CHAPTER X
DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD
All the passion, the tragedy, and the glory of the Indian Mutiny gathers round three great sieges. We vaguely remember a hundred tales of individual adventure elsewhere on the great stage of the Mutiny; we have perhaps a still fainter and more ghostly mental image of the combats Havelock fought on the road to Lucknow, and the battles by which Campbell crushed this body of rebels or that. But it is all a mist of confused recollections, a kaleidoscope of fast-fading pictures. But who does not remember the three great sieges of the Mutiny—Cawnpore, Lucknow, Delhi? The very names are like beacon lights flaming through leagues of night!
At Cawnpore the British were besieged and destroyed, a tragedy due to Wheeler’s fatal blunder in choosing the site where the British were to make their stand for life, and his failure in collecting provisions for the siege. At Lucknow, again, the British were besieged, but triumphed, becoming themselves in turn the besiegers. Success here was due to the genius of Henry Lawrence in organising the defences of the Residency, and his energy in storing supplies before the Mutiny broke out. The brave men who died behind Wheeler’s ridges of earth, or in the Slaughter Ghaut at Cawnpore, showed valour as lofty and enduring as that of the men who held the Residency with such invincible courage at Lucknow. But the interval between the tragedy at Cawnpore and the triumph at Lucknow is measured by the difference between the two leaders, Wheeler and Lawrence. Both were brave men, but Lawrence was a great captain.
At Delhi the British, from the outset, were the besiegers, and nothing in British history—not the story of Sir Richard Grenville and the _Revenge_, of the Fusileers at Albuera, or of the Guards at Inkerman—is a more kindling tale of endurance and valour than the story of how for months a handful of British clung to the Ridge outside Delhi, fighting daily with foes ten times more numerous than themselves, and yet besieging—or maintaining the show of besieging—the great city which was the nerve-centre and heart of the whole Mutiny.
At Cawnpore and Lucknow the British fought for existence. At Delhi they fought for empire! While the British flag flew from the Ridge at Delhi it was a symbol that the British _raj_ was still undestroyed. It was a red gleaming menace of punishment to all rebels. Had that flag fallen for twenty-four hours, India, for a time at least, would have been lost to England. But it flew proudly and threateningly aloft, undestroyed by a hundred attacks, till at last Nicholson led his stormers through the Cashmere Gate, and the fate of the Mutiny was sealed!
The mutineers from Meerut rode into Delhi on May 11. It was the city of the Great Mogul. It appealed by a thousand memories to both the race-pride and the fanaticism of the revolted Sepoys. Here the Mutiny found, not only a natural stronghold, but an official head, and Delhi thus became a far-seen signal of revolt to the whole of Northern India. But on June 7—or less than four weeks after Willoughby in heroic despair blew up the great magazine at Delhi—Sir Henry Barnard’s microscopic army made its appearance on the Ridge, and the siege of Delhi began. It was a real stroke of military genius that thus, from the earliest outbreak of the Mutiny, kept a bayonet, so to speak, pointed threateningly at its very heart!
And the hero of the siege of Delhi is not Barnard, or Wilson, or Baird-Smith, or Neville Chamberlain, or Nicholson—but a man who never fired a shot or struck a sword-stroke in the actual siege itself—John Lawrence. Lawrence, and not Havelock, nor Outram, nor Canning, was the true saviour of the British _raj_ in India in the wild days of the Mutiny.
John Lawrence was five years younger than his gallant brother Henry, who died in the Residency at Lucknow. He had no visible gleam of the brilliancy which makes Henry Lawrence a character so attractive. Up to middle life, indeed, John Lawrence was a silent, inarticulate, rugged man, with the reputation of being a great worker, but whom nobody suspected to be a genius, and for whom nobody—least of all Lawrence himself—dreamed fame was waiting. He came of that strong-bodied, strong-brained, masterful race of which the North of Ireland is the cradle. But England, Ireland, and Scotland all had a share in the making of John Lawrence. He was actually born in England. His father was a gallant Irish soldier, who led the forlorn hope at the storming of Seringapatam. His mother was a lineal descendant of John Knox, the Scottish reformer. And perhaps the characteristic traits of the three countries never met more happily in a single human character than in John Lawrence. In Ulster he was known amongst his schoolmates as “English John.” At Haileybury, in England, he was looked upon as a typical Irishman.
The truth is, he was Englishman, Irishman, Scotchman all in one. He had Celtic glow and fire under a crust of Scottish silence and caution; and he added the Englishman’s steady intelligence and passion for justice to Scottish hard-headedness and the generous daring of the Irish character. Or, to put the matter in a different way, in any perilous crisis he could survey the situation with the balanced judgment of an Englishman; could choose his course with the shrewd and calculating sagacity of a Scotchman; then carry it out with Irish fire and daring!
Lawrence shone as a youth neither in studies nor in games, and both as a youth and man he had a magnificent faculty for silence. By blood and genius he was a soldier. But duty was the supreme law of life for him; and at the bidding of what he deemed to be duty, he surrendered a soldier’s career and entered the Indian Civil Service. His silent energy, his strong brain, his passion for work, his chivalrous loyalty to righteousness, quickly assured him a great career. He was above the middle height, strongly built, with an eager, forward gait. His massive head gave him a sort of kingly look—the forehead broad, the eyes deep-set and grey, but with a gleam in them as of a sword-blade. The firm lips had a saddened curve; the face was ploughed deep with furrows of thought and work. His voice, when his feelings were aroused, had a singular resonance and timbre, and his whole aspect was that of silent, half-melancholy simplicity and strength.
But Lawrence was exactly the man for a great crisis. He had a kingly faculty for choosing fit instruments. He saw with perfect clearness every detail of the visible landscape; but he had also that subtler vision—which only great poets and great statesmen possess—of the tendencies and forces which underlie external facts and determine their flow. The Celtic element in him, perhaps, gave Lawrence that rare and subtle faculty; but by virtue of his Scottish strain he was essentially a man of action. He could grasp a great purpose with a hand of steel, and hold it unshaken through all the shocks of conflict and adversity.
