REMINISCENCES

OF THE

GREAT MUTINY

1857-59

INCLUDING THE RELIEF, SIEGE, AND CAPTURE OF
LUCKNOW, AND THE CAMPAIGNS IN
ROHILCUND AND OUDE

BY

WILLIAM FORBES-MITCHELL

LATE SERGEANT, NINETY-THIRD SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1910

First Edition (Extra Crown 8vo) 1893. Reprinted 1894
Reprinted (Crown 8vo) 1895, 1897, 1904
Shilling Edition 1910

To the
OFFICERS, NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, AND MEN,
STILL LIVING,
OF THE OLD NINETY-THIRD SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS,
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
THOSE WHO FELL DURING THE MUTINY
OR HAVE SINCE PASSED AWAY,

These Reminiscences

ARE RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY THEIR OLD SERVANT AND COMRADE,

WILLIAM FORBES-MITCHELL,
LATE NINETY-THIRD SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS.

CALCUTTA, April, 1893.

INTRODUCTION

These Reminiscences are submitted to the public in the trust that they will be welcomed alike by soldier and civilian. They are recorded by one who was himself an actor in the scenes which he describes, and who viewed them from a novel and most unusual position for a military historian—the ranks.

They have been carefully perused by an officer who was present at many of the operations mentioned; and considerable pains have been taken to verify, wherever possible, those incidents of which he was not personally cognisant.

The interest of Mr. Forbes-Mitchell's straightforward and soldierlike story is enhanced by the coincidence that he takes up the pen where Lady Inglis laid it down; and it is hoped that this volume may prove an acceptable continuation of her touching narrative of the Defence of Lucknow, and that, as a record of the Great Mutiny, it may furnish another thrilling chapter in that unparalleled story of suffering and of heroism,—of man's bravery and of woman's devotion.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE NINETY-THIRD—SAIL FOR CHINA—COUNTER-ORDERED TO CALCUTTA—ARRIVAL IN INDIA

I cannot truthfully commence these reminiscences with the usual formula of the amateur author,—namely, by stating that, "At the solicitation of numerous friends, the writer was most reluctantly prevailed upon to publish his narrative," and so forth. No one has asked me to write my recollections of the past and my impressions of the present. I do so to please myself, because on revisiting the scenes of the Mutiny I have been forcibly impressed with the fact that, like so many memories, the soldiers and civilians who were personal actors in the great uprising are fast passing away.

They live but in time-stricken men,
Or else lie hushed in clay.

Having served in the old Ninety-Third Sutherland Highlanders, and been present at every action in which that famous regiment played a part from the actual relief of Lucknow in November, 1857, till the final operations in Oude ended in November, 1859, and being blessed with a fairly retentive memory, I feel tempted to put on record the recollections of the past and the impressions which my recent return to those scenes has revived.

In writing of the past I shall be careful to discriminate between what I saw myself and what I heard from other eye-witnesses, whether native or European; but when I come to write of the present I may be permitted to make my own comparisons and to draw my own conclusions from present facts, or appearances, as they have been impressed on my own observation; and when recording my recollections of the many engagements in which the Ninety-Third played a prominent part, I intend to skip much that has already been recorded in the pages of history, and to more particularly notice the action of individual soldiers, and other incidents which came under my own notice, which have not, to my knowledge, been recorded by any historian or author of the numerous narratives, personal or other, which have been written about the Indian Mutiny.

Before entering on my reminiscences I may mention that I never previously had an opportunity of revisiting any of the scenes of which I am about to write since I had been an actor in them. My readers will, therefore, understand that it was with strongly mixed feelings both of pleasure and sorrow, not unmingled with gratitude, that I started by the mail train from Howrah in August, 1892, to revisit Cawnpore and Lucknow for the first time, with the terrible scenes of 1857 and 1858 still vividly photographed, as it were, on my memory. In the course of thirty-five years of the life of even the most commonplace individual there are events which are never forgotten, and certain friends are lost who are never replaced; so much so, that in thinking of the past one is almost compelled to exclaim with Solomon,—"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! One generation passeth away and another generation cometh," and the end of all is "vanity and vexation of spirit." But to the Christian, in grand contrast to the vanity and changeableness of this life, stands out like a rock the promise of the Eternal, the Self-existing, and Unchangeable Jehovah. "The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms!" But I am no padre, and must not commence to moralise or preach. What tempts me do so is the fact that there is a class of writers in the present day who not only deny the truth of many of the fondly-treasured recollections of the past, which have become part of our national history, but who would, if it were possible, refine even God Himself out of creation, and hand us all over to blind chance for our existence! But enough; I must hark back to 1857.

On the return of the Ninety-Third from the Crimea they were quartered at Dover, and in April, 1857, the regiment was detailed for the expedition forming for China under Lord Elgin, and all time-expired men and those unfit for foreign service were carefully weeded from the service companies and formed into a depôt. The ten service companies were recruited by volunteers from the other Highland regiments, the Forty-Second, Seventy-Second, Seventy-Ninth, and Ninety-Second, each giving a certain number of men, bringing the Ninety-Third up to a corps of eleven hundred bayonets. About the 20th of May the Ninety-Third left Dover for Portsmouth, where we were reviewed by the Queen accompanied by Sir Colin Campbell, who took final leave, as he then supposed, of the regiment which had stood with him in the "thin red line" of Balaklava against the terrible Cossacks. On the first of June three companies, of which mine formed one, embarked in a coasting steamer for Plymouth, where we joined the Belleisle, an old 84-gun two-decker, which had been converted into a transport for the China expedition. This detachment of the Ninety-Third was under the command of Colonel the Honourable Adrian Hope, and the captains of the three companies were Cornwall, Dawson, and Williams—my company being that of Captain E. S. F. G. Dawson, an officer of great experience, who had served in another regiment (I forget which) throughout the Kaffir war in the Cape, and was adjutant of the Ninety-Third at the Alma, where he had his horse shot under him. The remaining seven companies, forming headquarters under Colonel A. S. Leith-Hay, sailed from Portsmouth in the steam transport Mauritius about ten days after us.

Although an old wooden ship, the Belleisle was a very comfortable transport and a good sailer, and we sighted land at the Cape on the morning of the 9th of August, having called and posted mails at both Madeira and the Cape de Verde Islands on our way. We were at anchor in Simon's Bay by the afternoon of the 9th of August, where we heard the first news of the Indian Mutiny, and that our destination was changed from China to Calcutta; and during the 10th and 11th all was bustle, tightening up rigging, taking in fuel for cooking, and refilling our empty water-tanks. On the evening of the 11th, just as it was becoming dark, a steamer came up the bay, and anchored quite close to the Belleisle; and on our bugler's sounding the regimental call, it turned out to be the Mauritius with headquarters on board. Most of our officers immediately went on board, and many of the men in the three companies were gratified by receiving letters from parents, sweethearts, and friends, which had reached Portsmouth after our detachment had left. On the forenoon of the 12th of August the Belleisle left Simon's Bay, making all sail day and night for Calcutta. The ship's crew numbered nine hundred men, being made up of drafts for the ships of the China squadron. Every yard of canvas that the masts or spars could carry was crowded on day and night; and we reached the pilot station at the Sandheads on the 19th of September, thirty-eight days from the Cape, where we learned that the Mauritius, with our headquarters, had just proceeded up the river.

Early on the 20th, the anniversary of the Alma, we got tug steamers and proceeded up the Hooghly, anchoring off the steps at Prinsep's ghât[1] on the afternoon of the 21st of September. Our progress up the river was all excitement. We had two tug steamers, the Belleisle being considered too large for a single tug of the horsepower of those days; and the pilot and tug commanders all sent bundles of the latest Calcutta papers on board, from which we learned the first news of the sieges of Delhi and Lucknow, of the horrible massacre at Cawnpore, and of the gallant advance of the small force under Generals Havelock, Neill, and Outram for the relief of Lucknow. When passing Garden Reach, every balcony, verandah, and housetop was crowded with ladies and gentlemen waving their handkerchiefs and cheering us, all our men being in full Highland dress and the pipers playing on the poop. In passing the present No. 46 Garden Reach the flood-tide was still running up too strong for the Belleisle to come into harbour, and we anchored for about an hour just opposite No. 46. The house and steps of the ghât were crowded with ladies and gentlemen cheering us; and one of my comrades, a young man named Frank Henderson, said to me, "Forbes Mitchell, how would you like to be owner of a palace like that?" when I, on the spur of the moment, without any thought, replied, "I'll be master of that house and garden yet before I leave India." Poor Henderson replied: "I firmly believe you will, if you make up your mind for it; but as for myself, I feel that I shall either die or be killed in this war. I am convinced I shall never see the end of it. I have dreamed of my dead father every night since we sighted the pilot-brig, and I know my days are numbered. But as for you,—I have also dreamed of you, and I am sure you will go safely through the war, and live for many years, and become a prosperous man in India. Mark my words; I am convinced of it." We had a Church of England chaplain on the Belleisle, and service every morning, and Henderson and myself, with many others, formed part of the chaplain's Sunday and Wednesday evening prayer-meeting class. "Since ever we sighted the pilot-brig," Henderson went on to say, "and my dead father has commenced to appear to me in my dreams, I have felt every day at morning prayers that the words, 'That we may return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the land, with the fruits of our labours, and with a thankful remembrance of Thy mercies, to praise and glorify Thy holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord,' had no reference to me, and I cannot join in them. But when the chaplain read the prayers this morning he looked straight at you when he pronounced that part of the prayer, and I felt that the blessing prayed for rests on you. Mark my words, and remember them when I am dead and buried." Strange to say, on the 16th of November Henderson was severely wounded at the taking of the Shâh Nujeef, died in the retreat from Lucknow on the evening of the 20th of November, and was buried on the banks of the Ganges, just opposite the bridge of boats at Cawnpore. The Rev. Mr. Henderson of St. Andrew's Church, Calcutta, who had accompanied the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders to Lucknow, attended as chaplain to our wounded after we relieved the Residency, and being of the same name, he took a particular interest in poor Henderson. However, to return to Garden Reach. Stranger still as it may appear, just thirty-two years after, I took possession of the house No. 46, where I have established the Bon Accord Rope Works. But enough of this; I am not writing my autobiography.

The arrival of the Ninety-Third caused quite a sensation in Calcutta, where but few Highland regiments had ever been seen before. To quote the words of an eye-witness writing from Calcutta to friends at home, and published in the Aberdeen Herald, describing a party of the Ninety-Third which was sent ashore to store the heavy baggage which had to be left in Calcutta, he stated:—"On hearing the Ninety-Third in the streets, Scotchmen who had long been exiled from home rose from their desks, rushed out, and stood at the doors of their offices, looking with feelings of pride at their stalwart countrymen, and listening with smiles of pleasure to the sounds of their own northern tongue, long unfamiliar to their ears. Many brought out tankards of cool beer, and invited the men as they passed along to drink, and the Highlanders required but little pressing, for the sun was hot, and, to use their own vernacular, the exercise made them gey an drauthy."

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A landing-place.

CHAPTER II

MARCH UP COUNTRY—FUTTEHPORE—CAWNPORE

By the 25th of September the whole of the Ninety-Third were once more together in Chinsurah, and on the 28th the first company, the grenadiers under Captain Middleton, started by rail for Râneegunge en route for Lucknow, and a company followed daily in regular rotation till the light company left Chinsurah on the 7th of October. From Râneegunge to Benares the old bullock-train was arranged with relays of bullocks from eight to ten miles apart, according to the nature of the road, and six men were told off to each cart to ride and march by relief. Thus we proceeded, making an average advance of from twenty-five to thirty miles daily, halting every day about ten o'clock for cooking, resuming our march about four o'clock, and so on through the night for coolness; the bullocks did not average more than two and a half miles per hour, and there was always considerable delay at the different stations, changing teams. In this way my company reached Benares on the 17th of October. From Benares we proceeded by detachments of two or three companies to Allahabad; the country between Benares and Allahabad, being overrun by different bands of mutineers, was too dangerous for small detachments of one company. My company reached Allahabad on the 19th of October. There we were supplied with the usual Indian field equipment of tents, etc. By this time the railway had been pushed on in the direction of Cawnpore to a place called Lohunga, about forty-eight miles from Allahabad, but no stations were built. On the 22nd of October my company, with three others, left Allahabad, packed into open trucks or waggons used by the railway contractors for the construction of the line. From Lohunga we commenced our daily marches on foot, with our tents on elephants, en route for Cawnpore.

By this time a considerable force had assembled at Allahabad, consisting of artillery from the Cape, Peel's Naval Brigade, detachments of the Fifth Fusiliers, the Fifty-Third, and Ninetieth Light Infantry. But the only complete regiment was the Ninety-Third Highlanders, over a thousand men, in splendid condition, armed with the Enfield rifle, and, what was of more importance, well drilled to the use of it.

After leaving Lohunga, the first place of note which we reached was Futtehpore, seventy-two miles from Allahabad. At Futtehpore I met some native Christians whom I had first seen in Allahabad, and who were, or had been, connected with mission work, and could speak English. They had returned from Allahabad to look after property which they had been obliged to abandon when they fled from Futtehpore on the outbreak of the Mutiny. These men all knew Dr. Duff, or had heard of him, and were most anxious to talk to Dr. Duff's countrymen, as they called the Highlanders. From one of them I heard of the brave defence made by a solitary Englishman who refused to leave his post, and as I have never seen this alluded to in any of the histories of the Mutiny, I shall relate it.

When the insurrection broke out, Mr. Robert Tucker was the judge of Futtehpore, and like his namesake of Salvation Army fame, he combined the missionary with the civil-servant, and used to preach to the natives, who listened to him with seeming respect, but with concealed hatred in their hearts. One of the most regular attendants at these Christian meetings in the judge's house was a Mahommedan named Hikmut Oollah Khân, the native head of the police in Futtehpore, and Mr. Tucker had unbounded confidence in the friendship of this man and in the loyalty of the police. On the first certain signs of disturbance in the station Mr. Tucker despatched all the Christians, native and European, to Allahabad, but refused to move himself. My informant told me that he had stayed with the brave judge till the last, and had made his escape to Allahabad after Mr. Tucker was killed; but I had no means of testing the truth of that statement. He further stated that Mr. Tucker had sent away all the Christians to Allahabad during the night, and next day about noon he sent for Hikmut Oollah Khân, who had neglected to make his usual morning report, with an intimation that the judge wished to see him and his loyal police to make arrangements for the protection of the Treasury and other Government property. The "loyal and friendly" Hikmut Oollah Khân sent back a reply that it was then too hot for him to come out, and that the judge sâhib need not trouble himself about the Treasury. Considering that the Government of the English was at an end, the police would take care of the Treasury for the Bâdshâh of Delhi, to whom it rightly belonged, and till the cool of the evening the judge sâhib might repeat his Kaffir prayers, when the "loyal and friendly" Hikmut Oollah Khân, with a detachment of his loyal police, would come and give his Kaffir soul a quick despatch to Jehunnum. Such was the loyalty of Mr. Tucker's trusted and pampered friend!

The message of Hikmut Oollah Khân opened the eyes of the too confiding judge, but he did not flinch from his duty. Mr. Tucker had been a mighty hunter in his day, and possessed a good assortment of offensive and defensive arms, such as rifles, fowling-pieces, and hog-spears. He carefully arranged his ammunition and loaded every rifle and fowling-piece which he had, strongly barricaded the doors and windows of his house, and then sat quietly down to read his Bible. At sunset he saw a large body of the police, with the green banner of Islâm and Hikmut Oollah Khân at their head, entering his compound. They advanced, and called on Mr. Tucker to surrender in the name of the Bâdshâh of Delhi, and if he wished his life to be spared, he could have it on condition that he accepted the religion of Mahommed. This he resolutely refused to do, and tried to reason with the police, to which they replied by a volley. Mr. Tucker returned the fire, and before the doors of his house could be forced he had killed sixteen and wounded many more, when he fell pierced by both spears and bullets. So died the brave and God-fearing Robert Tucker, the glory of the Bengal Civil Service, and thus ended the defence of Futtehpore by one solitary Englishman against hundreds of rebels.

When the detachment of which my company formed part, marched through Futtehpore, it was rumoured that the Banda and Dinapore mutineers, joined by large bodies of budmâshes,[2] numbering over ten thousand men, with three batteries of regular artillery, mustering eighteen guns, had crossed the Jumna, and were threatening our communications with Allahabad. Owing to this report, No. 2, or Captain Cornwallis's company of the Ninety-Third, was left in the fort at Futtehpore to guard provisions, etc., as that post had been greatly strengthened by a party of sappers and was formed into a depôt for commissariat stores and ammunition, which were being pushed on by every available mode of conveyance from Allahabad. We left Futtehpore on the 25th of October, and arrived at Cawnpore on the morning of the 27th, having marched the forty-six miles in two days.

When we reached Cawnpore we found everything quiet, and Brigadier Wilson, of the Sixty-Fourth Regiment, in command. Wheeler's immortal entrenchment was deserted, but a much stronger one had lately been built, or rather was still under construction on the right (the Cawnpore) bank of the Ganges, to protect the bridge of boats crossing into Oude. This place was constructed of strong and well-planned earthworks, and every available coolie in Cawnpore was at work, from daylight till dark, strengthening the place. Bastions and ramparts were being constructed of every conceivable material, besides the usual gabions and fascines. Bales of cotton were built into the ramparts, bags of every size and shape, soldiers' knapsacks, etc., were filled with earth; in brief, everything that could possibly hold a few spadefuls of earth, and could thereby assist in raising a defensive breast-work, had been appropriated for building the parapet-walls, and a ditch of considerable depth and width was being excavated. On my recent visit to Cawnpore I looked for this fort in vain. Eventually I learned from Colonel Baddeley that it was some time ago dismantled and converted into the Government Harness and Saddlery Factory, the ramparts having been levelled and the ditch filled in with earth.

The day before we reached Cawnpore, a strong column from Delhi had arrived under command of Sir Hope Grant, and was encamped on the plain near the spot where the railway station now stands. The detachment of the Ninety-Third did not pitch tents, but was accommodated in some buildings, on which the roofs were still left, near General Wheeler's entrenchment. My company occupied the dâk bungalow, which, on my revisit to Cawnpore, appeared to me to have given place to the present Victoria Hotel.

After a few hours' rest, we were allowed to go out in parties of ten or twelve to visit the horrid scene of the recent treachery and massacre. The first place my party reached was General Wheeler's so-called entrenchment, the ramparts of which at the highest places did not exceed four feet, and were so thin that at the top they could never have been bullet-proof! The entrenchment and the barracks inside of it were complete ruins, and the only wonder about it was how the small force could have held out so long. In the rooms of the building were still lying strewn about the remains of articles of women's and children's clothing, broken toys, torn pictures, books, pieces of music, etc. Among the books, I picked up a New Testament in Gaelic, but without any name on it. All the blank leaves had been torn out, and at the time I formed the opinion that they had been used for gun-waddings, because, close beside the Testament, there was a broken single-barrelled duck gun, which had evidently been smashed by a 9-pounder shot lying near. I annexed the Testament as a relic, and still have it. The Psalms and Paraphrases in Gaelic verses are complete, but the first chapter of Matthew and up to the middle of the seventh verse of the second chapter are wanting. The Testament must have belonged to some Scotch Highlander in the garrison. I have more than once thought of sending it home to the Highland Society as a relic of the Mutiny.

From the entrenchment we went to the Suttee Chowrah ghât, where the doomed garrison were permitted to embark in the boats in which they were murdered, and traces of the treachery were still very plain, many skeletons, etc., lying about unburied among the bushes.

We then went to see the slaughter-house in which the unfortunate women and children had been barbarously murdered, and the well into which their mangled bodies were afterwards flung. Our guide was a native of the ordinary camp-follower class, who could speak intelligible barrack-room English. He told us that he had been born in a battery of European artillery, in which his forefathers had been shoeblacks for unknown generations, and his name, he stated, was "Peshawarie," because he had been born in Peshawur, when the English occupied it during the first advance to Caubul. His apparent age coincided with this statement. He claimed to have been in Sir Hugh Wheeler's entrenchment with the artillery all the time of the siege, and to have had a narrow escape of his life at the last. He told us a story which I have never seen mentioned elsewhere, that the Nânâ Sâhib, through a spy, tried to bribe the commissariat bakers who had remained with the English to put arsenic into the bread, which they refused to do, and that after the massacre of the English at the ghât the Nânâ had these bakers taken and put alive into their own ovens, and there cooked and thrown to the pigs. These bakers were Mahommedans. Of course, I had no means of testing the truth of this statement.[3] Our guide showed no desire to minimise the horrors of the massacre and the murders to which he said he had been an eye-witness. However, from the traces, still too apparent, the bare facts, without exaggeration, must have been horrible enough. But with reference to the women and children, from the cross-questions I put to our guide, I then formed the opinion, which I have never since altered, that most of the European women had been most barbarously murdered, but not dishonoured, with the exception of a few of the young and good-looking ones, who, our guide stated, were forcibly carried off to become Mahommedans. But I need not dwell on these points. These are the opinions I formed in October, 1857, three months after the massacre, and nothing which I have since learnt during my thirty-five years' residence in India has led me to alter them.

Most of the men of my company visited the slaughter-house and well, and what we there saw was enough to fill our hearts with feelings which I need not here dwell on; it was long before those feelings could be controlled. On the date of my visit a great part of the house had not been cleaned out; the floors of the rooms were still covered with congealed blood, littered with trampled, torn dresses of women and children, shoes, slippers, and locks of long hair, many of which had evidently been severed from the living scalps by sword-cuts. But among the traces of barbarous torture and cruelty which excited horror and a desire for revenge, one stood out prominently beyond all others. It was an iron hook fixed into the wall of one of the rooms in the house, about six feet from the floor. I could not possibly say for what purpose this hook had originally been fixed in the wall. I examined it carefully, and it appeared to have been an old fixture, which had been seized on as a diabolic and convenient instrument of torture by the inhuman wretches engaged in murdering the women and children. This hook was covered with dried blood, and from the marks on the whitewashed wall, it was evident that a little child had been hung on to it by the neck with its face to the wall, where the poor thing must have struggled for long, perhaps in the sight of its helpless mother, because the wall all round the hook on a level with it was covered with the hand-prints, and below the hook with the foot-prints, in blood, of a little child.

