English Church and Residency at Lucknow—from Officers’ Quarters.
During this month of August, the women and children, the sick and wounded, of course suffered much more terribly than in the previous month of July. Every kind of peril and discomfort had increased in severity; every means of succour and solace had diminished in quantity. Death struck down many; disease and wounds laid low a still greater number; and those who remained were a prey to carking cares, which wore down both mind and body. Those who, in a Christian country, are accustomed to pay the last token of respect to departed friends by decent funeral ceremonies, were often pained by their disability to do so in the Lucknow enclosure, under the straitened circumstances of their position. The Rev. Mr Polehampton, after working day and night in his kindly offices among the sick and wounded, was at length himself struck down by cholera; and then came the mournful question, whether he could have a coffin and a separate grave. The writer of the Diary, wife of the clergyman who succeeded Mr Polehampton in his duties as a pastor, says that her husband read the funeral-service over the dead body in presence of the mourning widow, on the day and in the room where the death took place, before removal for instant interment. ‘She (the widow) was extremely anxious he should have a coffin, a wish it seemed impossible to gratify; but —— instituted a search, and found one stored away with some old boxes under the staircase in the hospital; and he also had a separate grave dug for him. Since the siege, the bodies have hitherto always been buried several in the same grave, and sewn up in their bedding, as there are no people and no time to make coffins.’ In their troubled state of feeling, vexations affected the different members of the imprisoned community more acutely than would have been the case at other times. The plague of flies can be adverted to in a half-laughing manner by a man in health; but in the Lucknow enclosure it was a real plague, a source of exquisite misery, against which more complaints were uttered than almost anything else. There were also troublesome and painful boils on the person, brought on by high temperature and insufficient diet and medicines. Whatever might be the amount of care taken, bullocks were frequently killed by the shot of the enemy; and as animals so dying were not fit for human food, it became necessary to bury the carcasses at once. A frightful duty this was, mostly performed (as has already been stated) at night by officers, whose few hours of possible sleep were cut short by this revolting sort of labour. No one could leave the enclosure, except native servants determined on escape; not an inch of ground belonged to the British beyond the limits of the intrenched position; and therefore whatever had to be put out of sight—dead bodies of human beings, carcasses of bullocks and horses, garbage and refuse of every kind—could only so be treated by being buried underground in the few open spots between the buildings. And this, too, in the August of an Indian climate, when even the best sanitary arrangements fail to remove offensive odours. The officers, in all their letters and diaries, spoke of this portion of their labours as being most distressing; while the poor women, cabined by dozens together in single rooms, yearned, but yearned in vain, for the breathing of a little air free from impurities. They dared not move out, for the balls and bullets of the enemy were whizzing across and into every open spot. Sometimes an 18-pounder shot would burst into a room where two or three of them were dressing, or where a larger number were at meals. In some of the houses or ‘garrisons,’ where many ladies formed one community, they used to take it in turn to keep awake for hourly watches during the night; one of them said in a letter: ‘I don’t exactly know what is gained by these night-watchings—except that we are all very nervous, and are expecting some dreadful catastrophe to happen.’ The little children died off rapidly, their maladies being more than could be met by the resources at hand; and those who bore up against the afflictions were much emaciated. The husbands and fathers, worn out with daily fatigue and nightly watching, had little solace to afford their families; and thus the women and children were left to pass the weary hours as best they could. A few little creatures, ‘siege-babies,’ as their poor mothers called them, came into the world during this stormy period; and with them each day was a struggle for life. When the native servants one by one escaped, the discomforts of the English women of course underwent much aggravation; and when the house or bungalow of Mr Gubbins became untenable through shot and bullet, the difficulty was immense of finding shelter elsewhere; every place was already overcrowded. Much additional misery befell the officers and men from this fact—that the commissariat quarter, offensive to every sense on account of the organic accumulations inseparable from the slaughtering and cutting up of animals—was one of the weakest parts in the whole enclosure, and required to be guarded at all hours by armed men, who loathed the spot for the reason just mentioned. The chaplain, too, found the church-yard getting into such a horrible state that he dared not go near the graves to read the funeral-service. Mr Rees mentions an instance to illustrate the anxieties of those who, willing to suffer themselves, were almost crushed by witnessing the privations of those dear to them. ‘He’ (mentioning one of the officers) ‘had at first told me of his wife being feverish and quite overcome with the abominable life she had to lead. And then he talked to me of his boy Herbert; how he was attacked with cholera, and feared he was very ill; and how, instead of being able to watch by his bedside, he had been all night digging at Captain Fulton’s mine; and then how his child next night was convulsed, and what little hope of his darling being spared to them—how heart-rending the boy’s sufferings were to his parents’ feelings—how even his (the father’s) iron constitution was at last giving way—how he had neither medicine, nor attendance, nor proper food for the child—and how the blowing up of the mine so close to his sick child had frightened him. And then to-day he told me, with tears in his eyes, that yesterday—the anniversary of his birthday—his poor child was called away. “God’s will be done,” said he; “but it is terrible to think of. At night we dug a hole in the garden, and there, wrapped in a blanket, we laid him.”’ This case is not singular; many another poor parent’s heart was thus torn.