Lawrence, it may be added, was pre-eminently fortunate in his officers. Partly by the attraction which draws like to like, and partly by his own rare genius for choosing fit instruments, he had gathered round him a group of splendid soldiers and administrators, all in the prime of life. Nicholson, for example, was only thirty-five; Edwardes and Neville Chamberlain only thirty-seven. The general average of age, indeed, on Lawrence’s staff was much below that of India in general. All the energy of youth, in brief, was in Lawrence’s men; all the sagacity of ripest statesmanship was in Lawrence himself.
Lawrence’s contribution to the history of the Mutiny must be compressed into a dozen sentences. In 1857 he was Chief Commissioner of the Punjaub, the “land of the five rivers,” with a population of 20,000,000. The Punjaub was newly-conquered territory; its population was the most warlike in India; its frontiers marched for 800 miles with those of Afghanistan, and the hill passes were held by wild Moslem clans always ready to storm down with clattering shield and gleaming spear on the fat, defenceless plains at their feet. In eight years, under the _régime_ of the Lawrences, the Punjaub was rendered orderly, loyal, and prosperous; while the Punjaub Frontier Force, a body of 12,000 men, which kept the mountain tribes in order, was perhaps the first body of native troops which ever followed British officers into battle.
Then came the cataclysm of the Mutiny. As with the shock of an earthquake, British rule in Northern India seemed to crumble to the ground, and British officers who yesterday were rulers of kingdoms and cities, were to-day fugitives, or fighting in tiny and broken clusters for their lives. The Mutiny, too, cut Oude and the Punjaub off from the centre of authority at Calcutta. For weeks no whisper from the outside world reached Lawrence. He was left to keep his own head and shape his own policy.
His policy may be told almost in a sentence. He anticipated mutiny, and outpaced it. He disarmed with iron resolution and swift decision all the Sepoy regiments whose loyalty was doubtful, and put all the forts, arsenals, treasuries, and strategic points in the Punjaub under the guard of British bayonets. Then he organised a movable column of European troops—scanty in dimensions, but of the finest fighting quality—under the command, first, of Neville Chamberlain, and next of Nicholson; and this force stood ready to strike at any point where mutiny threatened to lift its head. In the Punjaub, that is, mutiny was anticipated, robbed of weapons and left helpless, and under the ceaseless menace of the light-footed, almost ubiquitous, movable column.
Next, having dismissed into air, as with a gesture of his hand, the army whose loyalty was tainted, Lawrence had to create another native army, with loyalty above reproach. And from the wild mountain clans and the Sikhs—themselves a conquered people—Lawrence actually created a new army, nearly 50,000 strong, with which he was able to crush the very Sepoys who, under British leadership, had been the conquerors of the Punjaub!
Lawrence’s genius and masterful will, too, determined the whole strategy to be employed for the suppression of the Mutiny. He settled the question that Delhi must be instantly besieged. He formed a military base for the siege at Umballa, a distance of a hundred miles, and he kept sleepless guard over that long line of communications. He fed the besieging force with supplies and munitions of every kind; reinforced it with, first, his own frontier troops, the famous Guides and the Ghoorkas, and, later, with his own movable column. He cast into the scale against Delhi, in effect, his last coin, his last cartridge, and his last man. And in that terrible game, on which hung the fate of the British rule in India, Lawrence won! “Through him,” wrote Lord Canning, “Delhi fell.” And the fall of Delhi rang the knell of the Mutiny.
Once, it is true, even John Lawrence’s iron courage seemed to give way, or, rather, the strain of the peril threw his cool judgment off its balance. The fate of India visibly hung on Delhi. The force on the Ridge was absurdly inadequate for its task, and Lawrence conceived the idea that, to succeed at Delhi, it would be necessary to abandon Peshawur, give up the Punjaub to Dost Mohammed, and retire across the Indus. There were three European regiments, with powerful artillery, and the best native troops locked up beyond the Indus. On the Ridge at Delhi they would decide the issue of the siege. “If Delhi does not fall,” Lawrence argued, “Peshawur must go. Let us abandon the Punjaub for the sake of Delhi.”
It is still thrilling to read the sentences in which Herbert Edwardes protested against this evil policy. To abandon Peshawur, he urged, would be to fail not only at Delhi, but all over India. “Cabul would come again!” Lawrence quoted Napoleon against Edwardes. Did not Napoleon ruin himself in 1814 by holding fast to the line of the Elbe instead of falling back to the Rhine? But Edwardes knew the Eastern mind. India is not Europe. To waver, to seem to withdraw, to consent to disaster, was to be ruined. To abandon the Punjaub, Edwardes warned Lawrence, was to abandon the cause of England in the East. “Every hand in India would be against us. Don’t yield an inch of frontier!... If General Reed, with all the men you have sent him, cannot get into Delhi, let Delhi go. The Empire’s reconquest hangs on the Punjaub.” Then he quotes Nelson against Lawrence. “Make a stand! ‘Anchor, Hardy, anchor!’” The quotation was, perhaps, not very relevant; but it is curious to note how one brave spirit seems to speak to another across half a century, and give a new edge to its courage.
There can be no doubt that Edwardes showed, at this moment, not only the more heroic temper, but the sounder judgment of the two. Canning settled the dispute. “Hold on to Peshawur to the last,” he wrote; and the question was decided. But Lawrence’s momentary lapse into indecision only sets in more dazzling light his courage afterwards. It was after he had seriously meditated abandoning the Punjaub that he despatched the immortal movable column, under Nicholson, 4200 strong, with a powerful battering-train, to Delhi, thus feeding the gallant force on the Ridge with his own best troops, and yet not giving up “an inch of the frontier,” or abating one whit of his own haughty rule in the Punjaub!
General Anson, as we have seen, was commander-in-chief in India when the Mutiny broke out. He was a brave man, had fought as an ensign at Waterloo, and had seen forty-three years’ bloodless service after that great battle. But his gifts were rather social than soldierly. He was a better authority on whist and horses than on questions of tactics and strategy, and he was scarcely the man to face an army in revolt. Lawrence acted as a military brain and conscience for Anson, and determined that Delhi must be attacked; though, as a matter of fact, Anson had only three regiments of British troops, almost no artillery, and absolutely no transport at his command.
