Sahib (45 page)

Indians equipped with musket and bayonet often preferred to use the sword when at close quarters. Even the Company’s sepoys had ‘unofficial’ swords. In 1772 a sepoy was sentenced to ‘be drawn
asunder by tattoos’ (that is, pulled apart by horses) for the crime of killing his captain. The gruesome process went badly: ‘The horses being fastened to his limbs, many attempts were made to draw them from the body, but wanted effect, and the Sepoys were ordered to put him to death, which they did with their swords.’
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In 1849 Gough directed that the men of his Indian light cavalry regiments ‘who are so inclined’ might ‘arm themselves with their own Tulwars (which they are understood in general to possess) in lieu of the Government sabres they at present carry’.
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The most common sword was the
tulwar
(the word simply means sabre in Hindustani), a curved weapon with a cruciform guard, sometimes extending to a single knuckle-bow, and a characteristic dish-shaped pommel.

The
tulwarwas
used almost exclusively for slashing, and was always carefully honed. It was kept in a wooden scabbard covered with leather: Indians rightly believed that the metal scabbards favoured by Europeans tended to dull a sword’s edge. Some of them kept their
tulwars
tied securely into the scabbard to prevent any movement at all. Near Delhi in 1857 Lieutenant A. R. D. Mackenzie saw how:

one unfortunate fellow, who fell to my lot, threw himself off his horse when I had very nearly overtaken him, and boldly facing me on foot, tried to draw his
tulwar;
but the more he tugged the less it would leave the scabbard. For a moment I thought fear had paralysed his arm, but I discovered afterwards that he had tied the hilt to the scabbard, and in his hurry and very natural agitation had forgotten all about the fastening. It was not at all an unusual practice with native swordsmen to thus fasten up their tulwars, with the view of preventing their keen edges from getting blunted by friction.
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When British infantry reached their opponents, having passed through artillery fire and musketry, it was generally a matter of bayonet against sword. According to Harry Smith, even the Sikh infantry, trained on European lines, threw down their muskets ‘and came on sword and target (they all carry excellent swords) like the ancient Greeks’.
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A trooper in the 16th Lancers agreed, He wrote that at Aliwal

on coming within 40 yards they gave us a volley, a ball from which struck the chain of my lance-cap just over the left cheekbone. Then they threw away their muskets, and, taking their large shields, came at us sword in hand.
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The ‘target’, like the Scots targe, was a small round shield carried on the left arm and, again like the targe, it was made from hide. It could catch a misdirected bayonet thrust and enable its owner to use his
tulwarwith
effect. The bayonet, however, had a longer reach, and soldiers were often taught to work in pairs, with the rear-rank man covering his front-rank comrade. But there was no room for error. As the 93rd Highlanders stormed Lucknow, two brothers were killed by an Indian who got a single good cut at each of them. Sergeant Forbes-Mitchell then saw how the surviving third brother then bayoneted the man, and:

seized the
tulwar
that had killed both his brothers, and used it with terrible effect, cutting off heads of men as if they had been heads of cabbage. When the fight was over I examined the sword. It was of ordinary weight, well-balanced, curved about a quarter-circle, as sharp as the sharpest razor, and the blade as rigid as cast-iron. Now, my experience is that none of our very best English swords would have cut like this one. A sword of that quality would cut through a man’s skull or thigh-bone without the least shiver, as easily as an ordinary Birmingham blade would cut through a willow.
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Most British infantry officers used regulation swords. Until 1822 the officers of battalion companies carried a straight sword with a single knuckle-bow, while their comrades of the light and grenadier companies carried sabres. From 1822 to 1892 all carried a sword with a lightly curved blade and an elegant half-basket hilt. There was wide agreement that these weapons were outclassed by the
tulwar.
Ensign Wilberforce recounted that when the British stormed Delhi:

