The Cannons of Lucknow, page 15
“Tytler,” he said, coming to the point without preamble, “In your opinion, what chance have we of effecting the relief of Lucknow if we push on at once?”
“In my view, General,” his Chief of Staff answered, without hesitation, “we have none at all, with our present resources. To make the attempt and fail would, I feel sure, seal the fate of the garrison. Colonel Inglis has said that he can hold out until the fifth of August; we have to some extent relieved the pressure on him by drawing troops away from the siege, and if we return to Mungalwar, they will almost certainly follow us. Provided the reinforcements reach us within the next few days, we shall still be in time to save Lucknow, and by going back now, we shall save our own sick and wounded.”
“My view is the same as yours,” Havelock told him. “Although whether it will be shared in Calcutta or, for that matter, in England is by no means certain!” He shrugged with weary resignation. “And our own men won’t like it, poor fellows.”
“True, sir,” Tytler conceded. “But it would be no use attempting to fight our way into Lucknow with eight hundred Europeans when Inglis himself has warned that we shall require two or three thousand, if we are to have any chance of reaching the Residency at all! And even that supposes that we could cross the Sai at Bunni without loss, by a bridge we’re told has been destroyed …” his smile was wry. “Shall I give the order to retire, sir?”
Havelock shook his white head. “No, I will give it myself, since the decision is mine. Fall the Column in at four o’clock this afternoon, if you please, and I will break the news to them then.”
At four, the Column was formed up, facing towards Lucknow, and Havelock, after a brief explanation of his reasons, gave the order to retire. The men’s faces fell; there were murmurs of surprised and angry protest, and Alex, sitting his horse with the twenty of his troop who had been detailed to act as escort to the guns, heard several of them swearing in disbelief. But the order had been given and must be obeyed; dejected and sullen, they marched back across the battlefield they had contested the previous day and, after bivouacking overnight at Unao, reached Mungalwar in a deluge of rain, to find what shelter they could in the mud huts of the village. They were unmolested by the rebels but with every mile more men fell out, suffering from sickness and exhaustion, and when the Column finally halted, casualties from these causes outnumbered those inflicted in action against the enemy.
General Havelock, as weary and dispirited as the men he commanded, received a message from the Commander-in-Chief, sent by electric telegraph and forwarded from Cawnpore by Neill. This contained the heartbreaking news that the Dinapore sepoys were now in open revolt, for which reason the two British regiments he had been promised, the 5th Fusiliers and the 90th Foot, could not yet be sent to reinforce the Lucknow relief column. He had believed them to be already on their way upcountry, and the information that they were not coming was a shattering blow to him. It was followed by another. Late on the evening of 1st August, a personal letter from Neill was delivered to his Headquarters by a staff officer and he read it with growing anger.
I late last night received yours of yesterday,
his second-in-command had written, in a hasty, almost illegible scrawl.
I deeply regret that you have fallen back one foot. The effect on our prestige is very bad indeed. Your camp was not pitched yesterday before all manner of reports were rife in the city—that you had returned to get more guns, having lost all you took with you. In fact, amongst all the belief is that you have been defeated and forced back. It has been most unfortunate your not bringing any guns captured from the enemy. The natives will not believe that you have captured one. The effect of your retrograde movement will be very injurious to our cause everywhere.
White with fury at such gross insubordination, Havelock turned the page, to read that reinforcements—in the shape of a half-battery of Horse Artillery and a company of the 84th—had left Allahabad on their way to join him.
When these reinforcements reach you,
Neill’s final paragraph read,
you ought to advance again and not halt until you have rescued, if possible, the garrison of Lucknow. Return here sharp with them for there is much to be done, between this and Agra and Delhi.
Young Lieutenant Hargood of the Fusiliers, who had replaced Lieutenant Seton as his AFDC after Seton had suffered a severe wound at Unao, eyed his Chief apprehensively, fearing, from his expression, that an outburst was imminent. But General Havelock was not given to futile loss of temper in front of his subordinates, and, to Hargood’s surprise, he said in a flat, controlled voice, “Be so good as to tell my son that I wish to see him, if you please.” When the AFDC had hurried off on his errand, the general turned to Lieutenant Simpson, who had brought the letter, and bade him wait outside.” There will be a reply. Kindly wait for it.”
Simpson saluted and withdrew. Left alone, Havelock reached for pen and paper and, his hand perfectly steady, wrote his answer.
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 experience 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. I have my own reasons, which I will not communicate to anyone, and I alone am responsible for the course which I have pursued.
When his son Harry arrived breathless, the general placed both letters in his hand. “Read these,” he invited.
Harry read them, unable to contain his indignation.
“He’ll communicate these—these entirely false accusations to Calcutta, Father,” he warned.
“I know it,” the general admitted. “But I can do nothing, save advise Patrick Grant of the true situation and let him judge for himself. If I take this Column—even with the paltry reinforcements they have sent me—to Lucknow I shall, in all probability, lose every man. If that is what Government requires of me, then I’ll do it, Harry. But inevitably, if I do, the loss of this force in a fruitless attempt to relieve Colonel Inglis will bring about his fall.”
