The Cannons of Lucknow (21 page)

“Lucknow is our goal, my friends,” he said. “We cannot afford to lose men or expend all our ammunition on the way … or so Colonel Tytler informs me.” He sighed. “There's to be a council of war now, which I'm ordered to attend, to decide whether we continue the advance or not. In the meantime, the orders are for you to retire, with Smithett's guns, to the causeway.”

Palliser cursed, loudly and angrily, as they rode back. “I know you're a Havelock man, Colonel Sheridan,” he told Alex. “But this is too much! God's teeth, we win victories and then retire, as if we'd suffered defeat! And for us in the cavalry, it's a choice of baggage guard or escort to the artillery, with the occasional reconnaissance from which, on sighting the enemy, we are commanded to beat an inglorious retreat. Let's go on to Lucknow at any price, I say, and have done.”

But it was not to be. The recapture of Busseratgunj had cost ten men killed and over a hundred wounded or stricken with cholera and, with a quarter of the gun ammunition expended—although enemy casualties exceeded 400—the officers whom General Havelock had summoned to discuss the situation agreed unhappily that their desperate gamble had little chance of succeeding.

Colonel Tytler summed up. “The worst is yet to come,” he said, weighing his words carefully. “We are still thirty miles from Lucknow. Every village is held against us; the
zamindars
have risen to oppose us, and they are all round us in bodies of five or six hundred strong, waiting for an opportunity to fall upon the wounded and the baggage train. The bridge of boats at Bunni is strongly entrenched and defended by cannon. According to our spies' reports, the Pandies will blow it up on our approach. How, then, can we cross the Sai?”

“There will be some boats, surely, Colonel?” Harry Havelock put in. “And the bridge could be repaired.”

“That would take too long, Harry,” Captain Crommelin objected. “And we should have to work under fire. We might lose half our force, on that crossing alone. Boats remain a possibility, but—”

“Even if we contrived, by some miracle, to seize sufficient boats,” Tytler said flatly, “we would still have to get across the canal at the Char Bagh and then fight our way through a mile and a half of Lucknow streets in order to gain the Residency. Colonel Inglis can promise only a diversion in our favour and some flank fire with his guns. And if we fail to reach the Residency, he says he cannot cut his way out to join us. His letter's here …” Unfolding the crumpled scrap of paper Ungud had delivered from the besieged garrison that morning, he read it aloud, “‘It is quite impossible with my weak and shattered garrison that I can leave my defences … that's it, in black and white, gentlemen.' And he adds that he is hampered by 350 women and children and nearly half that number of sick and wounded, for whom he has no carriage whatsoever! In my considered view, we have no chance of relieving Lucknow or of evacuating the garrison to Cawnpore, as the Commander-in-Chief requires, until we are reinforced by at least two more regiments of Europeans. We should be sacrificing this force, without a chance of benefiting the garrison, if we attempted now to go on.”

General Havelock, who had contributed no view of his own, looked from one to the other of them in mute, reluctant question. All, with the exception of his son Harry, agreed with Tytler's assessment.

“
I
think,” Harry Havelock said hotly, “that we must advance at all hazards. Even if only a handful of us succeeds in reaching the Residency, honour demands that we make the attempt.”

“Of what use will a handful of exhausted men be to Inglis?” Lousada Barrow asked. “They will simply be more mouths for him to feed, Harry.”

“It must not be said of us that we failed in our duty,” Harry objected. “And you know who will say it, do you not, Lousada! My father's reputation is already compromised by our earlier retreat. Calcutta has been told of it by a man who believes he could do better and—”

“Are you,” Tytler demanded, “prepared to sacrifice this whole force and the interests of British India, rather than compromise your father's reputation? However galling it is for you—and, as I am fully aware, for the general himself—to retire, this is not a personal question, Harry. If this Force were annihilated in an unsuccessful attempt to reach Lucknow, for how long do you suppose General Neill could hold out in Cawnpore? Not only Lucknow would be lost but Cawnpore also … and then Allahabad would be attacked! Our presence here in Oudh, as a fighting force, will aid Colonel Inglis's resistance, but we are too few and too poorly equipped and supplied to bring him relief and, for this undeniable fact, your father cannot be blamed.”