The provisioning of the garrison was of course a perpetual source of anxiety to Brigadier Inglis and the other officers; or rather, the distribution of the food already possessed, and rapidly becoming exhausted, without any prospect of replenishing. Fresh meat was in store for the garrison as long as any healthy bullocks remained; but in other articles of food the deficiency became serious as the month advanced. An immense store of attah—the coarse meal from which chupatties or cakes were made—had been provided by Sir Henry Lawrence; but this was now nearly exhausted, and the garrison had to grind corn daily, from the store kept in the impromptu granaries. The women and the elder children were much employed in this corn-grinding, by means of hand-mills. To economise the meal thus laboriously ground, rice and unground wheat were served out to the natives. The animal food was likely to be limited, by the want not of bullocks, but of bhoosa or fodder to feed them; and the commissariat-officers saw clearly before them the approach of a time when the poor animals must die for want of food. The tea and sugar were exhausted, except a little store kept for invalids. The tobacco was all gone; and the soldiers, yearning for a pipe after a hard day’s work, smoked dried leaves as the only obtainable substitute. A few casks of porter still remained, to be guarded as a precious treasure. Once now and then, when an officer was struck down to death, an auction would be held of the few trifling comforts which he had been able to bring with him into the enclosure; and then the prices given by those who possessed means plainly told how eager was the desire for some little change in the poor and insufficient daily food. A few effects left by Sir Henry Lawrence were sold; among them, £16 was given for a dozen bottles of brandy, £7 for a dozen of beer, the same amount for a dozen of sherry, £7 for a ham, £4 for a quart bottle of honey, £5 for two small tins of preserved soup, and £3 for a cake of chocolate. Sugar was the luxury for which most craving was exhibited.
We pass on now to another month, September, whose early days ushered in the tenth week of the captivity.
New mines were everywhere discovered. The British, officers and men, attended sedulously to the underground listening-galleries adverted to in a former paragraph, and there obtained unmistakable evidence that the enemy were running mines towards Sago’s house, the Brigade Mess, the Bailey guard, and other buildings, with the customary intent of blowing them up, and making a forcible entry into the enclosure. Untiring exertions at countermining alone frustrated these terrible operations. On one day, the upper part of the Brigade Mess was smashed in by a shot; on another, a breach was made in the wall of the Martinière temporary school, requiring very speedy stockading and barricading to prevent the entrance of the enemy; on another, a few engineers made a gallant sortie from Innes’s house, and succeeded in blowing up a building from which the enemy had maintained an annoying fire of musketry; and on another day, an officer had the curiosity to count the cannon-balls, varying from 3 to 24 pounds each, which had fallen on the roof of one building alone, the Brigade Mess—they were no less than 280 in number! On the 5th of the month, the enemy made a more than usually impetuous attack; there were 5000 of them in sight from the Residency; they had formed a battery on the other side of the river; they exploded two mines near the Bailey guard and the mess-house; they advanced to Gubbins’s house and to the Sikh Square, bringing with them long ladders to effect an escalade—in short, they seemed determined to carry their point on this occasion. All was in vain, however; the garrison, though worked almost to death, gallantly rushed to every endangered spot and repelled the enemy, hastily reconstructing such defence-works as had been destroyed or damaged. Fortunately, the two exploded mines were short of their intended distance: they wrought but little damage. Much marching and countermarching were occasionally visible among the troops in the city: vague rumours reached the Residency that Havelock had a second time vanquished Nena Sahib’s troops at Cawnpore or Bithoor; but to what extent these movements and rumours would influence the garrison was left painfully undecided. The nights were more terrible than the days; for the enemy, as if to destroy all chance of sleep, kept up a torrent of musketry, accompanied by much shouting and screaming. Many of the officers worked with almost superhuman energy at this time. Captains Fulton and Anderson, Lieutenants Aitken, Clery, Innes, Hutchinson, Tulloch, Birch, Hay, and others, were constantly on the watch for mines, and sedulously digging countermines to foil them.