At the time of my visit the well was only about half-filled in, and the bodies of the victims only partially covered with earth. A gallows, with three or four ropes ready attached, stood facing the slaughter-house, half-way between it and the well; and during my stay three wretches were hanged, after having been flogged, and each made to clean about a square foot of the blood from the floor of the house. Our guide told us that these men had only been captured the day before, tried that morning, and found guilty as having assisted at the massacre.

During our visit a party of officers came to the slaughter-house, among whom was Dr. Munro, Surgeon of the Ninety-Third, now Surgeon-General Sir William Munro. When I saw him he was examining the hook covered with dried blood and the hand and foot-prints of the child on the wall, with the tears streaming down his cheeks. He was a most kind-hearted man, and I remember, when he came out of the house, that he cast a look of pity on the three wretches about to be hanged, and I overheard him say to another officer who was with him: "This is horrible and unchristian to look at; but I do hope those are the same wretches who tortured the little child on the hook inside that room." At this time there was no writing either in pencil or charcoal on the walls of the slaughter-house. I am positive on this point, because I looked for any writing. There was writing on the walls of the barracks inside General Wheeler's entrenchment, but not on the walls of the slaughter-house, though they were much splashed with blood and slashed with sword-cuts, where blows aimed at the victims had evidently been dodged and the swords had struck the walls. Such marks were most numerous in the corners of the rooms. The number of victims butchered in the house, counted and buried in the well by General Havelock's force, was one hundred and eighteen women and ninety-two children.

Up to the date of my visit, a brigade-order, issued by Brigadier-General J. G. S. Neill, First Madras Fusiliers, was still in force. This order bears date the 25th of July, 1857. I have not now an exact copy of it, but its purport was to this effect:—That, after trial and condemnation, all prisoners found guilty of having taken part in the murder of the European women and children, were to be taken into the slaughter-house by Major Brace's méhter[4] police, and there made to crouch down, and with their mouths lick clean a square foot of the blood-soaked floor before being taken to the gallows and hanged. This order was carried out in my presence as regards the three wretches who were hanged that morning. The dried blood on the floor was first moistened with water, and the lash of the warder was applied till the wretches kneeled down and cleaned their square foot of flooring. This order remained in force till the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell in Cawnpore on the 3rd of November, 1857, when he promptly put a stop to it as unworthy of the English name and a Christian Government. General Neill has been much blamed for this order; but in condemning the action we must not overlook the provocation. The general saw more of the horrors of Cawnpore than I did; but what I saw, and the stories which were told by natives who claimed to have been eye-witnesses of the horrible scenes which they described, were enough to make the words mercy and pardon appear a mockery; and in passing judgment on him we must not forget the proclamations of the Nânâ Sâhib. These have often been published, and I will only give one extract bearing on the murder of the women and children. The extract is as follows, and was part of a proclamation placarded all over Cawnpore: "To extinguish a fire and leave a spark, to kill a snake and preserve its young, is not the wisdom of men of sense."

However, let General Neill speak for himself. The following is a copy of one of his own letters, taken from Colonel White's Reminiscences. On page 135 he writes: "The Well and Slaughter-house, Cawnpore.—My object was to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly, and barbarous deed, and to strike terror into the rebels. The first I caught was a subadar or native officer, a high-caste Brahmin, who tried to resist my order of the 25th of July 1857, to clean the very blood which he had helped to shed; but I made the provost-marshall do his duty, and a few lashes compelled the miscreant to accomplish his work. When done he was taken out and immediately hanged, and buried in a ditch by the roadside. No one who has witnessed the scenes of murder, mutilation, and massacre can ever listen to the word 'mercy' as applicable to these fiends."

As already said, before condemning General Neill's order we must give due weight to the terrible provocation, the horrible scenes he saw, and the still more horrible stories he heard related by natives who either had or pretended to have been eye-witnesses of the facts they described. Even after the lapse of thirty-five years such horrors cannot be calmly contemplated; they can only be hinted at here. Such stories were common in camp, and believed not only by the soldiers in the ranks, but by officers of position; and in judging General Neill's order we must give due weight to the passionate nature of the man, and recollect that General Havelock, his senior, must have approved of the order, or he would have cancelled it.

But enough of massacre and revenge for the present; I shall return to General Neill's order when I describe my revisit to Cawnpore. In the meantime I should much like to know whether the late Major A. H. S. Neill, who commanded the Central India Horse, and was shot on parade by Sowar Mazar Ali, at Augur, Central India, on the 14th of March, 1887, was a son of General Neill of Mutiny fame. Mazar Ali was sentenced to death by Sir Lepel Griffin, as Governor-General's agent; but I did not see a full account of the trial, and I ask for the above information to corroborate a statement made to me, on my late visit to the scenes of the Mutiny, by a native who admitted that he had been an armourer in the rebel force at Cawnpore, but had joined the English after the defeat of the Gwalior Contingent in December, 1857.[5]

General Hope Grant's brigade and part of the Ninety-Third Highlanders crossed the bridge of boats at Cawnpore, and entered Oude on the 30th of October, with a convoy of provisions and ammunition en route to Lucknow. My company, with three others, remained in Cawnpore three days longer, and crossed into Oude on the 2nd of November, encamping a short distance from the bridge of boats.

On the morning of the 3rd a salute was fired from the mud fort on the Cawnpore side, from which we learned, to the great delight of the Ninety-Third, that Sir Colin Campbell had come up from Calcutta. Shortly after the salute some of our officers joined us from the Cawnpore side, and gave us the news, which had been brought by the Commander-in-Chief, that a few days before three companies of the Fifty-Third and Captain Cornwallis's company, No. 2, of the Ninety-Third, which had been left at Futtehpore, with part of the Naval Brigade under Captain William Peel, had formed a force of about five hundred men under the command of Colonel Powell of the Fifty-Third, marched out from Futtehpore to a place called Khujwah, and attacked and beaten the Banda and Dinapore mutineers, numbering over ten thousand, who had been threatening our communications with Allahabad. The victory for some time had been doubtful, as the mutineers were a well-equipped force, strongly posted and numbering more than twenty to one of the attacking force, possessing moreover, three well-drilled batteries of artillery, comprising eighteen guns. Colonel Powell was killed early in the action, and the command then devolved on Captain Peel of the Naval Brigade. Although hard pressed at first, the force eventually gained a complete and glorious victory, totally routing the rebels, capturing most of their guns, and driving the remnant of them across the Jumna, whence they had come. The company of the Ninety-Third lost heavily, having one officer wounded and sixteen men killed or wounded. The officer, Lieutenant Cunyngham (now Sir R. K. A. Dick-Cunyngham of Prestonfield, Edinburgh), was reported to have lost a leg, which caused general sorrow and regret throughout the regiment, as he was a most promising young officer and very popular with the men. During the day when more correct and fuller reports came in, we were all very glad to hear that, although severely wounded, the lieutenant had not lost a limb, and that the surgeons considered they would not only be able to save his leg, but that he might be fit to return to duty in a few months, which he eventually did, and was present at the siege of Lucknow.

During the afternoon of the 3rd of November more stores of provisions and ammunition crossed the river with some of Peel's 24-pounder guns, and on the morning of the 4th, long before daylight, we were on the march for Lucknow, under command of Colonel Leith-Hay, leaving Cawnpore and its horrors behind us, but neither forgotten nor disregarded. Every man in the regiment was determined to risk his life to save the women and children in the Residency of Lucknow from a similar fate. None were inclined to pay any heed to the French maxim that les représailles sont toujours inutiles, nor inclined to ponder and moralise on the lesson and warning given by the horrible catastrophe which had overtaken our people at Cawnpore. Many too were inclined to blame the Commander-in-Chief for having cancelled the brigade order of General Neill.

Before concluding this chapter I wish my readers to note that I merely describe facts as they appeared to me in 1857. Nothing is further from my intention than to revive the old race-hatreds. The real causes of the Mutiny and its horrors have yet to be written. I merely mention facts to show the incentive the troops had to make light of forced marches, under short rations and a double load of ammunition for want of other means of carriage, with an overwhelming enemy in front, and no means whatever of obtaining reinforcements or recovering from a defeat.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Bad characters, scoundrels.

[3] This story was current in Upper India at the time.

[4] Sweeper, scavenger; one of the lowest castes.

[5] See Appendix A.

CHAPTER III

START FOR LUCKNOW—SIR COLIN—THE DILKOOSHÁ—MARTINIÈRE—SECUNDRABÂGH

When proceeding on our march to Lucknow it was clear as noonday to the meanest capacity that we were now in an enemy's country. None of the villages along the route were inhabited, the only visible signs of life about them being a few mangy pariah dogs. The people had all fled on the first advance of Havelock, and had not returned; and it needed no great powers of observation to fully understand that the whole population of Oude was against us.

The deserted villages gave the country a miserable appearance. Not only were they forsaken, but we found, on reaching our first halting-ground, that the whole of the small bazaar of camp-followers, consisting of goat-herds, bread, milk, and butter-sellers, etc., which had accompanied us from Allahabad, had returned to Cawnpore, none daring to accompany the force into Oude. This was most disappointing for young soldiers with good appetites and sound digestions, who depended on bazaar chupatties,[6] with a chittack[7] of butter and a pint of goat's milk at the end of the march, to eke out the scanty commissariat allowance of rations. What made the privation the more keenly felt, was the custom of serving out at one time three days' biscuits, supposed to run four to the pound, but which, I fear, were often short weight. Speaking for myself, I did not control my appetite, but commenced to eat from my haversack on the march, the whole of my three days' biscuits usually disappearing before we reached the first halting-ground, and believe me, I ran no danger of a fit of indigestion. To demolish twelve ordinary-sized ship's biscuits, during a march of twenty to twenty-five miles, was no great tax on a young and healthy stomach.

I may here remark that my experience is that, after a forced march, it would be far more beneficial to the men if the general commanding were to serve out an extra ration of tea or coffee with a pound of bread or biscuit instead of extra grog. The latter was often issued during the forced marches of the Mutiny, but never an extra ration of food; and my experience is that a pint of good tea is far more refreshing than a dram of rum. Let me also note here most emphatically that regimental canteens and the fixed ration of rum in the field are the bane of the army. At the same time I am no teetotaller. In addition to the bazaar people, our cooks and dhobies[8] had also deserted. This was not such a serious matter for the Ninety-Third just fresh from the Crimea, as it was for the old Indian regiments. Men for cooking were at once told off for each of our tents; but the cooking-utensils had also gone with the cooks, or not come on; the rear-guard had seen nothing of them. There were, however, large copper water-cans attached to each tent, and these were soon brought into use for cooking, and plenty of earthen pots were to be found in the deserted houses of the villagers. Highlanders, and especially Highlanders who are old campaigners, are not lacking in resources where the preparation of food is concerned.

I will relate a rather amusing incident which happened to the men of the colour-sergeant's tent of my company,—Colour-Sergeant David Morton, a Fifeshire man, an old soldier of close on twenty years' service, one of the old "unlimited service" men, whose regimental number was 1100, if I remember rightly. A soldier's approximate service, I may here state, can almost always be told from his regimental number, as each man on enlisting takes the next consecutive number in the regiment, and as these numbers often range up to 8000 or even 10,000 before commencing again at No. 1, it is obvious that the earlier numbers indicate the oldest soldiers. The men in the Ninety-Third with numbers between 1000 and 2000 had been with the regiment in Canada before the Crimean war, so David Morton, it will be seen, was an old soldier; but he had never seen tobacco growing in the field, and in the search for fuel to cook a dinner, he had come across a small plot of luxuriant tobacco leaf. He came back with an armful of it for Duncan Mackenzie, who was the improvised cook for the men of his tent, and told us all that he had secured a rare treat for our soup, having fallen on a plot of "real Scotch curly kail!" The men were all hungry, and the tobacco leaves were soon chopped fine, washed, and put into the soup. But when that soup was cooked it was a "caution." I was the only non-smoker in the squad, and was the first to detect that instead of "real Scotch curly kail" we had got "death in the pot!" As before remarked we were all hungry, having marched over twenty miles since we had last tasted food. Although noticing that there was something wrong about the soup and the "curly kail," I had swallowed enough to act as a powerful emetic before I was aware of the full extent of the bitter taste. At first we feared it was a deadly poison, and so we were all much relieved when the bheestie, who picked up some of the rejected stalks, assured us that it was only green tobacco which had been cooked in the soup.

The desertion of our camp-followers was significant. An army in India is followed by another army whose general or commander-in-chief is the bazaar kotwal.[9] These people carry all their household goods and families with them, their only houses being their little tents. The elder men, at the time of which I write, could all talk of the victories of Lords Lake and Combermere, and the Caubul war of 1840-42, and the younger hands could tell us of the victories of Lords Gough and Hardinge in the Punjâb. The younger generations took up the handicrafts of their fathers, as barbers, cobblers, cooks, shoeblacks, and so forth, a motley hive bred in camps but unwarlike, always in the rear of the army. Most of these camp-followers were low-caste Hindoos, very few of them were Mahommedans, except the bheesties. I may remark that the bheesties and the dooly-bearers (the latter were under the hospital guard) were the only camp-followers who did not desert us when we crossed into Oude.[10] The natives fully believed that our column was doomed to extermination; there is no doubt that they knew of the powerful force collecting in our rear, consisting of the Gwalior Contingent, which had never yet been beaten and was supposed to be invincible; also of the Central India mutineers who were gathering for a fresh attack on Cawnpore under the leadership of Nânâ Sâhib, Kooer Sing, Tântia Topee, and other commanders. But we learned all this afterwards, when this army retook Cawnpore in our rear, which story I will relate in its proper place. For the present, we must resume our advance into Oude.

Every hour's march brought us three miles nearer Lucknow, and before we made our first halt, we could distinctly hear the guns of the enemy bombarding the Residency. Foot-sore and tired as they were, the report of each salvo made the men step out with a firmer tread and a more determined resolve to overcome all difficulties, and to carry relief to the beleaguered garrison and the helpless women and children. I may mention that the cowardly treachery of the enemy, and their barbarous murders of women and children, had converted the war of the Mutiny into a guerre à la mort,—a war of the most cruel and exterminating form, in which no quarter was given on either side. Up to the final relief of Lucknow and the second capture of Cawnpore, and the total rout of the Gwalior Contingent on the 6th of December, 1857, it would have been impossible for the Europeans to have guarded their prisoners, and, for that reason, it was obvious that prisoners were not to be taken; while on the part of the rebels, wherever they met a Christian or a white man, he was at once slain without pity or remorse, and natives who attempted to assist or conceal a distressed European did so at the risk of their own lives and property. It was both horrible and demoralising for the army to be engaged in such a war. Looking back to those days, over my long experience of thirty-five years in India, I must admit that, with few exceptions, the European soldiers went through the terrible scenes of the Mutiny with great moderation, especially where women and children, or even unarmed men, came into their power.

On the 10th of November the total force that could be collected for the final relief of Lucknow was encamped on the plain about five miles in front of the Alumbâgh. The total strength was under five thousand of all arms, and the only really complete regiment was the Ninety-Third Highlanders. By this time the whole regiment, consisting of ten companies, had reached the front, numbering over a thousand men in the prime of manhood, about seven hundred of them having the Crimean medals on their breasts. By the afternoon of the 11th of November, the whole force had been told off into brigades. The Fifty-Third Shropshire Light Infantry, the Ninety-Third, and the Fourth Punjâb Infantry, just come down from Delhi with Sir Hope Grant, formed the fourth brigade, under Colonel the Hon. Adrian Hope of the Ninety-Third as brigadier. If I am not mistaken the whole of the Fifty-Third regiment were not present. I think there were only six or seven companies, and there was no field-officer, Captain Walton, late commandant of the Calcutta Volunteers, being the senior captain present.[11] Under these circumstances Colonel Gordon, of ours, was temporarily put in command of the Fifty-Third. The whole force was formed up in a line of columns on the afternoon of the 11th for the inspection of the Commander-in-Chief. The Ninety-Third formed the extreme left of the line in quarter-distance column, in full Highland costume, with feather bonnets and dark waving plumes, a solid mass of brawny-limbed men. I have never seen a more magnificent regiment than the Ninety-Third looked that day, and I was, and still am, proud to have formed one of its units.

The old Chief rode along the line, commencing from the right, halting and addressing a short speech to each corps as he came along. The eyes of the Ninety-Third were eagerly turned towards Sir Colin and his staff as he advanced, the men remarking among themselves that none of the other corps had given him a single cheer, but had taken whatever he had said to them in solemn silence. At last he approached us; we were called to attention, and formed close column, so that every man might hear what was said. When Sir Colin rode up, he appeared to have a worn and haggard expression on his face, but he was received with such a cheer, or rather shout of welcome, as made the echoes ring from the Alumbâgh and the surrounding woods. His wrinkled brow at once became smooth, and his wearied-looking features broke into a smile, as he acknowledged the cheer by a hearty salute, and addressed us almost exactly as follows. I stood near him and heard every word. "Ninety-Third! when I took leave of you in Portsmouth, I never thought I should see you again. I expected the bugle, or maybe the bagpipes, to sound a call for me to go somewhere else long before you would be likely to return to our dearly-loved home. But another commander has decreed it otherwise, and here I am prepared to lead you through another campaign. And I must tell you, my lads, there is work of difficulty and danger before us,—harder work and greater dangers than any we encountered in the Crimea. But I trust to you to overcome the difficulties and to brave the dangers. The eyes of the people at home,—I may say the eyes of Europe and of the whole of Christendom are upon us, and we must relieve our countrymen, women, and children, now shut up in the Residency of Lucknow. The lives at stake are not merely those of soldiers, who might well be expected to cut themselves out, or to die sword in hand. We have to rescue helpless women and children from a fate worse than death. When you meet the enemy, you must remember that he is well armed and well provided with ammunition, and that he can play at long bowls as well as you can, especially from behind loopholed walls. So when we make an attack you must come to close quarters as quickly as possible; keep well together and use the bayonet. Remember that the cowardly sepoys, who are eager to murder women and children, cannot look a European soldier in the face when it is accompanied with cold steel. Ninety-Third! you are my own lads, I rely on you to do the work!" A voice from the ranks called out: "Ay, ay, Sir Colin, ye ken us and we ken you; we'll bring the women and children out o' Lucknow or die wi' you in the attempt!" and the whole regiment burst into another ringing cheer, which was taken up by the whole line.

I may here mention the service rendered to the relieving force by Mr. Kavanagh, an enterprise of consummate daring which won for him a well-deserved Victoria Cross; only those who know the state of Lucknow at the time can fully appreciate the perils he encountered, or the value of the service he rendered. My own company, made up to one hundred men, with a troop of the Ninth Lancers and a company of the Fourth Punjâb Infantry, formed the advance piquet at which Mr. Kavanagh, who had made his way from the Residency through the heart of the enemy, disguised as a native scout, arrived. I will not give any account of his venturesome march. He has already told his own story, and I need not repeat it. I only allude to the value of the service rendered, and how it was appraised in the force at the time. Oude had only been annexed in 1856, and the Mutiny broke out in May, 1857. There had been no time to complete a survey of Lucknow and its surroundings, and consequently the Commander-in-Chief had no plan of the city, and there was no officer in the force, or, for that matter, no European outside the Residency, who knew the strong positions of the enemy or the intricacies of the streets. When Generals Havelock and Outram forced their way into the Residency, their advance was through miles of intricate and narrow lanes. The sequel is well known. The relieving force got into the Residency, but they had lost so many men in the attempt that they were unable to come out again in charge of the women and children, and so they were themselves besieged. In our force, among the ranks (I don't know what the plans of the Commander-in-Chief were), it was understood that we were to advance on the Residency by the same route as Generals Havelock and Outram had done, and that the streets were all duly prepared for giving us a warm reception. But after "Lucknow" Kavanagh, who thoroughly knew the ground, came out to act as a guide to the relieving force, the Commander-in-Chief was supposed to have altered the plan of his line of advance. Instead of forcing his way through loopholed and narrow lanes, he decided to avoid the city altogether, and advance through the Dilkooshá park and by the right bank of the Goomtee, having thus only six or seven posts to force, instead of running the gauntlet of miles of fortified streets. The strongest positions which we had to attack on this route were the Dilkooshá palace and park, the Martinière college, the Thirty-Second mess-house, the Secundrabâgh, the Shâh Nujeef, and the Moti Munzil. The force in the Residency would thus be able to assist and to distract the enemy by advancing from their side to meet us at the Chutter Munzil and other positions. This was what was believed in the camp to be the intentions of the Commander-in-Chief, and the supposed change of route was attributed to the arrival of Mr. Kavanagh; and whatever history may say, I believe this is the correct statement of the position. It will thus be seen and understood by any one having a plan of Lucknow before him,—and there is no want of plans now—that the services rendered by Mr. Kavanagh were of the greatest value to the country and to the relieving force, and were by no means over-paid. I mention this because on my recent visit to Lucknow I met some gentlemen at the Royal Hotel who appeared to think lightly of Mr. Kavanagh's gallant deed, and that fact has made me, as a soldier of the relieving force, put on record my impressions of the great value of the service he rendered at a most critical juncture in the fortunes of the country.[12]

By the afternoon of the 12th of November the total force under command of Sir Colin Campbell for the final relief of Lucknow numbered only four thousand five hundred and fifty men of all arms and thirty-two guns—the heaviest being 24-pounders—and two 8-inch howitzers, manned by the Naval Brigade under Captain William Peel of glorious memory. I have read some accounts that mentioned 68-pounders, but this is a mistake; the 68-pounders had to be left at Allahabad when we started, for want of cattle to drag them. There are four 68-pounders now in the Residency grounds at Lucknow, which, during my recent visit, the guide pointed out to me as the guns which breached the walls of the Secundrabâgh,[13] and finally relieved the Residency; but this is an error. The 68-pounders did not reach Lucknow till the 2nd of March, 1858. I am positive on this point, because I myself assisted to drag the guns into position in the assault on the Secundrabâgh, and I was on guard on the guns in Allahabad when the 68-pounders had to be sent into the fort for want of bullocks, and I next saw them when they crossed the river at Cawnpore and joined the ordnance park at Oonâo in February, 1858. They were first used on the works in defence of the Martinière, fired from the Dilkooshá park, and were advanced as the out-works were carried till they breached the defences around the Begum's palace on the 11th of March. This is a small matter; I only wish to point out that the four 68-pounders now in the Residency grounds are not the guns which relieved the garrison in November, 1857.