On May 16 Anson held a council of war with his five senior officers at Umballa, and the council agreed unanimously that, with the means at Anson’s command, nothing could be done. It is a curious fact, showing the speed with which, from this point, events moved, that, within less than two months from the date of that council, all its members were dead—either killed in battle, or killed by mere exposure and strain! But Lawrence’s views prevailed. “Pray, only reflect on the whole history of India,” he wrote to Anson. “Where have we failed when we have acted vigorously? Where have we succeeded when guided by timid counsels?”
Anson and his advisers gave that highest proof of courage which brave men can offer: they moved forward without a murmur on an adventure which they believed to be hopeless. From an orthodox military point of view it was hopeless. Only, the British empire in India has been built up by the doing of “hopeless” things.
On May 24 Anson reached Kurnal, where his troops were to arrive four days afterwards. On the 26th Anson himself was dead, killed by cholera after only four hours’ illness!
Sir Henry Barnard, who succeeded him, had been Chief of the Staff in the Crimea. He was an utter stranger to India, having landed in it only a few weeks before. He was a brave soldier, and a high-minded English gentleman; but he was, perhaps, even less of a general than Anson. His force consisted of 2400 infantry, 600 cavalry, and 22 field-guns. Barnard had to fight one fierce and bloody combat before he reached the Delhi Ridge. This took place on June 7. It was the first time the British and the mutineers had met in the shock of battle; and the Sepoys who had revolted at Meerut, and the British troops who had been so strangely held back from crushing the revolt at the moment of its outbreak, now looked grimly at each other across a narrow interval of sun-baked turf. Lord Roberts says that when, as night fell on June 6, it was known that the troops were to move forward and attack the rebel force which stood in their path to Delhi, the sick in hospital declared they would remain there no longer, and “many quite unfit to walk insisted upon accompanying the attacking column, imploring their comrades not to mention they were ill, for fear they should not be allowed to take part in the fight!”
The rebels fought with an obstinacy unsurpassed in the whole record of the Mutiny; but British troops in such a mood as we have described, were not to be stayed. The 75th carried the rebel guns at the point of the bayonet; Hope Grant with his scanty squadrons of horse swept round their left flank. The British lost less than 200 killed and wounded, the rebels lost over 1000 men and 13 guns; and, as night fell, Barnard took possession of the famous Ridge. Then from the streets of the revolted city, the crowds looked up and saw the British flag, a gleaming and fluttering menace, a stern prophecy of defeat and retribution, flying from the Flagstaff Tower.
Delhi lies on the right bank of the Jumna; and nearly six miles of massive stone wall twenty-four feet high, with a ditch twenty-five feet broad and nearly as many feet deep in front, sweep round the city, forming a bow, of which the river is the string. Napier, afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala, had employed his rare skill as an engineer in strengthening the defences of the city. The walls were knotted with bastions, mounting 114 heavy guns. Behind them was a huge fanatical population and over 40,000 revolted Sepoys, with some 60 field-guns and exhaustless magazines of warlike supplies. Every week, from one revolted station after another, new waves of mutineers flowed into the city. Some 3000 British soldiers, with a few battalions of native troops, and 22 light guns, stood perched on the Ridge to undertake the desperate feat of besieging this huge stronghold!
The historic Ridge, it may be explained, is a low hill, not quite sixty feet high, and some two miles long, running obliquely towards the city walls. Its left touches the Jumna itself, at a distance of more than two miles from the city; its right was within 1200 yards of the hostile walls. At the middle of the Ridge stood the Flagstaff Tower. On its right extremity the Ridge overlooked the trunk road, and was surrounded by a fringe of houses and gardens, making it the weak point of the British position. The various buildings along the crest of the Ridge, Hindu Rao’s house, the observatory, an old Pathan mosque, the Flagstaff Tower, &c., were held by strong pickets, each with one or more field-guns. The external slope of the Ridge was covered with old buildings and enclosures, giving the enemy dangerous shelter in their attacks. The main body of the British was encamped on the reverse slope of the Ridge.
Delhi, it will be seen, was in no sense “invested.” Supplies and reinforcements flowed in with perfect safety on its river front throughout the whole siege. All that Barnard and his men could do was to keep the British flag flying on the Ridge, and hold their ground with obstinate, unquenchable courage, against almost daily assaults, until reinforcements reached them, and they could leap on the city.
The first reinforcement to arrive took the surprising shape of a baby! One officer alone, Tytler, of the 38th Native Infantry, had brought his wife into the camp; she was too ill to be sent to the rear, and, in a rough waggon for bed-chamber, gave birth to a son, who was solemnly named “Stanley Delhi Force.” The soldiers welcomed the infant with an odd mixture of humour and superstition. A British private was overheard to say, “Now we shall get our reinforcements. This camp was formed to avenge the blood of innocents, and the first reinforcement sent us is a new-born infant!”
The next day the famous Guides sent by Lawrence from his Frontier Force marched into camp, three troops of cavalry and six companies of infantry, under Daly, an officer of great daring and energy. This little force had marched 580 miles in twenty days, a feat of endurance unsurpassed in Indian history. The cavalry consisted mainly of Afghans, tall, swarthy, fierce-looking. The Ghoorkas were sturdy, undersized little Highlanders, born fighters all of them, and ready to follow their commanding officer, Major Reid, on any dare-devil feat to which he might lead them. The battalion numbered 490 men, and of these no less than 320—or three out of four—were killed or wounded during the siege. On the day of the assault (September 14) no fewer than 180 of them, who were lying sick or wounded in the hospital, volunteered for the assault, and came limping and bandaged into the ranks of their comrades, to join in the mad rush through the Cashmere Gate!
The revolted Sepoys, on their side, were full of a fierce energy quite unusual to them, and on the very first day they flung themselves in great numbers, and with great daring, on the detachment holding Hindu Rao’s house. Two companies of the 60th held this post, with two guns from Scott’s battery; and for half the afternoon the quick flashes, the white smoke of cannon, and the incessant rattle of musketry round the assailed post told with what fury the attack was being urged, and how stubbornly the defence was being maintained.
