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Chapter 8

Guide Havelock’s heavy guns and wounded – A shameful failure – Nine heroes – First sortie, and a hasty return home – A brave Pandi rewarded – Sepoys behaved well with us, and mutineers would have done better with good leaders – Second sortie more successful – Feeble attempt to open a road to Alum Bagh – Captain Wade – Pickles and preserves the death of Major Haliburton – A house taken, retaken, and not taken – Alum Bagh project abandoned – Volunteer Engineers – First crawl through the mines – First encounter in the bowels of the earth, a Sepoy wounded – Second Adventure, two mortally wounded – Brasyer a good soldier – Sikhs ought to be brought to England and exhibited: an idea for the wise

The time had now come when I could be of more service than was previously practicable, and I eagerly seized every chance of being useful to the force. With Sir James Outram came my early friend Colonel Robert Napier, who readily availed himself of my service in making his arrangements for the passage of the heavy artillery, and wounded, through the Chatar Manzil Palace; which was effected by a road screened from the view of the enemy nearly the whole distance. We had but two men wounded in an operation that would have been impossible in the direction followed by Generals Outram and Havelock.

The heavy guns having to pass under a close fire from the Red Gate, I offered to guide a party, after dark, to take it by surprise, and Colonel Napier entrusted the attack to me. I led it into the square

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before the gate, (where lay our wounded in the doolies dropped the previous evening), without alarming the enemy, who could be distinctly heard overhead, and behind a screen drawn across the passage. In three minutes the Gate would have been ours, but, at the moment for action, the two young officers in command urged that the enemy were too many, and being overheard by the men, they at once whispered their concurrence, and alluded to me as a drunken madman. I did reel, indeed, from the effects of pain and fatigue; ‘I was many hours on my feet, and my toes had been severely squeezed by Captain Hardinge’s horse. In vain I urged the certainty of success, and the necessity for holding the gate while our heavy guns passed by: my party retired, pursued by a sharp fire from the enemy, who were warned by their noisy flight. We had unconsciously been close to nine devoted men, who, shut up in a house for two nights and a day, had resisted the persevering efforts of the enemy to destroy them, and endeavoured to preserve the wounded in the doolies – the victims of General Havelock’s too great haste to reach the Residency.

Dr. Home, in his very interesting account of that gallant defence, thus alludes to our failure:– “ About two a.m. we heard a heavy firing close to us, and a great rush of the enemy over our heads. We now felt certain that our situation was known, and that the firing proceeded from a party sent to our relief. To describe the revulsion of feeling is impossible. We raised a cry of Europeans! Europeans! and then united . to give one loud cheer, and shouted with all our might Charge them! charge them! keep on your right!” The shout was addressed to men who heard nothing

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besides the fire of the enemy, which the Doctor and his exhausted companions mistook for ours.

In the afternoon of the 27th September a sortie was led, by Major Stephenson of the Madras Fusiliers, into a battery on the left of the Kanhpur Road, and I accompanied it as a volunteer. We captured and spiked three guns after much firing, when, from want of confidence in the guide, and uncertainty as to where we were, the commander became confused – our men grew uneasy standing still – the enemy crowded forward, encouraged by yells and bugles – and we scrambled out of the battery, and followed our inclinations home. Although misadventures will happen with the best of troops, I was rather disappointed at the two samples witnessed within a few hours, and began to think that we should never get out of our poor old defences. As we lingered in the battery a Sepoy of the 13th Native Infantry, who came out as a pioneer, advanced to a broad opening through which the enemy kept up a brisk fire, and, flourishing his pick-axe, called to the Europeans to follow him to another gun, till he was shot down. But the uproar and confusion at that moment was such that nobody heeded him, and he would have been left behind had I not helped him out of the battery, and put him on the road, along which I was myself in full flight soon after. The gallantry of this fine Pandi was reported; Sir James Outram raised him to the rank of an officer, and gave him the Order of Merit; and he died. Several Sepoys were conspicuous during the siege for gallantry, and their patient endurance of fatigue and privation was not excelled by ourselves: their fidelity, indeed, saved us. Foreigners had better not judge of the capabilities of

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the Sepoy from the ease with which the European defeated him; for timid leaders diminish, if they do not wholly extinguish, courage in their followers.

