. The river crossed, 
 he would have relieved himself of the anxiety that 
 constantly tormented him regarding the scratch detach- 
 ment he had left in the Alumbagh. He might have 
 remained there, in receipt of supplies from Cawnpore, 
 a standing menace to the enemy in Lucknow, a standing 
 succour in case of need to the Residency garrison. 
 Had the position of the Residency been regarded as 
 measurably safe, he would have set free for the uses 
 of the Commander-in-Chief a force of fifteen hundred 
 seasoned soldiers, precious beyond words in the still 
 critical situation of affairs. By remaining in Lucknow 
 if he could have gone out he detained that number 
 inactive; he left to its fate the feeble detachment in 
 the Alumbagh ; he consumed rations that would have 
 given a rough plenty to the garrison he had intended to 
 leave ; he debilitated his troops because of the necessity 
 for their being put on reduced and unwholesome rations ;
 
 vii REORGANISATION OF THE GARRISON 213 
 
 and he impaired his future mobility by eating his gun- 
 bullocks. And all this for what ? " Our position," he 
 wrote later, " is more untenable than that of the previous 
 garrison, because we are obliged to occupy the neigh- 
 bouring palaces outside the entrenchment to accommodate 
 the Europeans, which positions the enemy are able to 
 mine from cover of neighbouring buildings." 
 
 On the day after the entry Sir James Outram re- 
 sumed the Divisional command and reorganised the 
 brigades composing the force. To Brigadier Inglis was 
 assigned his own Thirty -second, the Seventy-eighth, the 
 Madras Fusiliers, and the volunteer cavalry, his brigade's 
 sphere of action being the Residency and its environs. 
 The other brigade, consisting of the Fifth Fusiliers, the 
 Eighty-fourth with Sixty-fourth companies attached, 
 the Ninetieth, and Brasyer's Sikhs, was allotted to 
 Brigadier -General Havelock. One may readily believe 
 that it was not a grateful thing to him to have no 
 longer under him the regiments which he had so 
 often led to victory, and every face in which he was 
 able to recognise. Except for the Sixty-fourth detach- 
 ment and the Sikhs, his new command was strange to 
 him and he to it; their mutual relations had existed 
 only from Cawnpore. To Havelock and his new 
 brigade was assigned the occupation of the palaces with 
 their precincts and gardens, lying to the eastward of 
 the old Residency position. This occupation, which was 
 accomplished in a few days without any serious loss, 
 had the effect at once of enlarging our holding and of 
 relieving the original position from the constant harass- 
 ment its defenders had endured from the hostile tenure 
 of the palaces. Quartered in the gorgeous apartments
 
 214 HAVELOCK CHAP. 
 
 of the Fureed Baksh and the Chutter Munzil, honest 
 Tommy Atkins who a few days before had been bivouack- 
 ing in mud and rain, now stretched himself on silken 
 couches and ate his sordid ration off dishes of rare and 
 beautiful china. But this elysium of luxury was tem- 
 pered with constant danger. For the position of the 
 brigade consisted of "gardens, courts, and houses, with- 
 out fortified enceinte, without flanking defences, and 
 closely connected with the buildings of the city ; and it 
 was exposed to a close and constant musketry fire from 
 loopholed walls and windows, from every lofty building 
 within rifle range, and to a frequent and desultory fire 
 of round shot and grape from guns posted at various 
 distances, from seventy to five hundred yards." The 
 besiegers directed their efforts chiefly against the position 
 of which Havelock had charge, their propinquity to 
 which afforded them opportunity for constructing mines ; 
 and there was entailed on our officers and men the in- 
 cessant task of countermining. The enemy advanced 
 twenty mines against the palaces and outposts ; of those 
 they exploded three which caused us loss of life, and 
 two harmlessly ; seven were blown in ; from seven 
 others the enemy were dispossessed. In obtaining those 
 results Colonel Napier, Captain Crommelin, and their 
 assistants executed twenty-one shafts aggregating two 
 hundred feet in depth, and three thousand nine hundred 
 and twenty-one feet of gallery. When at length powder 
 ran short, a gallery was constructed round the most 
 exposed parts of the position, whence the enemy's opera- 
 tions could be watched and frustrated. 
 