At last the cavalry of the newly-arrived Guides was sent at the enemy. They rode in upon the Sepoys with magnificent courage, broke them into flying fragments, and pursued them, wounding and slaying, to the walls of the city. Their victory was brilliant, but it was dearly bought, their commander, Quentin Battye, being mortally wounded. He was little more than a lad, but was almost worshipped by his dark-faced horsemen. He had been an English public-school boy, and, Lord Roberts says, was curiously fond of quotations. Almost his last words, spoken to a friend, were, “Good-bye! ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.’ That’s how it is with me, old fellow!” The victories of England are still won, as in Wellington’s days, on the playing grounds of its great schools.
The Guides found in the camp a soldier of mingled yet splendid fame who had been their leader in many a gallant charge—Hodson, of Hodson’s Horse. Hodson had been, rightly or wrongly, under a cloud; but the crisis of the Mutiny naturally gave, to the most daring horseman and the most brilliant light cavalry leader in India, a great opportunity. He was now at the head of a body of irregular horse, and one of Barnard’s most trusted officers. He was tall, fair-haired, with bloodless complexion, heavy curved moustache, and keen, alert, and what some one called “unforgiving” eyes.
When the Guides, as they rode into the camp, met Hodson, a curious scene took place. They crowded round him with wild gesticulations and deep-voiced, guttural shouts. “They seized my bridle,” says Hodson himself, “my dress, hands, and feet, and literally threw themselves down before the horse with tears streaming down their faces!” Hodson was the ideal leader for fierce irregulars like the Guides, a brilliant swordsman, of iron nerve, and courage as steadfast as the blade of his own sword. And with leaders like Daly, and Hodson, and Reid, and Battye, Sikhs and Ghoorkas made soldiers that might have charged through Russian Life Guards, or broken a square of Pomeranian Grenadiers!
On June 10 the Sepoys delivered another attack, in great strength, on Hindu Rao’s house, which they looked upon as the key of the British position, and which was held on this day by the Ghoorkas under Reid. The Sepoys hoped that the Ghoorkas would join them, and, as they came on, instead of firing, they waved their hands, and shouted, “Don’t fire. We are not firing. We want to speak to you. Come and join us.” “Oh yes! we are coming,” answered the sturdy little Ghoorkas, with fierce, jesting humour, and, running forward to within thirty yards of the Sepoys, they poured a quick and deadly fire upon them, driving them back with great slaughter. From that stage of the siege, Hindu Rao’s house, perhaps the most fiercely attacked point in the British front, was held by Reid and his Ghoorkas, and a better officer or better men were not to be found on the Ridge.
The more eager spirits among the British were burning to leap on the city, and, on June 12, a plan of attack was actually prepared by the engineer officers and Hodson, and approved by Barnard. The whole force was to be divided into three columns; one was to break its way through the Cashmere Gate, a second through the Lahore Gate, a third was to fling itself on the walls, and attempt an escalade—practically, the same plan by which the city was finally carried. It was a project, considering the force available for its execution, almost insane in its daring; and Barnard, though he consented to it, took no decided and methodical steps to carry it out.
It would almost seem, indeed, as if physical strain, want of sleep, and the terrible responsibility he was carrying, had affected Barnard’s head. The situation might well have taxed—and over-taxed—the brain of a greater general than Barnard. The light guns of the British, firing at a distance of a thousand yards, could make no impression on the walls. Their strength was dwindling daily; that of the enemy was growing fast. And it was natural that the British temper, under such conditions, should become explosive, and that the more daring spirits were eager, in the face of any risks, to come to the sword’s point with their enemies. The General’s nerve was curiously shaken. Hope Grant tells how Sir Henry Barnard sent for him on the evening of the 12th: “He hushed me into a whisper, and asked me if I thought any person could possibly overhear us, adding, ‘There is treason around us.’ Then he explained, ‘I mean to attack the town to-night.’” Barnard’s manner produced on Hope Grant’s mind the impression that his brain was slightly off its balance.
At one o’clock that night the troops were suddenly paraded, ammunition served out, and leaders assigned to the three columns. But the 75th Foot had, somehow, been left at the extreme front without orders, and before they could be brought up the grey dawn was breaking, and the proposed attack had to be abandoned. Lord Roberts says that this “blunder” was “a merciful dispensation, which saved the British from an irreparable disaster.” That was not Hodson’s judgment. In his journal he says: “The attack was frustrated by the fears and absolute disobedience to orders of ⸺, the man who first lost Delhi, and has now, by his folly, prevented its being recaptured.” But Hodson was more impatient and blunt-spoken than is permissible to even a gallant soldier, and his diary reflects, perhaps, rather the condition of his liver than the deliberate judgment of his head. Thus he writes: “That old woman ⸺, has come here for nothing apparently, but as an obstacle; ⸺ is also a crying evil to us!”
On the 12th, indeed, the Sepoys themselves were attacking Flagstaff Tower with great fury, but were repelled with steady valour. On June 14, General Reed arrived in camp; he was in chief divisional command, and should at once have taken over the charge of the siege from Barnard; but a ride of 500 miles had left him little better than a physical wreck, and Barnard still remained in command.
On the 13th, 14th, and 15th there were new attacks pluckily urged by the Sepoys, and repelled with cool and stern courage by the British. “They came on,” is Hodson’s summary, “very boldly, and got most heartily thrashed.” On the 17th the British were attacked along their whole front, and from almost every direction, and an attempt was made to construct a battery which would enfilade the Ridge. Two small columns, under Tombs and Reid, were sent out with a dash, broke up the proposed battery in brilliant style, and drove the troops that covered it in wild and bloody flight to the city walls.
Week after week the fighting went on most gallantly, and the story gleams with records of shining pluck; it rings with the clash of steel on steel; it thrills to the rattle of musketry volleys and the deeper voice of the cannon. Thus Hope Grant tells how, on the night of the 19th, from sunset till half-past eleven, he kept back, by repeated charges of squadrons of the 9th Lancers and the Guides, with the help of some field-guns, an attack on the rear of the British position.