“But he will be,” Harry Havelock retorted bitterly. “That, too, is an undeniable fact, Colonel.” He looked across at his father and, observing that the faded blue eyes were filled with tears, jumped up impulsively to put an arm about his shoulders. “I am thinking only of you, Father,” he said, and added softly, “In the eyes of the world, a good soldier dies with his sword in his hand.”

“I know it,” the general answered. “But I must, nevertheless, agree with Tytler … although with great grief and reluctance. God knows I would gladly lay down my life to prevent another Cawnpore, Harry my dear boy. But from a military viewpoint, the loss of this Force would be a greater calamity, at this time of grave crisis, than the enforced surrender of the Lucknow garrison. Colonel Inglis may yet hold out and I pray that he will.” He rose wearily to his feet. “We retire to Mungalwar, gentlemen. Issue the necessary orders, if you please. Oh, Captain Barrow—a moment, if you please.”

“Sir?” Barrow halted expectantly.

“I received a message from General Neill which will be of interest to Colonel Sheridan of your Volunteers,” Havelock told him. “I should have passed it on before this but my mind”—he smiled apologetically—“has been somewhat over-exercised of late. Inform Sheridan, would you, that four more of the Cawnpore garrison have survived and have been sent in safely by the friendly rajah who gave them shelter, following their escape. I have a note of their names somewhere and—”

“They're here, sir,” Harry Havelock supplied. He read from the note. “Lieutenants Mowbray Thomson and Henry Delafosse of the 53rd Native Infantry, Gunner Sullivan of the Bengal Artillery, and Private James Murphy of Her Majesty's 84th.”

“Thank you,” Barrow acknowledged. “Sheridan will be overjoyed, I know.” He saluted and went in search of Alex, who received the news with a heartfelt, “Oh, praise be to God! They were in Eddie Vibart's boat with me and … where were they found, Lou, do you know?”

Barrow shook his head. “I only know that they were given shelter by a friendly rajah. But they're in Cawnpore now and you may be seeing them before long.” He sighed and glanced at Charles Palliser, who was standing nearby, consuming the last of his midday meal. “We're going back to Mungalwar.” Palliser swore disgustedly but the Volunteer's commander cut him short. “The alternative would be our annihilation, Charlie, in the carefully considered opinion of the general and his staff, with which, having weighed up our chances, I fully concur.” He repeated some of the points which had been made and then said crisply, “Baggage guard, gentlemen, if you will be so good. We shall be moving in half an hour.”

Back, once more, at Mungalwar, General Havelock found much to cause him concern. An urgent note from Neill warned him that a trusted Sikh spy had brought word that a concentration of rebel troops, numbering at least 4,000 with five guns and believed to be commanded by the Nana, had assembled at Bithur and posed a threat to Cawnpore. Neill wrote:

I cannot stand this. They will enter the town and our communications are gone and if I am not supported, I can only hold out here. I can do nothing beyond our entrenchments—all the country between this and Allahabad will be up; our powder and ammunition on the way up by steamer may well fall into the hands of the enemy, and we will be in a bad way.

In a strange reversal of his initially critical attitude, he begged Havelock to cross back to Cawnpore with his entire force and, in his next letter, he reported that the strong, highly trained, and well-equipped Gwalior Contingent had mutinied against their ruler, Sindhia, and were moving toward the Jumna River. The Maharajah had hitherto kept them in check but now, Havelock was only too well aware, they could, depending on circumstances, pose a grave additional threat to Cawnpore, instead of marching on Agra, which had apparently been their initial intention.

A further appeal for aid from Lucknow, as well as one from Agra, reached him but the general decided that he must first deal with the immediate threat to Cawnpore. Work had already been started on repairs to the bridge of boats by his engineers and now he ordered that these must be completed with all possible speed. By 12th August, Captain Crommelin, who had toiled heroically at the difficult task, reported the bridge restored, and the sick and wounded, together with all stores and spare ammunition, were sent across the river to Cawnpore that night. Learning, however, from his spies that a considerable force of rebels was advancing from Busseratgunj in the hope of impeding his crossing, Havelock told his son Harry, with a smile, “I think we must take the initiative and strike a blow against them, rather than await their attack on our rear, don't you? Perhaps, if we can strike them hard enough, it will suffice to keep them immobile during our withdrawal.”

