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The Ninety-Eighth had been moved to Plymouth in
anticipation of departure on foreign service, and on the 20th of
December, 1841, it embarked for Hong-Kong on H.M.S. Belleisle, a
line-of-battle ship which had been commissioned for transport service.
According to present ideas the Belleisle, whose burden did not exceed
1750 tons, was abominably overcrowded, especially for a voyage of six
months or longer. The Ninety-Eighth embarked eight hundred and ten
strong; and what with staff officers, details, women and children and
crew, the ship carried a total of nearly thirteen hundred souls. Among
her passengers was Major-General Lord Saltoun, the hero of Hougomont,
who was going out as second in command of the Chinese expeditionary
force. During a short stay in Simon’s Bay Colin Campbell had the
pleasant opportunity of visiting his old Demerara chief Sir Benjamin
D'Urban, who since they last met had served a term of office as Governor
of Cape Colony, and was now living in retirement among his orchards and
vineyards a few miles from Cape Town. The Belleisle made a fairly quick
voyage to Hong-Kong, where she arrived oil June 2nd, 1842, and where
orders were awaiting the Ninety-Eighth to make all haste to join the
force of Sir Hugh Gough operating in the region of the estuary of the
Yang-tse-Kiang. Active hostilities had for some time previously been in
progress. After the capture of the town of Chapoo on May 18th the fleet
carrying the expeditionary force had proceeded to an anchorage off the
mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang, where it lay for a fortnight while tho bar
was being surveyed and buoyed. The Chinese had constructed a great line
of defensive works about Woosung, but the British fleet anchored in face
of the batteries on the 16th of June, and as the result of a two hours’
bombardment the Chinese fire was crushed and the garrisons were driven
from their batteries by the sailors and troops. Shanghai was occupied,
and the expedition remained in the vicinity of Woosung while surveying
steamers were prospecting the river. It was during this halt that the Belleisle with
the Ninety-Eighth aboard joined the expeditionary force at Woosung on
the 21st of June. The regiment was assigned to the first brigade under
Lord Saltoun, and occupied part of the third division of vessels during
the ascent of the river.
The expedition left Woosung on July 6th, its objectives
being the great cities of Chin-Kiang and Nanking. The strength of it was
overwhelming, for the fleet consisted of fifteen ships of war, ten
steamers and fifty transports and troop-ships, on which were embarked
nine thousand soldiers and three thousand disciplined seamen ready for
service on shore in case of need. The Belleisle was off Chin-Kiang on
the 19th, and on the morning of the 21st the troops disembarked in three
brigades. The columns of Sir Hugh Gough and General Schoedde had some
hard fighting with the Tartar garrison of the city commanded by the
gallant Haeling. Lord Paltoun’s brigade, with the Ninety-Eighth in
advance, marched against a Chinese force occupying a low ridge some
miles inland and to westward of the city. The opposition encountered was
trivial, and was easily overcome by the light company of the
Ninety-Eighth in skirmishing order supported by a few discharges from a
mountain-battery. But the regiment, debilitated as it was by a long
tropical voyage in an overcrowded ship, unsupplied with an equipment
suitable for the climate and wearing its ordinary European clothing, was
in no case to resist the fierce summer-heat of China. The sun had its
will of the men, thirteen of whom died on the ground; and Colin
Campbell, seasoned veteran as he was, was himself struck down, though he
soon recovered. From this day forth for months, and even for years,
disease maintained its fell grip on the victims of overcrowding, and
Napier would have been puzzled to recognise in the shattered invalids of
Hong-Kong the “beautiful regiment” which had sailed from Plymouth in
fine physique and high heart. On the night following the disembarkation
several cases of cholera occurred, and fever and dysentery became
immediately prevalent. Within ten days from the landing at Chin Kiang
fifty-three men of the Ninety-Eighth hau died, and the Belleisle was
rapidly becoming a floating hospital.
A garrison was left in Chin-Kiang, and on August 4th the GurnicaUis man-of-war
anchored in front of that very gate of Nanking which twenty-six years
earlier had been rudely shut in the face of a British ambassador.
Opposite that same gate it was destined that severe terms should now be
dictated by a victorious British force. The mass of the expedition
reached Nanking on the 9th and preparations for the attack on that city
were promptly begun. The Ninety-Eighth men fit for service were
transferred from the Belleisle to a steamer which conveyed them to a
point where a diversion was intended. Colin Campbell was too ill to
accompany his regiment* and when he joined it a few days later he was
again prostrated by fever. But Nanking escaped its imminent fate.
Negotiations resulted in a treaty of peace which was concluded on August
26th; the expedition retraced its steps, and in October the Belleisle reached
Hong-Kong with the wreck of the unfortunate regiment Even after those
long months fate still kept imprisoned on ship-board what remained of
the hapless Ninety-Eighth. The regiment had to remain on the Belleisle until
barracks could be built for its reception. Writing to his sister in
December, Colin Campbell had the following sad tale to tell:—“ The
regiment has lost by death up to this date two hundred and eighty-three
men, and there are still two hundred and thirty-one sick, of whom some
fifty or sixty will die; and generally, of those who may survive, there
will be some seventy or eighty men to be discharged in consequence of
their constitutions having been so completely broken down as to unfit
them for the duties of soldiers. This is the history of the
Ninety-Eighth regiment, which sailed from Plymouth in so effective a
state in all respects on the 20th of December of last year—and all this
destruction without having lost a man by the fire of the enemy ! ” His
estimate of the losses, grave as it was, did not reach the grim actual
total. From its landing at Chin-Kiang on July 21st, 1842, up to
February, 1844, a period of nineteen months, the unfortunate regiment
lost by death alone four hundred and thirty-two out of a strength of
seven hundred and sixty-six non-commissioned officers and men; and there
remained of it alive no more than three hundred and thirty-four, an
awful contrast to the full numbers with which it had embarked at
Plymouth twenty-six months earlier.
