CHAPTER VIII

LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL

Havelock fought his way through blood and fire into the Residency, but he shrank from leading a great procession of women and children and wounded men along that _via dolorosa_—that pathway of blood—by which, at so grim a cost, he had himself reached the beleaguered garrison. The Residency, it was clear, must be held, since the great company of helpless women and children it sheltered could not be carried off. So what Havelock and Outram really accomplished was not so much a Relief as a Reinforcement.

Outram assumed the command, and for six weeks the greatly-strengthened garrison held its own with comparative ease against the revolted swarms, reckoned—uncertainly—at no less than 60,000 strong, who still maintained a sullen blockade of the Residency.

Early in November reinforcements were pouring in from England, and a new actor appeared on the scene. The crisis of the Mutiny called to the post of commander-in-chief in India the best soldier Great Britain possessed. Colin Campbell was not, perhaps, a great general, in the sense in which Sir John Moore, or Wellington, or Sir Charles Napier were generals. But he was a tough, hard-fighting, much-experienced soldier, with that combination of wariness and fire which marks the Scotch genius for battle. What he did not know of the details of a soldier’s business might almost be described as not worth knowing. He had served his apprenticeship to war in the perils and hardships of Moore’s retreat to Corunna. A list of the battles and sieges in which he took part would cover almost the entire military history of Great Britain between Corunna and the Crimea. His cool skill and daring as a soldier are picturesquely illustrated by the famous “thin red line” incident at Balaclava; where, disdaining to throw his troops into square, he received a charge of Russian cavalry on a thin extended front, and smote the assailing squadron into fragments with a single blast of musketry.

Colin Campbell was sixty-five years of age, and regarded his military career as over; but on July 11, when the news of General Anson’s death reached England, Lord Panmure offered Campbell the chief command in India, and with characteristic promptitude the Scottish veteran offered to start for India the same afternoon! Campbell landed at Calcutta on August 13, spent some weeks there in “organising victory”—or, rather, in reorganising the whole shattered military system of the Presidency—and on October 27 hurried to the seat of war. He reached Cawnpore on November 3, and on the 9th set out to relieve Lucknow. “Our friends in Lucknow,” he wrote to his sister, “have food only for five or six days.” This was a mistake that cost the lives of many brave men. Lawrence had provisioned the Residency better than was imagined. But the delusion of imminent starvation, which made Havelock fight his way at such desperate speed and cost into Lucknow, still prevailed, and governed British strategy. Delhi had fallen by September 20—a story yet to be told—and part of its besieging force was thus available for a new march on Lucknow.

On the afternoon of November 11 Campbell reviewed the relieving force at Buntera. It was modest in numbers—counting only about 4700 men. But war-hardened, and full of fiery yet disciplined daring, it was as efficient for all the purposes of battle as Napoleon’s Old Guard or Wellington’s famous Light Division. The cavalry brigade included two squadrons of the 9th Lancers, Hodson’s Horse, and three squadrons of native cavalry. The Naval Brigade was under Peel, the third son of the great Prime Minister of England, one of the most daring yet gentle spirits that ever fought and died for England. Evelyn Wood, who served under him as middy in the Crimea, describes him as “the bravest of the brave,” and yet “an ideal English gentleman.” “His dark brown wavy hair was carefully brushed back, disclosing a perfectly oval face, a high square forehead, and deep blue-grey eyes, which flashed when he was talking eagerly, as he often did.” The Artillery Brigade consisted of five batteries. The infantry was made up of detachments from the 4th, the 5th, the 23rd Fusileers, a wing of the 53rd, part of the 82nd, and the full strength of the 93rd Highlanders, with some Sikh regiments.

The 93rd was 1000 strong, and 700 men in the ranks carried the Crimean medal on their breasts. It has been described as “the most Scotch of all the Highland regiments,” and a strong religious—as well as a rich Celtic—strain ran through its ranks. Forbes-Mitchell, indeed, who marched in its ranks, says the regiment constituted a sort of military Highland parish, ministers and elders complete. The elders were selected from among the men of all ranks, two sergeants, two corporals, and two privates. It had a regular service of communion plate, and the communion was administered to the whole regiment by its chaplain twice a year.