On the 13th of November a strong force, of which the Ninety-Third formed the infantry, was sent to attack the mud fort of Jellâlabâd, lying between the Alumbâgh and the Dilkooshá, on the right of Sir Colin Campbell's advance. As soon as the artillery opened fire on the fort the enemy retired, and the force advanced and covered the engineers until they had completed arrangements for blowing in the main gate and breaching the ramparts so that it would be impossible for Jellâlabâd to be occupied in our rear. This was finished before dark, and the force returned to camp in front of the Alumbâgh, where we rested fully accoutred.

We commenced our advance on the Dilkooshá park and palace by daybreak next morning, the 14th. The fourth brigade, composed of the Fifty-Third, Ninety-Third, and Fourth Punjâb regiments, with a strong force of artillery, reached the walls of the Dilkooshá park as the sun was rising. Here we halted till a breach was made in the wall, sufficiently wide to allow the Ninety-Third to march through in double column of companies and to form line inside on the two centre companies.

While we were halted my company and No. 8, Captain Williams' company, were in a field of beautiful carrots, which the men were pulling up and eating raw. I remember as if it were only yesterday a young lad not turned twenty, Kenneth Mackenzie by name, of No. 8 company, making a remark that these might be the last carrots many of us would eat, and with that he asked the colour-sergeant of the company, who belonged to the same place as himself, to write to his mother should anything happen to him. The colour-sergeant of course promised to do so, telling young Mackenzie not to let such gloomy thoughts enter his mind. Immediately after this the order was passed for the regiment to advance by double column of companies from the centre, and to form line on the two centre companies inside the park. The enclosure swarmed with deer, both black buck and spotted, but there were no signs of the enemy, and a staff-officer of the artillery galloped to the front to reconnoitre. This officer was none other than our present Commander-in-Chief, then Lieutenant Roberts, Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General of Artillery, who had joined our force at Cawnpore, and had been associated with the Ninety-Third in several skirmishes which had taken place in the advance on Alumbâgh. He was at that time familiarly known among us as "Plucky wee Bobs." About half of the regiment had passed through the breach and were forming into line right and left on the two centre companies, when we noticed the staff-officer halt and wheel round to return, signalling for the artillery to advance, and immediately a masked battery of six guns opened fire on us from behind the Dilkooshá palace. The first round shot passed through our column, between the right of No. 7 company and the line, as the company was wheeling into line, but the second shot was better aimed and struck the charger of Lieutenant Roberts just behind the rider, apparently cutting the horse in two, both horse and rider falling in a confused heap amidst the dust where the shot struck after passing through the loins of the horse. Some of the men exclaimed, "Plucky wee Bobs is done for!"[14] The same shot, a 9-pounder, ricochetted at almost a right angle, and in its course struck poor young Kenneth Mackenzie on the side of his head, taking the skull clean off just level with his ears. He fell just in front of me, and I had to step over his body before a single drop of blood had had time to flow. The colour-sergeant of his company turned to me and said, "Poor lad! how can I tell his poor mother. What would she think if she were to see him now! He was her favourite laddie!" There was no leisure for moralising, however; we were completely within the range of the enemy's guns, and the next shot cut down seven or eight of the light company, and old Colonel Leith-Hay was calling out, "Keep steady, men; close up the ranks, and don't waver in face of a battery manned by cowardly Asiatics." The shots were now coming thick, bounding along the hard ground, and MacBean, the adjutant, was behind the line telling the men in an undertone, "Don't mind the colonel; open out and let them [the round-shot] through, keep plenty of room and watch the shot." By this time the staff-officer, whose horse only had been killed under him, had got clear of the carcase, and the Ninety-Third, seeing him on his feet again, gave him a rousing cheer. He was soon in the saddle of a spare horse, and the artillery dashed to the front under his direction, taking the guns of the enemy in flank. The sepoys bolted down the hill for shelter in the Martinière, while our little force took possession of the Dilkooshá palace. The Ninety-Third had lost ten men killed and wounded by the time we had driven the enemy and their guns through the long grass into the entrenchments in front of the Martinière. I may note here that there were very few trees on the Dilkooshá heights at this time, and between the heights and the city there was a bare plain, so that signals could be passed between us and the Residency. A semaphore was erected on the top of the palace as soon as it was taken, and messages, in accordance with a code of signals brought out by Kavanagh, were interchanged with the Residency. The 15th was a Sunday; the force did not advance till the afternoon, as it had been decided to wait for the rear-guard and provisions and the spare ammunition, etc., to close up. About two o'clock Peel's guns, covered by the Ninety-Third, advanced, and we drove the enemy from the Martinière and occupied it, the semaphore being then removed from the Dilkooshá to the Martinière.

The Ninety-Third held the Martinière and the grounds to the left of it, facing the city, till about two A.M. on Monday the 16th of November, when Captain Peel's battery discharged several rockets as a signal to the Residency that we were about to commence our march through the city. We were then formed up and served with some rations, which had been cooked in the rear, each man receiving what was supposed to be three lbs. of beef, boiled in salt so that it would keep, and the usual dozen of commissariat biscuits and a canteenful of tea cooked on the ground. Just before we started I saw Sir Colin drinking his tea, the same kind as that served out to the men, out of a Ninety-Third soldier's canteen. Writing of the relief of Lucknow, Lady Inglis in her lately-published journal states, under date the 18th of November, 1857, two days after the time of which I write: "Sir Colin Campbell is much liked; he is living now exactly as a private soldier, takes his rations and lies down wherever he can to rest. This the men like, and he is a fine soldier. A Commander-in-Chief just now has indeed no enviable position." That is true; the Commander-in-Chief had only a staff-sergeant's tent (when he had a tent), and all his baggage was carried by one camel in a pair of camel trunks, marked "His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief." I suppose this was pour encourager les autres, some of whom required six or seven camels and as many as four bullock-hackeries, if they could have got them, to carry their stuff.

After getting our three days' rations and tea, the Ninety-Third were formed up, and the roll was called to see that none, except those known to be wounded or sick, were missing. Sir Colin again addressed the men, telling us that there was heavy work before us, and that we must hold well together, and as much as possible keep in threes, and that as soon as we stormed a position we were to use the bayonet. The centre man of each group of three was to make the attack, and the other two to come to his assistance with their bayonets right and left. We were not to fire a single bullet after we got inside a position, unless we were certain of hitting our enemy, for fear of wounding our own men. To use the bayonet with effect we were ordered, as I say, to group in threes and mutually assist each other, for by such action we would soon bayonet the enemy down although they might be ten to one; which as a matter of fact they were. It was by strictly following this advice and keeping cool and mutually assisting each other that the bayonet was used with such terrible effect inside the Secundrabâgh. It was exactly as Sir Colin had foretold in his address in front of the Alumbâgh. He knew the sepoys well, that when brought to the point of the bayonet they could not look the Europeans in the face. For all that they fought like devils. In addition to their muskets, all the men in the Secundrabâgh were armed with swords from the King of Oude's magazines, and the native tulwârs were as sharp as razors. I have never seen another fact noticed, that when they had fired their muskets, they hurled them amongst us like javelins, bayonets first, and then drawing their tulwârs, rushed madly on to their destruction, slashing in blind fury with their swords and using them as one sees sticks used in the sham fights on the last night of the Mohurrum.[15] As they rushed on us shouting "Deen! Deen! (The Faith! the Faith!)" they actually threw themselves under the bayonets and slashed at our legs. It was owing to this fact that more than half of our wounded were injured by sword-cuts.

From the Martinière we slowly and silently commenced our advance across the canal, the front of the column being directed by Mr. Kavanagh and his native guide. Just as morning broke we had reached the outskirts of a village on the east side of the Secundrabâgh. Here a halt was made for the heavy guns to be brought to the front, three companies of the Ninety-Third with some more artillery being diverted to the left under command of Colonel Leith-Hay, to attack the old Thirty-Second barracks, a large building in the form of a cross strongly flanked with earthworks. The rest of the force advanced through the village by a narrow lane, from which the enemy was driven by us into the Secundrabâgh.

About the centre of the village another short halt was made. Here we saw a naked wretch, of a strong muscular build, with his head closely shaven except for the tuft on his crown, and his face all streaked in a hideous manner with white and red paint, his body smeared with ashes. He was sitting on a leopard's skin counting a rosary of beads. A young staff-officer, I think it was Captain A. O. Mayne, Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General, was making his way to the front, when a man of my company, named James Wilson, pointed to this painted wretch saying, "I would like to try my bayonet on the hide of that painted scoundrel, who looks a murderer." Captain Mayne replied: "Oh don't touch him; these fellows are harmless Hindoo jogees,[16] and won't hurt us. It is the Mahommedans that are to blame for the horrors of this Mutiny." The words had scarcely been uttered when the painted scoundrel stopped counting the beads, slipped his hand under the leopard skin, and as quick as lightning brought out a short, brass, bell-mouthed blunderbuss and fired the contents of it into Captain Mayne's chest at a distance of only a few feet. His action was as quick as it was unexpected, and Captain Mayne was unable to avoid the shot, or the men to prevent it. Immediately our men were upon the assassin; there was no means of escape for him, and he was quickly bayoneted. Since then I have never seen a painted Hindoo, but I involuntarily raise my hand to knock him down. From that hour I formed the opinion (which I have never had cause to alter since) that the pampered high-caste Hindoo sepoys had far more to do with the Mutiny and the cowardly murders of women and children, than the Mahommedans, although the latter still bear most of the blame.

Immediately after this incident we advanced through the village and came in front of the Secundrabâgh, when a murderous fire was opened on us from the loopholed wall and from the windows and flat roof of a two-storied building in the centre of the garden. I may note that this building has long since been demolished; no trace of it now remains except the small garden-house with the row of pillars where the wounded and dead of the Ninety-Third were collected; the marble flooring has, however, been removed. Having got through the village, our men and the sailors manned the drag-ropes of the heavy guns, and these were run up to within one hundred yards, or even less, of the wall. As soon as the guns opened fire the Infantry Brigade was made to take shelter at the back of a low mud wall behind the guns, the men taking steady aim at every loophole from which we could see the musket-barrels of the enemy protruding. The Commander-in-Chief and his staff were close beside the guns, Sir Colin every now and again turning round when a man was hit, calling out, "Lie down, Ninety-Third, lie down! Every man of you is worth his weight in gold to England to-day!"

The first shots from our guns passed through the wall, piercing it as though it were a piece of cloth, and without knocking the surrounding brickwork away. Accounts differ, but my impression has always been that it was from half to three-quarters of an hour that the guns battered at the walls. During this time the men, both artillery and sailors, working the guns without any cover so close to the enemy's loopholes, were falling fast, over two guns' crews having been disabled or killed before the wall was breached. After holes had been pounded through the wall in many places large blocks of brick-and-mortar commenced to fall out, and then portions of the wall came down bodily, leaving wide gaps. Thereupon a sergeant of the Fifty-Third, who had served under Sir Colin Campbell in the Punjâb, presuming on old acquaintance, called out: "Sir Colin, your Excellency, let the infantry storm; let the two 'Thirds' at them [meaning the Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third], and we'll soon make short work of the murdering villains!" The sergeant who called to Sir Colin was a Welshman, and I recognised him thirty-five years afterwards as old Joe Lee, the present proprietor of the Railway Hotel in Cawnpore. He was always known as Dobbin in his regiment; and Sir Colin, who had a most wonderful memory for names and faces, turning to General Sir William Mansfield who had formerly served in the Fifty-Third, said, "Isn't that Sergeant Dobbin?" General Mansfield replied in the affirmative; and Sir Colin, turning to Lee, said, "Do you think the breach is wide enough, Dobbin?" Lee replied, "Part of us can get through and hold it till the pioneers widen it with their crowbars to allow the rest to get in." The word was then passed to the Fourth Punjâbis to prepare to lead the assault, and after a few more rounds were fired, the charge was ordered. The Punjâbis dashed over the mud wall shouting the war-cry of the Sikhs, "Jai Khâlsa Jee!"[17] led by their two European officers, who were both shot down before they had gone a few yards. This staggered the Sikhs, and they halted. As soon as Sir Colin saw them waver, he turned to Colonel Ewart, who was in command of the seven companies of the Ninety-Third (Colonel Leith-Hay being in command of the assault on the Thirty-Second barracks), and said: "Colonel Ewart, bring on the tartan—let my own lads at them." Before the command could be repeated or the buglers had time to sound the advance, the whole seven companies, like one man, leaped over the wall, with such a yell of pent-up rage as I had never heard before nor since. It was not a cheer, but a concentrated yell of rage and ferocity that made the echoes ring again; and it must have struck terror into the defenders, for they actually ceased firing, and we could see them through the breach rushing from the outside wall to take shelter in the two-storied building in the centre of the garden, the gate and doors of which they firmly barred. Here I must not omit to pay a tribute of respect to the memory of Pipe-Major John M'Leod, who, with seven pipers, the other three being with their companies attacking the barracks, struck up the Highland Charge, called by some The Haughs of Cromdell, and by others On wi' the Tartan—the famous charge of the great Montrose when he led his Highlanders so often to victory. When all was over, and Sir Colin complimented the pipe-major on the way he had played, John said, "I thought the boys would fecht better wi' the national music to cheer them."

The storming of the Secundrabâgh has been so often described that I need not dwell on the general action. Once inside, the Fifty-Third (who got in by a window or small door in the wall to the right of the hole by which we got through) and the Sikhs who followed us, joined the Ninety-Third, and keeping together the bayonet did the work. As I before remarked, I could write pages about the actions of individual men whose names will never be known to history. Although pressed for space, I must notice the behaviour of one or two. But I must leave this to another chapter; the present one has already become too long.

NOTE.

With regard to the incident mentioned on page 40 Captain W. T. Furse, A.D.C. to his Excellency, wrote to me as follows: "Dear Forbes-Mitchell—His Excellency has read your Mutiny Reminiscences with great interest, and thinks they are a very true description of the events of that time. He wishes me, however, to draw your attention to a mistake you have made in stating that 'the horse of Lieutenant Roberts was shot down under him.' But the Chief remembers that though he was in the position which you assign to him at that moment, it was not his horse that was shot, but the horse of a trooper of the squadron commanded by Lieut. J. Watson (now Sir John Watson, V.C., K.C.B.), who happened to be near Lord Roberts at the time."

Now I could not understand this, because I had entered in my note-book that Lieutenant Fred. Roberts, Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General of Artillery, was the first man to enter the Dilkooshá park and ride to the front to reconnoitre, that the enemy opened fire on him at point-blank range from a masked battery of 9-pounder guns, and that his horse was shot under him near the Yellow Bungalow (the name by which we then knew the Dilkooshá palace) on the morning of the 14th of November, 1857. And I was confident that about half-a-dozen men with Captain Dalziel ran out from the light company of the Ninety-Third to go to the assistance of Lieutenant Roberts, when we all saw him get on his feet and remount what we believed was a spare horse. The men of the light company, seeing that their assistance was not required, returned to the line, and directly we saw Lieutenant Roberts in the saddle again, unhurt, the whole regiment, officers and men, gave him a hearty cheer. But here was the Commander-in-Chief, through his aide-de-camp, telling me that I was incorrect! I could not account for it till I obtained an interview with his Excellency, when he explained to me that after he went past the Ninety-Third through the breach in the wall of the Dilkooshá park, Lieutenant Watson sent a trooper after him, and that the trooper was close to him when the battery unmasked and opened fire on them, the guns having been laid for their horses; that the second shot struck the trooper's horse as described by me, the horse and rider falling together amidst the dust knocked up by the other round shot; and that he, as a matter of course, dismounted and assisted the trooper to get from under the dead horse, and as he remounted after performing this humane and dangerous service to the fallen trooper, the Ninety-Third set up their cheer as I described.

Now I must say the true facts of this incident rather add to the bravery of the action. The young lieutenant, who could thus coolly dismount and extricate a trooper from under a dead horse within point-blank range of a well-served battery of 9-pounder guns, was early qualifying for the distinguished position which he has since reached.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Unleavened griddle-cakes.

[7] Rather less than two ounces.

[8] Laundry-men.

[9] The native official in charge of the bazaar; he possesses certain magisterial powers.

[10] The bheesties, or water-carriers, have been noted for bravery and fidelity in every Indian campaign.

[11] Now Colonel Bendyshe Walton, C.I.E.

[12] Kavanagh was a European clerk in one of the newly-instituted Government offices.

[13] Bâgh means a garden, usually surrounded by high walls.

[14] See note at end of chapter.

[15] The great Mussulman carnival.

[16] Religious mendicants.

[17] "Victory to the Khâlsa!"

CHAPTER IV

THE NINETY-THIRD—ANECDOTES OF THE SECUNDRABÂGH—GENERAL EWART—THE SHÂH NUJEEF

In the first chapter of these reminiscences I mentioned that, before leaving Dover, the Ninety-Third obtained a number of volunteers from the other Highland regiments serving in England. Ours was the only Highland regiment told off for the China expedition, and it was currently whispered that Lord Elgin had specially asked for us to form his guard of honour at the court of China after he had administered a due castigation to the Chinese. Whether the report was true or not, the belief did the regiment no harm; it added to the esprit de corps which was already a prominent feeling in the regiment, and enabled the boys to boast to the girls in Portsmouth that they were "a cut above" the other corps of the army. In support of this, the fact is worthy of being put on record that although the regiment was not (as is usually the case) confined to barracks the night before embarking, but were allowed leave till midnight, still, when the time to leave the barracks came, there was not a single man absent nor a prisoner in the guard-room; and General Britain put it in garrison orders that he had never been able to say the same of any other corps during the time he had commanded the Portsmouth garrison. But the Ninety-Third were no ordinary regiment. They were then the most Scotch of all the Highland regiments; in brief, they were a military Highland parish, minister and elders complete. The elders were selected from among the men of all ranks,—two sergeants, two corporals, and two privates; and I believe it was the only regiment in the army which had a regular service of Communion plate; and in time of peace the Holy Communion, according to the Church of Scotland, was administered by the regimental chaplain twice a year. I hope the young second battalion of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders are like the old Ninety-Third in this respect. At the same time, I don't ask them ever to pray for the men who took away the numbers from our regiments; may their beards be defiled, is the only feeling I have for them. By taking away the old numbers a great deal was lost, and as far as I can see nothing has been gained except confusion and the utter effacement of all the old traditions of the army. The old numbers could easily have been retained along with the territorial designations. I hope at all events that the present regiment will never forget they are the descendants of the old Ninety-Third, the "Thin Red Line" which Sir Colin Campbell disdained to form four deep to meet the Russian cavalry on the morning of the memorable 25th of October, 1854:—"Steady, Ninety-Third, keep steady! Damn all that eagerness!" were Sir Colin's memorable words. But I am describing the relief of Lucknow, not the "Thin Red Line" of Balaclava.

Among the volunteers who came from the Seventy-Second was a man named James Wallace. He and six others from the same regiment joined my company. Wallace was not his real name, but he never took any one into his confidence, nor was he ever known to have any correspondence. He neither wrote nor received any letters, and he was usually so taciturn in his manner that he was known in the company as the Quaker, a name which had followed him from the Seventy-Second. He had evidently received a superior education, for if asked for any information by a more ignorant comrade, he would at once give it; or questioned as to the translation of a Latin or French quotation in a book, he would give it without the least hesitation. I have often seen him on the voyage out walking up and down the deck of the Belleisle during the watches of the night, repeating the famous poem of Lamartine, Le Chien du Solitaire, commencing:

Hélas! rentrer tout seul dans sa maison déserte
Sans voir à votre approche une fenêtre ouverte.

Taking him all in all Quaker Wallace was a strange enigma which no one could solve. When pressed to take promotion, for which his superior education well fitted him, he absolutely refused, always saying that he had come to the Ninety-Third for a certain purpose, and when that purpose was accomplished, he only wished to die

With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe!
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame.

During the march to Lucknow it was a common thing to hear the men in my company say they would give a day's grog to see Quaker Wallace under fire; and the time had now come for their gratification.

There was another man in the company who had joined the regiment in Turkey before embarking for the Crimea. He was also a man of superior education, but in many respects the very antithesis of Wallace. He was both wild and reckless, and used often to receive money sent to him from some one, which he as regularly spent in drink. He went under the name of Hope, but that was also known to be an assumed name, and when the volunteers from the Seventy-Second joined the regiment in Dover, it was remarked that Wallace had the address of Hope, and had asked to be posted to the same company. Yet the two men never spoke to one another; on the contrary they evidently hated each other with a mortal hatred. If the history of these two men could be known it would without doubt form material for a most sensational novel.

Just about the time the men were tightening their belts and preparing for the dash on the breach of the Secundrabâgh, this man Hope commenced to curse and swear in such a manner that Captain Dawson, who commanded the company, checked him, telling him that oaths and foul language were no signs of bravery. Hope replied that he did not care a d—— what the captain thought; that he would defy death; that the bullet was not yet moulded that would kill him; and he commenced exposing himself above the mud wall behind which we were lying. The captain was just on the point of ordering a corporal and a file of men to take Hope to the rear-guard as drunk and riotous in presence of the enemy, when Pipe-Major John M'Leod, who was close to the captain, said: "Don't mind the puir lad, sir; he's not drunk, he is fey! [meaning doomed]. It's not himself that's speaking; he will never see the sun set." The words were barely out of the pipe-major's mouth when Hope sprang up on the top of the mud wall, and a bullet struck him on the right side, hitting the buckle of his purse belt, which diverted its course, and instead of going right through his body it cut him round the front of his belly below the waist-belt, making a deep wound, and his bowels burst out falling down to his knees. He sank down at once, gasping for breath, when a couple of bullets went through his chest and he died without a groan. John M'Leod turned and said to Captain Dawson, "I told you so, sir. The lad was fey! I am never deceived in a fey man! It was not himself who spoke when swearing in yon terrible manner." Just at this time Quaker Wallace, who had evidently been a witness of Hope's tragic end, worked his way along to where the dead man lay, and looking on the distorted features he solemnly said, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. I came to the Ninety-Third to see that man die!" All this happened only a few seconds before the assault was ordered, and attracted but little attention except from those who were immediate witnesses of the incident. The gunners were falling fast, and almost all eyes were turned on them and the breach. When the signal for the assault was given, Quaker Wallace went into the Secundrabâgh like one of the Furies, if there are male Furies, plainly seeking death but not meeting it, and quoting the 116th Psalm, Scotch version in metre, beginning at the first verse:

I love the Lord, because my voice
And prayers He did hear.
I, while I live, will call on Him,
Who bow'd to me His ear.

