Sahib (51 page)

The most exciting scene I ever witnessed – the Piper sprang on a chair and he and Mrs Anderson claimed acquaintance – he asked her where she came from and – she said ‘Edinburgh’ and he answered ‘So do I and from the Castle Hill’ and then they shook hands and he sent round word that there was a lady from Edinburgh and then gave another tune on his bagpipes. The Sikh Ferozepore Regiment accompanied them and also some of the Madras Fusiliers. The confusion and excitement was beyond all description – they lost a great number of men coming through the city.
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Both before and after the first, partial, relief the compound was bombarded daily, and snipers pecked away at gun crews, sentries and officers. There were several general attacks, one of which, on 4 August, was beaten off with the loss of perhaps 450 sepoys killed. The garrison mounted sorties of its own to dislodge nests of snipers that had pushed in too close, and in one of these Captain Bernard McCabe of the 32nd, commissioned in the field for gallantry at Sobraon, was killed. The mutineers showed some aptitude for mining, and had Havelock and Outram not arrived they might indeed have succeeded in blowing up part of the Residency and overwhelming the garrison.

Throughout the siege a pensioner sepoy called Ungud took messages from Inglis to the relieving forces, carrying messages written in Greek and sealed into quills. When Campbell’s force was at last within striking distance, fighting hard in the suburbs, Thomas Kavanagh, a junior member of the Civil Service who had been serving as a volunteer, disguised himself to get through the enemy lines and tell Campbell how best to approach. Anthony Home thought that the disguise was:

triumphantly successful. The exposed parts of his body dyed to the colour of an up-country native, and dressed like one of their matchlock-men, with shield and
tulwar,
and accompanied by a very trusted spy, he left the entrenchment after dark, and, fording the Goomti River and recrossing it by the iron bridge, he got clear away into the city, and strode on through the most crowded street, and then onwards to the Alum Bagh. There
was great joy in the entrenchment when his safe arrival was signalled.
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William Russell, who rather liked Kavanagh, thought it a remarkable performance, for:

He is a square-shouldered, large-limbed muscular man, a good deal over middle height, with decided European features; a large head, covered with hair of – a reddish auburn, shall I say? – moustaches and beard still lighter, and features and eyes such as no native that I ever saw possessed.
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There was something of the high Victorian melodrama about the final relief in November. Havelock was wholly worn out and suffering from dysentery, and it was ‘the conviction of his own mind that he should not recover’. ‘I have for forty years so wholly ruled my life,’ he told James Outram, ‘that when death comes I might face it without fear.’ At the last moment he smiled and told his son to ‘see how a Christian can die’.
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Kate Bartrum and her baby son had survived the siege, but her husband Richard had been killed in September. She gained much comfort from hearing how bravely he had fought, and learning that an official memorandum declared that he would have been awarded the VC had he lived. Her
doolie
-bearers lost their way and it took her three hours to get back to the Dilkusha, whence the evacuation was to start, and her dress was ‘so coated with mud that it was with difficulty that I could get on’. She was given ‘some milk for baby, and a delicious cup of tea’, and lay down on the ground and slept till morning. Her story had no happy ending, for her son, also named Richard, died of fever in Calcutta in February 1858, the day before she had intended to leave India.

The garrison and its dependants were taken to safety. ‘Never, I believe, was such a scene,’ declared Mrs Germon.

The whole army marched except a few to keep the Dilkusha for a short time. One thousand sick were taken in
doolies
and 467 women and children in any kind of conveyance that could be got for them –
doolies
were not even allowed to ladies who were hourly expecting their confinement. Sir Colin said the wounded men must be first thought of as they had saved our lives. Never shall I forget the scene – as far as the eye could
search on all sides were strings of vehicles, elephants, camels, etc. The dust was overpowering. We went across country to avoid the enemy – our road lay over cultivated fields and such ups and downs it was a wonder how the vehicles got over them.
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There was a widespread recognition that Lucknow could never have been held at all without the loyal sepoys. It was a tragic example of the hazards inseparable from war that one of them, a valued member of the Baillie Guard garrison, was mortally wounded by ‘friendly’ fire as the relieving force arrived. ‘It was fated,’ he gasped to his sahib. ‘Victory to the Baillie Guard!’

