CHAPTER XXIV.

MILITARY OPERATIONS IN FEBRUARY.

Impatient as the whole British nation was to hear of a brilliant and successful termination of the struggle in India, every telegram, every weekly mail, shewed that the time for this satisfaction was still far distant. The mutineers were beaten, but not crushed; the rebellious chieftains were checked, but not extinguished; their deluded followers were disappointed in the results obtained, but not deterred from making further efforts. England, with all her delays and waverings of opinion, had sent over a large, fine, and complete army; the Punjaub had supplied such a force of reliable troops as no one would have ventured beforehand to anticipate; generals had been brought into notice by the exigencies of public affairs who possessed those fine soldierly attributes which a nation is proud to recognise; the authorities, steady at their posts, never for a moment doubted that the British ‘raj’ would be established on a firmer basis than ever—and yet everything was in turmoil in India. Blood and treasure were being daily expended; but the time had not arrived when any adequate return was obtained for these losses. January having passed, men speculated whether Lucknow and Oude—to say nothing of other cities and provinces—would fall permanently into British hands during the month of February. What was the response to this much-mooted question, the present chapter will shew.

The gallant commander-in-chief, Sir Colin Campbell, being the chief actor in the busy military scenes of the period, it may be well to trace his movements during the month of February, before noticing the marchings and battles of other generals.

It will be remembered, from the details given in the last chapter, that Sir Colin, after the capture of Furruckabad and Futteghur early in January, remained during the greater part of that month encamped in that neighbourhood, organising the military arrangements necessary for an advance into Oude. These arrangements involved the arrival of siege-guns from Delhi and Agra, and the concentration at one point of different columns under his brigadiers. Among various subsidiary operations, Captain Taylor, of the Engineers, was sent to the Alum Bagh, to report as far as possible on the defensive works thrown up by the enemy in and near Lucknow, and to gather a strong engineer force to aid the commander-in-chief. Sir Colin remained nearly stationary during these preliminary proceedings, elaborating the details of his plan of strategy, in conjunction with his chief of the staff, General Mansfield. When his troops and his missiles, his _personnel_ and _matériel_, were pretty well collected, he returned from Futteghur to Cawnpore on the 4th of February. Viscount Canning had shortly before gone up from Calcutta to Allahabad; and Sir Colin started off on the 8th to meet him. What these two representatives of British power agreed on during their interview, they of course kept to themselves; but every one felt the probability that some extensive scheme of policy, military and political, to be worked out by soldiers and civilians in unison, was discussed and mutually accepted. Returning again to Cawnpore, the commander-in-chief made the last arrangements for giving activity to the force which had been so slowly and with so much difficulty collected. Fain would many critics have censured the old general for delay; fain would they have urged that in two months he had only fought two battles—at Cawnpore and at Furruckabad—while the world was impatiently waiting to hear of the reconquest of Oude; but as he kept his own council with remarkable reticence, criticism gave way to a belief that there must have been good and sufficient cause for the caution which marked all his proceedings.

On or about the 11th of February, all the preparatory operations were completed, and an army, larger than any which had up to that time appeared against the rebels, began to cross the Ganges from Cawnpore into Oude. It had originally been intended to effect the crossing of a portion of the army at Futteghur; but Cawnpore was afterwards selected. The crossing was necessarily a slow and difficult one, on account of the vast _impedimenta_ of an Indian army. To increase the facilities, a second bridge of boats was constructed. Even with this addition the passage across the Ganges lasted several days; for each bullock-cart carried but little. A small portion only of the ammunition, irrespective of all other equipage and baggage, required the services of fifteen hundred carts. The artillery was on an enormous scale; the siege-guns, the naval-brigade guns, the field-guns, and the horse-artillery guns, numbered not much less than two hundred in all. After crossing, the army distributed itself at certain places on the line of route from Cawnpore to Lucknow. For instance, on the 15th of the month, the head-quarters were still at Cawnpore; one portion of the army was encamped at Onao, one march from Cawnpore; another at Busherutgunje, a march and a half from Cawnpore; a third at Nawabgunge, two marches from Cawnpore; a fourth, under Outram, at the Alum Bagh; and a fifth at Sheorajpore, twenty miles from Cawnpore on the Allygurh road. Sir Colin himself still remained with head-quarters at Cawnpore—partly to provide for the safety of convoys of ladies and children passing down from Agra through Cawnpore to Allahabad; partly to await the entry into Oude, from the east, of the forces under Jung Bahadoor and Brigadier Franks; and partly to watch the proceedings of a large body of the enemy near Calpee, who were threatening again to overrun the Doab unless strongly held in check.