On the morning of the 2nd October the same batteries were attacked by a stronger detachment of troops, under the orders of Colonel Robert Napier. I attached myself to the party with Captain Shute, of the 64th Foot; which forced its way over a stockade into the enemy’s battery amidst a terrific rattle of musketry, loud calls to COME, and fierce orders from the rear to GO. The troops ran to the large house in the centre of the garden, from the top of which they looked for the enemy. I took a direction to the left, and at once learnt the whereabouts of the guns, (which the enemy had withdrawn,) by two shots passing in quick succession through the wall I had mounted, carrying the bricks thick among the dozen soldiers and civilians who followed me. I stayed for a couple of minutes studying the ground, exposed to a misdirected fire of muskets, then brought down Captain Shute from the roof of the house, and led him unobserved upon the left flank of the mutineers, which compelled them to abandon their first gun. Here we remained, sheltered behind the wings of a gateway, making a prodigious noise about the one we had got, while the enemy harmlessly poured grape from a second gun, till Captain Shute and Lieutenant Brown rushed through the opening, and quite frightened them away from it, and from a very little gun at the top of a street. Owing to the flank movement, which surprised the enemy, and to their rank cowardice, we did not lose a single man in securing the three guns.

The guns were burst – a few traders were killed,

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including a very aged man, hiding under the petticoat of his venerable wife, for whom I pleaded in vain to men who laconically uttered the favourite war-whoop “CAWNPOOR!” – the garden house was blown down – the shops in the neighbourhood were pillaged – and I carried screaming to my quarters an old cock, a bosom full of sour oranges, and a heart filled with pride for the share I had had in that day’s glory.

The following morning Colonel Napier sent me to Major Haliburton of the 78th Highlanders, who had orders to open a communication, straight through the city, to the garrison at the Alum Bagh. The advance was led by Captain Wade of the 90th Foot, who marched nearly half a mile to the mansion of Nawab Moontaz-ood-doolah, where he was stopped by a fierce fire of matchlocks from a handsome mosque close by. As neither the strength nor position of the enemy could be satisfactorily ascertained from the mansion, I attempted to discover both by crossing the street further up, exposed to a severe fire, which drew them from under cover towards me. Captain Wade, who never is to be outdone in spirit, ran over through a severer fire, and after surveying them as long as he prudently could, we scampered back, pursued by numerous bullets and cries of Marc)! Miro! from fellows who made a feint of following us. Captain Wade made indifferent use of his very long legs, and I nearly butted him through the wicket in my anxiety to escape.

Major Haliburton, who had unavoidably been detained, now joined the party, and requested I would return with him to explain to Sir James Outram the position we had reached; but unfortunately for that kind-hearted and gallant officer a room was discovered

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in the Nawab’s mansion stored with pickles and preserves. I filled my coat pockets with sugar, and secured a jar of preserves under each arm, and a third in my hand, to take to my family, when Major Haliburton, who had incautiously gone to the door facing the mosque, fell mortally wounded while calling his men away from those “damned jams and gingers!” some of which he was eating. He died next day, to the great grief of his fine regiment.

According to his request, I returned without delay to Sir James Outram, unencumbered by the preserves, which the gallant men of the Fusiliers devoured whilst I was attending to their wounded leader. Colonel Napier brought me back, but in the meantime an order had reached the detachment to retire, and another party was taken on, under the command of Major Stephenson of the Madras Fusiliers, which re-occupied the empty mansion, and was greeted in the upper rooms with a fire from the mosque that drove it into the back apartments. Here Colonel Napier and Major Stephenson were standing behind a thick door questioning me, when a bullet passed through the panel and struck the latter officer, who died several days later. The mansion was again abandoned during the night, and barricaded by the enemy, who repulsed an assault made in the morning to recover it. Street fighting needed rapidity of movement; for, in such attacks, hesitation strengthened, and promptitude weakened, an enemy who would not wait to be cut off from the means of escape.

The project of reaching the Alum Bagh was abandoned, for there was nothing so good as staying as we were, giving employment to a host of enemies, who, had we retired, would have been free to threaten our

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communication with the sources from whence we were gathering strength at Kanhpur. Attention was now turned to improving old defences, and constructing new ones for the relieving force located in the palaces. Three sides of the Residency had been cleared of the enemy’s guns; officers and volunteers were temporarily appointed to the Engineers to superintend the defences, and Europeans and natives were enrolled as miners. Colonel Napier procured my appointment as an Assistant Field Engineer, and I set to work to maintain the character for zeal and courage that, to my great joy, I had already won with the assistance of my generous comrades. Our operations were small at first; but the activity of the enemy, who sprang some mines that did us damage, soon obliged the Engineers to begin making extensive defensive, or listening galleries, to protect the advanced posts, which were so close to the enemy that we might have spat in their faces.