When the expeditionary force was broken up at the end of
1842 Colin Campbell became commandant of the island of Hong-Kong, and he
devoted himself to the care of the survivors of his regiment. The worst
cases were sent to a hospital ship, those less serious to a temporary
hospital on shore. The remainder of the corps, some three hundred and
thirty men, at last, in February, 1843, quitted the Belleisle and
occupied quarters at Stanley. While at Hong-Kong he learned that he had
been made a Companion of the Bath and aide-de-camp to the Queen, the
latter appointment conferring promotion to the rank of colonel. In
January, 1844, he left Hong-Kong to succeed General Schoedde in command
of the garrison quartered on the Island of Chusan, a transfer which gave
him the position of brigadier of the second class. In the more bracing
and salubrious climate of Chusan Campbell materially regained his
health; and he had not been many months in his new command when he began
his efforts to have the Ninety-Eighth removed from its unhealthy
quarters in Hong-Kong to the reinvigorating atmosphere of Chusan. This
he was able to accomplish in the earlier months of 1845, and he
immediately set about the restoration of the regiment to its former
efficiency. He was a rigorous task-master, but if he did not spare
others he never spared himself. He seldom missed a parade, and except in
the hot season there were three parades a day. Leave of absence except
on medical certificate was refused to officers who had come from England
with the regiment, on the ground that their experience was needed to
instruct the comparatively raw material from the depot. The officers of
the Ninety-Eighth who belonged to the garrison staff were also required
to perform their regimental duty. The painstaking and laborious chief
thus notes in his journal the progress of the regiment in the midsummer
of 1845 : “Parade as usual morning and evening; men improving, but still
in great want of individual correctness in carriage, facings, motions of
the firelock, etc.; but they move in line and open column very fairly,
and I confidently expect before the end of the year to have them more
perfect than any battalion in this part of the world.” When toward the
close of the year the health of the regiment was fully re-established,
its colonel conceived that it should undergo higher tests than the
ordinary movements of the drill-ground afforded. He accordingly took it
out into the open country and divided it into an attacking and a
defending force, in order to train the men in the art of taking cover
and skill in skirmishes over broken ground. By the beginning of 1846 he
was “quite at ease as to the appearance the regiment would make on
landing in India,”
The time fixed by the treaty of Nanking for the
evacuation of the island of Chusan by the British troops was now
approaching, and on May 10th the Chinese authorities resumed
jurisdiction over the island. Until then Campbell’s duties had not been
purely military, the entire civil charge of Chusan having been vested in
his hands. The most friendly relations existed between the British
Brigadier and the Chinese Commissioners. Arrangements were made without
a trace of friction for the preservation of the European burial-grounds
and in regard to other matters. Campbell was the recipient of an
interesting letter from the Commissioners, passages in which deserve to
be quoted “ While observing and maintaining the treaty, you have behaved
with the utmost kindness and the greatest liberality towards our own
people, and have restrained by strict regulations the military of your
honourable country. . . . The very cottagers have enjoyed tranquillity
and protection, and have not been exposed to the calamity of wandering
about without a home. All this is owing to the excellent and vigorous
administration of you, the Honourable Brigadier, ... Now that you are
about to return to your own country crowned with honour, we wish you
every happiness.”
Notwithstanding occasional attacks of ague which rendered
him liable to depression and irritation, Campbell appears to have been
fairly happy during his stay in Chusan, He writes on the eve of his
departure of “‘my last walk’ in Chusan, where I have passed many days in
quiet and peace, and where I have been enabled to save a little money,
with which I hope to render my last days somewhat comfortable. My health
upon the whole is pretty good; and altogether I have every reason to be
thankful to God for sending me to a situation wherein I have been
enabled to accomplish so much for my own benefit and the comfort of
others, whilst my duty kept me absent from them.” The latter allusion
was to his father and sister, for both of whom he had been able to make
provision in the event of his predeceasing them. Having left England
heavily embarrassed, the increase of his emoluments during his stay in
China had enabled him to relieve himself of liabilities, and this
without being at all niggardly in the hospitalities which he dispensed.
Sailing from Chusan on July 5th in the transport Lord
Hungerford, the colonel and headquarters of the Ninety-Eighth landed at
Calcutta on October 24th, 1846; the last of the detachments carried by
other transports arrived at the end of November, when the regiment was
complete. Colin Campbell meanwhile had been in charge of Fort-William,
but when the regiment began its march to Dinapore in December he resumed
its command. He really seemed to live for the Ninety-Eighth. Lord
Hardinge had expressed his intention of appointing him a brigadier of
the second class. "This,” writes Campbell, “is very flattering; but I
would prefer to remain with my regiment.” He writes with soldierly pride
of its conduct on the route-march: “The march of the regiment has been
conducted to my entire satisfaction, no men falling out, and the
distance of sections so correctly preserved that their wheeling into
line is like the operation of a field-day. Those who follow me will
benefit by this order and regularity in conducting the line of march.”
On arrival at Dinapore in the end of January, 1846, he found his
appointment in general orders as brigadier of the second class to
command at Lahore. Before starting for his new sphere he held what
proved to be his last inspection of the Ninety-Eighth. “ Men steady as
rocks,” he writes, “moving by bugle-sound as correctly as by word of
command — equally steady, accurate, and with the same precision.” In the
evening he spoke to the regiment some simple manly, soldierly words, to
which the men must have listened with no little emotion. He dined with
the mess the same night, when the president rose and proposed his health
in connection with the day’s inspection of the regiment and the
exertions he had made as commanding officer to produce such results.
“The toast,” he wrote, “was received with great warmth and cordiality.
... I could not speak without emotion, and my manner could not conceal
my deep anxiety respecting a corps in which I had served so long. I
begged that, if their old colonel had been sometimes anxious and
impatient with them, they would forget the manner and impatience of one
who had no other thought or object in life but to add to their honour
and reputation collectively and individually.”
Next day he started for Lahore, “feeling,” as he records
in his restrained yet sincere manner, “more than I expected when taking
leave of the officers who happened to be at my quarters at the moment of
my departure.” He had a pleasant meeting at Cawnpore with his old West
Indian comrades of the Twenty-First Fusiliers; and on the road between
Kurnal and Meerut he had an interview with the Governor-General Lord
Hardinge received him with the frank kindness of an old Peninsular man
to a comrade, described Henry Lawrence, the British Resident in the
Punjaub, as “the King of the country, clever and good-natured, but
hot-tempered,” and gave Campbell to understand that if any part of the
force in the Punjaub should be called upon to take the field, he should
have a command. A few days later he reached Saharunpore, the
headquarters for the time of Lord Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, also an
old Peninsular man, whom he found most cordial and friendly. The old
Chief asked him whether he could be of any service to him. Colin
Campbell, sedulous as ever for the welfare of the Ninety-Eighth, replied
that he had no favour to ask for himself, but that his lordship would
give him pleasure by removing his regiment nearer to the frontier as
early as might be, away from its present station which afforded the men
so many temptations to drink. On his arrival at Lahore in the end of
February, 1847, he was cordially received by Henry Lawrence, whose guest
at the Residency he became until he should find accommodation for
himself.
Campbell came into the Punjaub at a very interesting
period. The issue of the war of 1845-46 had placed that vast territory
at the mercy of the British Government, and Lord Hardinge might have
incorporated it with the Company’s dominions. But he desired to avoid
the last resource of annexation; and although he considered it necessary
to punish the Sikh nation for past offences and to prevent the
recurrence of aggression, he professed his intention to perform those
duties without suppressing the political existence of the Punjaub State.
The Treaty of Lahore accorded a nominally independent sovereignty to the
boy Prince Dhulip Singh, a British Representative was in residence at
Lahore, and the Sikh army was being reorganised and limited to a
specified strength. Within a few months Lall Singh, who had been
appointed Prime Minister, had been deposed, and a fresh treaty was
signed in December, 1846, which provided that a council of regency
composed of eight leading Sikh chiefs should be appointed to act under
the control and guidance of the British Resident, who was to exercise
unlimited influence in all matters of internal administration and
external policy. British troops were to be stationed in various forts
and quarters throughout the country, maintained from the revenues of the
State. The management was to continue for eight years until the Maharaja
Dhulip Singh should reach his majority. The treaty conferred on the
Resident unprecedented powers, and Major Henry Lawrence, an officer of
the Company's artillery, became in effect the successor of Runjeet
Singh.