The eleventh week found the garrison more than ever exposed to hourly peril. The officers, driven from place to place for their few hours of repast and repose, had latterly messed in one of the buildings of the Begum’s Kothee; this fact seemed to be well known to the rebels, who were from the first better acquainted with what transpired inside the fort than the garrison were with external affairs; they directed their shells and balls so thickly on that spot, that ingress and egress were equally difficult. Two sides of Innes’s house were blown in, and the whole structure made little else than a heap of ruins; the Residency, too, became so tottering, that renewed precautions had to be taken in that quarter; new mines were perpetually discovered, directed to points underneath the various buildings; and the enemy sought to increase their means of annoyance by booming forth shells filled with abominable and filthy compositions. Perhaps the most harassing troubles were owing to the uncertainty of the time and place when active services would be needed. The officers could not reckon upon a single minute of peace. ‘In the midst of all these miseries,’ says Captain Anderson, ‘you would hear the cry of “Turn out;” and you had to seize your musket and rush to your post. Then there was a constant state of anxiety as to whether we were mined or not; and we were not quite sure, whilst we were at a loophole, that we might not suddenly see the ground open, or observe the whole materials of the house fly into the air by the explosion of a mine. Shells came smashing into our rooms, and dashed our property to pieces; then followed round-shot, and down tumbled huge pieces of masonry, while hits of wood and brick flew in all directions. I have seen beds literally blown to atoms, and trunks and boxes completely smashed into little bits.’ Nevertheless, there was no flinching in the garrison; if a mine were discovered, a countermine was run out to frustrate it; if a wall or a verandah were knocked down by shot, the débris was instantly used to form a rampart, barricade, or stockade. On the 14th of the month, a loss was incurred which caused grief throughout the garrison. Captain Fulton, whose indomitable energy had won the admiration of all in his duties as engineer, and whose kindness of manner had rendered him a general favourite, was struck by a cannon-ball which took his head completely off. Brigadier Inglis felt this loss sensitively, for Fulton had been to him an invaluable aid in all his trials and difficulties. Fulton, who was especially marked by his skill and promptness in countermining, had succeeded Major Anderson as chief-engineer, and was himself now succeeded by Captain Anderson.
The twelfth week, the last which the beleaguered English were destined to suffer before the one which was to bring Havelock and Neill to Lucknow, found them in great despondency. They had lately lost a number of valuable officers. Lieutenant Birch fell; then M. Deprat, a merchant who worked and fought most valiantly at the defences; then Captain Cunliffe; and then Lieutenant Graham, whose mental firmness gave way under privation, grief, and wounds, leading him to commit suicide. As a natural consequence of these and similar losses, harder work than ever pressed on those who remained alive. Never for a moment was the look-out neglected. At all hours of the day and night, officers were posted on the roofs of the Residency and the post-office, finding such shelter as they could while watching intently the river, the bridges, the roads, and the buildings in and around the city; every fact they observed, serious in its apparent import, was at once reported to Brigadier Inglis, who made such defensive arrangements as the circumstances made desirable, and as his gradually lessened means rendered possible. What were the sleepless nights thus added to harassing days for the responsible guardian of the forlorn band, may to some extent be conceived. The enemy’s batteries were now more numerous than ever. They were constructed near the iron bridge; in a piece of open ground that formerly comprised the Residency kitchen-garden; near a mosque by the swampy ground on the river’s bank; in front of a range of buildings called the Captan Bazaar; in the Taree Kothee opposite the Bailey guard; near the clock-tower opposite the financial office; in a garden and buildings opposite the judicial office and Anderson’s house; in numerous buildings that bore upon the Cawnpore Battery and the Brigade Mess; in fields and buildings that commanded Gubbins’s house; and in positions on the northwest of the enclosure—in other words, the whole place was surrounded by batteries bristling with mortars and great guns, some or other of which were almost incessantly firing shot and shell into it.
And what, the reader may anxiously ask, was the domestic or personal life of the inmates of the enclosure during these three weeks of September? It was sad indeed—beyond the former sadness. If the men toiled and watched in sultry dry weather, they were nearly overcome by heat and noisome odours; if they slept in the trenches in damp nights after great heat, they suffered terribly in their limbs and bones, for they had neither tents nor change of clothing. Such was the state to which the whole of the ground was brought, by refuse of every kind, that a pool resulting from a shower of rain soon became an insupportable nuisance; sanitary cleansings were unattainable by a community who had neither surplus labour nor efficient drains at command. Half the officers were ill at one time, from disease, over-fatigue, and insufficient diet; and when they were thus laid prostrate, they had neither medicines nor surgeons sufficient for their need. There was not a sound roof in the whole place. On one day a cannon-ball entered at one end of the largest room in the hospital, traversed the whole length, and went out at the other—but, singular to relate, it