And thus he plunged into the Secundrabâgh quoting the next verse at every shot fired from his rifle and at each thrust given by his bayonet:

I'll of salvation take the cup,
On God's name will I call;
I'll pay my vows now to the Lord
Before His people all.

It was generally reported in the company that Quaker Wallace single-handed killed twenty men, and one wonders at this, remembering that he took no comrade with him and did not follow Sir Colin's rule of "fighting in threes," but whenever he saw an enemy he "went for" him! I may here remark that the case of Wallace proved that, in a fight like the Secundrabâgh where the enemy is met hand to hand and foot to foot, the way to escape death is to brave it. Of course Wallace might have been shot from a distance, and in that respect he only ran an even chance with the others; but wherever he rushed with his bayonet, the enemy did their utmost to give him a wide berth.

By the time the bayonet had done its work of retribution, the throats of our men were hoarse with shouting "Cawnpore! you bloody murderers!" The taste of the powder (those were the days when the muzzle-loading cartridges had to be bitten with the teeth) made men almost mad with thirst; and with the sun high over head, and being fresh from England, with our feather bonnets, red coats, and heavy kilts, we felt the heat intensely.

In the centre of the inner court of the Secundrabâgh there was a large peepul[18] tree with a very bushy top, round the foot of which were set a number of jars full of cool water. When the slaughter was almost over, many of our men went under the tree for the sake of its shade, and to quench their burning thirst with a draught of the cool water from the jars. A number however lay dead under this tree, both of the Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third, and the many bodies lying in that particular spot attracted the notice of Captain Dawson. After having carefully examined the wounds, he noticed that in every case the men had evidently been shot from above. He thereupon stepped out from beneath the tree, and called to Quaker Wallace to look up if he could see any one in the top of the tree, because all the dead under it had apparently been shot from above. Wallace had his rifle loaded, and stepping back he carefully scanned the top of the tree. He almost immediately called out, "I see him, sir!" and cocking his rifle he repeated aloud,

I'll pay my vows now to the Lord
Before His people all.

He fired, and down fell a body dressed in a tight-fitting red jacket and tight-fitting rose-coloured silk trousers; and the breast of the jacket bursting open with the fall, showed that the wearer was a woman, She was armed with a pair of heavy old-pattern cavalry pistols, one of which was in her belt still loaded, and her pouch was still about half full of ammunition, while from her perch in the tree, which had been carefully prepared before the attack, she had killed more than half-a-dozen men. When Wallace saw that the person whom he shot was a woman, he burst into tears, exclaiming: "If I had known it was a woman, I would rather have died a thousand deaths than have harmed her."

I cannot now recall, although he belonged to my company, what became of Quaker Wallace, whether he lived to go through the rest of the Mutiny or not. I have long since lost my pocket company-roll, but I think Wallace took sick and was sent to Allahabad from Cawnpore, and was either invalided to England or died in the country.

By this time all opposition had ceased, and over two thousand of the enemy lay dead within the building and the centre court. The troops were withdrawn, and the muster-roll of the Ninety-Third was called just outside the gate, which is still standing, on the level spot between the gate and the mound where the European dead are buried.

When the roll was called it was found that the Ninety-Third had nine officers and ninety-nine men, in all one hundred and eight, killed and wounded. The roll of the Fifty-Third was called alongside of us, and Sir Colin Campbell rode up and addressing the men, spoke out in a clear voice: "Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third, you have bravely done your share of this morning's work, and Cawnpore is avenged!" Whereupon one of the Fifty-Third sang out, "Three cheers for the Commander-in-Chief, boys," which was heartily responded to.

All this time there was perfect silence around us, the enemy evidently not being aware of how the tide of victory had rolled inside the Secundrabâgh, for not a soul escaped from it to tell the tale. The silence was so great that we could hear the pipers of the Seventy-Eighth playing inside the Residency as a welcome to cheer us all. There were lately, by the way, some writers who denied that the Seventy-Eighth had their bagpipes and pipers with them at Lucknow. This is not true; they had their pipes and played them too! But we had barely saluted the Commander-in-Chief with a cheer when a perfect hail of round-shot assailed us both from the Târa Kothi on our left and the Shâh Nujeef on our right front. But I must leave the account of our storming the Shâh Nujeef for a separate chapter.

I may here remark that on revisiting Lucknow I did not see a single tablet or grave to show that any of the Ninety-Third are buried there. Surely Captains Dalzell and Lumsden and the men who lie in the mound to the east of the gate of the Secundrabâgh are deserving of some memorial! But it is the old, old story which was said to have been first written on the walls of Badajoz:

When war is rife and danger nigh,
God and the Soldier is all the cry;
When war is over, and wrongs are righted,
God is forgot and the Soldier slighted.

I am surprised that the officers of the Ninety-Third Regiment have never taken any steps to erect some monument to the memory of the brave men who fell in Lucknow at its relief, and at the siege in March, 1858. Neither is there a single tablet in the Memorial Church at Cawnpore in memory of the Ninety-Third, although almost every one of the other regiments have tablets somewhere in the church. If I were a millionaire I would myself erect a statue to Sir Colin Campbell on the spot where the muster-roll of the Ninety-Third was called on the east of the gate of the Secundrabâgh, with a life-sized figure of a private of the Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third, a sailor and a Sikh at each corner, with the names of every man who fell in the assault on the 16th of November, 1857; and as the Royal Artillery were also there, Sir Colin should be represented in the centre standing on a gun, with a royal artilleryman holding a port-fire ready.

Since commencing these reminiscences I met a gentleman in Calcutta who told me that he had a cousin in the Ninety-Third, General J. A. Ewart, who was with the regiment in the storming of the Secundrabâgh, and he asked me if I remembered General Ewart. This leads me to believe that it would not be out of place if I were to relate the following narrative. General Ewart, now Sir John Alexander Ewart, I am informed, is still alive, and some mention of the part played by him, so far as I saw it, will form an appropriate conclusion to the story of the taking of the Secundrabâgh. And should he ever read this narrative, I may inform him that it is written by one who was present when he was adopted into the Clan Forbes by our chief, the late Sir Charles Forbes, of Newe and Edinglassie, Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, and this fact alone will make the general receive my remarks with the feelings of a clansman as well as of my old commander.

The reminiscence of Secundrabâgh which is here reproduced was called forth, I should state, by a paragraph which appeared at the time in the columns of The Calcutta Statesman regarding General Ewart. The paragraph was as follows:

General Ewart, not having been employed since he gave over the command of the Allahabad division on the 30th of November, 1879, was placed on the retired list on the 30th ultimo [Nov. 1884]. General Ewart is one of the few, if not the only general, who refused a transfer from the Allahabad Command to a more favourite division. He has served for over forty-six years, but has only been employed once since giving over the command of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders in 1864, and that was for two and a half years in this country. He commanded the Ninety-Third for about eighteen months before joining the Seventy-Eighth. He is in possession of the Crimean medal with four clasps, a novelty rather nowadays. He lost his left arm at the battle of Cawnpore.

I accordingly wrote to The Statesman desiring to correct a slight inaccuracy in the statement that "General Ewart commanded the Ninety-Third for about eighteen months before joining the Seventy-Eighth." This is not, I remarked, strictly correct; General Ewart never commanded the Ninety-Third in the sense implied. He joined the regiment as captain in 1848, exchanging from the old Thirty-Fifth Royal Sussex with Captain Buchanan of the Ninety-Third, and served in the regiment till he received the regimental rank of lieutenant-colonel on the death, at Fort Rooyah in April, 1858, of the Hon. Adrian Hope. Colonel Ewart was then in England on sick-leave, suffering from the loss of his arm and other wounds and exchanged into the Seventy-Eighth with Colonel Stisted about the end of 1859, so that he never actually commanded the Ninety-Third for more than a few days at most. I will now give a few facts about him which may interest old soldiers at least.

During the whole of his service in the Ninety-Third, both as captain and field-officer, Colonel Ewart was singularly devoted to duty, while careful, considerate, and attentive to the wants of his men in a way that made him more beloved by those under his command than any officer I ever met during my service in the army. To the best of my recollection, he was the only officer of the Ninety-Third who received the clasp for Inkerman. At that battle he was serving on the staff of Lord Raglan as Deputy-Assistant-Quartermaster-General, and as such was on duty on the morning of the battle, and I believe he was the first officer of the British army who perceived the Russian advance. He was visiting the outposts, as was his custom when on duty, in the early morning, and gave the alarm to Sir George Brown's division, and then carried the news of the attack to Lord Raglan. For his services at Inkerman he was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel, and on the termination of the war, besides the Crimean medal with four clasps (Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, and Sebastopol), he received the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Sardinian Medal, with the motto Al valore Militare, and also the Turkish Order of the Medjidie.

Early in the attack on the Secundrabâgh three companies of the Ninety-Third were detached under Colonel Leith-Hay to clear the ground to the left and carry the barracks, and Colonel Ewart was left in command of the other seven companies. For some time we lay down sheltered by a low mud wall not more than one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards from the walls of the Secundrabâgh, to allow time for the heavy guns to breach the garden wall. During this time Colonel Ewart had dismounted and stood exposed on the bank, picking off the enemy on the top of the building with one of the men's rifles which he took, making the owner of the rifle lie down.

It was an anxious moment. The artillerymen were falling fast, but, after a few discharges, a hole,—it could not be called a breach—was made, and the order was given to the Fourth Punjâb Rifles to storm. They sprang out of cover, as I have already described, but before they were half-way across the intervening distance, their commanding officer fell mortally wounded, and I think two others of their European officers were severely wounded. This caused a slight halt of the Punjâbis. Sir Colin called to Colonel Ewart, "Ewart, bring on the tartan;" one of our buglers who was in attendance on Sir Colin, sounded the advance, and the whole of the Ninety-Third dashed from behind the bank. It has always been a disputed point who got through the hole first. I believe the first man in was Lance-Corporal Donnelly of the Ninety-Third, who was killed inside; then Subadar Gokul Sing, followed by Sergeant-Major Murray, of the Ninety-Third, also killed, and fourth, Captain Burroughs, severely wounded.

It was about this time I got through myself, pushed up by Colonel Ewart who immediately followed. My feet had scarcely touched the ground inside, when a sepoy fired point-blank at me from among the long grass a few yards distant. The bullet struck the thick brass clasp of my waist-belt, but with such force that it sent me spinning heels over head. The man who fired was cut down by Captain Cooper, of the Ninety-Third, who got through the hole abreast with myself. When struck I felt just as one feels when tripped up at a football match. Before I regained my feet, I heard Ewart say as he rushed past me, "Poor fellow, he is done for." I was but stunned, and regaining my feet and my breath too, which was completely knocked out of me, I rushed on to the inner court of the building, where I saw Ewart bareheaded, his feather bonnet having been shot off his head, engaged in fierce hand-to-hand fight with several of the enemy. I believe he shot down five or six of them with his revolver. By that time the whole of the Ninety-Third and the Sikhs had got in either through the wall or by the principal gate which had now been forced open; the Fifty-Third, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon of the Ninety-Third, and Captain B. Walton (who was severely wounded), had got in by a window in the right angle of the garden wall which they forced open. The inner court was rapidly filled with dead, but two officers of the mutineers were fiercely defending a regimental colour inside a dark room. Ewart rushed on them to seize it, and although severely wounded in his sword-arm, he not only captured the colour, but killed both the officers who were defending it.

By this time opposition had almost ceased. A few only of the defenders of the Secundrabâgh were left alive, and those few were being hunted out of dark corners, some of them from below heaps of slain. Colonel Ewart, seeing that the fighting was over, started with his colour to present it to Sir Colin Campbell; but whether it was that the old Chief considered that it was infra dig. for a field-officer to expose himself to needless danger, or whether it was that he was angry at some other thing, I know not, but this much I remember: Colonel Ewart ran up to him where he sat on his gray charger outside the gate of the Secundrabâgh, and called out: "We are in possession of the bungalows, sir. I have killed the last two of the enemy with my own hand, and here is one of their colours," "D—n your colours, sir!" said Sir Colin. "It's not your place to be taking colours; go back to your regiment this instant, sir!" However, the officers of the staff who were with Sir Colin gave a cheer for Colonel Ewart, and one of them presented him with a cap to cover his head, which was still bare. He turned back, apparently very much upset at the reception given to him by the old Chief; but I afterwards heard that Sir Colin sent for him in the afternoon, apologised for his rudeness, and thanked him for his services. Before I conclude, I may remark that I have often thought over this incident, and the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that, from the wild and excited appearance of Colonel Ewart, who had been by that time more than an hour without his hat in the fierce rays of the sun, covered with blood and powder smoke, and his eyes still flashing with the excitement of the fight, giving him the appearance of a man under the influence of something more potent than "blue ribbon" tipple—I feel pretty sure, I say, that, when Sir Colin first saw him, he thought he was drunk. When he found out his mistake he was of course sorry for his rudeness.

After the capture of the Shâh Nujeef, a field officer was required to hold the barracks, which was one of the most important posts on our left advance, and although severely wounded, having several sabre-cuts and many bruises on his body, Colonel Ewart volunteered for the post of commandant of the force. This post he held until the night of the evacuation of the Residency and the retreat from Lucknow, for the purpose of relieving Cawnpore for the second time from the grasp of the Nânâ Sâhib and the Gwalior Contingent. It was at the retaking of Cawnpore that Colonel Ewart eventually had his arm carried off by a cannon-shot; and the last time I saw him was when I assisted to lift him into a dooly on the plain of Cawnpore on the 1st of December, 1857. But I must leave the retaking of Cawnpore to its proper place in these reminiscences, and resume my narrative of the capture of the Secundrabâgh.

I mentioned previously that the muster-rolls had scarcely been called outside the gateway, when the enemy evidently became aware that the place was no longer held for them by living men, and a terrible fire was opened on us from both our right and left, as well as from the Shâh Nujeef in our direct front.

Let me here mention, before I take leave of the Secundrabâgh, that I have often been told that the hole in the wall by which the Ninety-Third entered is still in existence. This I had heard from several sources, and on Sunday morning, the 21st of August, 1892, when revisiting Lucknow, I left the Royal Hotel with a guide who did not know that I had ever seen Lucknow before, and who assured me that the breach had been preserved just as it was left on the 16th of November, 1857, after the Ninety-Third had passed through it; and I had made up my mind to re-enter the Secundrabâgh once again by the same old hole. On reaching the gate I therefore made the gharry stop, and walked round the outside of the wall to the hole; but as soon as I arrived at the spot I saw that the gap pointed out to me as the one by which the Ninety-Third entered was a fraud, and I astonished the guide by refusing to pass through it. The hole now shown as the one by which we entered was made through the wall by an 18-pounder gun, which was brought from Cawnpore by Captain Blount's troop of Royal Horse-Artillery. This was about twenty yards to the left of the real hole, and was made to enable a few men to keep up a cross fire through it till the stormers could get footing inside the actual breach. This post was held by Sergeant James Morrison and several sharp-shooters from my company, who, by direction of Sir Colin, made a rush on this hole before the order was given for the Fourth Punjâb Infantry to storm. Any military man of the least experience seeing the hole and its size now, thirty-five years after the event, will know this to be a fact. The real breach was much bigger and could admit three men abreast, and, as near as I can judge, was about the centre of the road which now passes through the Secundrabâgh. The guide, I may say, admitted such to be the case when he found that I had seen the Secundrabâgh before his time. Although it was only a hole, and not what is correctly called a breach, in the wall, it was so wide, and the surrounding parts of the wall had been so shaken by round-shot, that the upper portion forming the arch must have fallen down within a few years after 1857, and this evidently formed a convenient breach in the wall through which the present road has been constructed.[19] The smaller hole meanwhile has been laid hold of by the guides as the identical passage by which the Secundrabâgh was stormed.

Having corrected the guide on this point, I will now give my recollections of the assault on the Shâh Nujeef, and the Kuddum Russool which stands on its right, advancing from the Secundrabâgh.

The Kuddum Russool was a strongly-built domed mosque not nearly so large as the Shâh Nujeef, but it had been surrounded by a strong wall and converted into a powder magazine by the English between the annexation of Lucknow and the outbreak of the Mutiny. I think this fact is mentioned by Mr. Gubbins in his Mutinies in Oude. The Kuddum Russool was still used by the mutineers as a powder-magazine, but the powder had been conveyed from it into the tomb of the Shâh Nujeef, when the latter was converted into a post of defence to bar our advance on the Residency.

Before the order was given for the attack on the Shâh Nujeef, I may mention that the quartermaster-general's department had made an estimate of the number of the enemy slain in the Secundrabâgh from their appearance and from their parade-states of that morning. The mutineers, let me say, had still kept up their English discipline and parade-forms, and their parade-states and muster-rolls of the 16th of November were discovered among other documents in a room of the Secundrabâgh which had been their general's quarters and orderly-room. It was then found that four separate regiments had occupied the Secundrabâgh, numbering about two thousand five hundred men, and these had been augmented by a number of budmâshes from the city, bringing up the list of actual slain in the house and garden to about three thousand. Of these, over two thousand lay dead inside the rooms of the main building and the inner court. The colours, drums, etc., of the Seventy-First Native Infantry and the Eleventh Oude Irregular Infantry were captured. The mutineers fought under their English colours, and there were several Mahommedan standards of green silk captured besides the English colours. The Seventy-First Native Infantry was one of the crack corps of the Company's army, and many of the men were wearing the Punjâb medals on their breasts. This regiment and the Eleventh Oude Irregulars were simply annihilated. On examining the bodies of the dead, over fifty men of the Seventy-First were found to have furloughs, or leave-certificates, signed by their former commanding officer in their pockets, showing that they had been on leave when their regiment mutinied and had rejoined their colours to fight against us. It is a curious fact that after the Mutiny was suppressed, many sepoys tendered these leave-certificates as proof that they had not taken part in the rebellion; and I believe all such got enrolled either in the police or in the new regiments that were being raised, and obtained their back pay. And doubtless if the Ninety-Third and Fifty-Third bayonets had not cancelled those of the Seventy-First Native Infantry all those loyal men would afterwards have presented their leave-certificates, and have claimed pay for the time they were fighting against us!

When the number of the slain was reported to Sir Colin, he turned to Brigadier Hope, and said "This morning's work will strike terror into the sepoys,—it will strike terror into them," and he repeated it several times. Then turning to us again he said: "Ninety-Third, you have bravely done your share of this morning's work, and Cawnpore is avenged! There is more hard work to be done; but unless as a last resource, I will not call on you to storm more positions to-day. Your duty will be to cover the guns after they are dragged into position. But, my boys, if need be, remember I depend on you to carry the next position in the same daring manner in which you carried the Secundrabâgh." With that some one from the ranks called out, "Will we get a medal for this, Sir Colin?" To which he replied: "Well, my lads, I can't say what Her Majesty's Government may do; but if you don't get a medal, all I can say is you have deserved one better than any troops I have ever seen under fire. I shall inform the Governor-General, and, through him, Her Majesty the Queen, that I have never seen troops behave better." The order was then given to man the drag-ropes of Peel's guns for the advance on the Shâh Nujeef, and obeyed with a cheer; and, as it turned out, the Ninety-Third had to storm that position also.

The advance on the Shâh Nujeef has been so often described that I will cut my recollections of it short. At the word of command Captain Middleton's battery of Royal Artillery dashed forward with loud cheers, the drivers waving their whips and the gunners their caps as they passed us and Peel's guns at the gallop. The 24-pounder guns meanwhile were dragged along by our men and the sailors in the teeth of a perfect hail of lead and iron from the enemy's batteries. In the middle of the march a poor sailor lad, just in front of me, had his leg carried clean off above the knee by a round-shot, and, although knocked head over heels by the force of the shot, he sat bolt upright on the grass, with the blood spouting from the stump of his limb like water from the hose of a fire-engine, and shouted, "Here goes a shilling a day, a shilling a day! Pitch into them, boys, pitch into them! Remember Cawnpore, Ninety-Third, remember Cawnpore! Go at them, my hearties!" and he fell back in a dead faint, and on we went. I afterwards heard that the poor fellow was dead before a doctor could reach the spot to bind up his limb.

I will conclude this chapter with an extract from Sir Colin's despatch on the advance on the Shâh Nujeef:

The Ninety-Third and Captain Peel's guns rolled on in one irresistible wave, the men falling fast, but the column advanced till the heavy guns were within twenty yards of the walls of the Shâh Nujeef, where they were unlimbered and poured in round after round against the massive walls of the building, the withering fire of the Highlanders covering the Naval Brigade from great loss. But it was an action almost unexampled in war. Captain Peel behaved very much as if he had been laying the Shannon alongside an enemy's frigate.

But in this despatch Sir Colin does not mention that he was himself wounded by a bullet after it had passed through the head of a Ninety-Third grenadier.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Ficus Indica.

[19] The author is quite right in this surmise; the road was made through the old breach in 1861.