a brother ensign and myself had an opportunity of testing our swords. We attacked a man, not both together, but one at a time. I had the first try, and my sword bent almost double against the man’s chest without inflicting any wound. My companion fared but little better, for his sword glanced along a
rib, inflicting a long, shallow skin wound, and had not the revolver been handy, it might have been awkward for one or both of us.
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In 1879 Major Le Mesurier admitted that: ‘Some of the Afghans died hard, and from the nature of their clothing and head-dress it was difficult to make any impression on them with the sword.’ Afghan swords, however, ‘were of native manufacture, and as sharp as steel should be’.
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Lieutenant Arthur Lang and his comrades spent some time ‘sharpening our swords, kukris and dirks, and tried cutting silk handkerchiefs after breakfast: my favourite “fighting sword”, Excalibur, one of Aunt Mary’s presents, has now an edge like a razor and a surface like a mirror’. However, once he was inside Delhi:

I found that I was no hand at using a sword; I cut at several, but never gave a death blow; to my surprise I didn’t seem able to cut hard, but it was of no consequence, as a Gurkha’s kukri or European’s bayonet instantly did the business.
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On the frontier, sword and bayonet were often pitted against the local Khyber knife, a formidable weapon with a straight, single-edged blade up to twenty inches long. In a savage hand-to-hand battle near Kabul in 1870, a brother officer saw Captain Spens of the 72nd Highlanders run an Afghan chief through with his claymore, mortally wounding him. But ‘as if possessed with an extraordinary amount of vigour in his dying effort, the Afghan flashed his terrible knife, like lightning, in the air, and the gallant Spens fell dead, cut almost in two’.
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Towards the end of the Mutiny, Captain Garnet Wolseley, then a junior staff officer and as such, mounted, was challenged by an individual mutineer.

As I approached at a canter he had just planted a green standard about fifty yards in front of a battery he was evidently serving with. He cried out in the most defiant Hindustanee ‘come on with your
tulwar’.
I had only a regulation infantry sword, and I had not been trained to fight on horseback, but I would not shirk such a challenge. So drawing my sword, I put spurs to my horse and rode for him just as hard as ever I could. Just as I reached him, I made my horse swerve in order
to knock him down, and he cut at me at the same moment; but in trying to avoid my horse with a sort of jump to one side he stumbled and nearly fell, and before he could ‘right himself’ my Sowar Orderly, who was behind me, finished him with his lance. I was not very proud of this achievement, so I kept it to myself at the time.
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Charles MacGregor, himself a keen swordsman, was on foot when a
sowar
of 2nd Light Cavalry jumped up,

snatched a
tulwar
from underneath the grass, and rushed at me. As I was not prepared for him, he was on me before I knew where I was, and had given me a cut on my head with his tulwar. I saw the brute’s eyes shine as he gave me the cut, thinking he had done for me, and expecting to see me drop; but thanks to a solah topee and a good puggree, the blow did not touch my head. I went for him at once, and gave him a cut across his cheek; but my sword not being sharp, it did not floor him as I expected, so I was expecting to give him Point 3 in his stomach, when he turned and bolted. I went after him, and instead of giving him the point in the stomach, gave it him through his back. He fell heavily on my sword, and broke it.

He was better prepared next time, although his adversary was:

a pretty tolerable swordsman. However I had not quite forgotten my lessons at Angelo’s, and besides, these fellows can’t quite understand the point; so I waited, not trying to hit my man, but keeping my eye on him (which, by the way, was very necessary, as he danced and jumped about like a madman … ) I gave him a sharp jabbing kind of cut on his knuckles, his sword [-point] dropped, and I was just about to give him No 3 through his body, but he picked it up again too sharp for me, and began cutting at me again; but it was no use, he couldn’t hold it, and he received the long-delayed No 3 in his stomach. Over he went at once, and I picked up his
tulwar
and cut off his head pretty neatly with it.
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A broken sword could be a catastrophe. In 1794, Major Bolton, commanding 18th BNI, ‘being a powerful man, he cut down four of the enemy with his own hand; but in making a stroke at the fifth, his sword broke in the hilt, and he was then cut in pieces’.
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And even
a pig-sticking spear might be put to use. In March 1880, Major S. J. Waudby of 19th BoNI, on the lines of communication near Kandahar with five of his soldiers, fought to the death when his little post was overwhelmed, using revolver, sword and lastly his spear: eleven dead tribesmen were found near the bodies of Waudby and his men.