This settlement had a specious aspect of some measure of
permanency. It might have lasted longer if the state of his health had
enabled Henry Lawrence to remain at his post; but it was unsound at the
core, for a valiant and turbulent race does not bow the neck
submissively after a single disastrous campaign on its frontier. But the
Punjaub seemed in a state of unruffled peace when Colin Campbell shook
hands with Henry Lawrence in the Residency of its capital. In those days
the familiar sobriquet of “Kubhurdar,” of which the English is “Take
care!”, had not attached itself to him; but Campbell, even when his
Highland blood was aflame in the rapture of actual battle, was never
either reckless or careless; and the motto “Be Mindful,” which he chose
for his coat of arms when he was made a peer, was simply a condensation
of the principles of cool wisdom and shrewd caution on which he acted
through life. A strong Sikh force, he found, was located in and about
Lahore, and the population of the city had a name for turbulence. In
order to inform himself as to how the troops were posted in relation to
the defences of the city, as well against an interior as an exterior
attack, one of his earliest concerns was to make a careful inspection of
the positions along with the responsible engineer. In choosing his
residence he held it to he his duty to have it in the proximity of his
troops. Soon after his arrival there was a fUe in the Shalimar gardens
to which all the garrison had been invited, but he allowed only half of
the officers of his command to be absent from their men, giving as his
reason that “if the Sikhs wanted to murder all the officers, they could
not have a better chance than when these were gathered four miles away
from their men, enjoying themselves at a fete.” In the measures of
precaution which he adopted he had the approval of Henry Lawrence and of
Sir Charles Napier, to the latter of whom he wrote on the subject.
Napier expressed himself in his trenchant fashion :—“I am delighted at
all your precautions against surprise. In India we who take these pains
are reckoned cowards. Be assured that English officers think it a fine
dashing thing to be surprised—to take no precautions. Formerly it was an
axiom in war that no man was fit to be a commander who permitted himself
to be surprised; but things are on a more noble footing now! ”
In the end of 1847 Henry Lawrence left Lahore and went
home to England in the same ship with Lord Hardinge. A week before they
sailed from Calcutta Hardinge’s successor, Lord Dalhousie, arrived there
and took the oaths as Governor-General,—a potentate at whose hands a few
years later Colin Campbell was to receive treatment which caused the
high-spirited soldier to resign the command he held and leave India. In
the Lahore Residency Henry Lawrence was succeeded temporarily hy his
brother John, who in March, 1818, gave place to Sir Frederick Currie, a
member of the Supreme Council. The position "was one which required the
experience and military knowledge of a soldier, but Sir Frederick Currie
was a civilian. In January Sir John Littler had been succeeded in the
Punjaub divisional command by Major-General Whish, an officer of the
Company’s service, an appointment which disappointed Colin Campbell who
had hoped for the independent command of the Lahore brigade.
The deceptive quietude of the Punjaub was now to be
exposed. When Sir Frederick Currie reached Lahore, he found there
Moolraj the Governor of Mooltan, a man of vast wealth who had come to
offer the resignation of his position for reasons that were chiefly
personal. Moolraj stipulated for some conditions which were not
conceded, and ultimately he resigned without any other condition than
that of saving his honour in the eyes of his own people. A new Governor
was appointed in his place, who set out for Mooltan accompanied by Mr.
Vans Agnew of the Bengal Civil Service and Mr. Agnew’s assistant,
Lieutenant Anderson of the Bombay Army. Moolraj marched with the escort
of the new Governor, to whom, on the day after the arrival of the party
in Mooltan, he formally surrendered the fort After the ceremony Agnew
and Anderson started on their return to camp, Moolraj riding alongside
the two English gentlemen. At the gate of the fortress Agnew was
suddenly attacked,—run through by a spear and slashed by sword-cuts. At
the same moment Anderson was cut down and desperately wounded. Moolraj
galloped off, leaving the Englishmen to their fate. Khan Singhs people
carried them into a temple wherein two days later they were brutally
slaughtered; their bodies were cut to pieces and their heads thrown down
at the feet of Moolraj. What share Moolraj had taken in this treacherous
butchery was never clearly ascertained ; but every indication pointed to
his complicity. This much is certain, that on the morning after the
assassination he transferred his family and treasure into the fort, and
placed himself at the head of the insurrectionary movement by issuing a
proclamation summoning all the inhabitants of the province, of every
creed, to make common cause in a religious war against the Feringhees.
News of the outrage and rising at Mooltan reached Lahore
on April 24th. It was emphatically a time for prompt action, if an
outbreak was to be crushed which else might grow into a general revolt
throughout the Punjaub. It was extremely unlikely that the fort of
Mooltan was equipped for an early and stubborn defence. To maintain our
prestige was essential, for it was by prestige and promptitude only that
we have maintained our pre-eminence in India. Sir Henry Lawrence would
have marched the Lahore brigade on Mooltan without an hour’s hesitation.
Lord Hardinge would "have ordered up the troops and siege-train from
Ferozepore and the strong force collected at Bukkur; and would have
invested Mooltan before Moolraj could have made any adequate
preparations for prolonged defence. Marches through Scinde, from the
northwestern frontier, and from Lahore, could not have been made in the
hot season without casualties; but, in the words of Marshman, “our
Empire in India had been acquired and maintained, not by fair-weather
campaigns, but by taking the field on every emergency and at any
season.”
On the first tidings from Mooltan Sir Frederick Currie
ordered a strong brigade of all arms to prepare for a march on that
stronghold, being of opinion that the citadel, described in poor Agnew’s
report as the strongest fort he had seen in India, would not maintain a
defence when a British force should present itself before it, but that
the garrison would immediately abandon Moolraj to his fate. Colin
Campbell, on the other hand, held that since the fort of Mooltan was
very strong it was to be anticipated that Moolraj would obstinately
defend it; in which case a brigade sent to Mooltan would be obliged to
remain inactive before it while siege-guns were being brought up, or, as
seemed more probable, should no reinforcements arrive in support, it
would have to retrace its steps followed and harassed by Moolrajds
active and troublesome rabble. Eventually, in great measure because of
the arguments advanced by Campbell, the movement from Lahore on Mooltan
was countermanded; and the Commander-in-Chief, with the concurrence of
the Governor-General, intimated his resolve to postpone, military
operations until the cold weather, when he would take the field in
person.
Meanwhile a casual subaltern, for whom swift marches and
hard fighting in hot weather had no terrors, struck in on his own
responsibility. Gathering in the wild - trans-Indus district of Bunnoo
some fifteen hundred men with a couple of guns, Lieutenant Herbert
Edwardes marched towards Mooltan. Colonel Cortland with two thousand
Pathans and six guns hastened to join him; and on May 20th the united
force defeated Moolraj’s army six thousand strong. The loyal Nawab of
Bhawalpore sent a strong force of his warlike Daudputras across the
Sutlej to join hands with Edwardes and Cortland; and the junction had
just been accomplished on the field of Kinairi some twenty miles from
Mooltan, when the allies, about nine thousand strong, were attacked by
Moolraj with a force of about equal magnitude. After half a day’s hard
fighting the enemy fled in confusion from the field. Edwardes and
Cortland moved up nearer to Mooltan, their force now raised to a
strength of about eighteen thousand; and there was a moment when Moolraj
seemed willing to surrender if his life were spared. But he rallied his
nerves and came out on July 1st with twelve thousand men to give battle
on the plain of Sudusain within sight of the walls of Mooltan. After
another obstinate fight his troops were thoroughly beaten and fled
headlong into the city. “Now,” wrote Edwardes to the Resident, “is the
time to strike; I have got to the end of my tether. If,” added the
gallant and clear-sighted subaltern, “you would only send, with a few
regular regiments, a few heavy guns and a mortar battery, we could close
Moolraj’s account in a fortnight, and obviate the necessity of
assembling fifty thousand men in October.”