The fighting was close and furious. As Daly came up through the darkness into the fight, Tombs said, “Daly, if you don’t charge, my guns are taken;” and Daly, shaking his reins, and followed by a handful of his Guides, dashed on the enemy, and saved the guns. Colonel Yule, of the 9th Lancers, was killed; Daly himself was severely wounded; and the enemy, in the dark, worked round the flanks of the British guns, and two of the pieces were on the point of being taken.
Hope Grant collected a few men, and rode fiercely into the enemy’s ranks. His horse was shot, and, galloping wildly into the mass of Sepoys, fell dead. Hope Grant was thus left unhorsed in the darkness, and in the midst of the enemy! His orderly, a fine, tall Sowar, who had remained loyal when his regiment mutinied, was in a moment by his side, and cried, “Take my horse; it is your only chance of safety.” Hope Grant refused the generous offer, and, taking a firm grasp of the horse’s tail, bade the Sowar drag him out of the _mêlée_. The next day Hope Grant sent for the Sowar, warmly praised his gallant conduct, and offered him a reward in money. The brave fellow drew himself up with dignity, salaamed, and said, “No, Sahib, I will take no money.”
Seaton describes how, during that wild night combat, they watched, from the Ridge above, the flashes of the guns, rending the gloom with darting points of flame, and listened to the shouts, the clash of weapons, the crackle of the musketry that marked the progress of the fight. Presently there came a sudden glare, then a roar that for a moment drowned all other sounds. One of the British limbers had blown up. The fight was going badly. Then, out of the darkness, came the cry of a human voice, “Where is the General?” It was an officer asking reinforcements, and three companies of the 1st Fusileers, who were standing hard by, silent and invisible in the dusk, were sent down to the fight. They moved forward at the curt word of command: presently the rolling crash of their volleys was heard; a line of red, dancing points of fire through the darkness marked their progress, and the guns were saved!
June 23 was the centenary of Plassey, and a prediction, widely spread amongst the Sepoys, announced that on that day the _raj_ of the British was to end. As it happened, that particular day was also a great religious festival for the Hindus, whilst it was the day of the new moon, and so was held by Mohammedans as a fortunate day. Accordingly an attack of great fury, and maintained for eight long hours, was made on the British right. Some reinforcements, amounting to 850 men, were on the 22nd within twenty miles of Delhi, and a staff officer was despatched to hurry them on; and they actually reached the Ridge in time to take part in the final effort which drove back the enemy. Roberts says that “no men could have fought better than did the Sepoys. They charged the Rifles, the Guides, and the Ghoorkas again and again.” But nothing could shake the cool and obstinate—the almost scornful—valour of the British.
Every available man in the camp was at the front, and when the 2nd Fusileers and the 4th Sikhs, who formed the approaching reinforcement, came pressing on with eager speed to the crest of the Ridge, over which the battle-smoke was drifting in dense white clouds, they were at once sent into the fight, and the enemy was finally driven back with a loss of over 1600 men. It is not easy to picture the exhaustion of the British at the close of a fight so stern and prolonged. “When I arrived at Hindu Rao’s,” wrote an eye-witness, “I found every one exhausted. There were the 1st Fusileers and some Rifles all done up. I went on to the new advanced battery; it was crowded with worn-out men. The artillerymen, likewise done up, had ceased firing; another party of Rifles in a similar state in another position. 120 men of the 2nd Fusileers, who had marched twenty-three miles that morning and had had no breakfast, were lying down exhausted. Three weak companies of Ghoorkas were out as skirmishers; but they, too, were exhausted, and the remainder were resting under a rock. The heat was terrific, and the thermometer must have been at least 140 degrees, with a hot wind blowing, and a frightful glare.” Of ten officers in the 2nd Fusileers five were struck down by _coup de soleil_.
The next day Neville Chamberlain, Lawrence’s favourite officer, rode into the camp, and assumed the post of adjutant-general.
On July 3 Baird Smith reached the Ridge, and took charge of the engineering operations of the siege. On July 5 Sir Henry Barnard died, killed by the burden of a task too great for him, and Reed assumed command. He held it for less than ten days, and then passed it over to Archdale Wilson, who had shared in the discredit of Meerut, and who, though a brave man, had scanty gifts of leadership.
Twice over during those days of fierce and prolonged battle a time had been fixed for assaulting the city, and twice the plan had been spoiled by an earlier counter-attack of the enemy. Baird Smith, on his arrival, approved of the scheme for an assault, and urged it on Reed, who hesitated over it during the brief period of his command, and then handed it over as a perplexing legacy to his successor Wilson. The proposal to leap on Delhi was finally abandoned; but Baird Smith, the coolest brain employed in the siege, recorded long afterwards his deliberate judgment that “if we had assaulted any time between the 4th and 14th of July we should have carried the place.”
On July 9, an attack of great strength, and marked by great daring, was made by the enemy, and was almost lifted into success by the disloyalty of a detachment of the 9th Irregular Cavalry. They were on outpost duty, watching the trunk road. They allowed the enemy to approach the British position without giving warning, and when Hills, who commanded two guns in front of the General’s mound, ran out of his tent and leaped on his horse, he found a troop of Carabineers in broken flight, sweeping past him, and the enemy almost on his guns. He shouted “Action front!” then, to give his gunners a chance of firing, rode single-handed into the enemy’s squadrons, a solitary swordsman charging a regiment!
Hills actually cut down the leading man, and wounded the second; then two troopers charging him at once, he was rolled over, man and horse, and the troops swept over him. Hills struggled, bruised and half-dazed, to his feet, picked up his sword, and was at once attacked by two of the rebel cavalry and a foot soldier. Hills coolly shot the first horseman riding down upon him, then catching the lance of the second in his left hand, thrust him through the body with his sword. He was instantly attacked by the third enemy, and his sword wrenched from him. Hills, on this, fell back upon first principles, and struck his opponent in the face repeatedly with his fist. But he was by this time himself exhausted, and fell. Then, exactly as his antagonist lifted his sword to slay him, Tombs, who had cut his way through the enemy, and was coming up at a gallop to help his comrade, with a clever pistol-shot from a distance of thirty paces killed the Sepoy. It was a Homeric combat, and both Tombs and Hills received the Victoria Cross.
