Guns to the Far East (28 page)

Harriet sat reading her mail for most of the day; there were letters from her parents, from Lucy and Graham, one from Phillip, posted in China and, tragically, a scrawled little note from Lavinia, addressed to her in Sitapur, which had somehow reached her with the rest. She wept over it and then resolutely folded and placed it in the bosom of her dress. Life, she told herself sadly, had to go on and, for the children's sake, she must not yield to grief, for they were still in danger. The gunfire never ceased and on Saturday 21st the Lancers and the Artillery had to beat off a rebel attack on their camp. But gradually the garrison was being withdrawn from the Residency. Each day they came in, the gaunt, war-worn men of the Queen's 32nd, the Highlanders of the 78th in tattered tartan, the gallant sepoys of the 13th Native Infantry, who had defended the Bailey Guard Gate throughout the siege, and the Sikhs of Hardinge's Cavalry, on foot but still bearing themselves proudly, a handful of faithful household servants behind them.

Harriet found many friends in camp and from them, she learnt the incredible story of how the withdrawal had been made under the very noses of the rebel host. Guns in the Residency had been spiked and lights left burning; the defenders had filed out, leaving to Brigadier Inglis the sad honour of closing the gate of the Residency and, marching in tense silence, the last of the old garrison had passed along the route the women and children had followed, the outlying pickets falling in behind them, still without a shouted word or a bugle call. Covered by the guns of the
Shannon
Brigade and of the Horse Artillery, the rearguard of the 93rd had bivouacked five hundred yards from the Kaiser Bagh in which, still pounded by the
Shannon
's twenty-four-pounder broadsides, the rebels waited for the attack that never came. Then, as cheers from the sailors signalled another breach in its massive walls, the Highlanders had heaped logs on their bivouac fires and silently slipped away to serve as rearguard to the slowly moving guns as they, too, received the order to withdraw.

On the 24th the women and children were told that they were to move to the Alam Bagh and they heard, with intense sadness, that General Havelock—so recently promoted to a knighthood and the rank of Major-General—had died from an attack of dysentery in a tent in the Dilkusha. His body was borne to the Alam Bagh by a party of the soldiers he had led to nine valiant victories and there interred, the pipers of his favourite regiment, the 78th, playing him to his last long resting place.

Harriet was worn out when she and the children lay down at last in their tent at the Alam Bagh. The journey was only one of four miles but, starting at 11 a.m., they had been all day on the road, crowded with a dozen others into an open bullock cart. With so great a mass of waggons, carts, camels, bullocks, and elephants all loaded with baggage, the sick and wounded, and the women, clutching their children, in litters or on carts, confusion was inevitable and, every ten minutes, the long procession came to a standstill. Sir Colin, fuming at the chaotic lack of organisation and the delays, sent his Staff officers galloping this way and that and, after a while, some sort of order was restored, but the dust was suffocating, the heat almost unbearable. Tents had not been pitched when the head of the column reached the camp-site and, when finally this was rectified, the women and the wounded were found to have suffered a number of deaths.

Harriet wakened next morning to realise that, for the first time in five months, no cannon were firing. Anxious for Phillip, she sat up, straining her ears. The children continued to sleep but … She recalled a young midshipman, who had given his name as Lightfoot, who had sought her out during the march to tell her that her brother was with the two naval guns covering the retreat.

“Commander Hazard's compliments, ma'am,” the boy had said. “And I'm to tell you that he will be with you as soon as his duties permit.”

Weary and spent, the children fractious, she had scarcely taken it in but now she remembered and began to feel anxiety. General Outram, she had been told, was to remain in the Alam Bagh with artillery and four thousand troops, to prevent pursuit from Lucknow when the column took the road, and to hold the rebels in check, until the Commander-in-Chief returned with reinforcements to recapture the city they had now been compelled to abandon. Would Phillip, she wondered unhappily, be left behind with his guns? It seemed on the cards but no one was able to tell her and the naval guns had not yet left the Dilkusha.

All day she fretted, learning without enthusiasm that the column was under orders to leave for Cawnpore, guarded by the three thousand remaining troops, on the 27th. Most of the old garrison and the regiments of Havelock's Force were to go but, probe and question as she might, Harriet could glean no news of whether or not the Naval Brigade would accompany them.

On the evening of the 26th, as she was picking up her scanty possessions, she heard a glad cry from little Phillip and, running to the tent flap, saw that he was pointing excitedly to a long line of yoked bullocks pulling the great, unwieldy siegeguns. Overcome with relief, Harriet dropped her tired head into her hands and wept.

She was still weeping when Phillip found her.

“It's all right,” he told her gently and took her into his arms. “We'll get you back safely—nothing is more certain.” Harriet clung to him, smiling through her tears.