The other great sieges of the age occurred in Afghanistan. In 1841–42, Robert Sale’s brigade, with HM’s 13th Light Infantry, 35th BNI and Broadfoot’s Sappers and
Jezailchis
held Jalalabad, an important staging post between the Khyber Pass and Kabul. Sale arrived there on 12 November 1841, and found the place – ‘an irregular quadrilateral enclosed within earthen walls, with thirty-two semi-circular bastions, and a citadel at the south-eastern angle, the whole perimeter being rather over two thousand yards’ – in very poor condition.
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After some discussion Sale decided to hold the town, although he was short of supplies and had only 120 rounds of ammunition for each musket, and a small reserve. For the first two months there were only sporadic attacks, and Sale’s foraging parties were able to bring in food and fodder. Ensign Stapylton of the 13th recorded that: ‘we are all in very good spirits here, considering circumstances, spent a tolerably pleasant Christmas. Our band did not come in to play as all our music was lost and our band-master badly wounded.’
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Sale decided to pay no attention to a message from Elphinstone, in such difficulties up in Kabul, telling him to withdraw on Peshawar, and on 12 January 1842, Dr Bryden rode in with the shocking news of the destruction of the retreating British force. In an effort to attract more survivors, the colours of the 13th were flown above the main gate during the day and replaced by a lantern at night, and buglers sounded the ‘advance’ at half-hourly intervals. One man was brought in the next day, by an Afghan whose mulberry trees he had
once saved from some Sikh soldiers, but he ‘only lived one day, being perfectly exhausted from his sufferings from cold and hunger’.
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On 27 January, Sale held a council of war with his senior officers, and although there was a majority for a retreat on Peshawar, George Broadfoot spoke so strongly against it that a decision was deferred, and the following day Broadfoot swung the argument by congratulating the group ‘on the figure they would cut if a relieving force should be marching into Jelalabad, as they were marching out of it’. They were still negotiating with Akbar Khan, but eventually (though Sale himself, and Macgregor, his political agent, still favoured falling back) the council decided to hold fast, and ‘to break off negotiations and restore their honour’.
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The whole garrison worked unrelentingly at building up the walls. Henry Havelock, a committed abolitionist, thought that the fact that there was no liquor in the stores was a decided advantage, and that they:

gained full one-third in manual exertion by their entire sobriety. Every man has been constantly employed with shovel and pickaxe. If there had been a spirit ration, one-third of the effort would have been diminished in consequence of soldiers being the inmates of the hospital and guard-houses, or coming to their work with fevered brain and trembling hand, or sulky and disaffected, after the protracted debauch. Now all is health, cheerfulness, industry and resolution.
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A severe earthquake levelled much of the new work and left three practicable breaches in the wall, but the men set to with a will. ‘The men spared no exertion,’ wrote Ensign Stapylton, ‘as they saw the absolute necessity of it.’ Red coats were put in the stores, and, over their canvas fatigue jackets or perhaps just their shirts, ‘the men slung their accoutrements and, with sleeves tucked up, laboured in good spirits with exceeding industry, the officers digging beside them’.
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Other officers, equipped with double-barrelled guns and sporting rifles, formed an ‘amateur corps, posting ourselves in the most favourable places around the fort and picking off any of the enemy who ventured to expose himself within range and in this way a good deal of execution was done’.
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Pewter was melted to make
bullets, and officers, scuffling about in the fort’s ditch, could each pick up 80–100 musket balls an hour. The garrison even resorted to the old frontier expedient of coating suitably sized stones in lead. One officer reluctantly converted the gold mount of his wife’s miniature into a bullet, and gave one attacker the benefit of this affectionate keepsake.