It may here usefully be stated that Sir Colin organised his Oudian army before any of the regiments began to cross into that province. As a permanent record of the component elements of that fine force, we give the details in a note at the end of the present chapter; but a summary may not be out of place here. The ‘army of Oude,’ as tabulated on the 10th of February, comprised such regiments and corps as were at that time under the more immediate command of Sir Colin Campbell; and took no account of the separate forces under Jung Bahadoor, Franks, Seaton, Macgregor, Windham, Inglis, Van Cortlandt, Rose, Stuart, Steuart, Orr, Whitlock, Greathed, Penny, M’Causland, Roberts, and other officers whose services were required elsewhere, or who had not reached the Oudian frontier at that date. The army of Oude, thus limited in its meaning, was systematically classified. There were three divisions of infantry, under Outram, Walpole, and a third general afterwards to be named. These were subdivided into six brigades, under Hamilton, Russell, Franklyn, Adrian Hope, Douglas, and Horsford—two brigades to each division. Each brigade was further divided into three regiments or battalions. The Queen’s regiments of infantry in the six brigades were the 5th, 23d, 34th, 38th, 42d, 53d, 78th, 79th, 84th, 90th, and 93d, and two battalions of the Rifle Brigade. The other infantry regiments were Company’s Europeans, Sikhs, and Punjaubees; the Goorkhas were in corps not yet incorporated in the army of Oude. A fourth division of infantry, under Franks, Wroughton, and Puhlwan Singh, was provided for, but did not at that time form a part of the army of Oude. The cavalry formed one division, under Hope Grant, and was separated into two brigades, under William Campbell and Little. The Queen’s cavalry regiments in this division were the 2d Dragoon Guards, the 7th Hussars, and the 9th Lancers; the other cavalry were Sikhs, Punjaubees, and a few volunteers and irregulars of miscellaneous origin. The artillery division, under Archdale Wilson (the conqueror of Delhi), comprised a field-artillery brigade under Wood, a siege-artillery brigade under Barker, a naval brigade under Peel, and an engineer brigade under Napier.

Not until the last day of February did the commander-in-chief cross over the Ganges, and take command of the army destined to besiege and finally capture the great city of Lucknow. Meanwhile Sir James Outram, at the Alum Bagh, had been daily in communication with the other officers, and had prepared detailed plans of everything relating to Lucknow and its defences, so far as he was acquainted with them. The engineers, too, had been busily engaged in preparing that vast store of siege-materials which is necessary for the attack of strongly defended fortifications.

What the army of Oude effected during the month of March, the next chapter will shew. Before quitting this part of the February operations, however, it may be well to notice episodically the remarkable connection between the newspaper press and the battle-field in recent times. In the great wars of former days, correspondents residing at the chief cities in foreign countries were wont to send such items of information as they could pick up to the editors of English newspapers; and military officers, cautiously and anonymously, sent occasional criticisms on the details of the battles in which they were engaged. It was left for the period of the Crimean war, however, to commence, or at least to perfect, a system by which a non-military writer is sent out at enormous expense, to join an army in the field or at a siege, to bear some danger and much privation, to see with his own eyes everything that can be seen, and to write such descriptions of the scenes as shall be intelligible to ordinary newspaper readers. Mr W. H. Russell, of the _Times_, gave an importance to such communications never before equalled, by the brilliant style in which he described the military operations in Bulgaria and the Crimea during the Russian war of 1854-5; and the system was ably carried out by special correspondents connected with the staff of some of the other London newspapers. When the Indian mutiny was half a year old, Mr Russell started from England, to do that for India which he had before done for the Crimea—mix in the turmoil of war, and describe battles in a graphic and vivid way. What he saw and what he did in February initiated him into many of the peculiarities of Indian life, when scenes of slaughter had not yet come under his notice. Leaving Calcutta on the 4th of February, he went like other travellers to Raneegunge by railway, and thence to Benares by gharry dâk—a four-wheeled, venetian-blinded, oblong vehicle, driven by a native with ‘mail post guard’ inscribed on his brass belt-plate, and drawn at the rate of seven miles an hour by a single horse, the horse being changed at post-houses at every few miles’ distance. On the way were troops going up with great regularity, travelling 35 miles per day in bullock-carts, and supplied with comfortable meals and sleeping-places at the dâk-bungalows. Travelling thus by way of Burdwan, Nimeaghat, Sheergotty, and Noubutpore, he arrived at Benares; this city, ‘long, straggling, and Turkish looking,’ was completely commanded by a new fort at Rajghat, built since the troubles of the preceding summer. Thence to Allahabad the fields were rich with corn, and the roads thronged by natives and trains of bullock-hackeries laden with cotton for the Benares and Mirzapore markets. Arrived at Allahabad, Mr Russell commenced his camp-life, messing generally with some of the officers, and sleeping under a tent. Viscount Canning and his suite were at that time living under canvas within the fort; while all around were evidences of military preparation for the English regiments sent up from Calcutta. Thence he travelled for fifty miles by the second portion of the great trunk-railway. The rebels in the preceding June had attacked the locomotives in an extraordinary way, if his account is to be taken as anything more than mere raillery: ‘They fired musketry at the engines for some time at a distance, as if they were living bodies; then advanced cautiously, and finding that the engines did not stir, began to belabour them with sticks, all the time calling them names and abusing them.’ By horse-dâk Mr Russell proceeded through Futtehpoor to Cawnpore, where he, like all others, was struck with astonishment that poor Sir Hugh Wheeler’s ‘intrenchment’ could ever have held out so long as it