The 93rd was drawn up in quarter-distance column on the extreme left of the line as Colin Campbell rode down to review his forces that November afternoon. It was in full Highland costume, with kilts and bonnets and wind-blown plumes. Campbell’s Celtic blood kindled when he reached the Highlanders. “Ninety-third!” he said, “you are my own lads; I rely on you to do the work.” And a voice from the ranks in broadest Doric answered, “Ay, ay, Sir Colin, ye ken us and we ken you; we’ll bring the women and children out of Lucknow or die wi’ you in the attempt.” And then from the steady ranks of the Highlanders there broke a shout, sudden and deep and stern, the shout of valiant men—the men of the hardy North—pledging themselves to valiant deeds.

Here is the description given by an eye-witness of the little army, less than 5000 strong, but of such magnificent fighting quality, down whose ranks Colin Campbell rode as the November sun was going down:—

The field-guns from Delhi looked blackened and service-worn; but the horses were in good condition, and the harness in perfect repair; the gunners bronzed, stalwart, and in perfect fighting case. The 9th Lancers, with their gallant bearing, their flagless lances, and their lean but hardy horses, looked the perfection of regular cavalry on active service. Wild and bold was the bearing of the Sikh horsemen, clad in loose fawn-coloured dress, with long boots, blue or red turbans and sashes; and armed with carbine and tulwar. Next to them were the worn and wasted remains of the 8th and 75th Queen’s, who, with wearied air, stood grouped under their colours. Then came the two regiments of Punjab infantry, tall of stature, with fierce eager eyes under their huge turbans—men swift in the march, forward in the fight, and eager for the pillage. On the left of the line, in massive serried ranks, a waving sea of plumes and tartan, stood the 93rd Highlanders, who with loud and rapturous cheers welcomed the veteran commander whom they knew so well and loved so warmly.

On November 12 Campbell had reached the Alumbagh, and, halting there, decided on the line of his advance to the Residency. Instead of advancing direct on the city, and fighting his way through loopholed and narrow lanes, each one a mere valley of death, he proposed to swing round to the right, march in a wide curve through the open ground, and seize what was known as the Dilkusha Park, a great enclosed garden, surrounded by a wall 20 feet high, a little over two miles to the east of the Residency. Using this as his base, he would next move round to the north of the city, forcing his way through a series of strong posts, the most formidable of which were the Secundrabagh and the Shah Nujeef, and so reach the Residency. And the story of the fighting at those two points makes up the tragedy and glory of the Relief of Lucknow.

Outram, of course, was not the man to lie inertly within his defences while Campbell was moving to his relief. He had already sent plans of the city and its approaches, with suggestions as to the best route, to Campbell by means of a spy, and he was prepared to break out on the line by which the relieving force was to advance. But if Campbell could be supplied with a guide, who knew the city as he knew the palm of his own hand, this would be an enormous advantage; and exactly such a guide at this moment presented himself. A civilian named Kavanagh offered to undertake this desperate mission.

Kavanagh was an Irishman, a clerk in one of the civil offices, and apparently possessed a hundred disqualifications for the business of making his way, disguised as a native, through the dark-faced hordes that kept sleepless watch round the Residency, and through the busy streets of Lucknow beyond. He was a big-limbed, fair man, with aggressively red hair, and uncompromisingly blue eyes! By what histrionic art could he be “translated,” in Shakespeare’s sense, into a spindle-shanked, narrow-shouldered, dusky-skinned Oude peasant? But Kavanagh was a man of quenchless courage, with a more than Irish delight in deeds of daring, and he had a perfect knowledge of native dialect and character. He has left a narrative of his adventure.

A spy had come in from Campbell, and was to return that night, and Kavanagh conceived the idea of going out with him, and acting as guide to the relieving force. Outram hesitated to permit the attempt to be made, declaring it to be too dangerous; but Kavanagh’s eagerness for the adventure prevailed. He hid the whole scheme from his wife, and, at half-past seven o’clock that evening, when he entered Outram’s headquarters, he was so perfectly disguised that nobody recognised him. He had blackened his face, neck, and arms with lamp-black, mixed with a little oil. His red hair, which even lamp-black and oil could hardly subdue to a colder tint, was concealed beneath a huge turban. His dress was that of a budmash, or irregular native soldier, with sword and shield, tight trousers, a yellow-coloured chintz sheet thrown over the shoulders, and a white cummerbund.

A little after eight o’clock Kavanagh, with his native guide, crept to the bank of the Goomtee, which ran to the north of the Residency entrenchment. The river was a hundred yards wide, and between four feet and five feet deep. Both men stripped, crept down the bank, and slipped, as silently as otters, into the stream. Here for a moment, as Kavanagh in his narrative confesses, his courage failed him. The shadowy bank beyond the black river was held by some 60,000 merciless enemies. He had to pass through their camps and guards, and through miles of city streets beyond. If detected, he would certainly perish by torture. “If my guide had been within my reach,” he says, “I should perhaps have pulled him back and abandoned the enterprise.” But the guide was already vanishing, a sort of crouching shadow, into the blackness of the further bank; and, hardening his heart, Kavanagh stole on through the sliding gloom of the river.

Both men crept up a ditch that pierced the river-bank to a cluster of trees, and there dressed; and then, with his tulwar on his shoulder and the swagger of a budmash, Kavanagh went boldly forward with his guide. A matchlock man first met the adventurous pair and peered suspiciously at them from under his turban. Kavanagh in a loud voice volunteered the remark that “the night was cold,” and passed on. They had to cross the iron bridge which spanned the Goomtee, and the officer on guard challenged them lazily from the balcony of a two-storeyed house. Kavanagh himself hung back in the shade, while his guide went forward and told the story of how they belonged to a village some miles distant, and were going to the city from their homes.

They were allowed to pass, ran the gauntlet of many troops of Sepoys, re-crossed the Goomtee by what was called the stone bridge, and passed unsuspected along the principal street of Lucknow, jostling their way through the crowds, and so reached the open fields beyond the city. “I had not been in green fields,” writes Kavanagh, “for five months. Everything around us smelt sweet, and a carrot I took from the roadside was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted!” But it was difficult to find their way in the night. They wandered into the Dilkusha Park, and stumbled upon a battery of guns, which Kavanagh, to the terror of his guide, insisted upon inspecting.

They next blundered into the canal, but still wandered on, till they fell into the hands of a guard of twenty-five Sepoys, and Kavanagh’s guide, in his terror, dropped in the dust of the road the letter he was carrying from Outram to Campbell. Kavanagh, however, kept his coolness, and after some parleying he and his guide were allowed to pass on. The much-enduring pair next found themselves entangled in a swamp, and, waist-deep in its slime and weeds, they struggled on for two hours, when they reached solid ground again. Kavanagh insisted on lying down to rest for a time. Next they crept between some Sepoy pickets which, with true native carelessness, had thrown out no sentries, and finally, just as the eastern sky was growing white with the coming day, the two adventurers heard the challenge, “Who comes there?” from under the shadow of a great tree!

It was a British cavalry picket, and Kavanagh had soon the happiness of pouring into Sir Colin Campbell’s ears the messages and information he brought, while a flag, hoisted at twelve o’clock on the summit of the Alumbagh, told Outram that his messenger had succeeded, and that both the garrison and the relieving force had now a common plan. It is difficult to imagine a higher example of human courage than that supplied by “Lucknow” Kavanagh, as he was afterwards called, and never was the Victoria Cross better won.

On the afternoon of the 15th Campbell made an elaborate reconnaissance on his extreme left, and all night he thundered in that direction with his guns, and the enemy gathered in full strength on that line, persuaded that the British would advance on it. But by daybreak on the 16th Campbell was moving off, light-footed and swift, by his right, exactly where the enemy did not expect him! He had little over 3000 bayonets in his force, but he was strong in artillery, counting in all thirty-nine guns, six mortars, and two rocket-tubes, and he hoped to smash by the weight of his fire every obstacle that stood in his path to the Residency. Yet, be it remembered, he was moving on the arc of a great fortified central position, held by a hostile force not less than 60,000 strong, or more than fifteen times more numerous than his own.