CHAPTER V

PERSONAL ANECDOTES—CAPTURE OF THE SHÂH NUJEEF—A FEARFUL EXPERIENCE

I must now leave for a little the general struggle, and turn to the actions of individual men as they fell under my own observation,—actions which neither appear in despatches nor in history; and, by the way, I may remark that one of the best accounts extant of the taking of the Shâh Nujeef is that of Colonel Alison, in Blackwood's Magazine for October, 1858. Both the Alisons were severely wounded on that occasion,—Colonel Archibald Alison, Military Secretary, and his brother, Captain F. M. Alison, A.D.C. to Sir Colin Campbell. I will now relate a service rendered by Sergeant M. W. Findlay, of my company, which was never noticed nor rewarded. Sergeant Findlay, let me state, merely considered that he had done his duty, but that is no reason why I should not mention his name. I believe he is still in India, and a distinguished officer of the Râjpootâna-Mâlwa Railway Volunteers at Ajmere. However, after Captain Peel's guns were dragged into position, the Ninety-Third took up whatever shelter they could get on the right and left of the guns, and I, with several others, got behind the walls of an unroofed mud hut, through which we made loopholes on the side next to the Shâh Nujeef, and were thus able to keep up a destructive fire on the enemy. Let me add here that the surgeons of the force were overwhelmed with work, and attending to the wounded in the thick of the fire. Some time after the attack had commenced we noticed Captain Alison and his horse in a heap together a few yards behind where we were in shelter. Sergeant Findlay rushed out, got the wounded officer clear of his dead horse under a perfect hail of bullets and round-shot, and carried him under the shelter of the walls where we were lying. He then ran off in search of a surgeon to bandage his wounds, which were bleeding very profusely; but the surgeons were all too busy, and Sir Colin was most strict on the point of wounds being attended to. Officers, no matter what their rank, had no precedence over the rank-and-file in this respect; in fact, Sir Colin often expressed the opinion that an officer could be far more easily replaced than a well-drilled private. However, there was no surgeon available; so Sergeant Findlay took his own bandage,—every soldier on going on active service is supplied with lint and a bandage to have them handy in case of wounds—set to work, stanched the bleeding, and bandaged up the wounds of Captain Alison in such a surgeon-like manner that, when Dr. Menzies of the Ninety-Third at length came to see him, he thought he had been attended to by a doctor. When he did discover that it was Sergeant Findlay who had put on the bandages, he expressed his surprise, and said that in all probability this prompt action had saved Captain Alison's life, who otherwise might have been weakened by loss of blood beyond recovery before a doctor could have attended to him. Dr. Menzies there and then applied to Captain Dawson to get Sergeant Findlay into the field-hospital as an extra assistant to attend to the wounded. In closing this incident I may remark that I have known men get the Victoria Cross for incurring far less danger than Sergeant Findlay did in exposing himself to bring Captain Alison under shelter. The bullets were literally flying round him like hail; several passed through his clothes, and his feather bonnet was shot off his head. When he had finished putting on the bandages he coolly remarked: "I must go out and get my bonnet for fear I get sunstruck;" so out he went for his hat, and before he got back scores of bullets were fired at him from the walls of the Shâh Nujeef.

The next man I shall refer to was Sergeant Daniel White, one of the coolest and most fearless men in the regiment. Sergeant White was a man of superior education, an excellent vocalist and reciter, with a most retentive memory, and one of the best amateur actors in the Ninety-Third. Under fire he was just as cool and collected as if he had been enacting the part of Bailie Nicol Jarvie in Rob Roy.

In the force defending the Shâh Nujeef, in addition to the regular army, there was a large body of archers on the walls, armed with bows and arrows which they discharged with great force and precision, and on White raising his head above the wall an arrow was shot right into his feather bonnet. Inside of the wire cage of his bonnet, however, he had placed his forage cap, folded up, and instead of passing right through, the arrow stuck in the folds of the forage cap, and "Dan," as he was called, coolly pulled out the arrow, paraphrasing a quotation from Sir Walter Scott's Legend of Montrose, where Dugald Dalgetty and Ranald MacEagh made their escape from the castle of McCallum More. Looking at the arrow, "My conscience!" said White, "bows and arrows! bows and arrows! Have we got Robin Hood and Little John back again? Bows and arrows! My conscience, the sight has not been seen in civilised war for nearly two hundred years. Bows and arrows! And why not weavers' beams as in the days of Goliath? Ah! that Daniel White should be able to tell in the Saut Market of Glasgow that he had seen men fight with bows and arrows in the days of Enfield rifles! Well, well, Jack Pandy, since bows and arrows are the words, here's at you!" and with that he raised his feather bonnet on the point of his bayonet above the top of the wall, and immediately another arrow pierced it through, while a dozen more whizzed past a little wide of the mark.

Just then one poor fellow of the Ninety-Third, named Penny, of No. 2 company, raising his head for an instant a little above the wall, got an arrow right through his brain, the shaft projecting more than a foot out at the back of his head. As the poor lad fell dead at our feet, Sergeant White remarked, "Boys, this is no joke; we must pay them off." We all loaded and capped, and pushing up our feather bonnets again, a whole shower of arrows went past or through them. Up we sprang and returned a well-aimed volley from our rifles at point-blank distance, and more than half-a-dozen of the enemy went down. But one unfortunate man of the regiment, named Montgomery, of No. 6 company, exposed himself a little too long to watch the effect of our volley, and before he could get down into shelter again an arrow was sent right through his heart, passing clean through his body and falling on the ground a few yards behind him. He leaped about six feet straight up in the air, and fell stone dead. White could not resist making another quotation, but this time it was from the old English ballad of Chevy Chase.

He had a bow bent in his hand
Made of a trusty tree,
An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Up to the head drew he.

Against Sir Hugh Montgomerie
So right his shaft he set,
The grey goose wing that was thereon
In his heart's blood was wet.

Readers who have never been under the excitement of a fight like this which I describe, may think that such coolness is an exaggeration. It is not so. Remember the men of whom I write had stood in the "Thin Red Line" of Balaclava without wavering, and had made up their minds to die where they stood, if need be; men who had been for days and nights under shot and shell in the trenches of Sebastopol. If familiarity breeds contempt, continual exposure to danger breeds coolness, and, I may say, selfishness too; where all are exposed to equal danger little sympathy is, for the time being at least, displayed for the unlucky ones "knocked on the head," to use the common expression in the ranks for those who are killed. Besides, Sergeant Daniel White was an exceptionally cool man, and looked on every incident with the eye of an actor.

By this time the sun was getting low, a heavy cloud of smoke hung over the field, and every flash of the guns and rifles could be clearly seen. The enemy in hundreds were visible on the ramparts, yelling like demons, brandishing their swords in one hand and burning torches in the other, shouting at us to "Come on!" But little impression had been made on the solid masonry walls. Brigadier Hope and his aide-de-camp were rolling on the ground together, the horses of both shot dead; and the same shell which had done this mischief exploded one of our ammunition waggons, killing and wounding several men. Altogether the position looked black and critical when Major Barnston and his battalion of detachments were ordered to storm. This battalion of detachments was a body made up of almost every corps in the service,—at least as far as the regiments forming the expedition to China were concerned—and men belonging to the different corps which had entered the Residency with Generals Havelock and Outram. It also comprised some men who had been left (through sickness or wounds) at Allahabad and Cawnpore, and some of the Ninetieth Regiment which had been intercepted at Singapore on their way to China, under Captain (now General Lord) Wolseley. However, although a made-up battalion, they advanced bravely to the breach, and I think their leader, Major Barnston, was killed, and the command devolved on Captain Wolseley. He made a most determined attempt to get into the place, but there were no scaling-ladders, and the wall was still almost twenty feet high. During the heavy cannonade the masonry had fallen down in flakes on the outside, but still leaving an inner wall standing almost perpendicular, and in attempting to climb up this the men were raked with a perfect hail of missiles—grenades and round-shot hurled from wall-pieces, arrows and brickbats, burning torches of rags and cotton saturated with oil—even boiling water was dashed on them! In the midst of the smoke the breach would have made a very good representation of Pandemonium. There were scores of men armed with great burning torches just like what one may see in the sham fights of the Mohurrum, only these men were in earnest, shouting "Allah Akbar!" "Deen! Deen!" and "Jai Kâli mâ ki!"[20]

The stormers were driven back, leaving many dead and wounded under the wall. At this juncture Sir Colin called on Brigadier Hope to form up the Ninety-Third for a final attempt. Sir Colin, again addressing us, said that he had not intended to call on us to storm more positions that day, but that the building in our front must be carried before dark, and the Ninety-Third must do it, and he would lead us himself, saying again: "Remember, men, the lives at stake inside the Residency are those of women and children, and they must be rescued." A reply burst from the ranks: "Ay, ay, Sir Colin! we stood by you at Balaklava, and will stand by you here; but you must not expose yourself so much as you are doing. We can be replaced, but you can't. You must remain behind; we can lead ourselves."

By that time the battalion of detachments had cleared the front, and the enemy were still yelling to us to "Come on," and piling up missiles to give us a warm reception. Captain Peel had meanwhile brought his infernal machine, known as a rocket battery, to the front, and sent a volley of rockets through the crowd on the ramparts around the breach. Just at that moment Sergeant John Paton of my company came running down the ravine that separated the Kuddum Russool from the Shâh Nujeef, completely out of breath through exertion, but just able to tell Brigadier Hope that he had gone up the ravine at the moment the battalion of detachments had been ordered to storm, and had discovered a breach in the north-east corner of the rampart next to the river Goomtee. It appears that our shot and shell had gone over the first breach, and had blown out the wall on the other side in this particular spot. Paton told how he had climbed up to the top of the ramparts without difficulty, and seen right inside the place as the whole defending force had been called forward to repulse the assault in front.

Captain Dawson and his company were at once called out, and while the others opened fire on the breach in front of them, we dashed down the ravine, Sergeant Paton showing the way. As soon as the enemy saw that the breach behind had been discovered, and that their well-defended position was no longer tenable, they fled like sheep through the back gate next to the Goomtee and another in the direction of the Motee Munzil.[21] If No. 7 company had got in behind them and cut off their retreat by the back gate, it would have been Secundrabâgh over again! As it was, by the time we got over the breach we were able to catch only about a score of the fugitives, who were promptly bayoneted; the rest fled pell-mell into the Goomtee, and it was then too dark to see to use the rifle with effect on the flying masses. However, by the great pools of blood inside, and the number of dead floating in the river, they had plainly suffered heavily, and the well-contested position of the Shâh Nujeef was ours.

By this time Sir Colin and those of his staff remaining alive or unwounded were inside the position, and the front gate thrown open. A hearty cheer was given for the Commander-in-Chief, as he called the officers round him to give instructions for the disposition of the force for the night. As it was Captain Dawson and his company who had scaled the breach, to them was assigned the honour of holding the Shâh Nujeef, which was now one of the principal positions to protect the retreat from the Residency. And thus ended the terrible 16th of November, 1857.

In the taking of the Secundrabâgh all the subaltern officers of my company were wounded, namely, Lieutenants E. Welch and S. E. Wood, and Ensign F. R. M'Namara. The only officer therefore with the company in the Shâh Nujeef was Captain Dawson. Sergeant Findlay, as already mentioned, had been taken over as hospital-assistant, and another sergeant named Wood was either sick or wounded, I forget which, and Corporals M'Kenzie and Mitchell (a namesake of mine, belonging to Balmoral) were killed. It thus fell to my lot as the non-commissioned officer on duty to go round with Captain Dawson to post the sentries. Mr. Kavanagh, who was officiating as a volunteer staff-officer, accompanied us to point out the direction of the strongest positions of the enemy, and the likely points from which any attempts would be made to recapture our position during the night. During the absence of the captain the command of the company devolved on Colour-Sergeant David Morton, of "Tobacco Soup" fame, and he was instructed to see that none of the enemy were still lurking in the rooms surrounding the mosque of the Shâh Nujeef, while the captain was going round the ramparts placing the sentries for the protection of our position.

As soon as the sentries were posted on the ramparts and regular reliefs told off, arrangements were made among the sergeants and corporals to patrol at regular intervals from sentry to sentry to see that all were alert. This was the more necessary as the men were completely worn out and fatigued by long marches and heavy fighting, and in fact had not once had their belts off for a week previous, while all the time carrying double ammunition on half-empty stomachs. Every precaution had therefore to be taken that the sentries should not go to sleep, and it fell to me as the corporal on duty to patrol the first two hours of the night, from eight o'clock till ten. The remainder of the company bivouacked around the piled arms, which were arranged carefully loaded and capped with bayonets fixed, ready for instant action should an attack be made on our position. After the great heat of the day the nights by contrast felt bitterly cold. There was a stack of dry wood in the centre of the grounds from which the men kindled a large fire near the piled arms, and arranged themselves around it, rolled in their greatcoats but fully accoutred, ready to stand to arms at the least alarm.

In writing these reminiscences it is far from my wish to make them an autobiography. My intention is rather to relate the actions of others than recount what I did myself; but an adventure happened to me in the Shâh Nujeef which gave me such a nervous fright that to this day I often dream of it. I have forgotten to state that when the force advanced from the Alumbâgh each man carried his greatcoat rolled into what was then known in our regiment as the "Crimean roll," with ends strapped together across the right shoulder just over the ammunition pouch-belt, so that it did not interfere with the free use of the rifle, but rather formed a protection across the chest. As it turned out many men owed their lives to the fact that bullets became spent in passing through the rolled greatcoats before reaching a vital part. Now it happened that in the heat of the fight in the Secundrabâgh my greatcoat was cut right through where the two ends were fastened together, by the stroke of a keen-edged tulwâr which was intended to cut me across the shoulder, and as it was very warm at the time from the heat of the mid-day sun combined with the excitement of the fight, I was rather glad than otherwise to be rid of the greatcoat; and when the fight was over, it did not occur to me to appropriate another one in its place from one of my dead comrades. But by ten o'clock at night there was a considerable difference in the temperature from ten in the morning, and when it came to my turn to be relieved from patrol duty and to lie down for a sleep, I felt the cold wet grass anything but comfortable, and missed my greatcoat to wrap round my knees; for the kilt is not the most suitable dress imaginable for a bivouac, without greatcoat or plaid, on a cold, dewy November night in Upper India; with a raw north wind the climate of Lucknow feels uncommonly cold at night in November, especially when contrasted with the heat of the day. I have already mentioned that the sun had set before we entered the Shâh Nujeef, the surrounding enclosure of which contained a number of small rooms round the inside of the walls, arranged after the manner of the ordinary Indian native travellers' serais. The Shâh Nujeef, it must be remembered, was the tomb of Ghâzee-ood-deen Hyder, the first king of Oude, and consequently a place of Mahommedan pilgrimage, and the small rooms round the four walls of the square were for the accommodation of pilgrims. These rooms had been turned into quarters by the enemy, and, in their hurry to escape, many of them had left their lamps burning, consisting of the ordinary chirâgs[22] placed in small niches in the walls, leaving also their evening meal of chupatties in small piles ready cooked, and the curry and dhâl[23] boiling on the fires. Many of the lamps were still burning when my turn of duty was over, and as I felt the want of a greatcoat badly, I asked the colour-sergeant of the company (the captain being fast asleep) for permission to go out of the gate to where our dead were collected near the Secundrabâgh to get another one. This Colour-Sergeant Morton refused, stating that before going to sleep the captain had given strict orders that except those on sentry no man was to leave his post on any pretence whatever. I had therefore to try to make the best of my position, but although dead tired and wearied out I felt too uncomfortable to go to sleep, and getting up it struck me that some of the sepoys in their hurried departure might have left their greatcoats or blankets behind them. With this hope I went into one of the rooms where a lamp was burning, took it off its shelf, and shading the flame with my hand walked to the door of the great domed tomb, or mosque, which was only about twenty or thirty yards from where the arms were piled and the men lying round the still burning fire. I peered into the dark vault, not knowing that it was a king's tomb, but could see nothing, so I advanced slowly, holding the chirâg high over my head and looking cautiously around for fear of surprise from a concealed enemy, till I was near the centre of the great vault, where my progress was obstructed by a big black heap about four or five feet high, which felt to my feet as if I were walking among loose sand. I lowered the lamp to see what it was, and immediately discovered that I was standing up to the ankles in loose gunpowder! About forty cwt. of it lay in a great heap in front of my nose, while a glance to my left showed me a range of twenty to thirty barrels also full of powder, and on the right over a hundred 8-inch shells, all loaded with the fuses fixed, while spare fuses and slow matches and port-fires in profusion lay heaped beside the shells.

By this time my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness of the mosque, and I took in my position and my danger at a glance. Here I was up to my knees in powder,—in the very bowels of a magazine with a naked light! My hair literally stood on end; I felt the skin of my head lifting my feather bonnet off my scalp; my knees knocked together, and despite the chilly night air the cold perspiration burst out all over me and ran down my face and legs. I had neither cloth nor handkerchief in my pocket, and there was not a moment to be lost, as already the overhanging wick of the chirâg was threatening to shed its smouldering red tip into the live magazine at my feet with consequences too frightful to contemplate. Quick as thought I put my left hand under the down-dropping flame, and clasped it with a grasp of determination; holding it firmly I slowly turned to the door, and walked out with my knees knocking one against the other! Fear had so overcome all other feeling that I am confident I never felt the least pain from grasping the burning wick till after I was outside the building and once again in the open air; but when I opened my hand I felt the smart acutely enough. I poured the oil out of the lamp into the burnt hand, and kneeling down thanked God for having saved myself and all the men lying around me from horrible destruction. I then got up and, staggering rather than walking to the place where Captain Dawson was sleeping, and shaking him by the shoulder till he awoke, I told him of my discovery and the fright I had got.

At first he either did not believe me, or did not comprehend the danger. "Bah! Corporal Mitchell," was all his answer, "you have woke up out of your sleep, and have got frightened at a shadow," for my heart was still thumping against my ribs worse than it was when I first discovered my danger, and my voice was trembling. I turned my smarting hand to the light of the fire and showed the captain how it was scorched; and then, feeling my pride hurt at being told I had got frightened at a shadow, I said: "Sir, you're not a Highlander or you would know the Gaelic proverb 'The heart of one who can look death in the face will not start at a shadow,' and you, sir, can yourself bear witness that I have not shirked to look death in the face more than once since daylight this morning." He replied, "Pardon me, I did not mean that; but calm yourself and explain what it is that has frightened you." I then told him that I had gone into the mosque with a naked lamp burning, and had found it half full of loose gunpowder piled in a great heap on the floor and a large number of loaded shells. "Are you sure you're not dreaming from the excitement of this terrible day?" said the captain. With that I looked down to my feet and my gaiters, which were still covered with blood from the slaughter in the Secundrabâgh; the wet grass had softened it again, and on this the powder was sticking nearly an inch thick. I scraped some of it off, throwing it into the fire, and said, "There is positive proof for you that I'm not dreaming, nor my vision a shadow!" On that the captain became almost as alarmed as I was, and a sentry was posted near the door of the mosque to prevent any one from entering it. The sleeping men were aroused, and the fire smothered out with as great care as possible, using for the purpose several earthen ghurrahs, or jars of water, which the enemy had left under the trees near where we were lying.

When all was over, Colour-Sergeant Morton coolly proposed to the captain to place me under arrest for having left the pile of arms after he, the colour-sergeant, had refused to give me leave. To this proposal Captain Dawson replied: "If any one deserves to be put under arrest it is you yourself, Sergeant Morton, for not having explored the mosque and discovered the gunpowder while Corporal Mitchell and I were posting the sentries; and if this neglect comes to the notice of either Colonel Hay or the Commander-in-Chief, both you and I are likely to hear more about it; so the less you say about the matter the better!" This ended the discussion and my adventure, and at the time I was glad to hear nothing more about it, but I have sometimes since thought that if the part I acted in this crisis had come to the knowledge of either Colonel Hay or Sir Colin Campbell, my burnt hand would have brought me something more than a proposal to place me under arrest, and take my corporal's stripes from me! Be that as it may, I got a fright that I have never forgotten, and, as already mentioned, even to this day I often dream of it, and wake up with a sudden start, the cold perspiration in great beads on my face, as I think I see again the huge black heap of powder in front of me.

After a sentry had been posted on the mosque and the fire put out, a glass lantern was discovered in one of the rooms, and Captain Dawson and I, with an escort of three or four men, made the circuit of the walls, searching every room. I remember one of the escort was James Wilson, the same man who wished to bayonet the Hindoo jogie in the village who afterwards shot poor Captain Mayne as told in my fourth chapter. As Wilson was peering into one of the rooms, a concealed sepoy struck him over the head with his tulwâr, but the feather bonnet saved his scalp as it had saved many more that day, and Captain Dawson being armed with a pair of double-barrelled pistols, put a bullet through the sepoy before he had time to make another cut at Wilson. In the same room I found a good cotton quilt which I promptly annexed to replace my lost greatcoat.

After all was quiet, the men rolled off to sleep again, and wrapping round my legs my newly-acquired quilt, which was lined with silk and had evidently belonged to a rebel officer, I too lay down and tried to sleep. My nerves were however too much shaken, and the pain of my burnt hand kept me awake, so I lay and listened to the men sleeping around me; and what a night that was! Had I the descriptive powers of a Tennyson or a Scott I might draw a picture of it, but as it is I can only very faintly attempt to make my readers imagine what it was like. The horrible scenes through which the men had passed during the day had told with terrible effect on their nervous systems, and the struggles,—eye to eye, foot to foot, and steel to steel—with death in the Secundrabâgh, were fought over again by most of the men in their sleep, oaths and shouts of defiance often curiously intermingled with prayers. One man would be lying calmly sleeping and commence muttering something inaudible, and then break out into a fierce battle-cry of "Cawnpore, you bloody murderer!"; another would shout "Charge! give them the bayonet!"; and a third, "Keep together, boys, don't fire; forward, forward; if we are to die, let us die like men!" Then I would hear one muttering, "Oh, mother, forgive me, and I'll never leave you again!"; while his comrade would half rise up, wave his hand, and call, "There they are! Fire low, give them the bayonet! Remember Cawnpore!" And so it was throughout that memorable night inside the Shâh Nujeef; and I have no doubt but it was the same with the men holding the other posts. The pain of my burnt hand and the terrible fright I had got kept me awake, and I lay and listened till nearly daybreak; but at length completely worn out, I, too, dosed off into a disturbed slumber, and I suppose I must have behaved in much the same way as those I had been listening to, for I dreamed of blood and battle, and then my mind would wander to scenes on Dee and Don side, and to the Braemar and Lonach gathering, and from that the scene would suddenly change, and I was a little boy again, kneeling beside my mother, saying my evening-hymn. Verily that night convinced me that Campbell's Soldier's Dream is no mere fiction, but must have been written or dictated from actual experience by one who had passed through such another day of excitement and danger as that of the 16th of November, 1857.

My dreams were rudely broken into by the crash of a round-shot through the top of the tree under which I was lying, and I jumped up repeating aloud the seventh verse of the ninety-first Psalm, Scotch version:

A thousand at thy side shall fall,
On thy right hand shall lie
Ten thousand dead; yet unto thee
It shall not once come nigh.

Captain Dawson and the sergeants of the company had been astir long before, and a party of ordnance-lascars from the ammunition park and several warrant-officers of the Ordnance-Department were busy removing the gunpowder from the tomb of the Shâh Nujeef. Over sixty maunds[24] of loose powder were filled into bags and carted out, besides twenty barrels of the ordinary size of powder-barrels, and more than one hundred and fifty loaded 8-inch shells. The work of removal was scarcely completed before the enemy commenced firing shell and red-hot round-shot from their batteries in the Bâdshâhibâgh across the Goomtee, aimed straight for the door of the tomb facing the river, showing that they believed the powder was still there, and that they hoped they might manage to blow us all up.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] "God is great!" "Religion! Religion!" "Victory to Mother Kâli!" The first two are Mussulman war-cries; the last is Hindoo.