The worst was over, she told herself thankfully. From now on, every step she and the children took would be a step nearer to freedom. And Phillip would be with them, to help them on their way.

CONTEMPORARY

The Mutinies in Oudh and the Siege of the Lucknow Residency:
Martin Gubbins (Richard Bentley, 1858).

A Lady's Diary of the Siege of Lucknow:
Mrs G. Harris (John Murray, 1858).

Lucknow and Oudh in the Mutiny:
Lt.-Gen. James Innes (A. D. Innes, 1895).

The Siege of Lucknow:
The Hon. Julia Inglis (Osgood, MacIlvaine, 1892).

A Middy's Recollections:
Victor Montagu (Black, 1898).

Memories of the Mutiny:
Col. F. C. Maude & J. W. Sherer (Remington, 1894).

Journal of the Siege of Lucknow:
Maria Germon (privately printed 1870: Edited by Michael Edwardes Constable).

The Relief of Lucknow:
William Forbes-Mitchell (1893; Edited by Michael Edwardes for The Folio Society, 1962).

Memoirs of Sir Henry Havelock:
Marshman 1867 (Longman's,1891).

The Shannon
'
s Brigade in India:
Edmund Hope Verney (Saunders, Otley & Co., 1862).

Recollections of a Winter
'
s Campaign on India:
Captain Oliver Jones, R.N. (Saunders, Otley & Co., 1859).

Letters from Lord Canning to Vernon Smith Esq. (private papers, kindly lent by Jane Vansittart, author of
From Minnie with Love
).

The Illustrated London News
, 1857–8–9.

Papers of Dr N. Cheevers, Medical Secretariat, Calcutta (private collection of letters, cuttings from Indian newspapers, printed Orders in Council, telegraph messages 1857–9, obtained from Mr H. J. Varnham, Blackheath).

HISTORICAL REFERENCES

The Naval Brigades in the Indian Mutiny:
Edited by Commander W. B. Rowbotham, R.N. (Navy Records Society, 1948).

The Second China War:
Edited by Captain D. Bonner, R.N., and E. W. R. Lumby (Navy Records Society, 1954).

History of the Indian Mutiny:
T. R. Holmes (Macmillan, 1898).

History of the Indian Mutiny:
Charles Ball (London Pub. Co.,1858).

History of the Indian Mutiny:
3 vols. G. W. Forrest, C.I.E. (Blackwood, 1904).

The Tale of the Great Mutiny:
W. H. Fitchett (Smith, Elder, 1904).

The Sound of Fury:
Richard Collier (Collins, 1963).

Eighteen Fifty-Seven:
S. N. Sen (Govt. of India, 1957).

Ayan:
nurse or maid servant

Baba:
child

Bearer:
personal, usually head, servant

Bhisti:
water bearer

Boorka:
all-enveloping cotton garment worn by purdah women when mixing with the outside world

Brahmin:
high-caste Hindu

Chapkan:
knee-length tunic

Charpoy:
string bed

Chitti:
a chit, a written order

Chuprassi:
a uniformed door-keeper

Daffadar:
sergeant, cavalry

Dhoti:
a loincloth worn by men in India

Din:
faith

Doolie:
stretcher or covered litter for conveyance of wounded

Eurasian:
half-caste, usually children born of British fathers and Indian mothers

Ekka:
small, single-horse-drawn cart, often curtained for conveyance of purdah women

Fakir:
itinerant holy man

Feringhi:
foreigner (term of disrespect)

Ghat:
river bank, landing place, quay

Godown:
storeroom, warehouse

Golandaz:
gunner, native

Havildar/Havildar-Major:
sergeant/sergeant major, infantry

Jemadar:
native officer, all arms

Ji/Ji-han:
yes

Lal-kote:
British soldier

Log:
people (baba-log: children)

Mahout:
the keeper and driver of an elephant

Mem:
wife, woman

Moulvi:
teacher of religion, Moslem

Nahin:
no

Nana:
lit. grandfather, popular title bestowed on the Mahratta chief

Oudh:
kingdom of, recently annexed by Hon. East India Company

Paltan:
regiment

Pandy:
name for mutineers, taken from the first to revolt, Sepoy Mangal Pandy, 34th Native Infantry

Peishwa:
official title of ruler of the Mahratta

Pugree:
turban

Raj:
rule

Rajwana:
troops and retainers of native chiefs

Rissala:
cavalry

Rissaldar:
native officer, cavalry

Ryot:
peasant landowner, cultivator

Sepoy:
infantry soldier

Sowar:
cavalry trooper

Subedar:
native officer, infantry (equivalent of Captain)

Sweeper:
low-caste servant

Talukdar:
minor chief

Tulwar:
sword or sabre

Vakeel:
agent

Zamindar:
landowner

Zenana:
harem

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