 Over those tasks of the " scientific arm " Havelock 
 could exercise but a general supervision. It was his daily
 
 vii THE RECOIL AFTER THE STRAIN 215 
 
 custom to make an early circuit of his position a walk of 
 about two miles, subsequently visiting Outram to make 
 his report. His abundant leisure was chiefly spent in 
 reading ; we are told he found intense pleasure in 
 Macaulay's History, a copy of which he found in Mr. 
 Gubbins's library. It was noticed that his strength 
 seemed failing as the days of the blockade grew into 
 weeks of dull inaction. When in Persia he had expressed 
 his dread of the physical reaction when exertion should 
 give place to rest, and no doubt the recoil was now telling 
 on him. For at sixty-three he was an old man to be 
 in India, and he was older than his years, after thirty- 
 five years of tropical service unbroken but by one short 
 furlough home. Relegated from the coveted position 
 of independent and active command to the dreariness 
 of subordinate immobility, he may probably have appre- 
 hended that his short bright day was done, and that 
 fate, after one brief flash of kindness, was now again 
 ungenial. Pottering round the position on his daily 
 beat, the old man did not know, else the knowledge 
 might have braced him, that his name had become a 
 household word in England, and that Sovereign and 
 Parliament had made haste to honour and reward him. 
 But although his strength was flagging under reaction 
 and the unwholesome food whose deleterious effects 
 Gubbins's sherry was ineffectual to counteract, he re- 
 tained his cheerfulness and never relaxed his care for 
 the soldiers. He was much in the hospitals, where the 
 sick and wounded waited for death for there was small 
 hope of recovery in the stifling and poisonous air, the 
 lack of medicines, the absence of all medical comforts, 
 and the impossibility of making the coarse ration palat-
 
 2 1 6 HA I 'ELOCK CHAP. 
 
 able or assimilative. Gangrene was rampant and even 
 the slightest wound was deadly. Dressings for wounds 
 were all but unprocurable in a garrison where, as regarded 
 clothing, there reigned a universal squalor of privation. 
 "I came in," wrote the General, and his case was the 
 case of all the relieving force "with one suit of clothes, 
 which I have hardly put off for six weeks." He was 
 enduring his second siege, and in material respects he 
 found Lucknow harder than had been Jellalabad. " We 
 eat," he wrote, " a reduced ration of artillery-bullock 
 beef, chupatties, and rice but tea, sugar, soap, and candles 
 are unknown luxuries. I find it not so easy to starve at 
 sixty-three as at forty-seven." 
 
 At length the beleaguerment, which for the original 
 garrison had lasted four and a half months, for the rein- 
 forcing force seven weeks, was to terminate. Communi- 
 cations from without were scant and precarious, but on 
 November 9th Outram knew that Campbell with four 
 thousand two hundred British soldiers and sailors, 
 was within a march of the Alumbagh. Then it was 
 that in Henry Cavanagh, not a soldier but a civilian, 
 there emerged through unparalleled peril into imperish- 
 able fame, the hero of all the heroes of the Mutin}-. 
 To tell how, disguised as a native, that most valiant 
 man passed through the heart of Lucknow, through 
 post after post of the enemy, picket on picket, carrying 
 to Campbell plans and advices from Outram, would 
 be to recount the story of a deed of sustained valour 
 in cold blood that will live in our annals so long as 
 the nation retains the spirit which actuates men to 
 admire cool courage and dauntless constancy. From 
 Campbell in the Alumbagh there came tidings on the
 
 vir ADVANCE OF SIR COLIN 217 
 
 12th that on the 14th he intended to begin his advance 
 on the Residency. It behoved the garrison to exert itself 
 in co-operation with the relieving force. In furtherance 
 of this duty, mines had been prepared under the eastern 
 wall of the advanced garden lying under the eastern face 
 of the Chutter Munzil, and other mines had been driven 
 farther forward under the Engine House and the Hurreen 
 Khana, two structures standing apart some distance 
 farther eastward than the garden wall. Inside the 
 garden Avere two heavy batteries commanded respect- 
 ively by Eyre and Olpherts, and Maude had a mortar 
 battery in a quadrangle in rear. Sir Colin halted at 
 the Dilkoosha on the 15th, announcing that evening 
 "Advance to-morrow" from his semaphore on the 
 top of the Martiniere. 
 
 The time fixed for the beginning of the garrison's co- 
 operation, the dispositions for which were in the hands 
 of General Havelock, 1 was when the relieving force 
 should reach the Secundrabagh. Its attack on that 
 great walled structure began at eleven. The mines 
 under the masking garden wall were sprung, but the 
 powder was damp, the effect was unsatisfactory, and a 
 prolonged cannonade with reduced charges was needed to 
 demolish the Avail, the enemy meanwhile replying vigor- 
 ously from the Kaiserbagh. Then the cannon had free play 
 on the Engine House and Hurreen Khana, and simultane- 
 ously the mines under the latter structure were fired. 
 
 1 Havelock signs "Major-General" to his despatch dated 
 Nov. 16th, recounting the proceedings of that date. Intimation 
 of his promotion must have been sent in to him. It was gazetted 
 on September 29th; he had been made a K.C.B. three days earlier, 
 but did not know of this distinction until Sir Colin told him. He 
 was already dead when the baronetcy and pension were conferred.
 