Meanwhile the Resident had taken the strange course of
empowering the Lahore Durbar to despatch to Mooltan a Sikh force of some
five thousand men under Shere Singh. It was notorious that both
commander and troops were thoroughly disaffected; and so anxious was the
Resident to prevent the force from approaching Moolraj that Shere Singh
had orders to halt fifty miles short of Mooltan, and was only allowed to
join Edwardes after his victory of July 1st. In tardy answer to that
young officer’s appeal for reinforcements, in the end of July a force of
seven thousand men with a siege-train was ordered to converge on Mooltan
from Lahore and Ferozepore under the divisional command of General
Whish. It had been chiefly at Colin Campbell’s dissuasion that the
Resident had relinquished his intention of sending a force to Mooltan in
April. Campbell’s argument in that month had been the unfavourable
season for marching; and now in a season not less unfavourable he was
scarcely justified in considering himself the victim of a job in not
obtaining the command of the Lahore brigade ordered on Mooltan. The
disappointment proved fortunate, since a few months later he found
himself in command of a division in the field with the rank of
brigadier-general. By August 24th the whole of Whisk's field-force was
before Mooltan, but it was not until September 7th that the siege-guns
were in position. Moolraj, confident in the increased strength which our
delay had afforded him, spurned a summons to surrender. Active and
bloody approaches were carried on for a week, when Shere Singh with his
contingent suddenly passed over to the enemy. After this defection Whish
held it impossible to continue the siege, and he retired to a position
in the vicinity pending the arrival of reinforcements from Bombay. The
siege was reopened late in December: the city was stormed after a hard
fight; and finally on January 22nd, 1849, Moolraj surrendered at
discretion. It must be said of him that he had made a heroic defence.
By the end of September, 1848, the local outbreak was
fast swelling into a national revolt The flame of rebellion was
spreading over the Land of the Five Rivers, and by the end of October
only a few brave English officers were still holding together the last
shreds of British influence in the. Punjaub outside of Lahore and the
camp of General Whish. Moolraj was the reverse of cordial to Shere
Singh, who on October 9th quitted Mooltan and marched northward towards
Lahore, his original force of five thousand men strengthened at every
step by the warriors of the old Khalsa army who flocked eagerly to his
standard. After threatening Lahore he moved westward to meet the Bunnoo
insurgents, who had mutinied and murdered their officers, and he finally
took up a position h, cheval of the Chenab at Ramnuggur, his main body
on the right hank of the river.
During the summer and autumn Colin Campbell passed an
uneasy and anxious . time. It was not until the beginning of November
that he had the full assurance of being employed in the manifestly
impending campaign. By this time Cureton’s cavalry brigade and Godby’s
infantry brigade were in the Doab between the Ravee and the Chenab, and
on November 12th Colin Campbell joined Cureton there with two native
infantry regiments, taking command of the advanced force with the
temporary rank of brigadier-general. At length Lord Gough himself took
the field, and 011 the 19th he crossed the Eavee at the head of an army
of respectable strength. Apart from the division before Mooltan and the
garrison required for Lahore, he had available for field service four
British and eleven native infantry regiments. He was strong in cavalry,
with three fine British regiments, five of native light cavalry, and
five corps of irregular horse; and his powerful artillery consisted of
sixty horse and field guns, eight howitzers, and ten 18-pounders. On the
early morning of the 22nd his lordship, with Colin Campbell's infantry
division and a cavalry force under Cureton with horse and field
artillery, marched from Saharun towards Bamnuggur with the object of
driving across the Chenab some Sikh infantry reported to be still on the
left bank. Some small detachments hurrying towards the river were
pursued somewhat recklessly by horse-artillery, which had to retire
under the heavy fire opened from the Sikh batteries on the commanding
right bank, A gun and two waggons stuck fast in the deep sand and could
not be extricated. Colin Campbell suggested to Lord Gough the measure of
protecting the gun until it could be withdrawn at night, by placing
infantry to cover it in a ravine immediately in its rear; but the
Commander-in-Chief disapproved of this measure. The enemy lost no time
in sending the whole of his cavalry across the river to take possession
of the gun under cover of his overwhelming artillery fire. Our cavalry
was foolishly sent forward to charge the superior hostile horse,—a folly
which was committed, according to Colin Campbell, under the personal
direction of the Commander-in-Chief. Ouvry’s squadron of the Third Light
Dragoons made a brilliant and useful charge which materially aided the
withdrawal of the artillery. In the face of a heavy fire Colonel William
Havelock, a noble soldier who had fought in the Peninsula and at
Waterloo, led on the Fourteenth Light Dragoons to a desperate combat
with the Sikh horse. The horses of the dragoons were exhausted by the
long gallop through the heavy sand and the casualties were heavy. Among
the slain was Havelock himself, after a hand-to-hand combat; and while
riding forward to stay Havelock’s last advance Brigadier-General Cureton,
who had raised himself to distinction from the ranks in which he had
enlisted as a runaway lad, was killed by a Sikh bullet.
Lord Gough withdrew his troops beyond the reach of the
Sikh batteries and awaited the arrival of his heavy guns and the
remainder of his force. If his intention was to refrain from coming to
close quarters with the enemy until the fall of Mooltan should bring him
reinforcements, he was well placed on the left bank of the Chenab,
covering Lahore and the siege of Mooltan and leaving Shere Singh
undisturbed. If on the other hand he preferred the offensive, that
offensive should have been prompt; a rapid stroke might have ended the
business, for the Sikhs, as the sequel proved, were eager enough for
fighting. And to all appearance the Commander-in-Chief meant to gratify
their desire. To do so he had in the first instance to cross the Chenab.
To accomplish this by direct assault on the Sikh position on the
opposite bank was impracticable; and he resolved to compel the enemy’s
withdrawal by a wide turning movement with part of his force under the
command of Sir Joseph Thackwell, an experienced soldier. Thackwell’s
command consisted of Colin Campbell’s strong division, a cavalry
brigade, three troops of horse-artillery, two field-batteries and two
heavy guns,—in all about eight thousand men. This force started in the
early morning of December 1st, and after a march of twenty-four miles up
the left bank of the Chenab was across that river at Wuzeerabad by noon
of the 2nd. The same afternoon the force marched ten miles down the
right bank and bivouacked. During the short march of the following
morning Thackwell learned that a brigade was on its way to reinforce
him, crossing by an intermediate ford; whereupon he halted the force and
rode away in search of this reinforcement. Before he departed Colin
Campbell asked permission to deploy and take up a position. Thackwell
replied, “No—remain where you are until my return,”
The force was then in open ground in front of the village
of Sadoolapore, which has given its name to the engagement. Campbell
rode to the front to reconnoitre. In front of the centre were some
hostile horse; to the right in wooded ground some detachments of cavalry
and infantry were seen scattered about. Certain that the enemy was in
force and near at hand, he returned to the force and as a measure of
precaution occupied with an infantry company each of the three villages
in his front,—Langwala, Khamookhan and Rutta. The force, in his own
words, “was not in a state of formation for troops to be when liable to
be attacked at any moment. However, my orders were imperative not to
deploy.” Two hours later the enemy opened fire with their artillery from
the woodland behind the villages.
At that moment Thackwell returned, and he ordered the
companies holding the three villages to withdraw and rejoin their
respective corps. The columns were immediately deployed. Between the
British line and the Sikh troops, which had occupied the villages and
were firing heavily from some twenty pieces of artillery while large
bodies of their cavalry were threatening both flanks of the British
force, was a smooth open space over which Thackwell desired to advance
to the attack. Colin Campbell suggested that “as they were coming on so
cockily, we should allow them to come out into the plain before we
moved.” He states in his journal that, since presently the enemy halted
at the villages and there plied their artillery firo, he was convinced
that they did not intend to come further forward; and that he twice
begged of Thackwell to be allowed to attack with his infantry but was
not permitted. The affair then resolved itself into a simple cannonade
the result of which was to silence the Sikh fire. By this time Thackwell
had received permission from the Commander-in-Chief to act as his
judgment should dictate, whether his reinforcements had come up or not.
It seemed the moment for an advance; the troops were full of eagerness,
and a portion at least of the enemy’s guns were in Thackwell’s grasp.
Thackwell, however, exercised caution for the time, hoping most likely
for a decisive victory on the morrow. But during the night the enemy
withdrew and marched away towards the Jhelum, probably without having
sustained serious loss. That of the British amounted to some seventy
men. Thackwell’s turning movement had not been brilliant, and
Sadoolapore was not an affair to be very proud of; but it had brought
about the relinquishment by the Sikhs of their position on the right
bank of the Chenab, and this enabled the main British force to cross the
river. By the 5th the mass of the army was at Heylah, about midway
between Ram-nuggur and Chillianwallah; but the Commander-in-Chief and
headquarters did not cross the Chenab until December 18th.
If until then Lord Gough had been trammelled by superior
authority, a few days later he was set free to act on his own
judgment,—the result of which was simply absolute inaction until
January, 1849. On the 11th of that month he reviewed his troops at
Lassourie, and next day he was encamped at Dinjhi, whence the Sikh army
had fallen back into the sheltering jungle, its right resting on Mung,
its left on the broken ground and strong entrenchments about the village
and heights of Russoul. Colin Campbell had been suffering from fever
resulting from night exposure in bivouac during Thackwell’s flank march;
he had been on the sick list until the 10th and was still weak. In the
memoir of the late Sir Henry Durand by bis son occurs an interesting
passage illustrative of Campbell’s anxiety that the ground on which the
enemy’s position was to be approached should be properly reconnoitred.
Durand writes: “Whilst in the Commander-in-Chief’s camp to-day (11th)
the projected attack on the enemy’s position was described to me by
General Campbell. He had just been with the Commander-in-Chief, who had
spoken of attacking the Sikh position on the 13th. Campbell, seeing that
his lordship had no intention of properly reconnoitring the position,
was anxious on the subject; and we went into the tent of Tremenheere the
chief engineer, to discuss the matter. Campbell opened on the subject,
announcing the intention to attack, and that it was to be done blindly,
that was to say without any reconnaissance but such as the moment might
afford on debouching from the jungle. He advocated a second march from
Dinjhi, the force prepared to bivouac for the night, and that the 13th
should be passed by the engineers in reconnoitring. Campbell wished
Tremenheere to suggest this measure in a quiet way to the
Commander-in-Chief; but he said that since the passage of the Chenab the
Chief was determined to take no advice, nor brook any volunteered
opinions; and he proposed that I should speak to John Gough (the
Commander-in-Chief’s nephew) and try to engage him to put it into the
Commander-in-Chief’s mind to adopt such a course.” It is not certain
that anything came of this improvised council of war : but there is no
question that up to the afternoon of the 13th Lord Gough intended to
defer the attack until the following morning.
Early on the 13th the army was at length marching on the
enemy. The heavy guns moved along the road leading over the Russoul
ridge to the Jhelum fords. Gilbert’s division marched on their right,
Colin Campbell’s (the third) on their left, with the cavalry and light
artillery on their respective flanks. The original intention was that
Gilbert’s (the right) division, with the greater part of the field-guns,
was to advance on Russoul, while Campbell’s division and the heavy guns
should stand fast on the left, overthrow the left of the Sikhs, and thus
cut them off from retiring along the high road toward Jhelum. Their left
thus turned, Gilbert and Campbell were to operate conjointly against the
Sikh line, which it was hoped would be rolled back upon Moong and driven
to the southward. A reconnaissance made by Tremenheere and Durand
reported the road clear and practicable up to Eussoul, hut that the
enemy was marching down from the heights apparently to take up a
position on the plain. The march was resumed to beyond the village of
Umrao; hut when deserters brought in the intelligence that the enemy was
forming to the left front of Gough’s line of march behind the village of
Chillianwallah, he quitted the Eussoul road, inclined to his left, and
moved straight on Chillianwallah. An outpost on the mound of
Chillianwallah was driven in upon the main body of the enemy, and from
that elevated position was clearly discernible the Sikh army drawn out
in battle array. Its right centre directly in front of Chillianwallah
was about two miles distant from that village, but less from the British
line, which was being deployed about five hundred yards in its front.
There was a gap nearly three-quarters of a mile wide between the right
wing of the Sikhs under Utar Singh, and the right of the main body under
Sbere Singb. The British line when deployed could do little more than
oppose a front to Shere Singh’s centre and right, which latter, however,
it overlapped a little, so that part of Campbell’s left brigade was
opposite to a section of the gap between Shere Singh’s right and Utar
Singh’s left. Between the hostile lines there intervened a belt of
rather dense low jungle, not forest, but a mixture of thorny mimosa
bushes and wild caper.
It was near two o’clock in the afternoon of a winter day,
and the troops had been under arms since daybreak. Lord Gough,
therefore, wisely determined to defer the action until the morrow, and
the camping-ground was being marked out. But the Sikh leaders knew well
how prone to kindle was the temperament of the gallant old Chief. They
themselves were keen for fighting, and the British commander needed
little provocation to reciprocate their mood when they gave him a
challenge of a few cannon shots. Late in the day though it was, he
determined on immediate attack. The heavy guns were ordered up and
opened fire at a range of some sixteen hundred yards, the gunners in the
thick jungle having no other means of judging distance than by timing
the intervals between tbe flash and report of the Sikh guns. The advance
of the infantry soon obliged the fire of the British guns to cease. The
line pressed on eagerly, its formation somewhat impaired by the
thickness of the jungle through which it had to force its way, and met
in the teeth as it pushed forward by the artillery fire which the enemy,
no longer smitten by the heavy guns, poured on the advancing ranks of
the British infantry. For a while nothing but the roar of the Sikh
artillery was to be heard; but after a short time the sharp rattle of
the musketry told that the conflict had begun in earnest and that the
British infantry were closing on the hostile guns. Of the two divisions
Gilbert’s had the right, Colin Campbell’s the left. The latter had been
the first to receive the order to advance and was the first engaged.
Pennycuick commanded Campbell’s right brigade, consisting of the
Twenty-Fourth Queen’s, and the Twenty-Fifth and Forty-Fifth native
infantry regiments; Hoggan’s, his left brigade, was formed of the
Sixty-First Queen’s and the Thirty-Sixth
and Forty-Sixth Sepoy regiments. In the interval between
the brigades moved a field-battery, and on the left of the division
three guns of another. At some distance on Campbell’s left were a
cavalry brigade and three troops of horse-artillery under Thackwell,
whose duty it was to engage the attention of Utar Singh’s detachment and
to attempt to hinder that force from taking Campbell in flank and in
reverse. The nature of the ground to be fought over rendered it
impossible that the divisional commander could superintend the attack of
more than one brigade; and Colin Campbell had arranged with Pennycuick
that he himself should remain with the left brigade. Pennycuick’s
brigade experienced an adverse fate. During the advance its regiments
were exposed to the fire of some eighteen guns on a mound directly in
their front, from which they suffered very severely. The Twenty-Fourth,
a fine and exceptionally strong regiment, advancing rapidly on the
hostile batteries carried them by storm, but encountered a deadly fire
from the infantry masses on either flank of the guns. The regiment
sustained fearful losses. Pennycuick and thirteen officers of the
regiment were killed at the guns, nine were wounded, two hundred and
three of the men were killed and two hundred and sixty-six wounded. The
native regiments of the brigade failed adequately to support the
Twenty-Fourth, and musketry volleys from the Sikh infantry, followed by
a rush of cavalry, completed the disorder and defeat of the ill-fated
body. Already broken, it now fled, pursued with great havoc by the Sikh
horse almost to its original position $t the beginning of the action.
Hoggan’s brigade, the left of Colin Campbell’s division,
had better fortune. Campbell himself conducted it and its advance was
made without any great difficulty. Its experiences he thus described in
his journal:—“I took care to regulate the rate of march of the centre or
directing regiment (H.M.’s Sixty-First), so that all could keep up; and
consequently the brigade emerged from the wood in a very tolerable line.
We found the enemy posted on an open space on a slight rise. He had four
guns, which played upon us in our advance \ a large body of cavalry
stood directly in front of the Sixty-First, and on the cavalry’s left a
large body of infantry in face of the Thirty-Sixth N.I. That regiment
went at the Sikh infantry and was repulsed; the Sixty-First moved
gallantly and steadily on the Sikh cavalry in its front, which slowly
retired. When the Sixty-First had nearly reached the ground which the
cavalry had occupied, I ordered the regiment to open its fire to hasten
their departure.” This fire was delivered as the corps advanced in line,
a manoeuvre constantly practised by Campbell, and it put the Sikh
cavalry to a hasty flight. At this moment the enemy pushed forward two
of their guns to within about twenty-five yards of the right flank of
the Sixty-First, and opened with grape while their infantry were
actually in rear of its right. Campbell promptly wheeled to the light
the two right companies of the Sixty-First and headed them in their
charge on the two Sikh guns. Those were captured, whereupon the two
companies opened fire on the flank of the Sikh infantry in pursuit of
the Thirty-Sixth Native Infantry and obliged the former to desist and
fall back. While the Sixty-First was completing its new alignment to the
right, an evolution by which Shere Singh’s right flank was effectually
turned, the enemy advanced with two more guns strongly supported by
infantry. Neither of the two native regiments had succeeded in forming
on the new alignment of the Sixty-First; “but,” writes Campbell, “the
confident bearing of the enemy and the approaching and steady fire of
grape from their two guns made it necessary to advance, and to charge
when we got within proper distance. I gave the word to advance and
subsequently to charge, heading the Sixty-First immediately opposite the
guns as I had done in the former instance. These two attacks,” he
continues, et gave the greatest confidence to the Sixty-First, and it
was evident that in personally guiding and commanding the soldiers in
these two successful attacks under difficult circumstances, I had gained
the complete confidence and liking of the corps, and that with it I
could undertake with perfect certainty of success anything that could be
accomplished by men.”
While Campbell was leading the earlier charge on the two
first Sikh guns, one of the enemy’s artillerymen who had already fired
at him from under a gun apparently without result, rushed forward sword
in hand and cut at the General, inflicting a deep sword-cut on his right
arm. Not until the following morning was it discovered that the Sikh
gunner’s bullet had found its billet, fortunately an innocuous one. It
had smashed to atoms the ivory handle of a small pistol which Campbell
carried in a pocket of his waistcoat, and had also broken the bow of bis
watch. The Sikh’s aim was true, and but for the pistol and the watch
Colin Campbell would never have seen another battle. His charger was
found to be wounded by a musket-shot which had passed through both sides
of the mouth and finally had lodged and flattened in the curb-chain.
The journal thus continues:—“After the capture of the
second two guns, and the dispersion of the enemy, we proceeded rolling
up his line, continuing along the line of the hostile position until we
had taken thirteen guns, all of them by the Sixty-First at the point of
the bayonet. We finally met Mountain’s brigade coming from the opposite
direction. During our progress we were on several occasions threatened
by the enemy’s cavalry on our flank and rear. The guns were all spiked,
but having no means with the force to remove them and it being too small
to admit of any portion being withdrawn for their protection, they were,
with the exception of the last three that were taken, unavoidably left
on the field.”
Colin Campbell had to fight hard for his success, and it
was well for him that in the gallant Sixty-First he had a staunch and
resolute English regiment. But he would have had to fight yet more hard,
and then might not have attained success, if away on his left Thackwell
had not been holding Utar Singh in check and impeding his efforts to
harass Campbell’s flank and rear. Brind’s three troops of
horse-artillery expended some twelve hundred rounds in a hot duel with
Utar Singh’s cannon which else would have been playing on Campbell’s
flank, and Unett’s gallant troopers of the famous “Third Light” crashed
through Sikh infantry edging away to their left with intent to take
Campbell in reverse. Thackwell did his valiant best until he and his
command were called away to the endangered right, but before then he had
time to serve Campbell materially, although he could not entirely
prevent Utar Singh’s people from molesting that commander; and although
Campbell did not record the critical episode, there vras a period when
he found himself engaged simultaneously in front, flank, and rear, and
when the brigade was extricated from its entanglement only by his own
ready skill and the indomitable staunchness of the noble Sixty-First.
In spite of the disasters which chequered it the battle
of Hillianwaliah may be regarded as a technical victory for the British
arms, since the enemy was compelled to quit the field, although they
only retired into the strong position on the Bussoul heights from w hich
in the morning they had descended into the plain to fight. The moral
results of the action w ere dismal, and the cost of the barren struggle
was a loss of two thousand four hundred killed and wounded. At home the
intelli gence of this waste of blood excited feelings of alarm and
indignation, and Sir Charles Napier was inme diately despatched to India
to supersede Lord Gough in the position of Commander-in-Chief. Meanwhile
the army lay passiv e in its encampment at Chillianwadah, within sight
of the Sikh position at Bussoul, awaiting the surrender of Mooltan and
the accession of strength it would receive in consequence of that event.
The Sikh leader more than once gave the British Commander-in-Chief an
opportunity to fight, but Gongh with tardy wisdom resisted the offered
temptation, resolved not to join issues until his reinforcements from
Mooltan should reach him. On the night of February 13th the Sikh army
abandoned Bussoul, marched round the British right flank, and on the
14th was well on its way to Goojerat. Gough, who had slowly followed to
within a march of Goojerat, was joined at Koonjah by the Mooltan force
on the 18th and 19th, and on the 20th advanced to Shadawal whence the
Sikh encampment around the town of Goojerat was within sight The
battlefield of February 21st was the wide plain to the south of Goojerat,
intersected by two dry water-courses. The Sikh line of battle extended
from Morarea Tibba, where their cavalry was in force, along an easterly
bend of the Bimber (the western) channel, thence across the plain,
behind the three villages of Kalra which were occupied by infantry, to
Malkawallah a village on the left hank of the eastern channel Against
this extended front advanced the British army, now twenty-three thousand
strong with ninety guns, eighteen of which were heavy siege-pieces. The
heavy guns, followed by two and a half infantry brigades, moved over the
plain between the two channels. Campbell’s division and Dundas’ brigade
were on the left bank of the western channel, with Thackwell’s cavalry
still further to the left. The Sikhs, ever ready with their artillery,
opened the battle with that arm. Gough at last had been taught by hard
experience that an artillery preparation should precede his favourite
"cold steeL” The British batteries went out to the front and began a
magnificent and effective cannonade which lasted for two hours and
crushed the fire of the Sikh guns. The infantry then deployed and
marched forward, stormed the three Kalra villages after experiencing a
desperate and prolonged resistance, and swept on up the plain toward
Goojerat. There was little bloodshed on the right of the Bimber channel,
where marched Campbell and Dundas, hut there was plenty of that skill
which spares precious lives. Campbell describes how he handled his
division:—“I formed my two brigades in contiguous columns of regiments
with a verv strong line of skirmishers—the artillery in line with the
skirmishers. When we arrived within long range of the enemy’s guns, we
deployed into line. In this order, the artillery—twelve 9-pounders with
the skirmishers anil the infantry in line close in rear, advanced as at
a review; the guns firing into the masses of infantry and cavalry behind
the nullah, who gradually melted away and took shelter in its channel. I
then caused the artillery of my division to be turned on the fiank -if
these throngs while the Bombay troop of horse-artillery fired direct on
their front. I finally dislodged them by artillery which enfiladed the
nullah, and which was moved forward and placed in position for that
object. I was ordered to storm this nullah; hut to have done so with
infantry would have occasioned a useless and needless sacrifice of life.