[21] The Pearl Mosque.

[22] Little clay saucers of oil, with a loosely twisted cotton wick.

[23] Small pulse.

[24] Nearly five thousand lbs.

CHAPTER VI

BREAKFAST UNDER DIFFICULTIES—LONG SHOTS—THE LITTLE DRUMMER—EVACUATION OF THE RESIDENCY BY THE GARRISON

By this time several of the old campaigners had kindled a fire in one of the small rooms, through the roof of which one of our shells had fallen the day before, making a convenient chimney for the egress of the smoke. They had found a large copper pot which had been left by the sepoys, and had it on the fire filled with a stew of about a score or more of pigeons which had been left shut up in a dovecot in a corner of the compound. There were also plenty of pumpkins and other vegetables in the rooms, and piles of chupatties which had been cooked by the sepoys for their evening meal before they fled. Everything in fact was there for making a good breakfast for hungry men except salt, and there was no salt to be found in any of the rooms; but as luck favoured us, I had one of the old-fashioned round cylinder-shaped wooden match-boxes full of salt in my haversack, which was more than sufficient to season the stew. I had carried this salt from Cawnpore, and I did so by the advice of an old veteran who had served in the Ninety-Second Gordon Highlanders all through the Peninsular war, and finally at Waterloo. When as a boy I had often listened to his stories and told him that I would also enlist for a soldier, he had given me this piece of practical advice, which I in my turn present to every young soldier and volunteer. It is this: "Always carry a box of salt in your haversack when on active service; because the commissariat department is usually in the rear, and as a rule when an army is pressed for food the men have often the chance of getting hold of a bullock or a sheep, or of fowls, etc., but it is more difficult to find salt, and even good food without salt is very unpalatable." I remembered the advice, and it proved of great service to myself and comrades in many instances during the Mutiny. As it was, thanks to my foresight the hungry men in the Shâh Nujeef made a good breakfast on the morning of the 17th of November, 1857. I may here say that my experience is that the soldiers who could best look after their stomachs were also those who could make the best use of the bayonet, and who were the least likely to fall behind in a forced march. If I had the command of an army in the field my rule would be: "Cut the grog, and give double grub when hard work has to be done!"

After making a good breakfast the men were told off in sections, and we discharged our rifles at the enemy across the Goomtee,[25] and then spunged them out, which they sorely needed, because they had not been cleaned from the day we advanced from the Alumbâgh. Our rifles had in fact got so foul with four days' heavy work that it was almost impossible to load them, and the recoil had become so great that the shoulders of many of the men were perfectly black with bruises. As soon as our rifles were cleaned, a number of the best shots in the company were selected to try and silence the fire from the battery in the Bâdshâhibâgh across the river, which was annoying us by endeavouring to pitch hot shot and shell into the tomb, and to shorten the distance they had brought their guns outside the gate on to the open ground. They evidently as yet did not understand the range of the Enfield rifle, as they now came within about a thousand to twelve hundred yards of the wall of the Shâh Nujeef next the river. Some twenty of the best shots in the company, with carefully cleaned and loaded rifles, watched till they saw a good number of the enemy near their guns, then, raising sights to the full height and carefully aiming high, they fired a volley by word of command slowly given—one, two, fire! and about half a dozen of the enemy were knocked over. They at once withdrew their guns inside the Bâdshâhibâgh and shut the gate, and did not molest us any more.

During the early part of the forenoon we had several men struck by rifle bullets fired from one of the minarets in the Motee Mahal, which was said to be occupied by one of the ex-King of Oude's eunuchs who was a first-rate marksman, and armed with an excellent rifle; from his elevated position in the minaret he could see right into the square of the Shâh Nujeef. We soon had several men wounded, and as there was no surgeon with us Captain Dawson sent me back to where the field-hospital was formed near the Secundrabâgh, to ask Dr. Munro if an assistant-surgeon could be spared for our post. But Dr. Munro told me to tell Captain Dawson that it was impossible to spare an assistant-surgeon or even an apothecary, because he had just been informed that the Mess-House and Motee Mahal were to be assaulted at two o'clock, and every medical officer would be required on the spot; but he would try and send a hospital-attendant with a supply of lint and bandages. By the time I got back the assault on the Mess-House had begun, and Sergeant Findlay, before mentioned, was sent with a dooly and a supply of bandages, lint, and dressing, to do the best he could for any of ours who might be wounded.

About half an hour after the assault on the Mess-House had commenced a large body of the enemy, numbering at least six or seven hundred men, whose retreat had evidently been cut off from the city, crossed from the Mess-House into the Motee Mahal in our front, and forming up under cover of some huts between the Shâh Munzil and Motee Mahal, they evidently made up their minds to try and retake the Shâh Nujeef. They debouched on the plain with a number of men in front carrying scaling-ladders, and Captain Dawson being on the alert ordered all the men to kneel down behind the loopholes with rifles sighted for five hundred yards, and wait for the word of command. It was now our turn to know what it felt like to be behind loopholed walls, and we calmly awaited the enemy, watching them forming up for a dash on our position. The silence was profound, when Sergeant Daniel White repeated aloud a passage from the third canto of Scott's Bridal of Triermain:

Bewcastle now must keep the Hold,
Speir-Adam's steeds must bide in stall,
Of Hartley-burn the bowmen bold
Must only shoot from battled wall;
And Liddesdale may buckle spur,
And Teviot now may belt the brand,
Taras and Ewes keep nightly stir,
And Eskdale foray Cumberland.
Of wasted fields and plunder'd flocks
The Borderers bootless may complain;
They lack the sword of brave De Vaux,
There comes no aid from Triermain.

Captain Dawson, who had been steadily watching the advance of the enemy and carefully calculating their distance, just then called "Attention, five hundred yards, ready—one, two, fire!" when over eighty rifles rang out, and almost as many of the enemy went down like ninepins on the plain! Their leader was in front, mounted on a finely-accoutred charger, and he and his horse were evidently both hit; he at once wheeled round and made for the Goomtee, but horse and man both fell before they got near the river. After the first volley every man loaded and fired independently, and the plain was soon strewn with dead and wounded.

The unfortunate assaulters were now between two fires, for the force that had attacked the Shâh Munzil and Motee Mahal commenced to send grape and canister into their rear, so the routed rebels threw away their arms and scaling-ladders, and all that were able to do so bolted pell-mell for the Goomtee. Only about a quarter of the original number, however, reached the opposite bank, for when they were in the river our men rushed to the corner nearest to them and kept peppering at every head above water. One tall fellow, I well remember, acted as cunningly as a jackal; whether struck or not he fell just as he got into shallow water on the opposite side, and lay without moving, with his legs in the water and his head on the land. He appeared to be stone dead, and every rifle was turned on those that were running across the plain for the gate of the Bâdshâhibâgh, while many others who were evidently severely wounded were fired on as our fellows said, "in mercy to put them out of pain." I have previously remarked that the war of the Mutiny was a horrible, I may say a demoralising, war for civilised men to be engaged in. The inhuman murders and foul treachery of the Nânâ Sâhib and others put all feeling of humanity or mercy for the enemy out of the question, and our men thus early spoke of putting a wounded Jack Pandy out of pain, just as calmly as if he had been a wild beast; it was even considered an act of mercy. It is now horrible to recall it all, but what I state is true. The only excuse is that we did not begin this war of extermination; and no apologist for the mutineers can say that they were actuated by patriotism to throw off the yoke of the oppressor. The cold-blooded cruelty of the mutineers and their leaders from first to last branded them in fact as traitors to humanity and cowardly assassins of helpless women and children. But to return to the Pandy whom I left lying half-covered with water on the further bank of the Goomtee opposite the Shâh Nujeef. This particular man was ever after spoken of as the "jackal," because jackals and foxes have often been known to sham dead and wait for a chance of escape; and so it was with Jack Pandy. After he had lain apparently dead for about an hour, some one noticed that he had gradually dragged himself out of the water; till all at once he sprang to his feet, and ran like a deer in the direction of the gate of the Bâdshâhibâgh. He was still quite within easy range, and several rifles were levelled at him; but Sergeant Findlay, who was on the rampart, and was himself one of the best shots in the company, called out, "Don't fire, men; give the poor devil a chance!" Instead of a volley of bullets, the men's better feelings gained the day, and Jack Pandy was reprieved, with a cheer to speed him on his way. As soon as he heard it he realised his position, and like the Samaritan leper of old, he halted, turned round, and putting up both his hands with the palms together in front of his face, he salaamed profoundly, prostrating himself three times on the ground by way of thanks, and then walked slowly towards the Bâdshâhibâgh, while we on the ramparts waved our feather bonnets and clapped our hands to him in token of good-will. I have often wondered if that particular Pandy ever after fought the English, or if he returned to his village to relate his exceptional experience of our clemency.

Just at this time we noticed a great commotion in front, and heard our fellows and even those in the Residency cheering like mad. The cause we shortly after learned; that the generals, Sir Colin Campbell, Havelock, and Outram had met. The Residency was relieved and the women and children were saved, although not yet out of danger, and every man in the force slept with a lighter heart that night. If the cost was heavy, the gain was great.

I may here mention that there is an entry in my note-book, dated 18th of November 1857: "That Lieutenant Fred. Roberts planted the Union Jack three times on the top of the Mess-House as a signal to the force in the Residency that the Mess-House was in our possession, and it was as often shot down." Some time ago there was, I remember, a dispute about who was entitled to the credit of this action. Now I did not see it myself, but I must have got the information from some of the men of the other companies who witnessed the deed, as it was known that I was keeping a rough diary of the leading events.

Such was the glorious issue of the 17th of November. The meeting of the Generals, Sir Colin Campbell, Outram, and Havelock, proved that Lucknow was relieved and the women and children were safe; but to accomplish this object our small force had lost no less than forty-five officers and four hundred and ninety-six men—more than a tenth of our whole number! The brunt of the loss fell on the Artillery and Naval Brigade, and on the Fifty-Third, the Ninety-Third, and the Fourth Punjâb Infantry. These losses were respectively as follows:

leaving one hundred and twelve to be divided among the other corps engaged.

In writing mostly from memory thirty-five years after the events described, many incidents, though not entirely forgotten, escape being noticed in their proper sequence, and that is the case with the following, which I must here relate before I enter on the evacuation of the Residency.

Immediately after the powder left by the enemy had been removed from the tomb of the Shâh Nujeef, and the sun had dispelled the fog which rested over the Goomtee and the city, it was deemed necessary to signal to the Residency to let them know our position, and for this purpose our adjutant, Lieutenant William M'Bean, Sergeant Hutchinson, and Drummer Ross, a boy of about twelve years of age but even small for his years, climbed to the top of the dome of the Shâh Nujeef by means of a rude rope-ladder which was fixed on it; thence with the regimental colour of the Ninety-Third and a feather bonnet on the tip of the staff they signalled to the Residency, and the little drummer sounded the regimental call on his bugle from the top of the dome. The signal was seen, and answered from the Residency by lowering their flag three times. But the enemy on the Bâdshâhibâgh also saw the signalling and the daring adventurers on the dome, and turned their guns on them, sending several round-shots quite close to them. Their object being gained, however, our men descended; but little Ross ran up the ladder again like a monkey, and holding on to the spire of the dome with his left hand he waved his feather bonnet and then sounded the regimental call a second time, which he followed by the call known as The Cock of the North, which he sounded as a blast of defiance to the enemy. When peremptorily ordered to come down by Lieutenant M'Bean, he did so, but not before the little monkey had tootled out—

There's not a man beneath the moon,
Nor lives in any land he,
That hasn't heard the pleasant tune
Of Yankee Doodle Dandy!

In cooling drinks and clipper ships,
The Yankee has the way shown,
On land and sea 'tis he that whips
Old Bull, and all creation.

When little Ross reached the parapet at the foot of the dome, he turned to Lieutenant M'Bean and said: "Ye ken, sir, I was born when the regiment was in Canada when my mother was on a visit to an aunt in the States, and I could not come down till I had sung Yankee Doodle, to make my American cousins envious when they hear of the deeds of the Ninety-Third. Won't the Yankees feel jealous when they hear that the littlest drummer-boy in the regiment sang Yankee Doodle under a hail of fire on the dome of the highest mosque in Lucknow!"

As mentioned in the last chapter, the Residency was relieved on the afternoon of the 17th of November, and the following day preparations were made for the evacuation of the position and the withdrawal of the women and children. To do this in safety however was no easy task, for the mutineers and rebels showed but small regard for the laws of chivalry; a man might pass an exposed position in comparative safety, but if a helpless woman or little child were seen, they were made the target for a hundred bullets. So far as we could see from the Shâh Nujeef, the line of retreat was pretty well sheltered till the refugees emerged from the Motee Mahal; but between that and the Shâh Nujeef there was a long stretch of plain, exposed to the fire of the enemy's artillery and sharp-shooters from the opposite side of the Goomtee. To protect this part of their route a flying sap was constructed: a battery of artillery and some of Peel's guns, with a covering force of infantry, were posted in the north-east corner of the Motee Mahal; and all the best shots in the Shâh Nujeef were placed on the north-west corner of the ramparts next to the Goomtee. These men were under command of Sergeant Findlay, who, although nominally our medical officer, stuck to his post on the ramparts, and being one of the best shots in the company was entrusted with the command of the sharp-shooters for the protection of the retreating women and children. From these two points,—the north-east corner of the Motee Mahal and the north-west of the Shâh Nujeef—the enemy on the north bank of the Goomtee were brought under a cross-fire, the accuracy of which made them keep a very respectful distance from the river, with the result that the women and children passed the exposed part of their route without a single casualty. I remember one remarkably good shot made by Sergeant Findlay. He unhorsed a rebel officer close to the east gate of the Bâdshâhibâgh, who came out with a force of infantry and a couple of guns to open fire on the line of retreat; but he was no sooner knocked over than the enemy retreated into the bâgh, and did not show themselves any more that day.

By midnight of the 22nd of November the Residency was entirely evacuated, and the enemy completely deceived as to the movements; and about two o'clock on the morning of the 23rd we withdrew from the Shâh Nujeef and became the rear-guard of the retreating column, making our way slowly past the Secundrabâgh, the stench from which, as can easily be imagined, was something frightful. I have seen it stated in print that the two thousand odd of the enemy killed in the Secundrabâgh were dragged out and buried in deep trenches outside the enclosure. This is not correct. The European slain were removed and buried in a deep trench, where the mound is still visible, to the east of the gate, and the Punjâbees recovered their slain and cremated them near the bank of the Goomtee. But the rebel dead had to be left to rot where they lay, a prey to the vulture by day and the jackal by night, for from the smallness of the relieving force no other course was possible; in fact, it was with the greatest difficulty that men could be spared from the piquets,—for the whole force simply became a series of outlying piquets—to bury our own dead, let alone those of the enemy. And when we retired their friends did not take the trouble, as the skeletons were still whitening in the rooms of the buildings when the Ninety-Third returned to the siege of Lucknow in March, 1858. Their bones were doubtless buried after the fall of Lucknow, but that would be at least six months after their slaughter. By daylight on the 23rd of November the whole of the women and children had arrived at the Dilkooshá, where tents were pitched for them, and the rear-guard had reached the Martinière. Here the rolls were called again to see if any were missing, when it was discovered that Sergeant Alexander Macpherson, of No. 2 company, who had formed one of Colonel Ewart's detachment in the barracks, was not present. Shortly afterwards he was seen making his way across the plain, and reported that he had been left asleep in the barracks, and, on waking up after daylight and finding himself alone, guessed what had happened, and knowing the direction in which the column was to retire, he at once followed. Fortunately the enemy had not even then discovered the evacuation of the Residency, for they were still firing into our old positions. Sergeant Macpherson was ever after this known in the regiment as "Sleepy Sandy."

There was also an officer, Captain Waterman, left asleep in the Residency. He, too, managed to join the rear-guard in safety; but he got such a fright that I afterwards saw it stated in one of the Calcutta papers that his mind was affected by the shock to his nervous system. Some time later an Irishman in the Ninety-Third gave a good reason why the fright did not turn the head of Sandy Macpherson. In those days before the railway it took much longer than now for the mails to get from Cawnpore to Calcutta, and for Calcutta papers to get back again; and some time,—about a month or six weeks—after the events above related, when the Calcutta papers got back to camp with the accounts of the relief of Lucknow, I and Sergeant Macpherson were on outlying piquet at Futtehghur (I think), and the captain of the piquet gave me a bundle of the newspapers to read out to the men. In these papers there was an account of Captain Waterman's being left behind in the Residency, in which it was stated that the shock had affected his intellect. When I read this out, the men made some remarks concerning the fright which it must have given Sandy Macpherson when he found himself alone in the barracks, and Sandy joining in the remarks, was inclined to boast that the fright had not upset his intellect, when an Irishman of the piquet, named Andrew M'Onville, usually called "Handy Andy" in the company, joining in the conversation, said: "Boys, if Sergeant Macpherson will give me permission, I will tell you a story that will show the reason why the fright did not upset his intellect." Permission was of course granted for the story, and Handy Andy proceeded with his illustration as follows, as nearly as I can remember it.

"You have all heard of Mr. Gough, the great American Temperance lecturer. Well, the year before I enlisted he came to Armagh, giving a course of temperance lectures, and all the public-house keepers and brewers were up in arms to raise as much opposition as possible against Mr. Gough and his principles, and in one of his lectures he laid great stress on the fact that he considered moderation the parent of drunkenness. A brewer's drayman thereupon went on the platform to disprove this assertion by actual facts from his own experience, and in his argument in favour of moderate drinking, he stated that for upwards of twenty years he had habitually consumed over a gallon of beer and about a pint of whisky daily, and solemnly asserted that he had never been the worse for liquor in his life. To which Mr. Gough replied: 'My friends, there is no rule without its exception, and our friend here is an exception to the general rule of moderate drinking; but I will tell you a story that I think exactly illustrates his case. Some years ago, when I was a boy, my father had two negro servants, named Uncle Sambo and Snowball. Near our house there was a branch of one of the large fresh-water lakes which swarmed with fish, and it was the duty of Snowball to go every morning to catch sufficient for the breakfast of the household. The way Snowball usually caught his fish was by making them drunk by feeding them with Indian corn-meal mixed with strong whisky and rolled into balls. When these whisky balls were thrown into the water the fish came and ate them readily, but after they had swallowed a few they became helplessly drunk, turning on their backs and allowing themselves to be caught, so that in a very short time Snowball would return with his basket full of fish. But as I said, there is no rule without an exception, and one morning proved that there is also an exception in the matter of fish becoming drunk. As usual Snowball went to the lake with an allowance of whisky balls, and spying a fine big fish with a large flat head, he dropped a ball in front of it, which it at once ate and then another, and another, and so on till all the whisky balls in Snowball's basket were in the stomach of this queer fish, and still it showed no signs of becoming drunk, but kept wagging its tail and looking for more whisky balls. On this Snowball returned home and called old Uncle Sambo to come and see this wonderful fish which had swallowed nearly a peck of whisky balls and still was not drunk. When old Uncle Sambo set eyes on the fish, he exclaimed, "O Snowball, Snowball! you foolish boy, you will never be able to make that fish drunk with your whisky balls. That fish could live in a barrel of whisky and not get drunk. That fish, my son, is called a mullet-head: it has got no brains." And that accounts,' said Mr. Gough, turning to the brewer's drayman, 'for our friend here being able for twenty years to drink a gallon of beer and a pint of whisky daily and never become drunk.' And so, my chums," said Handy Andy, "if you will apply the same reasoning to the cases of Sergeant Macpherson and Captain Waterman I think you will come to the correct conclusion why the fright did not upset the intellect of Sergeant Macpherson." We all joined in the laugh at Handy Andy's story, and none more heartily than the butt of it, Sandy Macpherson himself.

But enough of digression. Shortly after the roll was called at the Martinière, a most unfortunate accident took place. Corporal Cooper and four or five men went into one of the rooms of the Martinière in which there was a quantity of loose powder which had been left by the enemy, and somehow,—it was never known how—the powder got ignited and they were all blown up, their bodies completely charred and their eyes scorched out. The poor fellows all died in the greatest agony within an hour or so of the accident, and none of them ever spoke to say how it happened. The quantity of powder was not sufficient to shatter the house, but it blew the doors and windows out, and burnt the poor fellows as black as charcoal. This sad accident cast a gloom over the regiment, and made me again very mindful of and thankful for my own narrow escape, and that of my comrades in the Shâh Nujeef on that memorable night of the 16th of November.

Later in the day our sadness increased when it was found that Colour-Sergeant Alexander Knox, of No. 2 company, was missing. He had called the roll of his company at daylight, and had then gone to see a friend in the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders. He had stayed some time with his friend and left to return to his own regiment, but was never heard of again. Poor Knox had two brothers in the regiment, and he was the youngest of the three. He was a most deserving and popular non-commissioned officer, decorated with the French war medal and the Cross of the Legion of Honour for valour in the Crimea, and was about to be promoted sergeant-major of the regiment, vice Murray killed in the Secundrabâgh. His fate was never known.

About two o'clock in the afternoon, the regiment being all together again, the following general order was read to us, and although this is well-known history, still there must be many of the readers of these reminiscences who have not ready access to histories. I will therefore quote the general order in question for the information of young soldiers.

Headquarters, La Martinière, Lucknow,
23rd November, 1857.

1. The Commander-in-Chief has reason to be thankful to the force he conducted for the relief of the garrison of Lucknow.

2. Hastily assembled, fatigued by forced marches, but animated by a common feeling of determination to accomplish the duty before them, all ranks of this force have compensated for their small number, in the execution of a most difficult duty, by unceasing exertions.

3. From the morning of the 16th till last night the whole force has been one outlying piquet, never out of fire, and covering an immense extent of ground, to permit the garrison to retire scatheless and in safety covered by the whole of the relieving force.

4. That ground was won by fighting as hard as it ever fell to the lot of the Commander-in-Chief to witness, it being necessary to bring up the same men over and over again to fresh attacks; and it is with the greatest gratification that his Excellency declares he never saw men behave better.

5. The storming of the Secundrabâgh and the Shâh Nujeef has never been surpassed in daring, and the success of it was most brilliant and complete.