did not hurt one human being in the whole crowded apartment. In the commissariat department, some of the bullocks yet remaining fell sick through privations, others were shot; thereby lessening the reserve store, and adding to the repulsive night-duties of the officers already adverted to. Of the few native servants still remaining, hardly one now could be retained; and the saving of their simple food was an inadequate counterbalance for the loss of their assistance in drudgery labours. There were not, however, wanting proofs of a fact abundantly illustrated in many walks of life—the moral healthiness of useful employment. One of the ladies, whose early weeks in the Residency had been weeks of misery, afterwards wrote thus: ‘I now find every hour of the day fully occupied. It is a great comfort to have so much to do, and to feel one’s self of some little use; it helps one to keep up one’s spirits much better than would otherwise be possible under the circumstances.’ The live-stock, the rum, the porter, were all getting low; tea, sugar, coffee, and chocolate had long disappeared from the rations. Such officers and civilians as had money in their pockets, were willing to give almost any prices for the few luxuries still remaining in private hands, in order that they might in some degree alleviate the sufferings of their wives and children. Forty shillings were eagerly given for a bottle of brandy; thirty-two for a bottle of curaçoa; forty for a small fowl; sixteen shillings per pound were offered, but offered in vain, for sugar; two shillings a pound for coarse flour; ten shillings a pound for a little half-rancid butter or ghee; tobacco, four shillings a leaf; a bottle of pickles, forty shillings. Mr Rees sold a gold watch to a companion who had money to spare, and with it purchased the luxury of smoking cigars at two shillings each; but when those bits of rolled tobacco-leaf commanded three rupees or six shillings each, he bade adieu to his last remaining source of personal enjoyment. What any one gave, he gave out of kind sympathy to his suffering companions; but what he sold, he sold in the usual commercial spirit to the highest bidder. The attire was reduced to the most piteous condition. Many of the officers had found much of their clothing burned nearly four months earlier, during the mutiny at the cantonment; and the troubles of June had prevented them from making purchases in the city before the arrival of the day when they were all alike to be shut up in the enclosure. As a consequence, their remaining clothes wore away to rags, or something worse. There was scarcely a vestige of a military uniform visible throughout the place. Officers worked and fought, dined and slept, in shirt, trousers, and slippers; one made himself a coat out of a billiard table-cloth; and another contrived a sort of shirt out of a piece of floor-cloth. When the trifling effects of one of the deceased officers came to be examined and sold, a little underclothing was sought for with an eagerness which sumptuous garments would not have excited; four pounds sterling were given for a new flannel-shirt, and twelve pounds for five others which had already rendered much service.
Joy, joy beyond expression rang through the enclosure when, on the 21st of September, the rumour ran round that a messenger had arrived with good news. Inglis had, a few days before, sent off a spy on the often-tried but generally unsuccessful attempt to carry a small note (enclosed in a quill); the peril had been great, but the man safely returned with a small written reply from Havelock, announcing that Outram and himself were on the road from Cawnpore, and expected to reach Lucknow in three or four days. Hearts were filled to overflowing with this announcement. Many wept for joy, some laughed and shouted, more sank on their knees in thanksgiving, while the sick and wounded rose from their pallets, as if wondrously strengthened by the glad tidings. All worked hard and vigorously, in their respective ways, to prepare for the struggle inevitable on any attempt of the two generals to penetrate through the streets of the city; the inmates of the garrison could not, it is true, leave their stronghold to join in the fight, but they might possibly aid when the forlorn-hope was approaching the Bailey guard, the probable place of entrance. The 22d passed over in hopes and fears, expectations and preparations. On the 23d, musketry was heard on the Cawnpore road, and much agitation was visible within the city. On the next day, cannonading and musketry were again heard; and then were the garrison rejoiced at seeing multitudes escaping out of the city, and over the bridge to the other side of the river—rejoiced, because this movement denoted success on the part of the advancing British.
The 25th arrived—the day of deliverance! Prodigious agitation and alarm had marked the city all night: movements of men and horses, and all the indications of a city in commotion. At noon, the increasing sounds told that street-fighting was going on; those who went on the top of the Residency for a look-out could see the smoke of musketry, but nothing else. As the afternoon advanced, the sounds came nearer and nearer;[101] then was heard the sharp crack of rifles; then was gradually perceived the flash of musketry; and then the well-known uniforms of a friendly hand. Outram and Havelock, when they had fought their way over the canal by the Char Bagh Bridge (bridge of the ‘four gardens’), intended to have taken the straight road to the Residency; but this road had been blocked up by the enemy with guns, palisades, stockades, barricades, concealed pits and trenches, and other obstacles. The two generals therefore diverged to the right, marched along a by-road to the eastern part of the city, and there fought their way through a continuous line of streets to the Bailey guard entrance of the Residency enclosure, suffering terribly as they went.[102] Great was the shout with which they were welcomed, and warm the grasp with which Inglis thanked his deliverers. ‘The immense enthusiasm,’ says Mr Rees, ‘with which they were greeted defies description. As their hurrah and ours rang in my ears, I was nigh bursting with joy.... We felt not only happy, happy beyond imagination, and grateful to that God of mercy who, by our noble deliverers, Havelock and Outram, and their gallant troops, had thus snatched us from imminent death; but we also felt proud of the defence we had made, and the success with which, with such fearful odds to contend against, we had preserved, not only our own lives, but the honour and lives of the women and children intrusted to our keeping. As our deliverers poured in, they continued to greet us with loud hurrahs.... We ran up to them, officers and men without distinction, and shook them by the hands—how cordially, who can describe? The shrill notes of the Highlanders’ bagpipes now pierced our ears. Not the most beautiful music ever was more welcome, more joy-bringing. And these brave men themselves, many of them bloody and exhausted, forgot the loss of their comrades, the pain of their wounds, the fatigue of overcoming the fearful obstacles they had combated for our sakes, in the pleasure of having accomplished our relief.’ What the women felt on this day, the Lady’s Diary will tell us. ‘Never shall I forget the moment to the latest day I live. It was most overpowering. We had no idea they were so near, and were breathing air in the portico as usual at that hour, speculating when they might be in—not expecting they could reach us for several days longer; when suddenly, just at dark, we heard a very sharp fire of musketry close by, and then a tremendous cheering. An instant after, the sound of bagpipes, then soldiers running up the road, our compound and verandah filled with our deliverers, and all of us shaking hands franticly, and exchanging fervent “God bless you’s!” with the gallant men and officers of the 78th Highlanders. Sir James Outram and staff were the next to come in, and the state of joyful confusion and excitement was beyond all description. The big, rough-bearded soldiers were seizing the little children out of our arms, kissing them with tears rolling down their cheeks, and thanking God they had come in time to save them from the fate of those at Cawnpore. We were all rushing about to give the poor fellows drinks of water, for they were perfectly exhausted; and tea was made down in the Tye Khana, of which a large party of tired, thirsty officers partook, without milk or sugar; we had nothing to give them to eat. Every one’s tongue seemed going at once with so much to ask and to tell; and the faces of utter strangers beamed upon each other like those of dearest friends and brothers.’
After a night, in which joy kept many awake whom fatigue would have else sent into a deep sleep, the dawn of the 26th ushered in a day in which there was again to be much severe fighting; for some of Havelock’s heroic little band had been left in palatial buildings outside the Residency enclosure, which they managed to hold during the night. To succour these comrades, to bring in the guns which they had guarded, and to obtain firm possession of the buildings, were objects that required great exertion and daring courage. The attempt succeeded. The palaces of Fureed Buksh and Taree Kothee were conquered from the enemy, and formed into new intrenched positions, which greatly relieved the overcrowded Residency. When the further conquest of the Chuttur Munzil palace and other buildings near the river-side had been effected, the position held by the British was thrice as large in area as that which Brigadier Inglis had so long and so gallantly defended. It lay along the river-bank for a considerable distance; while on the other side it was bounded by a dense mass of the streets constituting the main portion of the city.
One of the results of Havelock and Outram’s advance was the capture of an important outpost. At a spot three or four miles out of Lucknow, near the new road from Cawnpore, was the Alum Bagh, the ‘garden of the Lady Alum or beauty of the world.’ It comprised several buildings, including a palace, a mosque, and an emambarra or private temple, bounded by a beautiful garden, which was itself in the middle of a park, and the park enclosed in a wall with corner towers. There was abundant space within it for a large military force, and it was susceptible of being made a stronghold if the defences were well maintained. Havelock, on his advance from Cawnpore, found the enemy drawn up in considerable strength, within and without the wall of the Alum Bagh; and it was only after a hot and fierce contest that he could capture the place. He encamped there on the night of the 23d, and had to bear many attacks from the enemy near the same spot on the 24th. On the 25th he advanced to Lucknow, and maintained the sanguinary street-fight already noticed. The Alum Bagh was too important a place to be abandoned when once conquered. Havelock left there the baggage, ammunition, sick, and wounded, of his relieving force; with 300 men to protect them, and an immense array of elephants, camels, horses, camp-followers, and laden carts; and with four guns to aid in the defence. No one for an instant supposed that that detachment would be left there without further aid. Havelock and his men fully expected, that, Lucknow once conquered, the Alum Bagh would simply be one of the strongholds of his position with which he could communicate when he pleased. Little did he look forward to the state of things actually produced, when the occupants of the Alum Bagh were so completely isolated from the British in the city, that they could not send even a message, unless by good-fortune a kossid or native messenger succeeded in conveying, in a quill or in the sole of his shoe, a brief letter from the one place to the other.