Despite Colin Campbell’s demands that his soldiers should trust to their bayonets in Lucknow, there had already been a marked change in tactics. The Enfield rifle, whose introduction into the Bengal army had played its part in bringing about the Mutiny, significantly outranged the smoothbore musket. Musketry was rarely effective beyond about 200 yards: the Enfield was sighted up 1,000 yards. As the mutineers’ cannon were progressively captured, and British-manned artillery arrived from England, so the balance of firepower swung decisively in favour of the British. At Badli ke Serai on 8 June, Sir Henry Barnard decided to attack because he could not win the artillery duel, and was ‘losing men fast’. Lieutenant Kendall Coghill observed that: ‘I have never seen such splendid artillery practice as theirs was. They had the range to a yard and every shot told.’
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The assault that followed would have delighted old Gough.

Just over a month later Henry Havelock attacked the mutineers at Fatehpur, and made full use of Francis Maude’s well-handled battery and the fact that two of his battalions, 1st Madras Fusiliers and HM’s 64th, had the Enfield rifle. Havelock told his wife that:

Twelve British soldiers were struck down by the sun, and never rose again. But our fight was fought, neither with musket nor bayonet, nor with sabre, but with Enfield rifles and cannon; so we lost no men.

The enemy’s fire scarcely touched us; ours, for four hours, allowed him no repose.

He went on to tell his troops that they owed their victory:

To the fire of the British artillery, exceeding in rapidity and precision all that the Brigadier has ever witnessed in his not short career; to the power of the Enfield rifle in British hands; to British pluck, that great quality that has survived the vicissitudes of the hour, and gained intensely from the crisis; and to
the blessing of Almighty God on a most righteous cause, the love of justice, humanity, truth and good government in India.
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It took some time for British soldiers to take the Enfield to their hearts. In Richard Barter’s regiment, HM’s 75th, a proportion of the men had the new rifle and the remainder carried the old smoothbore. Because the rifles required more maintenance, those issued with them maintained that they had been happier with their muskets. Sergeant Forbes-Mitchell also noticed that the 93rd’s rifles were prone to fouling.

We discharged our rifles at the enemy across the Goomtee, and then spunged them out, which they sorely needed, because they had not been cleaned from the day we advanced from the Alumbagh. Our rifles had in fact got so foul with four day’s heavy work that it was almost impossible to load them, and the recoil had become so great that the shoulders of many of the men were perfectly black with bruises.
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But it was hard to argue with the effect of the new weapons, and Assistant Surgeon Sylvester observed that the skirmishers of Probyn’s Horse, just eleven men under Lieutenant G. V. Fosbery, fired 2,000 rounds from their Enfields in a single operation.

There were, though, moments when local adversaries might still have the technological edge. One spectacular example of British loss of technological advantage was the battle of Maiwand on 27 July 1880. A strong brigade, under Brigadier General G. R. S. Burrows, was sent out from Kandahar to prevent Ayub Khan from crossing the River Helmand. Burrows had two Indian cavalry regiments, the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry and the 3rd Scinde Horse, and three infantry battalions, HM’s 66th Foot, 1st BoNI (Grenadiers) and 30th BoNI (Jacob’s Rifles). There was one battery of Royal Horse Artillery, a battery of captured smoothbores manned by men of the 66th, and a company of Bombay Sappers and Miners. The 66th carried the Martini-Henry rifle, with which they had been told they could march the length and breadth of Afghanistan as they pleased, and the native infantry had the Snider, a more primitive breech-loader based on the old Enfield.

Burrows found himself engaged by Ayub Khan’s much bigger army, which included thirty guns, six of them modern Armstrongs (which fired a heavier shell than anything the British deployed that day), nine regular Afghan infantry battalions, four cavalry regiments, and a mass of irregulars, including several thousand ghazis. The Afghan guns were remarkably effective, and some worked their way forward to a
nullah
from which they could wreak havoc on the British line from close range. Lieutenant N. P. Fowell RHA acknowledged that: