Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places by Archibald Forbes
A >>
Archibald Forbes >> Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | 17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21
LUKHNOW, _Septr. 16th._ (Recd. 19th.)
MY DEAR GENERAL--The last letter I recd. from you was dated 24th ult'o,
since when I have rec'd [Greek: no neus] whatever from y'r [Greek: kamp]
or of y'r [Greek: movements] but am now [Greek: dailae expekting] to
receive [Greek: inteligense] of y'r [Greek: advanse] in this [Greek:
direktion]. Since the date of my last letter the enemy have continued to
persevere unceasingly in their efforts against this position & the firing
has never ceased day or night; they have about [Greek: sixten] guns in
position round us--many of them 18 p'rs. On 5th inst. they made a very
determined attack after exploding 2 mines and [Greek: suksaeded] for a
[Greek: moment] in [Greek: almost geting] into one of our [Greek:
bateries], but were eventually repulsed on all sides with heavy loss.
Since the above date they have kept up a cannonade & musketry fire,
occasionally throwing in a shell or two. My [Greek: waeklae loses]
continue very [Greek: hevae] both in [Greek: ophisers] & [Greek: men]. I
shall be quite out of [Greek: rum] for the [Greek: men] in [Greek: eit
dais], but we have been [Greek: living] on [Greek: redused rations] & I
hope to be [Greek: able] to [Greek: get] on [Greek: til] about [Greek:
phirst prox]. If you have not [Greek: relieved] us by [Greek: then] we
shall have [Greek: no meat lepht], as I must [Greek: kaep] some few [Greek:
buloks] to [Greek: move] my [Greek: guns] about the [Greek: positions].
As it is I have had to [Greek: kil] almost all the [Greek: gun buloks],
for my men c'd not [Greek: perphorm] the [Greek: ard work without animal
phood]. There is a report, tho' from a source on which I cannot implicitly
rely, that [Greek: mansing] has just [Greek: arived] in [Greek: luknow]
havg. [Greek: lepht part] of his [Greek: phors outside] the [Greek:
sitae]. It is said that [Greek: he] is in [Greek: our interest] and that
[Greek: he] has [Greek: taken] the [Greek: above step] at the [Greek:
instigation] of B[Greek: riti]sh [Greek: athoritae]. But I cannot say
whether [Greek: su]ch [Greek: be the kase], as all I have to go upon is
[Greek: bazar rumors]. I am [Greek: most anxious] to [Greek: hear] of yr.
[Greek: advanse] to [Greek: enable mae] to [Greek: rae-asure our native
soldiers]. [Footnote: The reader will observe that the words are English,
though the characters are Greek.]--Yours truly,
J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_,
H.M. 32'd Reg't.
To Brig'r Havelock, Commg. Relieving Force.
The other missive is of an earlier date, and was brought out in the same
manner as the first.
_August 16_. (Recd. 23rd August.)
MY DEAR GENERAL--A note from Colonel Tytler to Mr. Gubbins reached last
night, dated "Mungalwar, 4th instant," the latter part of which is as
follows:--"You must [Greek: aid] us in [Greek: everae] way even to cutting
y'r way out if we [Greek: kant phorse our] way in. We have [Greek: onlae a
small phorse]." This has [Greek: kaused mae] much [Greek: uneasiness], as
it is quite [Greek: imposible] with my [Greek: weak] & [Greek: shatered
phorse] that I can [Greek: leave] my [Greek: dephenses]. You must bear in
mind how I am [Greek: hampered], that I have upwards of [Greek: one undred
& twentae-sik wounded], and at the least [Greek: two undred & twenae
women], & about [Greek: two undred] & [Greek: thirtae children], & no
[Greek: kariage] of any [Greek: deskription], besides [Greek: sakriphising
twentae-thrae laks] of [Greek: treasure] & about [Greek: thirtae guns] of
[Greek: sorts]. In consequence of the news rec'd I shall soon put the
[Greek: phorse] on [Greek: alph rations], unless I [Greek: hear phrom]
you. [Greek: Our provisions] will [Greek: last] us [Greek: then] till
[Greek: about] the [Greek: tenth] [Greek: september]. If you [Greek: hope]
to [Greek: save this no time must] be [Greek: lost] in pushing forward. We
are [Greek: dailae] being [Greek: ataked] by the [Greek: enemae], who are
within a few yards of our [Greek: dephenses]. Their [Greek: mines] have
[Greek: alreadae weakened our post], & I have [Greek: everae] [Greek:
reason] to [Greek: believe] that are carrying on [Greek: others]. Their
[Greek: aeteen] [Greeks: pounders] are within 150 yards of [Greek: some
oph our bateries], & [Greek: phrom] their [Greek: positions & [Greek: our
inabilitae] to [Greek: phorm working] [Greek: parties], we [Greek: kanot
repli] to [Greek: them. Thae damage done ourlae] is very [Greek: great].