The enemy meanwhile had galloped past the guns, eager to reach the native artillery, which they hoped would ride off with them. The 9th Lancers, however, had turned out in their shirt-sleeves, and they, riding fiercely home, drove off the enemy.
It is always interesting to listen to the story of a gallant deed, as told by the doer himself. The reckless valour which Lieutenant Hills showed in charging, single-handed, a column of rebel cavalry, in order to secure for his gunners a chance of opening fire, can hardly be described by a remote historian. But Hills has told the story of his own deed, and an extract from his tale, at least, is worth giving:—
I thought that by charging them I might make a commotion, and give the gun time to load, so in I went at the front rank, cut down the first fellow, slashed the next across the face as hard as I could, when two Sowars charged me. Both their horses crashed into mine at the same moment, and, of course, both horse and myself were sent flying. We went down at such a pace that I escaped the cuts made at me, one of them giving my jacket an awful slice just below the left arm—it only, however, cut the jacket. Well, I lay quite snug until all had passed over me, and then got up and looked about for my sword. I found it full ten yards off. I had hardly got hold of it when three fellows returned, two on horseback. The first I wounded, and dropped him from his horse. The second charged me with a lance. I put it aside, and caught him an awful gash on the head and face. I thought I had killed him. Apparently he must have clung to his horse, for he disappeared. The wounded man then came up, but got his skull split. Then came on the third man—a young, active fellow. I found myself getting very weak from want of breath, the fall from my horse having pumped me considerably, and my cloak, somehow or other, had got tightly fixed round my throat, and was actually choking me. I went, however, at the fellow and cut him on the shoulder, but some “kupra” (cloth) on it apparently turned the blow. He managed to seize the hilt of my sword, and twisted it out of my hand, and then we had a hand-to-hand fight, I punching his head with my fists, and he trying to cut me, but I was too close to him. Somehow or other I fell, and then was the time, fortunately for me, that Tombs came up and shot the fellow. I was so choked by my cloak that move I could not until I got it loosened. By-the-bye, I forgot to say that I fired at this chap twice, but the pistol snapped, and I was so enraged I drove it at the fellow’s head, missing him, however.
The Sepoys had planted a battery of guns at a point in their front called Ludlow Castle, and maintained from it a constant fire on Metcalfe House. Their skirmishers, too, crept up with great audacity, and maintained a ceaseless fire on the British pickets. It was necessary to silence this battery, and early in the morning of August 12, without call of bugle or roll of drum, a force of British, Sikhs, and Ghoorkas, with a handful of cavalry, stole down the slope of the Ridge in order to carry the offending guns. The order was given for profoundest silence, and almost like a procession of shadows the little column crept over the Ridge through the gloom, and disappeared in the midst of the low-lying ground on its way to the rebel guns.
Undetected in the sheltering blackness, the column reached the sleeping battery. A startled Sepoy, who caught through the haze and shadow a sudden glimpse of stern faces and the gleam of bayonets, gave a hasty challenge. It was answered by a volley which ran like a streak of jagged flame through the darkness, and with a rush the British—their officers gallantly leading, and Sikh and Ghoorka trying to outrace their English comrades—swept on to the battery. The Sepoys succeeded in discharging two guns on their assailants; but Lord Roberts records that the discharge of the third gun was prevented by a gallant Irish soldier named Reegan. He leaped with levelled bayonet over the earthwork, and charged the artilleryman, who was in the very act of thrusting his port-fire on to the powder in the touch-hole of the gun. Reegan was struck at on every side, but nothing stopped him, and the fierce lunge of his bayonet slew the artilleryman and prevented the discharge of the gun. Captain Greville, followed by two or three men, flung himself on another gun, and slew or drove off its gunners.
Hodson characteristically says, “It was a very comfortable little affair!” As a matter of fact, it was, for a dozen fierce minutes, a deadly hand-to-hand combat. “The rebel artillerymen,” says Roberts, “stood to their guns splendidly, and fought till they were all killed.” The rebels, too, were in great force, and as the passionate _mêlée_ swayed to and fro, and the muskets crackled fiercely, and angry thrust of bayonet was answered by desperate stroke of tulwar, the slaughter was great. Some 250 Sepoys were slain, while the British only lost one officer and nineteen men, though nearly a hundred more were wounded. But the battery was destroyed, and four guns brought back in triumph to the camp.
The return of the force was a scene of mad excitement. A wounded officer sat astride one gun, waving his hand in triumph. A soldier, with musket and bayonet fixed, bestrode each horse, and dozens of shouting infantrymen—many with wounds and torn uniform, and all with smoke-blackened faces—clung, madly cheering, to the captured pieces.
On August 7 there rode into the British camp perhaps the most famous and daring soldier in all India, the man with whose memory the siege of Delhi, and the great assault which ended the siege, are for ever associated—John Nicholson.
Nicholson was of Irish birth, the son of a Dublin physician, who had seen twenty years’ service in India—service brilliant and varied beyond even what is common in that field of great deeds. There is no space here to tell the story of Nicholson’s career, but as he rode into the British camp that August morning, he was beyond all question the most picturesque and striking figure in India. He was a man of splendid physique, and is said to have borne an almost bewildering resemblance to the Czar Nicholas. He was six feet two in height, strongly built, with a flowing dark-coloured beard, colourless face, grey eyes, with dark pupils, in whose depths, when he was aroused, a point of steady light, as of steel or of flame, would kindle. Few men, indeed, could sustain the piercing look of those lustrous, menacing eyes. His voice had a curious depth in it; his whole bearing a singular air of command and strength—an impression which his habit of rare and curt speech intensified. “He was a man,” says one who knew him well, “cast in a giant mould, with massive chest and powerful limbs, and an expression, ardent and commanding, with a dash of roughness; features of stern beauty, a long black beard, and sonorous voice. His imperial air never left him.” “Nicholson,” says Lord Roberts, “impressed me more profoundly than any man I had ever met before, or have ever met since.”