This isolated position of the little garrison at Alum Bagh was, moreover, only one among many grave subjects that speedily presented themselves for consideration. After the first outburst of thankfulness at the arrival of the welcome deliverers, the residents in the Lucknow intrenchment had to ask themselves to what extent it was really a deliverance. Then did they find that, in effect, they were as close prisoners as ever. Havelock had lost nearly one-third of his small force during the desperate encounters of the past few days; and those who survived were far too weak for any considerable military operations. The one great, absorbing, sacred, deeply earnest object he had all along held in view, was to save his fellow-countrymen, their wives and children, from horrors such as had been perpetrated at Cawnpore. To his dying day he remained deeply grateful that he had been permitted to effect this; but what more could he do? Could he remain a conqueror in Lucknow, or could he bring away from that city all those who for four months had been exposed to such peril! He could do neither the one nor the other. The result of the fighting on the 25th and 26th of September had given to him the command of a larger portion of the city than the Residency enclosure, which had been so long and so gallantly maintained by Inglis; but he could neither gain another inch without struggling for it, nor retain the portion already acquired without incessant watchfulness and assiduity. Nor could he make the Residency and the Alum Bagh component parts of one great stronghold, seeing that the British were alike besieged in the one and the other, and could not hold intercommunication. Nor could he send the women and children to Allahabad or any other place of safety; they would all have been cut to pieces on the road, so small was the escort he could afford, and so overwhelming the force of the enemy. The whole of the immediate benefit consisted in an increase in the number of British for the defence-works; but as these hard-working and hard-fighting troops brought little or no supplies further than the Alum Bagh, there was an increase rather in the number of mouths to be fed than in the means of feeding them. The disappointment of Inglis’s garrison, after the first joy had passed, was very severe. Captivity and short commons were still to be their lot. Many councils of war were held, to determine what should be done. A party of volunteer cavalry on one day set out with the intention of cutting their way to the Alum Bagh, and perhaps to Cawnpore, to seek for reinforcements and to give notice of the exact state of affairs; but they were driven back almost immediately, by a body of rebels too large to be resisted. Sir James Outram sought to ascertain whether any of the influential natives in the city were disposed, by tempting offers, to render him and his companions aid in their difficulties; but here in like manner failure resulted. The scene was very miserable until something like order could be restored. The poor fellows who had fallen on the 25th and 26th had been brought into the intrenchment, some to be buried, some to be healed if possible. The authoress of the Lady’s Diary said: ‘The hospital is so densely crowded, that many have to lie outside in the open air, without bed or shelter. —— says he never saw such a heart-sickening scene. It is far worse than that after Chinhut—amputated arms and legs lying about in heaps all over the hospital, and the crowd and confusion such that little can be done to alleviate the intense discomfort and pain of the poor sufferers.’
It might be interesting to surviving friends, but would be tedious to general readers, to present here a list of all the persons mentioned by name in Brigadier Inglis’s dispatch as having distinguished themselves in this most gallant struggle. They amount to about ninety in number. Indeed, it may well be supposed that at such a time every soldier worthy of the name, every civilian with a drop of honest blood in him, would achieve things of which, at another time, he would scarcely deem himself capable. Not only British; for Captain Anderson mentions two gentlemen of foreign birth, a Frenchman and an Italian, who, shut up like the rest in the intrenchment, fought and worked as untiringly as their companions. In a foot-note we give the names of officers mentioned by Brigadier Inglis as having died during the siege;[103] and in another, of those who commanded eleven of the outposts or ‘garrisons,’ those fortified houses which were defended in so extraordinary a way.[104] Of all these he had a kindly word to say; as well as of the artillery and engineer officers, the infantry officers, the officers of the staff, the surgeons and the chaplains, the commissariat-officers, the gentlemen-volunteers, the humble rank and file, and the ladies who became the ‘Florence Nightingales’ of the garrison. Nothing, perhaps, in the whole course of the siege, was more remarkable than the conduct of the native troops. It will be remembered that when three native infantry regiments mutinied at the cantonment on the 30th of May, some of the sepoys in each remained faithful. This select band shared all the labours and sufferings of the British during the siege. With scanty food, little and broken sleep, harassing exertions, daily fightings, they remained steadfast to the last. Though sorely tempted by the mutineers, who would often converse with them over the palisades of the intrenchment, they never flinched from their duty. What they were on the 30th of May, they were on the 25th of September, soldiers ‘true to their salt.’ Few things are more embarrassing, in taking an estimate of the causes and progress of the Revolt, than to meet with such anomalies as this. Explain it how we may, it would be gross injustice to withhold from such men a tribute of admiration for their fidelity at so trying a time. May there not have been something of a moral grandeur, a sublimity of heroism, in the conduct of the devoted garrison, that touched the hearts of these sepoys, and appealed to their better nature?
Viscount Canning did not fail to give an official recognition of the merits of those who had made this glorious defence. In an ‘Order in Council,’ issued at Calcutta, after adverting to the receipt of a military account of the proceedings from Brigadier Inglis, his lordship said:
‘The governor-general in council believes that never has a tale been told which will so stir the hearts of Englishmen and Englishwomen.... There does not stand recorded in the annals of war an achievement more truly heroic than the defence of the Residency at Lucknow. That defence has not only called forth all the energy and daring which belong to Englishmen in the hour of active conflict, but it has exhibited continuously, and in the highest degree, that noble and sustained courage which against enormous odds and fearful disadvantages, against hope deferred, and through increasing toil and wear of body and mind, still holds on day after day, and triumphs. The heavy guns of the assailants, posted almost in security within fifty yards of the intrenchments—so near, indeed, that the solicitations, threats, and taunts which the rebels addressed to the native defenders of the garrison were easily heard by those true-hearted men; the fire of the enemy’s musketry, so searching that it penetrated the innermost retreat of the women and children and of the wounded; their desperate attempts, repeatedly made, to force an entry after blowing in the defences; the perpetual mining of the works; the weary night-watching for the expected signal of relief; and the steady waste of precious lives until the number of English gunners was reduced below that of the guns to be worked—all these constitute features in a history which the fellow-countrymen of the heroes of Lucknow will read with swelling hearts, and which will endure for ever as a lesson to those who shall hope, by treachery, numbers, or boldness in their treason, to overcome the indomitable spirit of Englishmen.’