My [Greek: strength] now in [Greek: europeans] is [Greek: thrae undred] &
[Greek: phiphtae], & about [Greek: thrae hundred natives], & the men
[Greek: dreadphulae] [Greek: harassed], & owing to [Greek: part] of the
[Greek: residensae] having been [Greek: brought down] by [Greek: round
shot] are without [Greek: shelter]. Our [Greek: native] [Greek: phorse]
hav'g been [Greek: asured] on Col. Tytler's authority of y'r [Greek: near]
[Greek: aproach some twentae phive dais ago are naturallae losing
konphidense], [Greek: and iph thae leave] us I do not [Greek: sae how the
dephenses] are to be [Greek: manned]. Did you [Greek: reseive a letter &
plan phrom] the [Greek: man] [Greek: Ungud]?--Kindly answer this
question.--Yours truly,
J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_.
Cawnpore is an engrossing theme, and Bithoor alone would furnish material
for an article; but my present subject is Lucknow, and I must get to it.
There is a railway now to Lucknow from Cawnpore, but the railway bridge
across the Ganges is not yet finished and passengers must cross by the
bridge of boats to the Oude side. Behind me, as the gharry jingles over
the wooden platform, is the fort which Havelock began, which Neill
completed, and in which Windham found the shelter which alone saved him
from utter defeat. Before me is the low Gangetic shore, with the dumpy
sand-hills gradually rising from the water's edge. A few years ago there
used to ride at the head of that noble regiment the 78th Highlanders, a
smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged, stooping officer on an old white horse.
The Colonel had a voice like a girl and his men irreverently called him
the "old squeaker"; but although you never heard him talk of his deeds he
had a habit of going quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting
and hardship philosophically as part of the day's work. Those sand-banks
were once the scene of some quiet, unsensational heroism of his. He
commanded the two companies of Highlanders whom Havelock threw on the
unknown shore as the vanguard of his advance into Oude. No prior
reconnaissance was possible. Oude swarmed with an armed and hostile
population. The chances were that an army was hovering but a little way
inland, waiting to attack the head of the column on landing. But it was
necessary to risk all contingencies, and Mackenzie accepted the service as
he might have done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the
night the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which
Havelock essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness,
it was Mackenzie's task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in
his vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band
hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached,
unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves until
it was possible to send a reinforcement. The charge of this vague,
uncertain, tentative enterprise, fraught with risks so imminent and so
vast, required a cool, steady-balanced courage of no common order.
"Onao!" shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from
Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native
village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with
battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to make
a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically Private
Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the hesitation of
his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the mutineers. We jog on
very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to India in point of
slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at home; but every yard
of the ground is interesting. Along that high road passed in long,
strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde brought away from
Lucknow--the civilians, the women, the children, and the wounded of the
immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees under which the _nhil
gau_ are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock's menacing position. No wonder
though the outskirts of this town on the high road present a ruined
appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene of three of Havelock's battles
and victories, fought and won in a single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where
Havelock and Outram tramping on to the relief, fired a royal salute in the
hope that the sound of it might reach to the Residency and cheer the
hearts of its garrison. And now we are on the platform of the Lucknow
station which has more of an English look about it than have most Indian
stations. There is a bookstall, although it is not one of Smith's; and
there are lots of English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the
train. The natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique
from the people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and
upright; he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his
carriage is that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked
by two earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.