Blunt’s guns and a company of the 53rd formed Campbell’s advance-guard. They crossed the canal, followed for a mile the river-bank, and then swung sharply to the left by a road which ran parallel to the rear of the Secundrabagh. This was a great garden, 150 yards on each face, with walls twenty feet high, and a circular bastion at each angle, and from its rear face, as the head of the British column came in sight, broke an angry tempest of musket-shot, a fire which, it must be remembered, smote the advancing British column on the flank. Cavalry and infantry were helpless in the narrow lane, and something like a “jam” took place. Blunt, however, an officer of great daring, with an enthusiastic belief that British guns could go anywhere and do anything, cut the knot of the difficulty. The bank of the lane was so steep that it seemed impossible that horses and guns could climb it, but Blunt, with cool decision, put the guns in motion, swung the horses’ heads sharply round, and, with whip and spur and shout, his gunners drove the snorting, panting horses up the bank into the open space under the fire of the Secundrabagh.

Travers, with two of his 18-pounders, came stumbling and struggling up the steep bank after Blunt. The guns were swung round, and, within musket-shot distance of the crowded walls and under a tempest of bullets, they opened a breaching fire on the face of the Secundrabagh. The British infantry meanwhile, lying down under the bank of the lane, waited for the moment of assault. Forbes-Mitchell gives a very realistic picture of the march up the lane, and the waiting under the shelter of a low mud-wall while the breach was being made, through which they must charge. Campbell himself, before the men moved up, had given amusingly prosaic instructions as to how they were to fight. When they swept into the Secundrabagh they were to “keep together in clusters of threes, and rely on nothing but the bayonet.” The central man of each group of three was to attack, and his comrades, right and left, guard him with their bayonets, &c.

As the 93rd moved up the lane, Forbes-Mitchell relates how they saw sitting on the roadside a naked Hindu, with shaven head and face streaked with white and red paint, busy counting his rosary, and unmoved by the tumult of battle. A Highlander said to a young staff-officer who was just passing, “I would like to try my bayonet on the hide of that painted scoundrel, sir; he looks a murderer.” “Don’t touch him,” answered the staff-officer, “he is a harmless Hindu mendicant; it is the Mohammedans who are to blame for the horrors of the Mutiny.” Scarcely had he spoken the words when the Hindu stopped counting his beads, slipped his hands under the mat on which he sat, and, with a single movement, drew out a short bell-mouthed blunderbuss and fired into the unfortunate staff-officer’s breast, killing him instantly, and himself dying a moment afterwards, under the reddened bayonets of half-a-dozen furious Highlanders.

Sir Colin Campbell himself stood by the guns, watching the balls tearing away flakes from the stubborn bricks which formed the immense thickness of the wall. Every now and then he repressed the eagerness of the Highlanders or Sikhs, waiting to make their rush. “Lie down, 93rd!” he said. “Lie down! Every man of you is worth his weight in gold to England to-day.” For nearly three-quarters of an hour that strange scene lasted, the British guns battering the tough brick wall, while from hundreds of loopholes a tempest of bullets scourged the toiling gunners. Twice over the detachments at the guns had to be renewed before the breach could be made.

The crouching infantry meanwhile could hardly be restrained. A sergeant of the 53rd, a Welshman named Dobbin, called out, “Let the infantry storm, Sir Colin! Let the two Thirds at them”—meaning the 53rd and 93rd—“and we’ll soon make short work of the murdering villains.” Campbell, always good-tempered when the bullets were flying, recognised the man, and asked, “Do you think the breach is wide enough, Dobbin?”

The three regiments waiting for the rush were the 53rd, the 93rd, and a Sikh regiment—the 4th Rifles; and suddenly they leaped up and joined in one eager dash at the slowly widening breach. Whether the signal to advance was given at all is doubtful, and which regiment led, and which brave soldier was first through the breach, are all equally doubtful points.

Malleson says the rush on the Secundrabagh was “the most wonderful scene witnessed in the war.” No order was given; but suddenly the Sikhs and the Highlanders were seen racing for the breach at full speed, bonneted Highlander and brown-faced Sikh straining every nerve to reach it first. A Sikh of the 4th Rifles, he adds, outran the leading Highlander, leaped through the breach, and was shot dead as he sprang. An ensign of the 93rd, named Cooper, was a good second, and, leaping feet first through the hole like a gymnast, got safely through.

Hope Grant says that “before the order was given a native Sikh officer started forward, sword in hand, followed by his men.” The 93rd determined not to let the Sikhs outcharge them, and instantly ran forward. The Sikhs had a few yards’ start, but “a sergeant of the 93rd, Sergeant-Major Murray, a fine active fellow, outstripped them, jumped through the opening like a harlequin, and, as he landed on the other side, was shot through the breast and fell dead.” Archibald Forbes says the first man through the breach was an Irishman, Lance-Corporal Donnelly, of the 93rd, killed as he jumped through the breach; the second was a Sikh, the third a Scotchman, Sergeant-Major Murray, also killed. Who shall decide when there is such a conflict of testimony betwixt the very actors in the great scene!

Roberts confirms Hope Grant in the statement that a Highlander was the first to reach the goal, and was shot dead as he reached the enclosure; and he adds one curiously pathetic detail. A drummer-boy of the 93rd, he says, “must have been one of the first to pass that grim boundary between life and death; for when I got in I found him just inside the breach, lying on his back, quite dead, a pretty, innocent-looking, fair-haired lad, not more than fourteen years old.” What daring must have burned in that lad’s Scottish blood when he thus took his place in the very van of the wild rush of veterans into the Secundrabagh!

Forbes-Mitchell, who actually took part in the charge, gives yet another account. The order to charge, he says, was given, and the Sikhs, who caught it first, leaped over the mud-wall, behind which they were lying, shouting their war-cry, and, led by their two British officers, ran eagerly towards the breach. Both their officers were shot before they had run many yards, and at that the Sikhs halted. “As soon as Sir Colin saw them waver, he turned to the 93rd, 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 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-storeyed building in the centre of the garden, the gate and doors of which they firmly barred.”

The Secundrabagh, it must be remembered, was held by four strong Sepoy regiments, numbering in all from 2000 to 3000 men, many of them veteran soldiers, wearing the medals they had won in British service, and they fought with desperate courage. The human jet of stormers through the gap in the wall was a mere tiny squirt, but the main body of the 93rd blew in the lock of the great gate with their bullets, and came sweeping in.

Lord Roberts gives another version of this incident. The Sepoys, he says, were driven out of the earthwork which covered the gateway, and were swept back into the Secundrabagh, and the heavy doors of the great gateway were being hurriedly shut in the face of the stormers. A subahdar of the 4th Punjab Infantry reached the gate in time enough to thrust his left arm, on which was carried a shield, between the closing doors. His hand was slashed across by a tulwar from within, whereupon he drew it out, instantly thrusting in the other arm, when his right hand, in turn, was all but severed from the wrist! But he kept the gates from being shut, and in another minute the men of the 93rd, of the 53rd, and of the gallant Punjabee’s own regiment went storming in.

The men of the 53rd again tried, with success, another device. They lifted their caps on the tips of their bayonets to a line of iron-barred windows above their heads, and thus drew the fire of their defenders. Then they leaped up, tore away the bars, and, clambering on each other’s shoulders, broke through. Forbes-Mitchell was the fifth or sixth man through the breach, and was immediately fired upon point-blank by a Sepoy lying in the grass half-a-dozen yards distant. The bullet struck the thick brass buckle on his belt, and such was the force of the blow that it tumbled him head over heels. Colonel Ewart came next to Forbes-Mitchell, who heard his colonel say, as he rushed past him, “Poor fellow! he is done for.” Ewart, a gallant Highlander, of commanding stature, played a great part in the struggle within the Secundrabagh. His bonnet was shot or struck off his head, and, bareheaded, amidst the push and sway and madness of the fight, he bore himself like a knight of old.