Nicholson, like the Lawrences, like Havelock, and Herbert Edwardes, and many of the Indian heroes of that generation, was a man of rough but sincere piety, and this did not weaken his soldiership—it rather gave a new loftiness to its ideals and a steadier pulse to its courage. “If there is a desperate deed to be done in India,” Herbert Edwardes told Lord Canning, “John Nicholson is the man to do it”; and exactly that impression and conviction Nicholson kindled in everybody about him.
“He had,” says Mrs. Steel, “the great gift. He could put his own heart into a whole camp, and make it believe it was its own.” Such a masterful will and personality as that of Nicholson took absolutely captive the imagination of the wild, irregular soldiery of which he was the leader.
What was Nicholson’s fighting quality, indeed, may be judged, say, from the fashion in which he smashed up the mutinous Sepoys at Mardan (as told in Trotter’s “Life” of him), and chased them mile after mile towards the hills of Swat, Nicholson leading the pursuit on his huge grey charger, “his great sword felling a Sepoy at every stroke!” His faculty for strategy, and for swift, sustained movement is, again, told by the manner in which he intercepted and destroyed the Sealkote mutineers at the fords of the Ravi on their way to Delhi, The mutineers were two days’ march ahead of him, and Nicholson made a forced march of forty-four miles in a single day, and under a July sun in India, to get within stroke of them. Nicholson’s little force started at 9 P.M. on July 10, and marched twenty-six miles without a break; after a halt of two hours they started on their second stage of eighteen miles at 10 A.M. During the hottest hour of the afternoon the force camped in a grove of trees, and the men fell, exhausted, into instant slumber.
Presently an officer, awakening, looked round for his general. “He saw Nicholson,” says Trotter, “in the middle of the hot, dusty road, sitting bolt upright on his horse in the full glare of that July sun, waiting like a sentinel turned to stone for the moment when his men should resume their march!” They might take shelter from the heat, but he scorned it. A march so swift and fierce was followed by an attack equally vehement, Nicholson leading the rush on the enemy’s guns in person, and with his own sword cutting literally in two a rebel gunner in the very act of putting his linstock to the touch-hole of his cannon.
The worship of force is natural to the Eastern mind; and, in 1848, when Nicholson was scouring the country between the Attock and the Jhelum, making incredible marches, and shattering with almost incredible valour whole armies with a mere handful of troops, the mingled admiration and dread of the native mind rose to the pieties of a religion. “To this day,” a border chief told Younghusband, twelve years after Nicholson was dead, “our women at night wake trembling, and saying they hear the tramp of Nikalsain’s war-horse!” A brotherhood of Fakirs renounced all other creeds, and devoted themselves to the worship of “Nikkul-Seyn.” They would lie in wait for Nicholson, and fall at his feet with votive offerings.
Nicholson tried to cure their inconvenient piety by a vigorous application of the whip, and flogged them soundly on every opportunity. But this, to the Fakir mind, supplied only another proof of the great Irishman’s divinity; and, to quote Herbert Edwardes, “the sect of Nikkul-Seynees remained as devoted as ever. _Sanguis martyrum est semen Ecclesiæ!_ On one occasion, after a satisfactory whipping, Nicholson released his devotees on the condition that they would transfer their adoration to John Becher; but as soon as they attained their freedom they resumed their worship of the relentless Nikkul-Seyn.” The last of the sect, says Raikes, dug his own grave, and was found dead in it shortly after the news came that Nicholson had fallen at Delhi.
Nicholson’s ardour had made him outride the movable column he was bringing up to reinforce the besiegers; but on August 14, with drums beating and flags flying, and welcomed with cheers by the whole camp, that gallant little force marched in. It consisted of the 52nd, 680 strong, a wing of the 61st, the second Punjaub Infantry, with some Beloochees and military police, and a field battery.
Work for such a force, and under such a leader, was quickly found. The siege train intended to breach the walls of Delhi was slowly creeping along the road from the Punjaub, and with unusual daring a great force of mutineers marched from Delhi to intercept this convoy. The movement was detected, and on August 25 Nicholson, with 1600 infantry, 400 cavalry, and a battery of field guns, set out to cut off the Sepoy force.
The rain fell in ceaseless, wind-blown sheets, as only Indian rain can fall. The country to be crossed was mottled with swamps. The roads were mere threads of liquid mud, and the march was of incredible difficulty. The enemy was overtaken at Nujutgurh, after a sort of wading march which lasted twelve hours. “No other man in India,” wrote a good soldier afterwards, “would have taken that column to Nujutgurh. An artillery officer told me that at one time the water was over his horses’ backs, and he thought they could not possibly get out of their difficulties. But he looked ahead, and saw Nicholson’s great form riding steadily on as if nothing was the matter.”
The rebels, 6000 strong, held an almost unassailable position, edged round with swamps and crossed in front by a deep and swift stream with an unknown ford. In the dusk, however, Nicholson led his troops across the stream. As they came splashing up from its waters he halted them, and, with his deep, far-reaching voice, told them to withhold their fire till within thirty yards of the enemy. He then led them steadily on, at a foot-pace, over a low hill, and through yet another swamp, while the fire of the enemy grew ever fiercer.
When within twenty yards of the enemy’s guns, Nicholson gave the word to charge. A swift volley, and an almost swifter rush, followed. The British in a moment were over the enemy’s guns, Nicholson still leading, his gleaming sword, as it rose and fell in desperate strokes, by this time turned bloody red. Gabbett, of the 61st, ran straight at one of the guns, and his men, though eagerly following, could not keep pace with their light-footed officer. He had just reached the gun, fully twenty paces in advance of his men, when his foot slipped, he fell, and was instantly bayoneted by a gigantic Sepoy. With a furious shout—a blast of wrathful passion—his panting men came up, carried the gun, and bayoneted the gunners.
Nicholson had the true genius of a commander. The moment he had carried the guns he swung to the left; and led his men in a rush for a bridge across the canal in the enemy’s rear, which formed their only line of retreat to Delhi. An Indian force is always peculiarly sensitive to a stroke at its line of retreat, and the moment Nicholson’s strategy was understood the Sepoy army resolved itself into a flying mob, eager only to outrun the British in the race for the bridge. Nicholson captured thirteen guns, killed or wounded 800 of the enemy, and drove the rest, a mob of terrified fugitives, to Delhi, his own casualties amounting to sixty.
His men had outmarched their supplies, and they had at once to retrace their steps to Delhi. They had marched thirty-five miles, under furious rains and across muddy roads, and had beaten a force three times stronger than their own, holding an almost impregnable position, and had done it all in less than forty hours, during twenty-four of which they had been without food. It was a great feat, and as the footsore, mud-splashed soldiers came limping into the camp all the regimental bands on the Ridge turned out to play them in.
The few hours preceding Nicholson’s arrival at the Ridge were the darkest hours of the siege, and some at least of the British leaders were hesitating whether the attempt to carry the city ought not to be abandoned. The circumstances, indeed, were such as might well strain human fortitude to the breaking point. The British force of all arms, native and European, was under 6000. Its scanty and light artillery commanded only two out of the seven gates of Delhi. The siege, in fact, was, as one writer puts it, “a struggle between a mere handful of men on an open ridge and a host behind massive and well-fortified walls.” Cholera was raging among the British. The 52nd on August 14 marched into camp 680 strong with only six sick. On September 14—only four weeks later, that is—the effectives of the regiment were only 240 of all ranks. Nearly two men out of every three had gone down!
There was treachery, too, in Wilson’s scanty force. Their plans were betrayed to the enemy. The slaughter amongst the British officers in the native regiments was such as could only be explained by the fact that they were shot down by their own men from behind, rather than by their open foes in the front. The one good service General Reed did during his brief interval of command was to dismiss from the camp some suspected regiments.
Archdale Wilson’s nerve, like that of Barnard and of Reed, his predecessors, was shaken by the terrific strain of the siege, and he contemplated abandoning it. “Wilson’s head is going,” wrote Nicholson to Lawrence on September 7; “he says so himself, and it is quite evident he speaks the truth.” It was due chiefly to John Lawrence’s clear judgment and iron strength of will that a step so evil and perilous was not taken. Lawrence had flung his last coin, his last cartridge, his last man into the siege, and he warned Wilson that the whole fate of the British in India depended on an immediate assault. “Every day,” he wrote, “disaffection and mutiny spread. Every day adds to the danger of the native princes taking part against us.” The loyalty of the Sikhs themselves was strained to the breaking point. Had the British flag fallen back from the Ridge, not merely would Delhi have poured out its armed host, 50,000 strong, but every village in the north-west would have risen, and the tragedy of the Khyber Pass might have been repeated, on a vaster scale, upon the plains of Hindustan. The banks of the Jumna might have seen such a spectacle as Cabul once witnessed.
But there were brave men on the Ridge itself, trained in Lawrence’s school, and in whom the spirit of John Lawrence burned with clear and steady flame. Baird Smith and Neville Chamberlain, Norman and Nicholson, and many another, knew that the fortunes and honour of England hung on the capture of Delhi. Lord Roberts tells a curious and wild story that shows what was Nicholson’s temper at this crisis:—
I was sitting in Nicholson’s tent before he set out to attend the council. He had been talking to me in confidential terms of personal matters, and ended by telling me of his intention to take a very unusual step should the council fail to arrive at any fixed determination regarding the assault. “Delhi must be taken,” he said, “and it is absolutely essential that this should be done at once; and, if Wilson hesitates longer, I intend to propose at to-day’s meeting that he should be superseded.” I was greatly startled, and ventured to remark that, as Chamberlain was _hors de combat_ from his wound, Wilson’s removal would leave him (Nicholson) senior officer with the force. He smiled as he answered, “I have not overlooked that fact. I shall make it perfectly clear that, under the circumstances, I could not possibly accept the command myself, and I shall propose that it be given to Campbell of the 52nd. I am prepared to serve under him for the time being, so no one can ever accuse me of being influenced by personal motives.”
Roberts puts on record his “confident belief” that Nicholson would have carried out this daring scheme, and he adds that, in his deliberate judgment, Nicholson was right. Discipline in a crisis so stern counts for less than the public honour and the national safety.
It is to be noted that on a still earlier date, September 11—Nicholson had written to Lawrence telling him Wilson was talking of withdrawing the guns and giving up the siege. “Had Wilson carried out his threat of withdrawing the guns,” adds Nicholson, “I was quite prepared to appeal to the army to set him aside, and elect a successor. I have seen lots of useless generals in my day; but such an ignorant, croaking obstructive as he is, I have never hitherto met with!”
Fortunately, Wilson found a tonic in the spirit of the men who sat round his council-table. “The force,” he wrote to the Chief Commissioner, “will die at their post.” Reinforcements came creeping in, till the forces on the Ridge rose to 8748 men, of whom, however, less than half were British. The battering-train from Umballa, too, safely reached the camp. It consisted of six 24-pounders, eight 18-pounders, and four 8-inch howitzers, with 1000 rounds of ammunition per piece. The huge convoy, with its tumbrils and ammunition-carts, sprawled over thirteen miles of road, and formed an amazing evidence of the energy and resources of John Lawrence.
Now at last the siege really began. Ground was broken for the new batteries on September 7, at a distance of 700 yards from the walls, and each battery, as it was armed, broke into wrathful thunder on the city. Each succeeding battery, too, was pushed up closer to the enemy’s defences. Thus Major Scott’s battery was pushed up to within 180 yards of the wall, and the heavy guns to arm it had to be dragged up under angry blasts of musketry fire. No fewer than thirty-nine men in this single battery were struck down during the first night of its construction! A section of No. 1 Battery took fire under the constant flash of its own guns, and, as the dancing flames rose up from it, the enemy turned on the burning spot every gun that could be brought to bear. The only way to quench the fire was to take sand-bags to the top of the battery, cut them open, and smother the fire with streams of sand.
A Ghoorka officer named Lockhart called for volunteers, and leaped upon the top of the battery, exposed, without shelter, to a storm of cannon balls and musket bullets. Half-a-dozen Ghoorkas instantly followed him. Four out of the seven men—including Lockhart himself—were shot down, but the fire was quenched.
The fire of the batteries was maintained with amazing energy and daring until September 13. Colonel Brind, for example, records that he never took off his clothes or left his guns from the moment they opened on the 8th to the 14th inst.