6. The movement of retreat of last night, by which the final rescue of the garrison was effected, was a model of discipline and exactness. The consequence was that the enemy was completely deceived, and the force retired by a narrow, tortuous lane, the only line of retreat open, in the face of 50,000 enemies, without molestation.

7. The Commander-in-Chief offers his sincere thanks to Major-General Sir James Outram, G.C.B., for the happy manner in which he planned and carried out his arrangements for the evacuation of the Residency of Lucknow.

By order of his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief,

W. Mayhew, Major,
Deputy Adjutant-General of the Army.

Thus were achieved the relief and evacuation of the Residency of Lucknow.[26] The enemy did not discover that the Residency was deserted till noon on the 23rd, and about the time the above general order was being read to us they fired a salute of one hundred and one guns, but did not attempt to follow us or to cut off our retreat. That night we bivouacked in the Dilkooshá park, and retired on the Alumbâgh on the 25th, the day on which the brave and gallant Havelock died. But that is a well-known part of the history of the relief of Lucknow, and I will turn to other matters.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] It may be necessary to remind civilians that the rifles of 1857 were muzzle-loading.

[26] It must always be recollected that this was the second relief of Lucknow. The first was effected by the force under Havelock and Outram on the 25th September, 1857, and was in fact more of a reinforcement than a relief.

CHAPTER VII

BAGPIPES AT LUCKNOW—A BEWILDERED BÂBOO—THE FORCED MARCH TO
CAWNPORE—OPIUM—WYNDHAM'S MISTAKE

Since commencing these reminiscences, and more particularly during my late visit to Lucknow and Cawnpore, I have been asked by several people about the truth of the story of the Scotch girl and the bagpipes at Lucknow, and in reply to all such inquiries I can only make the following answer.

About the time of the anniversary dinner in celebration of the relief of Lucknow, in September, 1891, some writers in the English papers went so far as to deny that the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders had their bagpipes with them at Lucknow, and in The Calcutta Statesman of the 18th of October, 1891, I wrote a letter contradicting this assertion, which with the permission of the editor I propose to republish in this chapter. But I may first mention that on my late visit to Lucknow a friend showed me a copy of the original edition of A Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow, by L. E. R. Rees, one of the surviving defenders, which I had never before seen, and on page 224 the following statement is given regarding the entry of Havelock's force. After describing the prevailing excitement the writer goes on to say: "The shrill tones of the Highlanders' bagpipes now pierced our ears; not the most beautiful music was ever more welcome or more joy-bringing," and so on. Further on, on page 226: "The enemy found some of us dancing to the sounds of the Highlanders' pipes. The remembrance of that happy evening will never be effaced from my memory." While yet again, on page 237, he gives the story related by me below about the Highland piper putting some of the enemy's cavalry to flight by a blast from his pipes. So much in proof of the fact that the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders had their bagpipes with them, and played them too, at the first relief of Lucknow.

I must now devote a few remarks to the incident of Jessie Brown, which Grace Campbell has immortalised in the song known as Jessie's Dream. In the Indian Empire, by R. Montgomery Martin, vol. ii. page 470, after denying that this story had its origin in Lucknow, the author gives the following foot-note: "It was originally a little romance, written by a French governess at Jersey for the use of her pupils; which found its way into a Paris paper, thence to the Jersey Times, thence to the London Times, December 12th, 1857, and afterwards appeared in nearly all the journals of the United Kingdom." With regard to this remark, I am positive that I heard the story in Lucknow in November, 1857, at the same time as I heard the story about the piper frightening the enemy's sowars with his bagpipes; and it appears a rather far-fetched theory about a French governess inventing the story in Jersey. What was the name of this governess, and, above all, why go for its origin to such an out-of-the-way place as Jersey? I doubt very much if it was possible for the news of the relief of Lucknow to have reached Jersey, and for the said French governess to have composed and printed such a romance in time for its roundabout publication in The Times of the 12th of December, 1857. This version of the origin of Jessie's Dream therefore to my thinking carries its own refutation on the face of it, and I should much like to see the story in its original French form before I believe it.

Be that as it may, in the letters published in the home papers, and quoted in The Calcutta Statesman in October, 1891, one lady gave the positive statement of a certain Mrs. Gaffney, then living in London, who asserted that she was, if I remember rightly, in the same compartment of the Residency with Jessie Brown at the very time the latter said that she heard the bagpipes when dull English ears could detect nothing besides the accustomed roar of the cannon. Now, I knew Mrs. Gaffney very well. Her husband, Sergeant Gaffney, served with me in the Commissariat Department in Peshawur just after the Mutiny, and I was present as his best man when he married Mrs. Gaffney. I forget now what was the name of her first husband, but she was a widow when Sergeant Gaffney married her. I think her first husband was a sergeant of the Company's Artillery, who was either killed in the defence of the Residency or died shortly after. However, she became Mrs. Gaffney either in the end of 1860 or beginning of 1861, and I have often heard her relate the incident of Jessie Brown's hearing the bagpipes in the underground cellar, or tykhâna, of the Residency, hours before any one would believe that a force was coming to their relief, when in the words of J. B. S. Boyle, the garrison were repeating in dull despair the lines so descriptive of their state:

No news from the outer world!
Days, weeks, and months have sped;
Pent up within our battlements,
We seem as living dead.

No news from the outer world!
Have British soldiers quailed
Before the rebel mutineers?—
Has British valour failed?

If the foregoing facts do not convince my readers of the truth of the origin of Jessie's Dream I cannot give them any more. I am positive on the point that the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders had their bagpipes and pipers with them in Lucknow, and that I first heard the story of Jessie's Dream on the 23rd of November, 1857, on the Dilkooshá heights before Lucknow. The following is my letter of the 18th of October, 1891, on the subject, addressed to the editor of The Calcutta Statesman.

Sir,—In an issue of the Statesman of last week there was a letter from Deputy-Inspector-General Joseph Jee, V.C., C.B., late of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs), recopied from an English paper, contradicting a report that had been published to the effect that the bagpipes of the Seventy-Eighth had been left behind at Cawnpore when the regiment went with General Havelock to the first relief of Lucknow; and I write to support the assertion of Deputy-Inspector-General Jee that if any late pipe-major or piper of the old Seventy-Eighth has ever made such an assertion, he must be mad! I was not in the Seventy-Eighth myself, but in the Ninety-Third, the regiment which saved the "Saviours of India" (as the Seventy-Eighth were then called), and rescued them from the Residency, and I am positive that the Seventy-Eighth had their bagpipes and pipers too inside the Residency; for I well remember they struck up the same tunes as the pipers of the Ninety-Third, on the memorable 16th of November, 1857. I recollect the fact as if it were only yesterday. When the din of battle had ceased for a time, and the roll of the Ninety-Third was being called outside the Secundrabâgh to ascertain how many had fallen in that memorable combat, which Sir Colin Campbell said had "never been surpassed and rarely equalled," Pipe-Major John McLeod called me aside to listen to the pipers of the Seventy-Eighth, inside the Residency, playing On wi' the Tartan, and I could hear the pipes quite distinctly, although, except for the practised lug of John McLeod, I could not have told the tune. However, I don't suppose there are many now living fitter to give evidence on the subject than Doctor Jee; but I may mention another incident. The morning after the Residency was evacuated, I visited the bivouac of the Seventy-Eighth near Dilkooshá, to make inquiries about an old school chum who had enlisted in the regiment. I found him still alive, and he related to me how he had been one of the men who were with Dr. Jee collecting the wounded in the streets of Lucknow on the 26th of September, and how they had been cut off from the main body and besieged in a house the whole night, and Dr. Jee was the only officer with the party, and that he had been recommended for the Victoria Cross for his bravery in defending the place and saving a large number of the wounded. I may mention another incident which my friend told me, and which has not been so much noticed as the Jessie Brown story. It was told to me as a fact at the time, and it afterwards appeared in a Glasgow newspaper. It was as follows: When Dr. Jee's detachment and the wounded were fighting their way to the Residency, a wounded piper and three others who had fired their last round of ammunition were charged by half-a-dozen rebel sowars[27] in a side street, and the three men with rifles prepared to defend themselves with the bayonet; but as soon as the sowars were within about twenty paces of the party, the piper pointed the drones of his bagpipes straight at them and blew such a wild blast that they turned tail and fled like the wind, mistaking the bagpipes for some infernal machine! But enough of Lucknow. Let us turn to more ancient history. Who ever heard of a Highland regiment going into action without their bagpipes and pipers, unless the latter were all "kilt"? No officer who ever commanded Highlanders knew the worth of a good piper better than Colonel John Cameron, "the grandson of Lochiel, the valiant Fassifern." And is there a Highland soldier worthy of the name who has not heard of his famous favourite piper who was shot at Cameron's side when playing the charge, while crossing the Nive in face of the French? The historian of the Peninsula war relates: "When the Ninety-Second Highlanders were in the middle of the stream, Colonel Cameron's favourite piper was shot by his side. Stooping from his saddle, Fassifern tried to rescue the body of the man who had so often cheered the regiment to victory, but in vain: the lifeless corpse was swept away by the torrent. 'Alas!' cried the brave Cameron, dashing the tears from his eyes, 'I would rather have lost twenty grenadiers than you.'" Let us next turn to McDonald's Martial Music of Scotland, and we read: "The bagpipes are sacred to Scotland and speak a language which Scotchmen only know, and inspire feelings which Scotchmen only feel. Need it be told to how many fields of danger and victory the warlike strains of the bagpipes have led? There is not a battlefield that is honourable to Britain where their war-blast has not sounded! When every other instrument has been silenced by the confusion and the carnage of the scene, the bagpipes have been borne into the thick of battle, and many a devoted piper has sounded at once encouragement to his clansmen and his own coronach!"

In the garb of old Gaul, with the fire of old Rome,
From the heath-covered mountains of Scotia we come;
Our loud-sounding pipe breathes the true martial strain,
And our hearts still the old Scottish valour retain.

We rested at the Alumbâgh on the 26th of November, but early on the 27th we understood something had gone wrong in our rear, because, as usual with Sir Colin when he contemplated a forced march, we were served out with three days' rations and double ammunition,—sixty rounds in our pouches and sixty in our haversacks; and by two o'clock in the afternoon the whole of the women and children, all the sick and wounded, in every conceivable kind of conveyance, were in full retreat towards Cawnpore. General Outram's Division being made up to four thousand men was left in the Alumbâgh to hold the enemy in check, and to show them that Lucknow was not abandoned, while three thousand fighting men, to guard over two thousand women and children, sick and wounded, commenced their march southwards. So far as I can remember the Third and Fifth Punjâb Infantry formed the infantry of the advance-guard; the Ninth Lancers and Horse Artillery supplied the flanking parties; while the rear guard, being the post of honour, was given to the Ninety-Third, a troop of the Ninth Lancers and Bourchier's light field-battery, No. 17 of the Honourable East India Company's artillery. We started from the Alumbâgh late in the afternoon, and reached Bunnee Bridge, seventeen miles from Lucknow, about 11 P.M. Here the regiment halted till daylight on the morning of the 28th of November, but the advance-guard with the women and children, sick and wounded, had been moving since 2 A.M.

As already mentioned, all the subaltern officers in my company were wounded, and I was told off, with a guard of about twenty men, to see all the baggage-carts across Bunnee Bridge and on their way to Cawnpore. While I was on this duty an amusing incident happened. A commissariat cart, a common country hackery, loaded with biscuits, got upset, and its wheel broke just as we were moving it on to the road. The only person near it belonging to the Commissariat Department was a young bâboo named Hera Lâll Chatterjee, a boy of about seventeen or eighteen years of age, who defended his charge as long as he could, but he was soon put on one side, the biscuits-bags were ripped open, and the men commenced filling their haversacks from them. Just at this time, an escort of the Ninth Lancers, with some staff-officers, rode up from the rear. It was the Commander-in-Chief and his staff. Hera Lâll seeing him rushed up and called out: "O my Lord, you are my father and my mother! what shall I tell you! These wild Highlanders will not hear me, but are stealing commissariat biscuits like fine fun." Sir Colin pulled up, and asked the bâboo if there was no officer present; to which Hera Lâll replied, "No officer, sir, only one corporal, and he tell me, 'Shut up, or I'll shoot you, same like rebel mutineer!'" Hearing this I stepped out of the crowd and saluting Sir Colin, told him that all the officers of my company were wounded except Captain Dawson, who was in front; that I and a party of men had been left to see the last of the carts on to the road; that this cart had broken down, and as there was no other means of carrying the biscuits, the men had filled their haversacks with them rather than leave them on the ground. On hearing that, Hera Lâll again came to the front with clasped hands, saying: "O my Lord, if one cart of biscuits short, Major Fitzgerald not listen to me, but will order thirty lashes with provost-marshal's cat! What can a poor bâboo do with such wild Highlanders?" Sir Colin replied: "Yes, bâboo, I know these Highlanders are very wild fellows when hungry; let them have the biscuits;" and turning to one of the staff, he directed him to give a voucher to the bâboo that a cart loaded with biscuits had broken down and the contents had been divided among the rear-guard by order of the Commander-in-Chief. Sir Colin then turned to us and said: "Men, I give you the biscuits; divide them with your comrades in front; but you must promise me should a cart loaded with rum break down, you will not interfere with it." We all replied: "No, no, Sir Colin, if rum breaks down we'll not touch it." "All right," said Sir Colin, "remember I trust you," and looking round he said, "I know every one of you," and rode on. We very soon found room for the biscuits, until we got up to the rest of the company, when we honestly shared them. I may add that bâboo Hera Lâll Chatterjee is still living, and is the only native employé I know who served through the second relief of Lucknow. He now holds the post of cashier in the offices of Messrs. McNeill and Co., of Clive Ghât Street, Calcutta, which doubtless he finds more congenial employment than defending commissariat stores from hungry wild Highlanders, with the prospect of the provost-marshal's cat as the only reward for doing his best to defend his charge.

About five miles farther on a general halt was made for a short rest and for all stragglers to come up. Sir Colin himself, being still with the column, ordered the Ninety-Third to form up, and, calling the officers to the front, he made the first announcement to the regiment that General Wyndham had been attacked by the Nânâ Sâhib and the Gwalior Contingent in Cawnpore; that his force had been obliged to retire within the fort at the head of the bridge of boats, and that we must reach Cawnpore that night, because, if the bridge of boats should be captured before we got there, we would be cut off in Oude with fifty thousand of our enemies in our rear, a well-equipped army of forty thousand men, with a powerful train of artillery numbering over forty siege guns, in our front, and with all the women and children, sick and wounded, to guard. "So, Ninety-Third," said the grand old Chief, "I don't ask you to undertake this forced march, in your present tired condition, without good reason. You must reach Cawnpore to-night at all costs." And, as usual, when he took the men into his confidence, he was answered from the ranks, "All right, Sir Colin, we'll do it." To which he replied, "Very well, Ninety-Third, remember I depend on you." And he and his staff and escort rode on.

By this time we could plainly hear the guns of the Gwalior Contingent bombarding General Wyndham's position in Cawnpore; and although terribly footsore and tired, not having had our clothes off, nor a change of socks, since the 10th of the month (now eighteen days) we trudged on our weary march, every mile making the roar of the guns in front more audible. I may remark here that there is nothing to rouse tired soldiers like a good cannonade in front; it is the best tonic out! Even the youngest soldier who has once been under fire, and can distinguish the sound of a shotted gun from blank, pricks up his ears at the sound and steps out with a firmer tread and a more erect bearing.

I shall never forget the misery of that march! However, we reached the sands on the banks of the Ganges, on the Oude side of the river opposite Cawnpore, just as the sun was setting, having covered the forty-seven miles under thirty hours. Of course the great hardship of the march was caused by our worn-out state after eighteen days' continual duty, without a change of clothes or our accoutrements off. And when we got in sight of Cawnpore, the first thing we saw was the enemy on the opposite side of the river from us, making bonfires of our spare kits and baggage which had been left at Cawnpore when we advanced for the relief of Lucknow! Tired as we were, we assisted to drag Peel's heavy guns into position on the banks of the river, whence the Blue-jackets opened fire on the left flank of the enemy, the bonfires of our spare baggage being a fine mark for them.

Just as the Nânâ Sâhib had got his first gun to bear on the bridge of boats, that gun was struck on the side by one of Peel's 24-pounders and upset, and an 8-inch shell from one of his howitzers bursting in the midst of a crowd of them, we could see them bolting helter-skelter. This put a stop to their game for the night, and we lay down and rested on the sands till daybreak next morning, the 29th of November.

I must mention here an experience of my own which I always recall to mind when I read some of the insane ravings of the Anti-Opium Society against the use of that drug. I was so completely tired out by that terrible march that after I had lain down for about half an hour I positively could not stand up, I was so stiff and worn out. Having been on duty as orderly corporal before leaving the Alumbâgh, I had been much longer on my feet than the rest of the men; in fact, I was tired out before we started on our march on the afternoon of the 27th, and now, after having covered forty-seven miles under thirty hours, my condition can be better imagined than described. After I became cold, I grew so stiff that I positively could not use my legs. Now Captain Dawson had a native servant, an old man named Hyder Khân, who had been an officers' servant all his life, and had been through many campaigns. I had made a friend of old Hyder before we left Chinsurah, and he did not forget me. Having ridden the greater part of the march on the camel carrying his master's baggage, Hyder was comparatively fresh when he got into camp, and about the time our canteen-sergeant got up and was calling for orderly-corporals to draw grog for the men, old Hyder came looking for me, and when he saw my tired state, he said, in his camp English: "Corporal sâhib, you God-damn tired; don't drink grog. Old Hyder give you something damn much better than grog for tired mans." With that he went away, but shortly after returned, and gave me a small pill, which he told me was opium, and about half a pint of hot tea, which he had prepared for himself and his master. I swallowed the pill and drank the tea, and in less than ten minutes I felt myself so much refreshed as to be able to get up and draw the grog for the men of the company and to serve it out to them while the colour-sergeant called the roll. I then lay down, rolled up in my sepoy officer's quilt, which I had carried from the Shâh Nujeef, and had a sound refreshing sleep till next morning, and then got up so much restored that, except for the sores on my feet from broken blisters, I could have undertaken another forty-mile march. I always recall this experience when I read many of the ignorant arguments of the Anti-Opium Society, who would, if they had the power, compel the Government to deprive every hard-worked coolie of the only solace in his life of toil. I am certainly not an opium-eater, and the abuse of opium may be injurious, as is the abuse of anything; but I am so convinced in my own mind of the beneficial effects of the temperate use of the drug, that if I were the general of an army after a forced march like that of the retreat from Lucknow to the relief of Cawnpore, I would make the Medical Department give every man a pill of opium and half a pint of hot tea, instead of rum or liquor of any sort! I hate drunkenness as much as anybody, but I have no sympathy with what I may call the intemperate temperance of most of our teetotallers and the Anti-Opium Society. My experience has been as great and as varied as that of most Europeans in India, and that experience has led me to the conviction that the members of the Anti-Opium Society are either culpably ignorant of facts, or dishonest in the way they represent what they wish others to believe to be facts. Most of the assertions made about the Government connection with opium being a hindrance to mission-work and the spread of Christianity, are gross exaggerations not borne out by experience, and the opium slave and the opium den, as depicted in much of the literature on this subject, have no existence except in the distorted imagination of the writers. But I shall have some more observations to make on this score elsewhere, and some evidence to bring forward in support of them.[28]

Early on the morning of the 29th of November the Ninety-Third crossed the bridge of boats, and it was well that Sir Colin had returned so promptly from Lucknow to the relief of Cawnpore, for General Wyndham's troops were not only beaten and cowed,—they were utterly demoralised.

When the Commander-in-Chief left Cawnpore for Lucknow, General Wyndham, known as the "Hero of the Redan," was left in command at Cawnpore with instructions to strengthen his position by every means, and to detain all detachments arriving from Calcutta after the 10th of November, because it was known that the Gwalior Contingent were in great force somewhere across the Jumna, and there was every probability that they would either attack Cawnpore, or cross into Oude to fall on the rear of the Commander-in-Chief's force to prevent the relief of Lucknow. But strict orders were given to General Wyndham that he was on no account to move out of Cawnpore, should the Gwalior Contingent advance on his position, but to act on the defensive, and to hold his entrenchments and guard the bridge of boats at all hazards. By that time the entrenchment or mud fort at the Cawnpore end of the bridge, where the Government Harness and Saddlery Factory now stands, had become a place of considerable strength under the able direction of Captain Mowbray Thomson, one of the four survivors of General Wheeler's force. Captain Thomson had over four thousand coolies daily employed on the defences from daybreak till dark, and he was a most energetic officer himself, so that by the time we passed through Cawnpore for the relief of Lucknow this position had become quite a strong fortification, especially when compared with the miserable apology for an entrenchment so gallantly defended by General Wheeler's small force and won from him by such black treachery. When we advanced for the relief of Lucknow, all our spare baggage, five hundred new tents, and a great quantity of clothing for the troops coming down from Delhi, were shut up in Cawnpore, with a large quantity of spare ammunition, harness, and saddlery; in brief, property to the value of over five lakhs of rupees was left stored in the church and in the houses which were still standing near the church between the town and the river, a short distance from the house in which the women and children were murdered. All this property, as already mentioned, fell into the hands of the Gwalior Contingent, and we returned just in time to see them making bonfires of what they could not use. Colonel Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) lost all the records of his long service, and many valuable engineering papers which could never be replaced. As for us of the Ninety-Third, we lost all our spare kits, and were now without a chance of a change of underclothing or socks. Let all who may read this consider what it meant to us, who had not changed our clothes from the 10th of the month, and how, on the morning of the 29th, the sight of the enemy making bonfires of our kits, just as we were within reach of them, could hardly have been soothing to contemplate.

But to return to General Wyndham's force. By the 26th of November it numbered two thousand four hundred men, according to Colonel Adye's Defence of Cawnpore; and when he heard of the advance of the Nânâ Sâhib at the head of the Gwalior Contingent, Wyndham considered himself strong enough to disobey the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, and moved out of his entrenchment to give them battle, encountering their advance guard at Pândoo Nuddee about seven miles from Cawnpore. He at once attacked and drove it back through a village in its rear; but behind the village he found himself confronted by an army of over forty thousand men, twenty-five thousand of them being the famous Gwalior Contingent, the best disciplined troops in India, which had never been beaten and considered themselves invincible, and which, in addition to a siege train of thirty heavy guns, 24 and 32-pounders, had a well-appointed and well-drilled field-artillery. General Wyndham now saw his mistake, and gave the order for retreat. His small force retired in good order, and encamped on the plain outside Cawnpore on the Bithoor road for the night, to find itself outflanked and almost surrounded by Tântia Topee and his Mahrattas on the morning of the 27th; and at the end of five hours' fighting a general retreat into the fort had again to be ordered.