Lucknow is so full of interest and the objects of interest are so widely
spread that one is in doubt where to begin the pilgrimage. But the
Alumbagh is on the railway side of the canal and therefore nearest; and I
drive directly to it before going into the town. From the station the road
to the Alumbagh turns sharp to the left and the two miles' drive is
through beautiful groves and gardens. Then the plain opens up and there is
the detached temple which so long was one of Outram's outlying pickets;
and to the left of it the square-walled enclosure of the Alumbagh itself
with the four corners flanked by earthen bastions. The top of the wall is
everywhere roughly crenelated for musketry fire, and on two of its faces
there are countless tokens that it has been the target for round shot and
bullets. The Alumbagh in the pre-Mutiny period was a pleasure-garden of
one of the princes of Oude. The enclosed park contained a summer palace
and all the surroundings were pretty and tasteful. It was for the
possession of the Alumbagh that Havelock fought his last battle before the
relief; here it was where he left his baggage and went in; here it was
that Clyde halted to organise the turning movement which achieved the
second relief. Hither were brought from the Dilkoosha the women and
children of the garrison prior to starting on the march for Cawnpore; here
Outram lay threatening Lucknow from Clyde's relief until the latter's
ultimate capture of the city. But these occurrences contribute but
trivially to the interest of the Alumbagh in comparison with the
circumstance that within its enclosure is the grave of Havelock. We enter
the great enclosure under the lofty arch of the castellated gateway. From
this a straight avenue bordered by arbor vitae trees, conducts to a square
plot of ground enclosed by low posts and chains. Inside this there is a
little garden the plants of which a native gardener is watering as we open
the wicket. From the centre of the little garden there rises a shapely
obelisk on a square pedestal and on one side of the pedestal is a long
inscription. "Here lie," it begins, "the mortal remains of Henry
Havelock;" and so, methinks, it might have ended. There is needed no
prolix biographical inscription to tell the reverent pilgrim of the deeds
of the dead man by whose grave he stands--so long as history lives, so
long does it suffice to know that "here lie the mortal remains of Henry
Havelock"--and the text and verse of poetry grate on one as redundancies.
He sickened two days before the evacuation of the Residency and died on
the morning of the 24th of November in his dooly in a tent of the camp at
the Dilkoosha. The life went out of him just as the march began, and his
soldiers conveyed with them, on the litter on which he had expired, the
mortal remains of the chief who had so often led them on to victory.
On the following morning they buried him here in the Alumbagh, under the
tree which still spreads its branches over the little garden in which he
lies. There stood around the grave-mouth Colin Campbell and the chivalrous
Outram, and stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the ever-ready Fraser Tytler;
and the "boy Harry" to whom the campaign had brought the gain of fame and
the loss of a father; and the devoted Harwood with "his heart in the
coffin there with Caesar;" and the heroic William Peel; and that "colossal
red Celt," the noble, ill-fated Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to
incompetent obstinacy. Behind stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the
Ross-shire Buffs and the "Blue Caps" who had served the dead chief so
stanchly, and had gathered here now, with many a memory of his ready
praise of valour and his indefatigable regard for the comfort of his men,
stirring in their war-worn hearts--
Guarded to a soldier's grave
By the bravest of the brave,
He hath gained a nobler tomb
Than in old cathedral gloom.
Nobler mourners paid the rite,
Than the crowd that craves a sight;
England's banners o'er him waved,
Dead he keeps the name he saved.
The burial-place was being temporarily abandoned, and as the rebels
desecrated all the graves they could discover it was necessary to
obliterate as much as possible the tokens of the interment. A big "H" was
carved into the bark of the tree and a small tin plate fastened to its
trunk, to guide to the subsequent investigation of the spot. Dr. Russell
tells us that when he visited the Alumbagh before his return home after
the mutiny in Oude was stamped out, he found the hero's grave a muddy
trench near the foot of a tree which bore the mark of a round shot and had
carved into its bark the letter "H." The tree is here still and the dent
of the round shot, and faintly too is to be discerned the carved letter
but the bark around it seems to have been whittled away, perhaps by the
sacrilegious knives of relic-seeking visitors. There is the grave of a
young lieutenant in a corner of the little garden and a few private
soldiers lie hard by.
I turn my face now toward the Charbagh bridge, following the route taken
by Havelock's force on the 25th of September--the memorable day of the
relief. There is the field where, as at a table in the open air Havelock
and Outram were studying a map, a round shot from the Sepoy battery by the
Yellow House ricochetted between them. There is the spot where stood the
Yellow House itself, whence after a desperate struggle Maude's
artillerymen drove the Sepoy garrison and its guns. Presently with a sweep
the road comes into a direct line with the Charbagh bridge over the canal.