Recognising that the result could be obtained by gun-fire without
risking the life of a man, I proceeded on my own responsibility to
employ my artillery in enfilading the nullah; and after thus clearing it
of the enemy, I had the satisfaction of seeing the whole of our left
wing pass this formidable defence of the enemy’s right wing without
firing a shot or losing a man. We had too much slaughter at
Chil-lianwalluh because due precaution had not been taken to prevent it
by the employment of our magnificent artillery. Having felt this
strongly and expressed it to theCommander-in-Chief in warm terms, I had
determined to employ this arm thenceforth to the fullest extent; and I
did so, accordingly, in the battle of Goojerat.” The discomfiture of the
enemy was thorough.
Cavalry, infantry, and artillery left the field in utter
confusion. The rout was too complete to allow of the reunion of formed
bodies in anything like order. A body of Sikh horse with a brigade of
Afghan cavalry adventured an advance on Thackwell’s flank. He hurled
against them the Scinde Horse and the Ninth Lancers, and a wild stampede
resulted. The rest of the British cavalry struck in and rushed on,
dispersing, riding over, and trampling down the Sikh infantry, capturing
guns and waggons, and converting the discomfited enemy into a shapeless
mass of fugitives. The horsemen did not draw rein until they had ridden
fifteen miles beyond Goojerat, by which time the army of Shere Singh was
a wreck, deprived of its camp, its standards, and fifty-three of its
cherished guns. On the morning after the battle Sir Walter Gilbert
started in pursuit of the broken Sikh host, while Campbell took out his
division in the direction of Dowlutanuggur, but the latter was recalled
on the 25th. On March 6th, however, he received the order to join
Gilbert’s force in room of Brigadier Mountain who had been injured by
the accidental discharge of his pistol. On the road to Rawul Pindi on
the 15th he passed the greater part of the Sikh army with its chiefs,
who were laying down their arms. Campbell was moved by the fine attitude
of the men of the Khalsa army. “There was,” he wrote, “nothing cringing
in the manner of these men in laying down their arms. They acknowledged
themselves beaten, and they were starving—destitute alike of food and
money. Each man as he laid down his arms received a rupee to enable him
to support himself while on his way to his home. The greater number of
the old men especially, when laying duwn their arms, made a deep
reverence or salaam as they placed their swords on the heap, with the
muttered words ‘Runjeet Singh is dead to-day!’ This was said with deep
feeling ; they are undoubtedly a fine and brave people.” On the 21st
Gilbert and Campbell reached Feshawur, and the latter encamped near the
fort of Jumrood at the mouth of the Khvber Pass, through which the
Afghans, whom Dost Mahomed had sent into the Punjaub to reinforce the
Sikhs in their warfare with the British forces, had retreated very
shortly before. The campaign was at an end; and early in April Colin
Campbell took command of the Sind Sagur District with his headquarters
at Rawul Pindi. There he shared a house with his friend Mansfield, who
in the time of the Mutiny was to be his Chief-of-Staff. In July there
occurred an event which called for all his firmness and discretion. Two
native infantry regiments stationed at Rawul Pindi refused to accept the
cantonment scale of pay, which was lower than they had been receiving
when on campaign. Evidence was clear that the combination to resist the
cantonment scale had spread to other stations, and the situation was
temporarily critical; but fortunately there was a British regiment at
Rawul Pindi, and the sepoys came to reason without the necessity on
Campbell’s part of resorting to strong measures. When at Rawul Pindi he
had the gratification to learn of his having been promoted to be a
Knight of the Bath for his services in the recent campaign; and Sir
Charles Napier in sending him the intimation added that “no man had won
it better,” and expressed the hope that “he would lung wear the spurs.”
In November he was transferred to the divisional command
of the Peshawur District, a more important, but also a more unquiet post
than Rawul Pindi. Thenceforth for three years he was to be the Warden of
the turbulent north-western frontier. It pleased him to find in his
command his old regiment the Ninety-Eighth, and also the Sixty-First
which he had led at Chillianwallah. When in February, 1850, Sir Charles
Napier reached Peshawur on a tour of inspection, Sir Colin was able to
assemble for review quite a little army of all ranks; three troops of
horse-artillery and two field-batteries, three cavalry regiments, three
European and three native infantry regiments. While Sir Charles was in
Colin Campbell’s district, it happened that he came under hostile fire
for the last time in his tumultuous life. Between Peshawur and Kohat,
both places in British territory, a mountain road ran outside that
territory through a long and dangerous defile. The Afridis inhabiting
the intervening hill country had complained that their subsidy for
keeping open the pass had not been paid, and in revenge had slaughtered
a working party of sappers and miners. Sir Charles determined to force
the defile in person. Campbell, on Napier’s requisition, detailed a
tolerably strong force as escort to the Commander-in-Chief. It chanced
that before starting Napier inspected a regiment of irregulars under the
control of the much-vaunted Punjaub Government. The men were of fine
physique, but “one soldier had a musket without a lock, another a lock
without a musket. A stalwart soldier, his broad chest swelling with
military pride, his eyes sparkling with a malicious twinkle, held on his
shoulder between his finger and thumb a flint—his only arm.” The defile
was duly forced, but its passage was one long skirmish. Kohat was
inspected and reinforced, but Napier, on commencing his return march,
found that the pickets left to keep the road open had been roughly
handled and had suffered serious loss. The Afridis were very daring, and
actually fired on Sir Charles and his staff at short range. The loss
sustained in this somewhat quixotic expedition amounted to one hundred
and ten men killed and wounded—“not much,” comments Napier grimly, “when
one considers the terrible defile through which we passed, defended by a
warlike race.” His biographer calls the enterprise an “ interesting
episode it certainly was not a very wise enterprise to be undertaken by
the Commander-in-Chief of British India. It was Napier’s last
eccentricity of a military character. By the end of the year he resigned
the command of the army of India, and was succeeded by Sir William Gomm,
an old brother officer of Colin Campbell in the Ninth in the Peninsula
days.