“Wait, Father,” Harry pleaded. “Wait at least until we hear when the regiments from Dinapore are to be sent.”
Next day a second telegraphic message from the Commander-in-Chief added to the general’s despair.
Events in Bengal make it impossible to send up the 5th and 99th regiments, and it is certain that no other European regiments can reach Allahabad for two months …
this starkly informed him, and then, influenced, it seemed probable, by the opinion Neil had expressed to him, Sir Patrick Grant ended his message by urging an immediate attempt to relieve Lucknow.
The “paltry reinforcements”—a hundred men of the Queen’s 84th, two 9-pounder guns of Captain Olpherts’ battery, under Lieutenant Smithett, and two 24-pounder howitzers from Cawnpore—reached Mungalwar on 4th August. Havelock paraded them and congratulated them on having come into a camp of heroic soldiers, who had six times met the enemy and each time defeated him and taken his cannon, but, learning from Smithett that his native gun lascars had shown signs of disaffection, he had them disarmed and sent back to Cawnpore to work as labourers in Neill’s entrenchment. That evening he despatched Ungud to Lucknow with a message saying he would make a second attempt to bring about the garrison’s relief, and the Column marched to Unao. Receiving intelligence that Busseratgunj was again occupied in strength by the rebels, the advance was continued at first light.
Employing similar tactics to those which had been so successful on the previous occasion, Havelock once more drove a vastly superior force of rebels from their stronghold. This time the 84th were entrusted to perform the turning movement, and they did so with dash and courage, leading the British column in a gallant bayonet charge which took them across the causeway at the heels of their fleeing foe. The Horse Artillery galloped forward with a slender escort of Volunteer Cavalry and, unlimbering well ahead of the infantry, pounded a number of enemy camps situated in the plain beyond the causeway with grape and shrapnel. As their occupants abandoned their tents and took to flight, led by a large body of irregular cavalry, both Alex and Charles Palliser pleaded to be allowed to give chase with the Volunteers, only to receive a regretful refusal. Disconsolately they sat their horses, watching their enemy escape, and Lousada Barrow, who had conveyed their plea to the general, confessed to his own frustration.
“Lucknow is our goal, my friends,” he said. “We cannot afford to lose men or expend all our ammunition on the way … or so Colonel Tytler informs me.” He sighed. “There’s to be a council of war now, which I’m ordered to attend, to decide whether we continue the advance or not. In the meantime, the orders are for you to retire, with Smithett’s guns, to the causeway.”
Palliser cursed, loudly and angrily, as they rode back. “I know you’re a Havelock man, Colonel Sheridan,” he told Alex. “But this is too much! God’s teeth, we win victories and then retire, as if we’d suffered defeat! And for us in the cavalry, it’s a choice of baggage guard or escort to the artillery, with the occasional reconnaissance from which, on sighting the enemy, we are commanded to beat an inglorious retreat. Let’s go on to Lucknow at any price, I say, and have done.”
But it was not to be. The recapture of Busseratgunj had cost ten men killed and over a hundred wounded or stricken with cholera and, with a quarter of the gun ammunition expended—although enemy casualties exceeded 400—the officers whom General Havelock had summoned to discuss the situation agreed unhappily that their desperate gamble had little chance of succeeding.
Colonel Tytler summed up. “The worst is yet to come,” he said, weighing his words carefully. “We are still thirty miles from Lucknow. Every village is held against us; the zamindars have risen to oppose us, and they are all round us in bodies of five or six hundred strong, waiting for an opportunity to fall upon the wounded and the baggage train. The bridge of boats at Bunni is strongly entrenched and defended by cannon. According to our spies’ reports, the Pandies will blow it up on our approach. How, then, can we cross the Sai?”
“There will be some boats, surely, Colonel?” Harry Havelock put in. “And the bridge could be repaired.”
“That would take too long, Harry,” Captain Crommelin objected. “And we should have to work under fire. We might lose half our force, on that crossing alone. Boats remain a possibility, but—”
“Even if we contrived, by some miracle, to seize sufficient boats,” Tytler said flatly, “we would still have to get across the canal at the Char Bagh and then fight our way through a mile and a half of Lucknow streets in order to gain the Residency. Colonel Inglis can promise only a diversion in our favour and some flank fire with his guns. And if we fail to reach the Residency, he says he cannot cut his way out to join us. His letter’s here …” Unfolding the crumpled scrap of paper Ungud had delivered from the besieged garrison that morning, he read it aloud, “‘It is quite impossible with my weak and shattered garrison that I can leave my defences … that’s it, in black and white, gentlemen.’ And he adds that he is hampered by 350 women and children and nearly half that number of sick and wounded, for whom he has no carriage whatsoever! In my considered view, we have no chance of relieving Lucknow or of evacuating the garrison to Cawnpore, as the Commander-in-Chief requires, until we are reinforced by at least two more regiments of Europeans. We should be sacrificing this force, without a chance of benefiting the garrison, if we attempted now to go on.”