The officer who so nobly held the command after Lawrence and Banks had been stricken down by death, well earned the honours which the Queen afterwards conferred upon him. He entered Lucknow as a lieutenant-colonel; he left it as Major-general Sir John Eardley Wilmot Inglis, K.C.B. Promotion in various ways awaited many of the other officers; but the immediate recognition by the governor-general of the services rendered by the garrison was embodied in the following general order: ‘Every officer and soldier, European and native, who has formed part of the garrison of the Residency between the 29th of June and the 25th of September last shall receive six months’ batta. Every civilian in the covenanted service of the East India Company who has taken part in the defence of the Residency within the above-named dates shall receive six months’ batta, at a rate calculated according to the military rank with which his standing corresponds. Every uncovenanted civil officer or volunteer who has taken a like part shall receive six months’ batta, at a rate to be fixed according to the functions and position which may have been assigned to him. Every native commissioned and non-commissioned officer and soldier who has formed part of the garrison shall receive the Order of Merit, with the increase of pay attached thereto, and shall be permitted to count three years of additional service. The soldiers of the 13th, 48th, and 71st regiments native infantry, who have been part of the garrison, shall be formed into a regiment of the line, to be called “the Regiment of Lucknow,” the further constitution of which, as regards officers and men, will be notified hereafter.’
What was done at Lucknow during October and November must be recorded in a future chapter. While Outram, Havelock, and Inglis were maintaining themselves, by indomitable resolution, in the Residency and the Alum Bagh, Sir Colin Campbell was collecting a force adequate, if not to the actual reconquest of Lucknow, at least to the rescue of all the British of every class residing in that hateful city. Those two concurrent lines of proceeding will be treated in intimate connection, a few pages on.
Note.
Brigadier Inglis’s Dispatch.—In order that the narrative contained in the foregoing chapter might not be interrupted by too many extracts from official documents, little has been said of the report which Brigadier Inglis drew up of the siege soon after the arrival of Outram and Havelock. So vividly, however, and in all respects so worthily, did that report or dispatch portray the trying difficulties of the position, and the heroic conduct of the garrison, that it may be well to give a portion of it in this place.
‘The right honourable the governor-general in council will feel that it would be impossible to crowd within the limits of a dispatch even the principal events, much less the individual acts of gallantry, which have marked this protracted struggle. But I can conscientiously declare my conviction, that few troops have ever undergone greater hardships, exposed as they have been to a never-ceasing musketry-fire and cannonade. They have also experienced the alternate vicissitudes of extreme wet and of intense heat, and that, too, with very insufficient shelter from either, and in many places without any shelter at all. In addition to having had to repel real attacks, they have been exposed night and day to the hardly less harassing false alarms which the enemy have been constantly raising. The insurgents have frequently fired very heavily, sounded the advance, and shouted for several hours together, though not a man could be seen: with the view, of course, of harassing our small and exhausted force. In this object they succeeded, for no part has been strong enough to allow of a portion only of the garrison being prepared in the event of a false attack being turned into a real one; all, therefore, had to stand to their arms and to remain at their posts until the demonstration had ceased; and such attacks were of almost nightly occurrence. The whole of the officers and men have been on duty night and day during the 87 days which the siege had lasted up to the arrival of Sir J. Outram, G.C.B. In addition to this incessant military duty, the force has been nightly employed in repairing defences, in moving guns, in burying dead animals, in conveying ammunition and commissariat stores from one place to another, and in other fatigue-duties too numerous and too trivial to enumerate here. I feel, however, that any words of mine will fail to convey any adequate idea of what the fatigue and labours have been—labours in which all ranks and all classes, civilians, officers, and soldiers, have all borne an equally noble part. All have together descended into the mine, and have together handled the shovel for the interment of the putrid bullocks; and all, accoutred with musket and bayonet, have relieved each other on sentry without regard to the distinctions of rank, civil or military. Notwithstanding all these hardships, the garrison has made no less than five sorties, in which they spiked two of the enemy’s heaviest guns, and blew up several of the houses from which they had kept up their most harassing fire. Owing to the extreme paucity of our numbers, each man was taught to feel that on his own individual efforts alone depended in no small measure the safety of the entire position. This consciousness incited every officer, soldier, and man, to defend the post assigned to him with such desperate tenacity, and to fight for the lives which Providence had intrusted to his care with such dauntless determination, that the enemy, despite their constant attacks, their heavy mines, their overwhelming numbers, and their incessant fire, could never succeed in gaining one single inch of ground within the bounds of this straggling position, which was so feebly fortified, that had they once obtained a footing in any of the outposts the whole place must inevitably have fallen.