The retiring force was overwhelmed by a murderous cannonade, and, being largely composed of young soldiers, a panic ensued. The men got out of hand, and fled for the fort with a loss of over three hundred,—mostly killed, because the wounded who fell into the hands of the enemy were cut to pieces,—and several guns. The Rev. Mr. Moore, Church of England Chaplain with General Wyndham's force, gave a very sad picture of the panic in which the men fled for the fort, and his description was borne out by what I saw myself when we passed through the fort on the morning of the 29th. Mr. Moore said: "The men got quite out of hand and fled pell-mell for the fort. An old Sikh sirdâr at the gate tried to stop them, and to form them up in some order, and when they pushed him aside and rushed past him, he lifted up his hands and said, 'You are not the brothers of the men who beat the Khâlsa army and conquered the Punjâb!'" Mr. Moore went on to say that, "The old Sikh followed the flying men through the Fort Gate, and patting some of them on the back said, 'Don't run, don't be afraid, there is nothing to hurt you!'" The fact is the men were mostly young soldiers, belonging to many different regiments, simply battalions of detachments. They were crushed by the heavy and well-served artillery of the enemy, and if the truth must be told, they had no confidence in their commander, who was a brave soldier, but no general; so when the men were once seized with panic, there was no stopping them. The only regiment, or rather part of a regiment, for they only numbered fourteen officers of all ranks and a hundred and sixty men, which behaved well, was the old Sixty-Fourth, and two companies of the Thirty-Fourth and Eighty-Second, making up a weak battalion of barely three hundred. This was led by brave old Brigadier Wilson, who held them in hand until he brought them forward to cover the retreat, which he did with a loss of seven officers killed and two wounded, eighteen men of the Sixty-Fourth killed and twenty-five wounded, with equally heavy proportions killed and wounded from the companies of the Thirty-Fourth and Eighty-Second. Brigadier Wilson first had his horse shot, and was then himself killed, while urging the men to maintain the honour of the regiment. The command then devolved on Major Stirling, one of the Sixty-Fourth, who was cut down in the act of spiking one of the enemy's guns, and Captain M'Crea of the same regiment was also cut down just as he had spiked his fourth gun. This charge, and these individual acts of bravery, retarded the advance of the enemy till some sort of order had been re-established inside the fort. The Sixty-Fourth were then driven back, and obliged to leave their dead.

This then was the state of matters when we reached Cawnpore from Lucknow. The whole of our spare baggage was captured: the city of Cawnpore and the whole of the river-side up to the house where the Nânâ had slaughtered the women and children were in the hands of the enemy; but they had not yet injured the bridge of boats, nor crossed the canal, and the road to Allahabad still remained open.

We marched through the fort, and took up ground near where the jute mill of Messrs. Beer Brothers and Co. and Joe Lee's hotel now stand. We crossed the bridge without any loss except one officer, who was slightly wounded by being struck on the shin by a spent bullet from a charge of grape. He was a long slender youth of about sixteen or seventeen years of age, whom the men had named "Jack Straw." He was knocked down just as we cleared the bridge of boats, among the blood of some camp-followers who had been killed by the bursting of a shell just in front of us. Sergeant Paton, of my company, picked him up, and put him into an empty dooly which was passing.

During the day a piquet of one sergeant, one corporal, and about twenty men, under command of Lieutenant Stirling, who was afterwards killed on the 5th of December, was sent out to bring in the body of Brigadier Wilson, and a man named Doran, of the Sixty-Fourth, who had gone up to Lucknow in the Volunteer Cavalry, and had there done good service and returned with our force, volunteered to go out with them to identify the brigadier's body, because there were many more killed near the same place, and their corpses having been stripped, they could not be identified by their uniform, and it would have been impossible to have brought in all without serious loss. The party reached the brigadier's body without apparently attracting the attention of the enemy; but just as two men, Rule of my regiment and Patrick Doran, were lifting it into the dooly they were seen, and the enemy opened fire on them. A bullet struck Doran and went right through his body from side to side, without touching any of the vital organs, just as he was bending down to lift the brigadier—a most extraordinary wound! If the bullet had deviated a hair's-breadth to either side, the wound must have been mortal, but Doran was able to walk back to the fort, and lived for many years after taking his discharge from the regiment.

During the time that this piquet was engaged the Blue-jackets of Peel's Brigade and our heavy artillery had taken up positions in front of the fort, and showed the gunners of the Gwalior Contingent that they were no longer confronted by raw inexperienced troops. By the afternoon of the 29th of November, the whole of the women and children and sick and wounded from Lucknow had crossed the Ganges, and encamped behind the Ninety-Third on the Allahabad road, and here I will leave them and close this chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Native cavalry troopers.

[28] See Appendix D.

CHAPTER VIII

ANECDOTES—ACTION WITH THE GWALIOR CONTINGENT—ITS DEFEAT—PURSUIT OF THE NÂN—BITHOOR—JOHN LANG AND JOTEE PERSHÂD

So far as I now remember, the 30th of November, 1857, passed without any movement on the part of the enemy, and the Commander-in-Chief, in his letter describing the state of affairs to the Governor-General, said, "I am obliged to submit to the hostile occupation of Cawnpore until the actual despatch of all my incumbrances towards Allahabad is effected." As stated in the last chapter, when our tents came up our camp was pitched (as near as I can now make out from the altered state of Cawnpore), about the spot where Joe Lee's hotel and the jute mill of Messrs. Beer Brothers and Co. now stand. St. Andrew's day and evening passed without molestation, except that strong piquets lined the canal and guarded our left and rear from surprise, and the men in camp slept accoutred, ready to turn out at the least alarm. But during the night, or early on the morning of the 1st of December, the enemy had quietly advanced some guns, unseen by our piquets, right up to the Cawnpore side of the canal, and suddenly opened fire on the Ninety-Third just as we were falling in for muster-parade, sending round-shot and shell right through our tents. One shrapnel shell burst right in the centre of Captain Cornwall's company severely wounding the captain, Colour-Sergeant M'Intyre, and five men, but not killing any one.

Captain Cornwall was the oldest officer in the regiment, even an older soldier than Colonel Leith-Hay who had then commanded it for over three years, and for long he had been named by the men "Old Daddy Cornwall." He was poor, and had been unable to purchase promotion, and in consequence was still a captain with over thirty-five years' service. The bursting of the shell right over his head stunned the old gentleman, and a bullet from it went through his shoulder breaking his collar-bone and cutting a deep furrow down his back. The old man was rather stout and very short-sighted; the shock of the fall stunned him for some time, and before he regained his senses Dr. Munro had cut the bullet out of his back and bandaged up his wound as well as possible. Daddy came to himself just as the men were lifting him into a dooly. Seeing Dr. Munro standing by with the bullet in his hand, about to present it to him as a memento of Cawnpore, Daddy gasped out, "Munro, is my wound dangerous?" "No, Cornwall," was the answer, "not if you don't excite yourself into a fever; you will get over it all right." The next question put was, "Is the road clear to Allahabad?" To which Munro replied that it was, and that he hoped to have all the sick and wounded sent down country within a day or two. "Then by ——" said Daddy, with considerable emphasis, "I'm off." The poor old fellow had through long disappointment become like our soldiers in Flanders,—he sometimes swore; but considering how promotion had passed over him, that was perhaps excusable. All this occupied far less time than it takes to write it, and I may as well here finish the history of Daddy Cornwall before I leave him. He went home in the same vessel as a rich widow, whom he married on arrival in Dublin, his native place, the corporation of which presented him with a valuable sword and the freedom of the city. The death of Brigadier-General Hope in the following April gave Captain Cornwall his majority without purchase, and he returned to India in the end of 1859 to command the regiment for about nine months, retiring from the army in 1860, when we lay at Rawul Pindee.

But I must return to my story. Being shelled out of our tents, the regiment was advanced to the side of the canal under cover of the mud walls of what had formerly been the sepoy lines, in which we took shelter from the fire of the enemy. Later in the day Colonel Ewart lost his left arm by a round-shot striking him on the elbow just as he had dismounted from his charger on his return from visiting the piquets on the left and rear of our position, he being the field-officer for the day. This caused universal regret in the regiment, Ewart being the most popular officer in it.

By the evening of the 3rd of December the whole of the women and children, and as many of the wounded as could bear to be moved, were on their way to Allahabad; and during the 4th and 5th reinforcements reached Cawnpore from England, among them our old comrades of the Forty-Second whom we had left at Dover in May. We were right glad to see them, on the morning of the 5th December, marching in with bagpipes playing, which was the first intimation we had of another Highland regiment being near us. These reinforcements raised the force under Sir Colin Campbell to five thousand infantry, six hundred cavalry, and thirty-five guns.

Early on the morning of the 6th of December we struck our tents, which were loaded on elephants, and marched to a place of safety behind the fort on the river bank, whilst we formed up in rear of the unroofed barracks—the Forty-Second, Fifty-Third, Ninety-Third, and Fourth Punjâb Infantry, with Peel's Brigade and several batteries of artillery, among them Colonel Bourchier's light field-battery (No. 17 of the old Company's European artillery), a most daring lot of fellows, the Ninth Lancers, and one squadron of Hodson's Horse under command of Lieutenant Gough,[29] a worthy pupil of a famous master. This detachment of Hodson's Horse had come down with Sir Hope Grant from Delhi, and served at the final relief of Lucknow and the retreat to the succour of Cawnpore. The headquarters of the regiment under its famous commander had been left with Brigadier Showers.

As this force was formed up in columns, masked from the view of the enemy by the barracks on the plain of Cawnpore, the Commander-in-Chief rode up, and told us that he had just got a telegram informing him of the safe arrival of the women and children, sick and wounded, at Allahabad, and that now we were to give battle to the famous Gwalior Contingent, consisting of twenty-five thousand well-disciplined troops, with about ten thousand of the Nânâ Sâhib's Mahrattas and all the budmâshes of Cawnpore, Calpee, and Gwalior, under command of the Nânâ in person, who had proclaimed himself Peishwa and Chief of the Mahratta power, with Tântia Topee, Bâlâ Sâhib (the Nânâ's brother), and Râja Koor Sing, the Râjpoot Chief of Judgdespore, as divisional commanders, and with all the native officers of the Gwalior Contingent as brigade and regimental commanders. Sir Colin also warned us that there was a large quantity of rum in the enemy's camp, which we must carefully avoid, because it was reported to have been drugged. "But, Ninety-Third," he continued, "I trust you. The supernumerary rank will see that no man breaks the ranks, and I have ordered the rum to be destroyed as soon as the camp is taken."

The Chief then rode on to the other regiments and as soon as he had addressed a short speech to each, a signal was sent up from Peel's rocket battery, and General Wyndham opened the ball on his side with every gun at his disposal, attacking the enemy's left between the city and the river. Sir Colin himself led the advance, the Fifty-Third and Fourth Punjâb Infantry in skirmishing order, with the Ninety-Third in line, the cavalry on our left, and Peel's guns and the horse-artillery at intervals, with the Forty-Second in the second line for our support.

Directly we emerged from the shelter of the buildings which had masked our formation, the piquets fell back, the skirmishers advanced at the double, and the enemy opened a tremendous cannonade on us with round-shot, shell, and grape. But, nothing daunted, our skirmishers soon lined the canal, and our line advanced, with the pipers playing and the colours in front of the centre company, without the least wavering,—except now and then opening out to let through the round-shot which were falling in front, and rebounding along the hard ground-determined to show the Gwalior Contingent that they had different men to meet from those whom they had encountered under Wyndham a week before. By the time we reached the canal, Peel's Blue-jackets were calling out—"Damn these cow horses," meaning the gun-bullocks, "they're too slow! Come, you Ninety-Third, give us a hand with the drag-ropes as you did at Lucknow!" We were then well under the range of the enemy's guns, and the excitement was at its height. A company of the Ninety-Third slung their rifles, and dashed to the assistance of the Blue-jackets. The bullocks were cast adrift, and the native drivers were not slow in going to the rear. The drag-ropes were manned, and the 24-pounders wheeled abreast of the first line of skirmishers just as if they had been light field-pieces.

When we reached the bank the infantry paused for a moment to see if the canal could be forded or if we should have to cross by the bridge over which the light field-battery were passing at the gallop, and unlimbering and opening fire, as soon as they cleared the head of the bridge, to protect our advance. At this juncture the enemy opened on us with grape and canister shot, but they fired high and did us but little damage. As the peculiar whish (a sound when once heard never to be forgotten) of the grape was going over our heads, the Blue-jackets gave a ringing cheer for the "Red, white, and blue!" While the Ninety-Third, led off by Sergeant Daniel White, struck up The Battle of the Alma, a song composed in the Crimea by Corporal John Brown of the Grenadier Guards, and often sung round the camp-fires in front of Sebastopol. I here give the words, not for their literary merit, but to show the spirit of the men who could thus sing going into action in the teeth of the fire of thirty well-served, although not very correctly-aimed guns, to encounter a force of more than ten to one. Just as the Blue-jackets gave their hurrah for the "Red, white, and blue," Dan White struck up the song, and the whole line, including the skirmishers of the Fifty-Third and the sailors, joined in the stirring patriotic tune, which is a first-rate quick march:

Come, all you gallant British hearts
Who love the Red and Blue,[30]
Come, drink a health to those brave lads
Who made the Russians rue.
Fill up your glass and let it pass,
Three cheers, and one cheer more,
For the fourteenth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

We sailed from Kalimita Bay,
And soon we made the coast,
Determined we would do our best
In spite of brag and boast.
We sprang to land upon the strand,
And slept on Russian shore,
On the fourteenth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

We marched along until we came
Upon the Alma's banks,
We halted just beneath their guns
To breathe and close our ranks.
"Advance!" we heard, and at the word
Right through the brook we bore,
On the twentieth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

We scrambled through the clustering vines,
Then came the battle's brunt;
Our officers, they cheered us on,
Our colours waved in front;
And fighting well full many fell,
Alas! to rise no more,
On the twentieth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

The French were on the right that day,
And flanked the Russian line,
While full upon their left they saw
The British bayonets shine.
With hearty cheers we stunned their ears,
Amidst the cannon's roar,
On the twentieth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

A picnic party Menschikoff
Had asked to see the fun;
The ladies came at twelve o'clock
To see the battle won.
They found the day too hot to stay,
The Prince felt rather sore,
On the twentieth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

For when he called his carriage up,
The French came up likewise;
And so he took French leave at once
And left to them the prize.
The Chasseurs took his pocket-book,
They even sacked his store,
On the twentieth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

A letter to Old Nick they found,
And this was what it said:
"To meet their bravest men, my liege,
Your soldiers do not dread;
But devils they, not mortal men,"
The Russian General swore,
"That drove us off the Alma's heights
In September, fifty-four."

Long life to Royal Cambridge,
To Peel and Camperdown,
And all the gallant British Tars
Who shared the great renown,
Who stunned Russian ears with British cheers,
Amidst the cannon's roar,
On the twentieth of September,
Eighteen hundred and fifty-four.

Here's a health to noble Raglan,
To Campbell and to Brown,
And all the gallant Frenchmen
Who shared that day's renown.
Whilst we displayed the black cockade,
They the tricolour bore;
The Russian crew wore gray and blue
In September, fifty-four.

Come, let us drink a toast to-night,
Our glasses take in hand,
And all around this festive board
In solemn silence stand.
Before we part let each true heart
Drink once to those no more,
Who fought their last fight on Alma's height
In September, fifty-four!

Around our bivouac fires that night as The Battle of the Alma was sung again, Daniel White told us that when the Blue-jackets commenced cheering under the hail of grape-shot, he remembered that the Scots Greys and Ninety-Second Highlanders had charged at Waterloo singing Bruce's Address at Bannockburn, "Scots wha hae," and trying to think of something equally appropriate in which Peel's Brigade might join, he could not at the moment recall anything better than the old Crimean song aforesaid.

After clearing the canal and re-forming our ranks, we came under shelter of a range of brick kilns behind which stood the camp of the enemy, and behind the camp their infantry were drawn up in columns, not deployed in line. The rum against which Sir Colin had warned us was in front of the camp, casks standing on end with the heads knocked out for convenience; and there is no doubt but the enemy expected the Europeans would break their ranks when they saw the rum, and had formed up their columns to fall on us in the event of such a contingency. But the Ninety-Third marched right on past the rum barrels, and the supernumerary rank soon upset the casks, leaving the contents to soak into the dry ground.

As soon as we cleared the camp, our line of infantry was halted. Up to that time, except the skirmishers, we had not fired a shot, and we could not understand the reason of the halt till we saw the Ninth Lancers and the detachment of Hodson's Horse galloping round some fields of tall sugar-cane on the left, masking the light field-battery. When the enemy saw the tips of the lances (they evidently did not see the guns) they quickly formed squares of brigades. They were armed with the old musket, "Brown Bess," and did not open fire till the cavalry were within about three hundred yards. Just as they commenced to fire, we could hear Sir Hope Grant, in a voice as loud as a trumpet, give the command to the cavalry, "Squadrons, outwards!" while Bourchier gave the order to his gunners, "Action, front!" The cavalry wheeled as if they had been at a review on the Calcutta parade-ground; the guns, having previously been charged with grape, were swung round, unlimbered as quick as lightning within about two hundred and fifty yards of the squares, and round after round of grape was poured into the enemy with murderous effect, every charge going right through, leaving a lane of dead from four to five yards wide. By this time our line was advanced close up behind the battery, and we could see the mounted officers of the enemy, as soon as they caught sight of the guns, dash out of the squares and fly like lightning across the plain. Directly the squares were broken, our cavalry charged, while the infantry advanced at the double with the bayonet. The battle was won, and the famous Gwalior Contingent was a flying rabble, although the struggle was protracted in a series of hand-to-hand fights all over the plain, no quarter being given. Peel's guns were wheeled up, as already mentioned, as if they had been 6-pounders, and the left wing of the enemy taken in rear and their retreat on the Calpee road cut off. What escaped of their right wing fled along this road. The cavalry and horse-artillery led by Sir Colin Campbell in person, the whole of the Fifty-Third, the Fourth Punjâb Infantry, and two companies of the Ninety-Third, pursued the flying mass for fourteen miles. The rebels, being cut down by hundreds wherever they attempted to rally for a stand, at length threw away their arms and accoutrements to expedite their flight, for none were spared,—"neither the sick man in his weakness, nor the strong man in his strength," to quote the words of Colonel Alison. The evening closed with the total rout of the enemy, and the capture of his camp, the whole of his ordnance-park, containing a large quantity of ammunition and thirty-two guns of sizes, siege-train, and field-artillery, with a loss of only ninety-nine killed and wounded on our side.

As night fell, large bodies of the left wing of the enemy were seen retreating from the city between our piquets and the Ganges, but we were too weary and too few in number to intercept them, and they retired along the Bithoor road. About midnight the force which had followed the enemy along the Calpee road returned, bringing in a large number of ammunition-waggons and baggage-carts, the bullocks driven by our men, and those not engaged in driving sitting on the waggons or carts, too tired and footsore to walk. We rested hungry and exhausted, but a man of my company, named Bill Summers, captured a little pack-bullock loaded with two bales of stuff which turned out to be fine soft woollen socks of Loodiana manufacture, sufficient to give every man in the company three pairs,—a real godsend for us, since at that moment there was nothing we stood more in need of than socks; and as no commissariat had come up from the rear, we slaughtered the bullock and cut it into steaks, which we broiled on the tips of our ramrods around the bivouac fires. Thus we passed the night of the 6th of December, 1857.

Early on the morning of the 7th a force was sent into the city of Cawnpore, and patrolled it from end to end, east, west, north, and south. Not only did we meet no enemy, but many of the townspeople brought out food and water to our men, appearing very glad to see us.

During the afternoon our tents came up from the rear, and were pitched by the side of the Grand Trunk road, and the Forty-Second being put on duty that night, we of the Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third were allowed to take our accoutrements off for the first night's sleep without them since the 10th of November—seven and twenty days! Our spare kits having all vanished with the enemy, as told in the last chapter, our quarter-master collected from the captured baggage all the underclothing and socks he could lay hands on. Thanks to Bill Summers and the little pack-bullock, my company got a change of socks; but there was more work before us before we got a bath or a change of shirts.

About noon on the 8th the Commander-in-Chief, accompanied by Sir Hope Grant and Brigadier Adrian Hope, had our brigade turned out, and as soon as Sir Colin rode in among us we knew there was work to be done. He called the officers to the front, and addressing them in the hearing of the men, told them that the Nânâ Sâhib had passed through Bithoor with a large number of men and seventeen guns, and that we must all prepare for another forced march to overtake him and capture these guns before he could either reach Futtehghur or cross into Oude with them. After stating that the camp would be struck as soon as we had got our dinners, the Commander-in-Chief and Sir Hope Grant held a short but animated conversation, which I have always thought was a prearranged matter between them for our encouragement. In the full hearing of the men, Sir Hope Grant turned to the Commander-in-Chief, and said, in rather a loud tone: "I'm afraid, your Excellency, this march will prove a wild-goose chase, because the infantry, in their present tired state, will never be able to keep up with the cavalry." On this, Sir Colin turned round in his saddle, and looking straight at us, replied in a tone equally loud, so as to be heard by all the men: "I tell you, General Grant, you are wrong. You don't know these men; these Highlanders will march your cavalry blind." And turning to the men, as if expecting to be corroborated by them, he was answered by over a dozen voices, "Ay, ay, Sir Colin, we'll show them what we can do!"

As soon as dinner was over we struck tents, loaded them on the elephants, and by two o'clock P.M. were on the march along the Grand Trunk road. By sunset we had covered fifteen miles from Cawnpore. Here we halted, lit fires, cooked tea, served out grog, and after a rest of three hours, to feed and water the horses as much as to rest the men, we were off again. By five A.M. on the 9th of December we had reached the thirtieth mile from the place where we started, and the scouts brought word to the general that we were ahead of the flying enemy. We then turned off the road to our right in the direction of the Ganges, and by eight o'clock came in sight of the enemy at Serai ghât, a ferry twenty-five miles above Cawnpore, preparing to embark the guns of which we were in pursuit.