General Havelock, who had contributed no view of his own, looked from one to the other of them in mute, reluctant question. All, with the exception of his son Harry, agreed with Tytler’s assessment.
“I think,” Harry Havelock said hotly, “that we must advance at all hazards. Even if only a handful of us succeeds in reaching the Residency, honour demands that we make the attempt.”
“Of what use will a handful of exhausted men be to Inglis?” Lousada Barrow asked. “They will simply be more mouths for him to feed, Harry.”
“It must not be said of us that we failed in our duty,” Harry objected. “And you know who will say it, do you not, Lousada! My father’s reputation is already compromised by our earlier retreat. Calcutta has been told of it by a man who believes he could do better and—”
“Are you,” Tytler demanded, “prepared to sacrifice this whole force and the interests of British India, rather than compromise your father’s reputation? However galling it is for you—and, as I am fully aware, for the general himself—to retire, this is not a personal question, Harry. If this Force were annihilated in an unsuccessful attempt to reach Lucknow, for how long do you suppose General Neill could hold out in Cawnpore? Not only Lucknow would be lost but Cawnpore also … and then Allahabad would be attacked! Our presence here in Oudh, as a fighting force, will aid Colonel Inglis’s resistance, but we are too few and too poorly equipped and supplied to bring him relief and, for this undeniable fact, your father cannot be blamed.”
“But he will be,” Harry Havelock retorted bitterly. “That, too, is an undeniable fact, Colonel.” He looked across at his father and, observing that the faded blue eyes were filled with tears, jumped up impulsively to put an arm about his shoulders. “I am thinking only of you, Father,” he said, and added softly, “In the eyes of the world, a good soldier dies with his sword in his hand.”
“I know it,” the general answered. “But I must, nevertheless, agree with Tytler … although with great grief and reluctance. God knows I would gladly lay down my life to prevent another Cawnpore, Harry my dear boy. But from a military viewpoint, the loss of this Force would be a greater calamity, at this time of grave crisis, than the enforced surrender of the Lucknow garrison. Colonel Inglis may yet hold out and I pray that he will.” He rose wearily to his feet. “We retire to Mungalwar, gentlemen. Issue the necessary orders, if you please. Oh, Captain Barrow—a moment, if you please.”
“Sir?” Barrow halted expectantly.
“I received a message from General Neill which will be of interest to Colonel Sheridan of your Volunteers,” Havelock told him. “I should have passed it on before this but my mind”—he smiled apologetically—“has been somewhat over-exercised of late. Inform Sheridan, would you, that four more of the Cawnpore garrison have survived and have been sent in safely by the friendly rajah who gave them shelter, following their escape. I have a note of their names somewhere and—”
“They’re here, sir,” Harry Havelock supplied. He read from the note. “Lieutenants Mowbray Thomson and Henry Delafosse of the 53rd Native Infantry, Gunner Sullivan of the Bengal Artillery, and Private James Murphy of Her Majesty’s 84th.”
“Thank you,” Barrow acknowledged. “Sheridan will be overjoyed, I know.” He saluted and went in search of Alex, who received the news with a heartfelt, “Oh, praise be to God! They were in Eddie Vibart’s boat with me and … where were they found, Lou, do you know?”
Barrow shook his head. “I only know that they were given shelter by a friendly rajah. But they’re in Cawnpore now and you may be seeing them before long.” He sighed and glanced at Charles Palliser, who was standing nearby, consuming the last of his midday meal. “We’re going back to Mungalwar.” Palliser swore disgustedly but the Volunteer’s commander cut him short. “The alternative would be our annihilation, Charlie, in the carefully considered opinion of the general and his staff, with which, having weighed up our chances, I fully concur.” He repeated some of the points which had been made and then said crisply, “Baggage guard, gentlemen, if you will be so good. We shall be moving in half an hour.”
Back, once more, at Mungalwar, General Havelock found much to cause him concern. An urgent note from Neill warned him that a trusted Sikh spy had brought word that a concentration of rebel troops, numbering at least 4,000 with five guns and believed to be commanded by the Nana, had assembled at Bithur and posed a threat to Cawnpore. Neill wrote:
I cannot stand this. They will enter the town and our communications are gone and if I am not supported, I can only hold out here. I can do nothing beyond our entrenchments—all the country between this and Allahabad will be up; our powder and ammunition on the way up by steamer may well fall into the hands of the enemy, and we will be in a bad way.
In a strange reversal of his initially critical attitude, he begged Havelock to cross back to Cawnpore with his entire force and, in his next letter, he reported that the strong, highly trained, and well-equipped Gwalior Contingent had mutinied against their ruler, Sindhia, and were moving toward the Jumna River. The Maharajah had hitherto kept them in check but now, Havelock was only too well aware, they could, depending on circumstances, pose a grave additional threat to Cawnpore, instead of marching on Agra, which had apparently been their initial intention.