 218 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 At half-past three the infantry, commanded by Colonel 
 Purnell of the Ninetieth, debouched from the court 
 of the Chutter Munzil, and carried at the bayonet point 
 the Engine House, King's Stables, and Hurreen Khana. 
 Considering the strength of the garrison in men and 
 guns, and its advantageous position for taking in reverse 
 the forces opposing the advance of the relieving column, 
 its co-operative work cannot be regarded as enterprising. 
 On the evening of the 16th, the only obstacles to a junc- 
 tion between the two bodies of Britons were the Motee 
 Mahal and the Mess House. During the night of the 
 16th a battery was erected and armed in front of the 
 Engine House, from which, and from Sir Colin's guns, a 
 heavy fire was next morning opened on the Mess House, 
 which had been abandoned by the enemy overnight. 
 After having been severely bombarded, the empty 
 building was stormed by a detachment of infantry, and 
 Lieutenant Roberts, ascending to the roof, hoisted a 
 flag on its highest tower under a shower of bullets. 1 
 The adjacent Observatory was then carried, and there 
 remained but the Motee Mahal. Adrian Hope's gallant 
 followers rushed it immediately, its few defenders 
 skulking out across the river. Now between the two 
 forces there remained but the open space between 
 
 1 Now General Sir Frederick Roberts, G.C.B. The credit of 
 this exploit, as well as of the capture of the Motee Mahal, had been 
 accepted by another officer who has since risen to distinction. But 
 the following explicit statement under Sir Frederick Roberts's hand 
 has been published, and has not been contradicted : "I took the 
 flag of the Second Punjab Infantry, by Sir Colin Campbell's orders, 
 and placed it on the Mess House, to show Outram and Havelock 
 where we were. The enemy knocked the flagstaff down three 
 times, breaking the pole once. The staff is, I believe, still in the 
 possession of the Second Punjab Infantry."
 
 viz THE MEETING OF THE CHIEFS 219 
 
 the Engine House and the Motee Mahal, swept by 
 cross fire from the Kaiserbagh and the opposite side 
 of the river. Moorsom was the first to attempt the com- 
 munication, and with success ; two officers from the 
 relieving force crossed him in the dangerous middle 
 passage. It became presently less dangerous, but was 
 still the reverse of safe when the generals and their staff 
 proceeded to join Sir Colin, where he stood in the 
 interval between the Mess House and the Motee Munzil. 1 
 Havelock descended from the top of the Chutter 
 Munzil, having Lieutenant Palliser 2 as a casual com- 
 panion, and followed by his faithful bugler, young Dick 
 Pearson of the Seventy-eighth. He was anxious in regard 
 to his son Avho, his wound of the Charbagh still unhealed, 
 had nevertheless been among the earliest to cross ; but 
 he was too feeble to hasten, and the dangerous promenade 
 was perforce very deliberate. It was, however, safely 
 made. The entrance into the Motee Mahal was through 
 a breach in its flank wall, the sill of which was more than 
 two feet above the level ; the General was too weak to 
 surmount this obstacle unaided, and Palliser and Pearson 
 had to hoist him up by passing their arms behind him. 
 Inside the Motee Mahal, the party of soldiers first 
 encountered by the General was led by a "gigantic 
 red -bearded officer," who must have been Adrian 
 Hope, and what happened next Sir Hope Grant 
 may tell in his own genial words. "Soon after 
 we entered the Motee Mahal," he writes, "General 
 Havelock came from the Residency to meet us, and I 
 
 1 The Motee Muuzil was merely a narrow building in front of 
 the large square pile of the Motee Mahal. Vide map. 
 - Now Sir C. H. Palliser, K.C.B.
 
 II A VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 had the happiness to be the first to congratulate him on 
 being relieved. He went up to the men, 1 who imme- 
 diately flocked around him and gave him three cheers. 
 This was too much for the fine old General ; his breast 
 heaved with emotion, and his eyes filled with tears. He 
 turned to the men and said : ' Soldiers, I am happy to see 
 you ; soldiers, I am happy to think you have got into this 
 place with a smaller loss than I had.' I asked him what 
 he supposed our loss amounted to. He answered that he 
 had heard it estimated at eighty, and was much surprised 
 and grieved when I told him we had lost about forty- 
 three officers and four hundred and fifty men killed and 
 wounded. We went together (across the fire from the 
 Kaiserbagh) to Sir Colin at the Mess House. This was 
 a very happy meeting, and a cordial shaking of hands 
 took place." 
 