Now there is not a house in the vicinity; the Charbagh garden has been
thrown into the plain and the steep banks of the canal are perfectly
naked. But then the scene was very different. On the Lucknow side the
native city came close up to the bridge and lined the canal. The tall
houses to right and left of the bridge on the Lucknow side were full of
men with firearms. At that end of the bridge there was a regular
overlapping breastwork, and behind it rose an earthwork battery solidly
constructed and armed with five guns, one a 42-pounder, all crammed to the
muzzle with grape. Let us sit down on the parapet and try to realise the
scene. Outram with the 78th has made a detour to the right through the
Charbagh garden to clear it of the enemy, and, gaining the canal bank, to
bring a flanking fire to bear on its defenders. There is only room for two
of Maude's guns; and there they stand out in the open on the road trying
to answer the fire of the rebel battery. Thrown forward along the bank to
the left of the bridge is a company of the Madras Fusiliers under Arnold,
lying down and returning the musketry fire from the houses on the other
side. Maude's guns are forward in the straight throat of the road where it
leads on to the bridge close by, but round the bend under cover of the
wall the Madras Fusiliers are lying down. In a bay of the wall of the
Charbagh enclosure General Neill is standing waiting for the effect of
Outram's flank movement to develop, and young Havelock, mounted, is on the
other side of the road somewhat forward. Matters are at a deadlock. It
seems as if Outram had lost his way. Maude's gunners are all down; he has
repeatedly called for volunteers from the infantry behind, and now his
gallant subaltern, Maitland, is doing bombardier's work. Maude calls to
young Havelock that he shall be forced to retire his guns if something is
not done at once; and Havelock rides across through the fire and in his
capacity as assistant adjutant-general urges on Neill the need for an
immediate assault. Neill "is not in command; he cannot take the
responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon." Havelock turns and
rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks
encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at the
long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one soldier, "a
chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim joke that reply
which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what the devil are we here
for but to get our heads taken off?" Young Havelock is bent on the
perpetration of what, under the circumstances, may be called a pious
fraud. His father, who commands the operations, is behind with the
Reserve, and he disappears round the bend on the make-belief of getting
instructions from the chief. The General is far in the rear but his son
comes back at the gallop, rides up to Neill, and saluting with his sword,
says, "You are to carry the bridge at once, sir." Neill, acquiescing in
the superior order, replies, "Get the regiment together then, and see it
formed up." At the word and without waiting for the regiment to rise and
form the gallant and eager Arnold springs up from his advanced position
and dashes on to the bridge, followed by about a dozen of his nearest
skirmishers. Tytler and Havelock, as eager as Arnold, set spurs to their
horses and are by his side in a moment. The brave and ardent 84th,
commanded by Willis, dashes to the front. Then the hurricane opens. The
big gun crammed to the muzzle with grape, sweeps its iron sleet across the
bridge in the face of the gallant band, and the Sepoy sharpshooters
converge their fire on it. Arnold drops shot through both thighs, Tytler's
horse goes down with a crash, the bridge is swept clear save for young
Havelock erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting for the
Fusiliers to come on, and a Fusilier corporal, Jakes by name, who, as he
rams a bullet home into his Enfield, says cheerily to Havelock, "We'll
soon have the ---- out of that, sir!" And corporal Jakes is a true
prophet. Before the big gun can be loaded again the stormers are on the
bridge in a rushing mass. They are across it, they clear the barricade,
they storm the battery, they are bayoneting the Sepoy gunners as they
stand. The Charbagh bridge is won, but with severe loss which continues
more or less all the way to the Residency; and when one comes to know the
ground it becomes more and more obvious that the strategy of Havelock,
overruled by Outram, was wise and prescient, when he counselled a wide
turning movement by the Dilkoosha, over the Goomtee near the Martinière,
and so along its northern bank to the Badshah-bagh, almost opposite to the
Residency and commanding the iron bridge.