On 7 April, Sale mounted a substantial sortie which inflicted a sharp defeat on the besiegers and captured all their guns (some of them British pieces taken from Elphinstone). The episode was marred by the death of Lieutenant Colonel Dennie, commanding the 13th, who was killed when Sale directed him to attack a small fort. Its outer defences had been damaged, but at the centre there was a small tower with the door halfway up and its ladder removed: the place was effectively impregnable. Pollock’s relieving force arrived on 16 April, played in by the band of the 13th to a: ‘Jacobite melody – beautiful in itself, and full of meaning – all who heard acknowledged its fitness to the occasion. The relieving force marched the last two or three miles towards Jalalabad to the cadence of “Oh, but ye’ve been lang o’coming”.’
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The garrison was so exhausted by its efforts that it took three days to march from Jalalabad to Futtehabad. Although the first day’s march was only nine miles, thirty men fell out and four died.

There were two major sieges in the Second Afghan War. One at Kandahar that followed Ayub Khan’s defeat of the British at Maiwand in July 1880, which was raised by Fred Roberts’s march from Kabul. Far more significant was the brief but decisive siege of Roberts’s fortified cantonment at Sherpur, just outside Kabul, which preceded it. Roberts had taken Kabul, but there was growing anti-British feeling and call for a jihad. There were scrambling engagements in the Chardeh valley in mid-December 1879, and, hearing from a subordinate that there were so many Afghans there that he was reminded of Epsom on Derby Day, Roberts ‘determined to withdraw from all isolated positions, and concentrate my force at Sherpur, thereby securing the safety of the cantonment and avoiding what had become a useless sacrifice of life’. He had only 7,000 men against perhaps 100,000 Afghans, but he had stockpiled supplies there, and the cantonment itself had proper entrenchments protected by barbed
wire, with towers and artillery positions, covering an 8,000-yard perimeter. In addition to their own 12 9-pounders, eight 7-pounder mountain guns and two Gatling machine guns, Roberts’s gunners had pressed into service four Afghan 18-pounders and two 8-inch guns.

The weather was crisp and snowy. Howard Hensman, war correspondent of the
Daily News,
wrote how:

At ten o’clock I visited the bastion held by the 72nd Highlanders, and gained some idea of the work our men are called upon to do. The sentries in their greatcoats were simply white figures standing rigidly up like ghosts, the snowflakes softly covering them from head to foot and freezing as they fell.
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Roberts and his chief of staff, Colonel Charles MacGregor, were not the best of friends, but both, as Mutiny veterans, knew that there was no room for failure. An officer recounted that:

the defence of the headquarter gateway had been given to a certain senior officer who, between ourselves, was a bit nervous. When his defences were prepared he went to Colonel MacGregor and said, ‘Now I have done the best I can; but what shall I do if the enemy force their way into the gate in overwhelming numbers, as I have no reserve left to fall back on … ?’ ‘Turn’em out!’ gruffly replied the chief of staff. ‘Yes of course, surely—but if they are too strong for us?’ ‘TURN THEM OUT!’ roared MacGregor. ‘That’s what you’re there for!’ And no other answer would he give him, as of course it was the first thing he would have done himself in a similar case.
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Roberts’s agents had discovered that the Afghans planned to launch feint attacks against the southern and western faces of the cantonment, and then stake everything in an assault on the eastern wall, where an unfinished section of defences had been shored up with logs. The signal for the attack was to be a signal fire lit on the nearby Asmai hills. Colonel H. B. Hanna saw how the troops got under arms silently well before dawn on the morning of 23 December:

In strained expectation, confident of ultimate victory, yet conscious that a life-and-death struggle lay before him, every man’s
eyes were turned towards the east, watching for the predicted signal; yet when it came, so brilliant, dazzling was the light … that, for an instant, men’s hearts stood still with astonishment and awe. All saw that light and some fragment of the scene revealed by it … never did soldiers gaze upon a more glorious, yet more terrible spectacle … every stone and rock on the rugged, precipitous Asmai heights shone out as if traced by a pencil of fire, and on those heights, their figures dark against the snow below and the light above, men – watchers and waiters like those who now beheld them – were just starting into fierce motion, ready to throw away their lives in the endeavour to break through the obstacles that lay between themselves and their hated foe.
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