 The meeting of Sir Colin Campbell, Outram, and 
 Havelock, commemorated in a well-known picture, 
 marked the virtual consummation of the Relief. On the 
 night between the 19th and 20th, the sick and wounded 
 and the women and children of the garrison were re- 
 moved to Sir Colin's camp at the Dilkoosha, and the 
 military evacuation of the position was effected on the 
 night between the 22nd and 23rd. Havelock, although 
 weak, was not actually ailing before the 20th. On the 
 19th he wrote a cheerful letter to his wife and another 
 to his brother-in-law, and on the evening of that day his 
 wounded son, who was being carried out in the convoy, 
 and stopped his litter to take leave of his father, found 
 him sitting alone, reading Macaulay's History by lamp- 
 
 1 Some of whom were of the Fifty-third, the regiment he had 
 last belonged to.
 
 HAVELOCK'S LAST HOURS 
 
 light. But on the 20th dysentery set in ; on the follow- 
 ing day the symptoms became serious, and after nightfall 
 he was carried out in a dhooly to the Dilkoosha, where a 
 soldiers' tentwas pitched for him. Hehad suffered severely 
 from the jolting of the journey, and was worse on the 
 22nd, in the course of which hostile bullets falling around 
 his tent caused his removal to a more sheltered spot. 
 On that day he was cheered by receiving the home-letters 
 which had been accumulating at Cawnpore during the 
 blockade of Lucknow ; but although he was not thought 
 in imminent danger, he expressed his conviction that he 
 was stricken for death. On the 23rd Mr. Gubbins went 
 to see him. " I was directed," he writes, " to a common 
 soldiers' tent. Entering it, I found the General's aide- 
 de-camp, Lieutenant Hargood, and his medical attendant, 
 Staff -Surgeon Collinson. They whispered to me in 
 mournful accents the grievous news that Sir Henry was 
 worse, and pointed to where he lay. It was in a dhooly, 
 which served as a bed. The curtain on my side was 
 down. I found young Havelock seated on the further 
 side, upon the ground by his dying father. His wounded 
 arm hung in a sling ; but with the other he supplied his 
 father's wants. I saw that speech was impossible, and 
 sorrowfully withdrew." On the same day Dr. Fayrer 
 visited him, had a consultation with Mr. Collinson, and 
 recognised that his condition Avas hopeless. 
 
 Good Hope Grant, whose whole life was an illustration 
 of the poet's saying that " the bravest are the tenderest," 
 " having heard that the General was lying seriously ill, 
 thought it well to visit him in his affliction and say a 
 few kind words of comfort. On my asking him how he 
 felt himself, he replied, ' The hand of death is upon me ;
 
 222 HA VELOCK CHAP. 
 
 God Almighty has seen fit to afflict me for some good 
 purpose.'" Havelock's parting words to Outram have 
 been quoted at the beginning of this little book. The 
 life went quietly out of him at half -past nine on the 
 morning of November 24th, just as the march back 
 to Cawnpore began, and his soldiers bore with them, 
 on the litter in which he had died, the mortal remains 
 of the chief who had so often led them to victory. 
 
 Next morning they buried him in the Alumbagh 
 enclosure, under the mango-tree which still spreads its 
 branches over his tomb, and in whose bark his first curt 
 epitaph, the letter " H," carved at a season when other 
 index of his resting-place would have been unwise, is 
 still faintly discernible. There stood around the grave 
 Colin Campbell and the chivalrous" Outram, and staunch 
 old Walter Hamilton, and the ever-ready Tytler; and 
 the " boy Harry," to whom the campaign had brought 
 repute for reckless daring and the loss of a father ; and 
 the devoted Hargood, his "heart in the coffin there 
 with Csesar " ; and the heroic William Peel ; and that 
 " colossal red Celt " the valiant ill-fated Adrian Hope ; 
 and honest Dick Pearson the dead General's bugler, 
 weeping for the loss of the best friend the Ross-shire 
 lad had ever known. Behind stood in a wide circle the 
 soldiers of the Ross - shire Buffs and of the Madras 
 Fusiliers, who had done the dead chiefs bidding in 
 many a hard fight, and in whose war-w r orn hearts, as 
 they looked down on the last of their old commander, 
 was stirring many a memory of his ready praise of valour 
 and of his ceaseless regard for the welfare of his soldiers. 
 The volleys of the firing party were the good soldier's 
 fittest requiem ; and so Henry Havelock was buried.
 
 7/75 GRA VE 223 
 
 Guarded to a soldier's grave 
 By the bravest of the brave, 
 He hath gained a nobler tomb 
 Than an old cathedral gloom. 
 Nobler mourners paid the rite 
 Than the crowd that craves a sight ; 
 England's banners o'er him waved, 
 Dead he keeps the name he saved. 
 
 "So long as the memory of great deeds, and high 
 courage, and spotless self-devotion is cherished among 
 his countrymen, so long will Havelock's lonely grave 
 beneath the scorching Eastern sky, hard by the vast 
 city, the scene alike of his toil, his triumph, and his 
 death, be regarded as one of the most holy of the count- 
 less spots where Britain's patriot soldiers lie." 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.
 
 A 000 965 851 9 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 LLBHARY, 
 
 1LOS ANGELES, CALIF