The fight within the walls of the Secundrabagh raged for nearly two hours, and the sounds that floated up from it as the Sepoys, “fighting like devils”—to quote an actor in the scene,—were driven from floor to floor of the building, or across the green turf of the garden, were appalling. The fighting passion amongst the combatants often took queer shapes. Thus one man, known amongst the 93rd as “the Quaker,” from his great quietness, charged into the Secundrabagh like a kilted and male Fury, and, according to Forbes-Mitchell, quoting a verse of the Scottish psalm with every thrust of his bayonet or shot from his rifle:—

“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.”

Scottish psalm, punctuated with bayonet thrusts: this surely is the strangest battle-hymn ever heard!

Ewart found that two native officers had carried the regimental flag into a narrow and dark room, and were defending themselves like wild cats. Ewart leaped single-handed into the room, and captured the colours, slaying both officers. The fight within the Secundrabagh was by this time practically over, and Ewart ran outside, and bareheaded, with blood-stained uniform and smoke-blackened face, ran up to Sir Colin as he sat on his grey horse, and cried, “We are in possession, sir! I have killed the last two of the enemy with my own hand, and here is one of their colours.” “D⸺ your colours, sir!” was the wrathful response of Sir Colin. “It’s not your place to be taking colours. Go back to your regiment this instant, sir.” Sir Colin had a Celtic shortness of temper; the strain of waiting while the madness of the fight raged within the great walls had told on his nerves. He was eager to get his 93rd into regimental shape again; and, as Forbes-Mitchell argues, believed, from his appearance and bearing, that Ewart was drunk! So he was: but it was with the passion of battle!

The officers of Sir Colin’s staff read Ewart’s condition more truly, and as this ragged, blood-stained figure, carrying the captured flag, came running out from the furnace of the great fight, they cheered vehemently. Later in the day Sir Colin himself apologised to Ewart for his brusqueness.

In the whole record of war there are not many scenes of slaughter to be compared with that which took place within the walls of the Secundrabagh. The 53rd held the north side of the great quadrangle, the Sikhs and the 93rd the east side, and a mixed force, composed of several regiments, held the south; on the west there was no escape. The great mass of Sepoys in the centre of the quadrangle was thus pelted with lead and fire from the three fronts. “We fired volley after volley into the dense multitude,” says Jones-Parry, “until nothing was left but a moving mass, like mites in a cheese!”

Of the 2000 or 2500 Sepoys who formed the garrison of the Secundrabagh not one man escaped. Its whole area, when the fight was over, was red with blood and strewn with the bodies of slain men. Four whole regiments of mutineers were simply blotted out. Many of the slain Sepoys wore Punjab medals on their breasts; many, too, were found to have leave certificates, signed by former commanding officers, in their pockets, showing they had been on leave when the regiment mutinied, and had rejoined their regiment to fight against the British. The walls of the Secundrabagh still stand, a long, low mound along one side showing where the great company of slain Sepoys were buried. What other patch of the earth’s surface, of equal size, has ever witnessed more of human valour and of human despair than those few square yards of turf that lie within the shot-battered walls of this ancient Indian pleasure-garden!

The British losses, curiously enough, were comparatively light, except amongst the officers. The 93rd had nine officers killed and wounded. The 4th Punjab infantry went into the fight with four British officers; two were killed, one was desperately wounded, and the regiment was brought out of the fight by the sole surviving officer, Lieut. Willoughby, himself only a lad. He was recommended for the V.C., but did not live to wear that much-coveted decoration, as he was slain in fight shortly afterwards.

But the strongest post held by the rebels, in the track along which the British were moving towards the Residency, was the Shah Nujeef, a great and massively-built mosque, girdled with a high loopholed wall, and screened by trees and enclosures of various kinds. Campbell brought up Peel, with his Naval Brigade, to make a breach in the massive walls of the Shah Nujeef, and that gallant sailor ran his guns up within twenty yards of the loopholed walls of the great mosque, and, swinging them round, opened fire, while the gunners were shot down in quick succession as they toiled to load and discharge their pieces. “It was an action,” said Sir Colin in his despatch afterwards, “almost unexampled in war.” Peel, in a word, behaved very much as if he were laying the _Shannon_ alongside an enemy’s frigate!