‘If further proof be wanting of the desperate nature of the struggle which we have, under God’s blessing, so long and so successfully waged, I would point to the roofless and ruined houses, to the crumbled walls, to the exploded mines, to the open breaches, to the shattered and disabled guns and defences, and lastly, to the long and melancholy list of the brave and devoted officers and men who have fallen. These silent witnesses bear sad and solemn testimony to the way in which this feeble position has been defended.
‘During the early part of these vicissitudes, we were left without any information whatever regarding the posture of affairs outside. An occasional spy did indeed come in with the object of inducing our sepoys and servants to desert; but the intelligence derived from such sources was, of course, entirely untrustworthy. We sent our messengers, daily calling for aid, and asking for information, none of whom ever returned until the 26th day of the siege; when a pensioner named Ungud came back with a letter from General Havelock’s camp, informing us that they were advancing with a force sufficient to bear down all opposition, and would be with us in five or six days. A messenger was immediately despatched, requesting that on the evening of their arrival on the outskirts of the city two rockets might be sent up, in order that we might take the necessary measures for assisting them while forcing their way in. The sixth day, however, expired, and they came not; but for many evenings after, officers and men watched for the ascension of the expected rockets, with hopes such as make the heart sick. We knew not then, nor did we learn until the 29th of August—or 35 days later—that the relieving force, after having fought most nobly to effect our deliverance, had been obliged to fall back for reinforcements; and this was the last communication we received until two days before the arrival of Sir James Outram, on the 25th of September.
‘Besides heavy visitations of cholera and small-pox, we have also had to contend against a sickness which has almost universally pervaded the garrison. Commencing with a very painful eruption, it has merged into a low fever, combined with diarrhœa; and although few or no men have actually died from its effects, it leaves behind a weakness and lassitude which, in the absence of all material sustenance, save coarse beef, and still coarser flour, none have been able entirely to get over. The mortality among the women and children, and especially among the latter, from these diseases and from other causes, has been perhaps the most painful characteristic of the siege. The want of native servants has also been a source of much privation. Owing to the suddenness with which we were besieged, many of these people, who might perhaps have otherwise proved faithful to their employers, but who were outside the defences at the time, were altogether excluded. Very many more deserted, and several families were consequently left without the services of a single domestic. Several ladies have had to tend their children, and even to wash their own clothes, as well as to cook their scanty meals, entirely unaided. Combined with the absence of servants, the want of proper accommodation has probably been the cause of much of the disease with which we have been afflicted.
‘I cannot refrain from bringing to the prominent notice of his lordship in council the patient endurance and the Christian resignation which have been evinced by the women of this garrison. They have animated us by their example. Many, alas! have been made widows and their children fatherless in this cruel struggle. But all such seem resigned to the will of Providence; and many—among whom may be mentioned the honoured names of Birch, of Polehampton, of Barbor, and of Gall—have, after the example of Miss Nightingale, constituted themselves the tender and solicitous nurses of the wounded and dying soldiers in the hospital.’
[After enumerating the officers and civilians who had wrought untiringly in the good cause, Brigadier Inglis did ample justice to the humbler combatants.]
‘Lastly, I have the pleasure of bringing the splendid behaviour of the soldiers—namely, the men of her Majesty’s 32d foot, the small detachment of her Majesty’s 84th foot, the European and native artillery, the 13th, 48th, and 71st regiments of native infantry, and the Sikhs of the respective corps—to the notice of the government of India. The losses sustained by her Majesty’s 32d, which is now barely 300 strong, by her Majesty’s 84th, and by the European artillery, shew at least that they knew how to die in the cause of their countrymen. Their conduct under the fire, the exposure, and the privations which they have had to undergo, has been throughout most admirable and praiseworthy.
‘As another instance of the desperate character of our defence, and the difficulties we have had to contend with, I may mention that the number of our artillerymen was so reduced, that on the occasion of an attack, the gunners, aided as they were by men of her Majesty’s 32d foot, and by volunteers of all classes, had to run from one battery to another wherever the fire of the enemy was hottest, there not being nearly enough men to serve half the number of guns at the same time. In short, at last the number of European gunners was only 24, while we had, including mortars, no less than 30 guns in position.
‘With respect to the native troops, I am of opinion that their loyalty has never been surpassed. They were indifferently fed and worse housed. They were exposed, especially the 13th regiment, under the gallant Lieutenant Aitken, to a most galling fire of round-shot and musketry, which materially decreased their numbers. They were so near the enemy that conversation could be carried on between them; and every effort, persuasion, promise, and threat, was alternately resorted to in vain to seduce them from their allegiance to the handful of Europeans, who, in all probability, would have been sacrificed by their desertion.’