The first attempt to blow up the enemy recoiled on ourselves, and an excellent miner of the 32nd Foot, and myself, were nearly buried in the ruins of our own building, as the Chief Engineer watched for the effects in the opposite direction! This was the virgin mine of one of the most active and intelligent Engineers in the service; and its failure goes to prove what I have said before, that men who have never been in war know little of its wants. Perhaps, had the thing been left to myself, the whole force of the powder would have come up the shaft before me, notwithstanding the haste with which I left it; and you would never have heard of “Lucknow Kavanagh.”

What a nervous moment was that first crawl on all-fours through a long, narrow, cold, damp mine,

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appalled by the darkness, and a fancy that an enemy may have got in wishing to blow out my shrinking brains, or that it might fall in and bury me alive It tried me considerably, and I had to say a great many encouraging things to myself to calm my agitated heart, which vehemently panted for the light again. Indeed, it cost many efforts to appease my fears, and gain confidence in those subterranean ramifications, in which I sometimes strayed, at night, despairing of ever getting out. At last I discovered that a resolute man was more dangerous below than above ground, and I soon had an opportunity of testing my spirit in the bowels of the earth.

The enemy were heard mining in the south corner of the. Sikh quarters, and the Engineers countermined to stop them; but they had done so much before being discovered, that we broke in about three feet from our own shaft, and the miners escaped. At this moment I relieved the officer on duty, and went down with a revolver, conjecturing that the enemy would send in some one to see what had disturbed the miners. After waiting awhile a Sepoy descended with his musket, and advanced to my end of the gallery, where it was quite dark, whereas the light streamed down at his. I let him come in about his own length, and then shot him through the shoulder. I pursued him, and fired again, but the cap snapped, and he escaped, roaring with pain. The enemy let water into the gallery, and an hour after it fell in.

Another day, while crawling through the galleries, I heard their miners at work, and for two hours I sat watching for them as they noiselessly approached. A small hole was first made, through which the miner

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thrust the handle of his tool to try what it led to, for they knew nothing of our listening galleries; as he withdrew it, I shoved down the narrow partition with my hands, and put a pistol to his breast. It missed fire again and again as I went in after him, and he scrambled out screeching with fear. I waited in the gallery, thinking it probable that one of the Sepoys would venture in; and, after much squabbling as to who should do it, a Sepoy jumped down, cautiously keeping his body back from the mouth of the gallery. He put his musket in towards me, showing no more than his hand; I felt certain that he would look before he fired, and reserved my shot. It was a hazardous moment, for whichever fired first was sure to hit. Fortune favoured me! As he stooped, his left arm and shoulder was exposed – my bullet passed through it – and he lost no time in getting out to his comrades.

The miner in his haste dropped his tools in the shaft, and the mutineers (who were only about three yards from me) threatened to shoot him if he did not fetch them. The poor creature remonstrated most sorrowfully, and my heart sickened as he prayed, before descending, that they would see to the support of his family. He leaped down crying “Mercy! mercy!” I could not fire a second time, as he slowly climbed out wounded, exclaiming he was dead! I grieved that our own imminent danger made it compulsory to intimidate the enemy’s miners, so as to render it difficult to obtain the services of such men.

My duty was at the mosque, and at the quarters of the Firuzpur regiment of the Sikhs, who came in with General Havelock, under the command of Major Brasyer: a soldier who, fourteen years ago, was

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promoted from the ranks for conspicuous gallantry in the Satlaj campaign of Lord Gough, and has since so much improved his good reputation, that his name is now familiar to most persons conversant with the history of the mutiny. He looks like a Sikh, and is as rough as any one of them. I was never associated with better soldiers than these, and, like many more of the same singular nation, they often led us to victory during that unnatural war. They never shrink from danger that is faced by their officers, and are more disposed to fraternize with Europeans than any other Asiatic of caste.

Why not show some of these warriors to the people of Europe, where I believe, there would be little difficulty in persuading them to go? They are sociable and intelligent; and, if relieved after a term, they would – if the Sikhs returned at all – carry back habits and sentiments that would be of the utmost use in introducing the civilized ideas of the West. The instruction of the people of India can only be effected through themselves, and nothing will enlighten them so much as ocular evidence of the prosperity and superiority of Europeans at home. Could they be socially mixed up with us, those prejudices which seem to be indestructible would fade away in the new light. I throw out this “ idea “ in the hope that some one may catch it who can give it a tangible form. There are duties in England which could be discharged by Sikhs, who are very apt at learning English.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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