The column of gaunt and war-weary men advanced, for the third time, to Unao, where they bivouacked for the night, the sick carriages and
dhoolies
swiftly filling with cholera victims. In spite of this, the advance was continued next morning and, a mile and a half in front of the earlier battlefield, the enemy were discovered in great strength close to a village known as Boorkiya, which straddled the Lucknow road.

Original reports had put their number at about 4,000, but when Tytler and Barrow returned after reconnoitering the position, it was with the unwelcome news that armed peasants and a body of Oudh horse had almost doubled this number. The enemy's right rested on the village, their left on a ridge 400 yards distant. Both flanks were defended by artillery and a ditch, with a breast-high mud wall lined with infantry connecting the two batteries; the cavalry were massed on their left flank. Along their front lay what appeared to be a level expanse of dry, grassy land but this, Tytler warned, was almost certainly swamp,

Havelock studied the position through his glass and then sent the 78th and the Fusiliers, with four horsed guns, off to the right, to attack the left of the rebels' lines. The heavy guns he directed to the left, supported by the 84th, with orders to turn their right flank and drive them from the village. Keeping his remaining troops and guns in the centre, he ordered the howitzers to open fire with shell.

Due to the ravages of cholera and dysentery, the Volunteer Cavalry had paraded that morning barely forty strong, and Alex was escorting the horsed battery, under Lieutenant Smithett, with a scant twenty men—the majority the now-seasoned cavalrymen of his original troop. Smithett, eager to bring his guns into action, forged ahead of his supporting infantry and, as he unlimbered to the right of the swamp, the rebel nine-pounders opened a furious fire on him from their entrenched and elevated position on the ridge. Smithett returned their fire but could make little impression on the well-protected and well-served enemy guns. Half his gunners were killed or wounded and he had lost four of his horses before, at Alex's urgent instigation, he limbered up and took ground to the right.

As Smithett was leading his depleted battery to their new position, the enemy gunners turned their attention to the advancing Highlanders and Smithett was out of their line of fire. But he was moving slowly, and the rebel cavalry, observing his predicament, started to move forward with the obvious intention of cutting him off from his support and seizing or disabling his guns before he could again bring them into action. There were about seven or eight hundred of them, all Oudh irregulars and well mounted; with the sun glinting on their
tulwars
and lance-tips, they looked formidable enough, but they were coming cautiously and at a trot, with a wary eye on the line of advancing Highlanders. Watching them, Alex decided that a charge by his own men—if carried through resolutely and in close formation—might disperse them long enough for Smithett to gain his objective and again unlimber his guns.

His tactic succeeded better, even, than he had dared to hope. His small troop, bunched round him in a single line and with the advantage of the downhill slope, charged into the loosely packed right flank of the Oudh horsemen who, anticipating no opposition and with the sun in their eyes, reeled back, startled, from the unexpected assault. They were given no time to determine how few their attackers were. Alex, thankful now for the hours of patient training which had welded his recruits into a disciplined body, wheeled and halted them and then, his knotted reins loose on his horse's neck and his sabre in his left hand, spurred back into the mêlée to hack his way through, Mahoney and Cullmane on either side of him, the rest close on their flying heels, yelling like banshees.

As they emerged, miraculously still twenty strong but with blown horses and aching arms, he saw that Smithett's guns were in position and, leading his troop off at an angle to leave them a clear field of fire, he left the final rout of the Oudh cavalry to the gunners. Aided by a handful of volunteers from the Fusiliers, Smithett's men completed it.

Minutes later, with a cheer that woke echoes even above the roar of the guns, the Highlanders hurled themselves onto the ridge and, with the Blue Caps challenging them for the honour, entered the battery at its summit without firing a shot. They bayoneted the gunners and then, still cheering, turned two of the 9-pounders they had captured onto the rebel infantry below. It was impossible to see, through the smoke, how the 84th had fared but, as the Highlanders and the Fusiliers drove on toward Busseratgunj, a dense mass of armed peasants and sepoys came pouring out of the village in headlong retreat. A shower of grape from the captured guns sped them on their way and, from the centre of the British line, the Sikhs and the 64th joined the pursuit.