In March, 1851, Lord Dalhousie visited Peshawur and
discussed with Sir Colin the policy to be adopted towards the
troublesome and turbulent tribes on the north-western border. Scarcely
had the Governor-General gone when news came in that a Momund tribe, of
the region north of Peshawur between the Swat and Cabul rivers, had been
raiding into British territory. Dalhousie left to Sir Colin the decision
whether to make signal reprisals or to adopt defensive measures, and, as
the result of the description of the wild and rugged region sent him by
Sir Colin after a reconnaissance he had made, elected for the defensive
as an experiment.
It failed, for in October the Momunds of Michni made an
irruption upon some villages within British territory. The
Governor-General now decided on an immediate resort to active measures,
and Sir Colin was ordered to inflict summary chastisement on the
offending tribe. He marched from Peshawur on October 25th with a force
of all arms about twelve hundred strong, and advanced to the confines of
the Michni territory. He did not hurry, because he desired that his
political officer should have opportunity to inform the inhabitants of
the conditions intended to be offered them; which were annexation of the
territory, exile for the irreconcilables, and the retention of their
lands by the cultivators on payment of revenue. Campbell's humane view
was that “to drive into the hills the whole population of Michni,
occupying some seven and twenty villages, could only result in forcing
them to prey on the plunder of the villages inside the border.” The
villages and fortalices whose inhabitants were implicated in the
violation of British territory were destroyed under a harmless fire
maintained by the mountaineers; but, as Campbell records, “while engaged
in duties in which no soldier can take pleasure no lives were lost on
either side. God t knows the rendering homeless of two or three hundred
families is a despicable task enough, without adding loss of life to
this severe punishment.” The British camp was more than once assailed by
bodies of Momund tribes, and one of those attacks was made by some five
thousand hillmen whom Sir Colin dispersed by shell fire. A fort was
built and garrisoned in the Michni country, and the field-force returned
to Peshawur in February, 1852. With the results it had accomplished the
Governor-General expressed his entire satisfaction.
The column had scarcely settled down in Peshawur when
fresh troubles were reported from the wearyful Momund frontier. Sir
Colin hurried thither with two horse-artillery guns and two hundred and
sixty native troopers, to find the Momund chief Sadut Khan in position
on the edge of the Panj Pao upland, fronting towards Muttah, with six
thousand matchlock men and some eighty horsemen. The affair had its
interesting features. Sir Colin took in reverse the Momund hordes with
his artillery fire, broke up their masses, put them to flight, and
pursued them. As he was preparing to return the Momunds suddenly wheeled
in their tracks and rushed upon him over the broken ground. The guns
were instantly unlimbered, and double charges of grape checked the wild
and gallant attack,—a brilliant rally after the endurance of two hours’
shell fire followed by a hasty retreat. The mountaineers continued to
press Campbell’s slow retirement across the table-land, notwithstanding
the fire of grape which he maintained. The incident strengthened his
belief in the superior efficacy of defensive operations, and he declined
to fall in with the anxious wish of the Punjaub Board of Administration
that he should act on the offensive against the Momunds, on the ground
that he was not prepared to execute operations of that character without
the most precise orders by the Commander-in-Chief, the authority to
which he was responsible. His reply met with the full approval of the
Commander-in-Chief, which however the Governor - General did not share.
Sir Colin maintained his ground with the approval of the former
authority, when pressed by the Commissioner of Peshawur to enter Swat.
Meanwhile the Ootman-Kheyl tribe had become implicated in the murder of
a native official in British employ at Char-suddah. Sir Colin had no
hesitation in taking measures to inflict punishment on this powerful and
turbulent clan. A column of all arms, two thousand four hundred and
fifty strong, was assembled on the left bank of the Swat river, and on
May 11th proceeded to destroy a group of deserted villages belonging to
the Ootman-KheyL The column then advanced on the large village of
Prangurh, the Ootman-Kheyl stronghold. It .had been prepared for
defence, and was crowded with men who opened fire on Sir Colin’s
advanced guard. Covered by artillery fire his troops carried the village
with a rush, after a stout defence on the part of the enemy. During the
destruction of Prangurh letters were found proving a strong feeling of
hostility towards the British Government on the part of the rulers of
Swat. Sir Colin then fell in with the views of the Commissioner, and
declared himself prepared to invade the Swat territory unless he should
be absolutely prohibited by the Commander-In-Chief.
The British force next moved upon Iskakote, a large
village of Kanizai, a dependency of Swat, whither large bodies of
hillmen hastened to defend the village and valley. Sir Colin estimated
the number of the hostile clansmen to be not less than six thousand.
They made a stubborn resistance, and endured a sharp cannonade with
great firmness. The Guides and Ghoorkas stormed the nullah with some
hand-to-hand fighting, whereupon, having suffered severe loss, the enemy
broke up and made for the hills pursued by the cavalry.
The Commander-in-Chief interposed no veto on the invasion
of Swat, but it became apparent to Sir Colin Campbell that the transport
for that operation was inadequate and inefficient. Experience of the
opposition he had encountered in the Iskakote affair, and a subsequent
reconnaissance in theRanizai valley, convinced him that his infantry
would require a reinforcement of two thousand five hundred men, without
receiving which he could not proceed to the invasion of Swat. The
Punjaub Board of Administration refused his requisition for the number
of troops he asked, and as it was unadvisable to keep the force in the
field in the hot weather, the column returned to Peshawur in the
beginning of June.
Campbell had already been made aware by the
Commander-in-Chief of the Governor-General’s dissatisfaction, which in
the shape of a formal censure awaited him at Peshawur. Lord Dalhousie
used expressions which must have cut the old fighting man to the quick.
His lordship chose to tell the soldier of many battles that he had
manifested “over-cautious reluctance” in advancing against the Swat
marauders in March. Presently came the further charge that not only had
he “transgressed the bounds of his proper province,” but that “he had
placed himself in an attitude of direct and proclaimed insubordination
to the authority of the Governor-General in Council.” Campbell replied
with disciplined dignity and self-respect, expressing his regret that
expressions so strong should have been used in regard to him, and his
painful surprise that after a lifetime of unswerving military
subordination he should be accused of the reverse. He was aware that he
was in disaccord with the Government, and already when in the field he
had determined to resign his command, an intention which he had
communicated to the Commander-in-Chief. To that old friend he wrote
without heat:—“I have come to the conclusion that I should be wanting in
what is due to myself, if, after what has passed, I were to continue in
this command; there is a limit at which a man’s forbearance ought to
stop, and that limit has in my case been reached.”
Sir Colin resigned his command on July 25th. He declined
a farewell banquet to which the officers of the Peshawur garrison
desired to invite him, believing that in the circumstances to accept the
honour would be contrary to the spirit of the Queen’s regulations. After
spending three months in the bracing hill-station of Murree, in the end
of October he visited at Dugshai the Ninety-Eighth regiment, to his
original position as senior lieutenant-colonel of which he had reverted
on the resignation of his divisional command; then, after a brief visit
to Simla, he sailed from Bombay, arriving in England in March, 1853.
Before leaving India he had read the official acknowledgment by the
Government of the services of the troops engaged in the recent
operations. The despatch recorded the Governor-General’s regret “that
any incident should have occurred to deserve a censure of any portion of
Sir Colin Campbell’s conduct;” but it “acknowledged in the most ample
terms the ability, the personal intrepidity and activity, and the
sterling soldierly qualities, which this distinguished officer had
displayed in the military command of the troops at Peshawur upon every
occasion on which they had taken the field.” The amende honorable was
well enough in its lumbering way; but it could scarcely take away the
hitter flavour of the barbed and venomous insinuation conveyed in the
cruel words “over-cautious reluctance.” |