I recross the Charbagh bridge and bend away to the left by the byroad
along the canal side by which the 78th Highlanders penetrated to the front
of the Kaiser-bagh. Most of the native houses are now destroyed, whence
was poured so deadly a fire on the advancing Ross-shire men that three
colour-bearers fell in succession, and the colour fell to the grasp of the
gallant Valentine McMaster, the assistant-surgeon of the regiment. And now
I stand in front of the main entrance to the Kaiser-bagh, hard by the spot
where stood the Sepoy battery which the Highlanders so opportunely took in
reverse. Before me on the _maidan_ is the plain monument to Sir
Mountstuart Jackson, Captain Orr, and a sergeant, who were murdered in the
Kaiser-bagh when the success of Campbell's final operations became
certain. I enter the great square enclosure of the Kaiser-bagh and stand
in the desolation of what was once a gay garden where the King of Oude and
his women were wont to disport themselves. The place stands much as
Campbell's men left it after looting its multifarious rich treasures. The
dainty little pavilions are empty and dilapidated, the statues are broken
and tottering. Quitting the Kaiser-bagh, I try to realise the scene of
that informal council of war in one of the outlying courtyards of the
numerous palaces. I want to fix the spot where on his big waler sat
Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and his arm in a sling; where
Havelock, dismounted, walked up and down by Outram's side with short,
nervous strides, halting now and then to give emphasis to the argument,
while all around them were officers, soldiers, guns, natives, wounded men,
bullocks, and a surging tide of disorganisation momentarily pouring into
the square. But the attempt is fruitless. The whole area has been cleared
of buildings right up to the gate of the Residency, only that hard by the
Goomtee there still stands the river wing of the Chutter Munzil Palace
with its fantastic architecture, and that the palace of the King of Oude
is now the station library and assembly rooms. The Hureen Khana, the
Lalbagh, the courts of the Furrut Bux Palace, the Khas Bazaar, and the
Clock Tower have alike been swept away, and in their place there opens up
before the eye trim ornamental grounds with neat plantations which extend
up to the Baileyguard itself. One archway alone stands--a gaunt
commemorative skeleton--a pedestal for the statue of a noble soldier. It
was from a chamber above the crown of this arch that the sepoy shot Neill
as he sat on his horse urging the confused press of guns and men through
the archway. The spot is memorable for other causes. This archway led into
that court which is world-famous under the name of Dhooly Square. Here it
was that the native bearers abandoned the wounded in the doolies which
poor Bensley Thornhill was trying to guide into the Residency; here it was
where they were butchered and burned as they lay, and here it was where
Dr. Home and a handful of men of the escort did what in them lay to cover
the wounded and defended themselves for a day and a night against
continuous attacks of countless enemies.
The _via dolorosa_, the road of death up which Outram and Havelock fought
their way with Brazier's Sikhs and the Ross-shire Buffs, is now a pleasant
open drive amid clumps of trees, leading on to the Residency. A strange
thrill runs through one's frame as there opens up before one that
reddish-gray crumbling archway spanning the roadway into the Residency
grounds. Its face is dented and splintered with cannon-shot and pitted all
over by musket-bullets. This is none other than that historic Baileyguard
gate which burly Jock Aitken and his faithful Sepoys kept so stanchly. You
may see the marks still of the earth banked up against it on the interior
during the siege. To the right and left runs the low wall which was the
curtain of the defence, now crumbled so as to be almost indistinguishable.
But there still stands, retired somewhat from the right of the archway,
Aitken's post--the guard-house and treasury, its pillars and façade cut
and dented all over with the marks of bullets fired by "Bob the Nailer"
and his comrades from the Clock Tower which stood over against it. And in
the curtain wall between the archway and the building is still to be
traced the faint outline of the embrasure through which Outram and
Havelock entered on the memorable evening. The turmoil and din and
conflicting emotions of that terrible, glorious day have merged into a
strange serenity of quietude. The scene is solitary, save for a native
woman who is playing with her baby on a spot where once dead bodies lay in
heaps. But the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind's eye
out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have passed
through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men of the
ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging with the
stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like tenderness. And all
around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of folk eager to give
welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison, civilians whom the
siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping tears of joy down on the
faces of the children for whom they had not dared to hope for aught but
death. There are gaunt men, pallid with loss of blood, whose great eyes
shine weirdly amid the torchlight and whose thin hands tremble with
weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy hands of the Highlanders. These
are the wounded of the long siege who have crawled out from the hospital
up yonder, as many of them as could compass the exertion, with a welcome
to their deliverers. The hearts of the impulsive Highlanders wax very
warm. As they grasp the hands held out to them they exclaim, "God bless
you!" "Why, we expected to have found only your bones!" "And the children
are living too!" and many other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. The
ladies of the garrison come among the Highlanders, shaking them
enthusiastically by the hand; and the children clasp the shaggy men round
the neck, and to say truth, so do some of the mothers. But Jessie Dunbar
and her "Dinna ye hear it?" in reference to the bagpipe music, are in the
category of melodramatic fictions.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | 17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21