As the men ran up their guns to the walls of the Shah Nujeef, Forbes-Mitchell says he saw a sailor lad, just in front of him, who had his leg carried clean off by a round shot, which struck him above the knee. “He sat bolt upright on the grass, with the blood spouting from the stump of his leg like water from the hose of a fire-engine, and shouted, ‘Here goes a shilling a day, a shilling a day! Remember Cawnpore, 93rd; remember Cawnpore! Go at them, my hearties;’ and then sank down and died.”

But the defence of the Shah Nujeef was stubborn, and for three hours Peel worked his guns under a double cross-fire, and still his 18-pounders failed to pierce the solid walls of the great mosque. The 93rd were brought up, and, lying down under what shelter they could secure, tried to keep down the musketry fire from the walls, and many of them were shot down by bullets or arrows from the summit of the mosque. The external masonry had flaked off, leaving a rough, irregular face, up which an active cat might possibly have scrambled; and at this a battalion of detachments—in which clusters from a dozen regiments were combined—under the command of Major Branston, was launched. The men ran forward with utmost daring, but the wall was twenty feet high; there were no scaling-ladders. It was impossible to climb the broken face of the masonry. Branston fell, shot, and his second in command, the present Lord Wolseley, kept up the attack, making desperate attempts to escalade.

A tree stood at an angle of the Shah Nujeef, close to the wall, and giving the chance of firing over it. Peel offered the Victoria Cross to any of his men who would climb it. Two lieutenants and a leading seaman named Harrison in a moment, with seamanlike activity, clambered up the tree, and opened a deadly fire on the enemy. Each man of the three was in turn shot, but not till they had accomplished the task they had undertaken.

Nightfall was coming on. It was impossible to turn back; it seemed equally impossible to carry the Shah Nujeef. Peel’s guns, firing for nearly three hours at point-blank range, had failed to tear the stubborn masonry to pieces. The answering fire, both of cannon and musketry, from either flank, which covered the face of the great mosque being assailed, grew heavier every moment. Campbell then called upon the 93rd, and told them he would lead them himself, as the place must be carried. The lives of the women and children inside the Residency were at stake. A dozen voices from the ranks called out that they would carry the place, right enough, but Sir Colin must not expose his own life. “We can lead ourselves,” cried one after another. Whether even the 93rd could have clambered over the lofty and unbroken walls of the Shah Nujeef may be doubted, but at this moment the wit and daring of a Scotch soldier saved the situation.

There are conflicting versions of the incident, but Forbes-Mitchell shall tell the story:—

Just at that moment Sergeant John Paton, of my company, came running down the ravine at the moment the battalion of detachments had been ordered to storm. He 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 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 Mootee Munzil. If No. 7 company had got in behind them and cut off their retreat by the back gate, it would have been Secundrabagh over again.

Paton received the Victoria Cross for that signal service. He was a soldier of the finest type, took part in more than thirty engagements, and passed through them all without so much as a scratch. Paton emigrated in 1861 to Melbourne; a little later he entered the service of the New South Wales Government, and became Governor of Goulburn Gaol, retiring on a pension in February 1896.

A quiet night followed a day so fierce. The troops were exhausted. Their rifles, in addition, had become so foul with four days’ heavy work that it was almost impossible to load them. The next day, however, the advance was continued, and position after position was carried, the last being what was known as the Mess-house. This was carried by a wing of the 53rd, led by Captain Hopkins—“one of the bravest men that ever lived,” says Malleson; “a man who literally revelled in danger.” From the summit of the Mess-house the Union Jack was hoisted as a signal to the Residency, but on the flag the exasperated Sepoys concentrated their fire, and twice in succession it was shot down. Forbes-Mitchell says that a previous and successful attempt to signal to the Residency had been made from the Shah Nujeef. The adjutant of the 93rd, Lieutenant M’Bean, a sergeant, and a little drummer-boy, twelve years old, named Ross, and tiny for his age, climbed to the summit of the dome of the Shah Nujeef, put a Highland bonnet on the tip of the staff, waved the regimental colour of the 93rd, while the boy sounded the regimental call shrilly on his bugle.

The signal was seen and answered from the Residency, its flag being raised and lowered three times; but every Sepoy battery within range instantly opened on the three figures on the summit of the dome. They quickly descended, but little Ross turned, ran up the ladder again like a monkey, and, holding on to the spire of the dome with his left hand, blew the call known as “The Cock of the North” as a blast of defiance to the enemy!

Outram meanwhile was pushing cautiously on in the direction of Campbell’s attack, occupying building after building; and late in the afternoon Outram and Havelock and Campbell had clasped hands on the sloping ground in front of the Mess-house. A hole had to be broken through the western wall of the Pearl Palace enclosure to let the chiefs of the beleaguered garrison through, and a slab in the wall still marks the spot. Campbell, Havelock, and Outram met on the slope outside the Mess-house, and the meeting of three such soldiers under such conditions was a memorable event. No red-coated Boswell, unhappily, has told us how the veterans greeted each other. The Kaisarbagh, strongly held by the mutineers, overlooked the little patch of rough soil on which the three famous soldiers stood, and every gun that could be trained upon the group broke into fire. It was to an accompaniment of bellowing cannon, of bursting shells, and of whistling bullets that Campbell, Havelock, and Outram exchanged their first greeting.

Young Roberts, with Captain Norman, accompanied Outram and Havelock back to the Residency, and he has described how he passed from post to post, held with such long-enduring and stubborn courage by the relieved garrison. “When we came,” he says, “to the Bailey Guard, and looked at the battered walls and gateway, not an inch without a mark of a round shot or bullet, we marvelled that Aitken and Loughnan could have managed to defend it for nearly five months.” It was found difficult to get the relieved garrison to talk of their own experiences; they were too hungry for news from the outside world! Jones-Parry says, “The first man of the garrison I met was my old schoolfellow and chum, Meecham. He was an excellent specimen of the condition of the defenders, for he looked more like a greyhound than a man. He was thin as a lath, and his eyes looked sunken into his head.”

Lucknow was relieved; but to reach the Residency had cost Sir Colin Campbell a loss of 45 officers and 496 men. Campbell found his position difficult. He had broken through the besieging force; he had not ended the siege. To hold the Residency meant to be besieged himself. He decided to bring off the Residency garrison, with the women and children, abandoning the shot-wrecked walls and foul trenches to the enemy. To evacuate the Residency, carrying off in safety, through the lines of a hostile force five times as numerous as his own, 600 women and children, and more than 1000 sick or wounded men, was a great feat, but Sir Colin Campbell accomplished it, and did it so adroitly that not a casualty was incurred, and not a serviceable gun abandoned. So completely, in fact, did Sir Colin Campbell deceive the enemy that their guns were pouring their fire angrily on the Residency for at least four hours after the last British soldier had left it!

Havelock died just as he was being carried out of the slender and battered defences he had reached and held so gallantly. He died of an attack of dysentery, brought on, says Major Anson, “by running nearly three-quarters of a mile under fire from the Residency to meet the Commander-in-Chief and greet him as his deliverer.”

He lies buried in the Alumbagh, the place Havelock himself won by an assault so daring when advancing to relieve Lucknow. He was buried on the morning of November 25, and round his rude coffin, on which the battle-flag lay, stood his sorrowing comrades, a group of the most gallant soldiers that earthly battlefields have ever known—Campbell, and Outram, and Peel, and Adrian Hope, and Fraser Tytler, and the younger Havelock, with men of the Ross-shire Buffs and of the Madras Fusileers, whom Havelock had so often led to victory. On a tree that grew beside the grave the letter H was roughly carved, to mark where Havelock’s body lay. To-day the interior of the Alumbagh is a garden, and a shapely obelisk marks the spot where sleeps the dust of one of the bravest soldiers that ever fought for the honour and flag of England.