|
The Mutiny had come to an end, although there was still a
ground-swell of disturbance on the Oude frontier opposite Nepaul, in
Bundelcund, and in some other districts of Central India. It was not
until the end of May, 1859, that Lord Clyde could confidently state that
the last embers of rebellion had been extinguished, and that the
provinces of India which during the preceding two years had been the
scene of so much lawlessness, bloodshed, and disorder, were now
subsiding into a state of profound tranquillity.
The oldest soldier on active service of all the army in
India, so strong was Lord Clyde’s constitution that from the day he
first took the field until the accident which befell him on the Nepaul
frontier a few days before the termination of the final campaign, he had
never suffered a day’s illness. His vigour and energy had been
extraordinary; the heat which prostrated so many of his followers was
borne lightly by the tough and seasoned veteran, who despised all
luxury, lived in a small tent, was content with the rations of the
soldiers, and cheerfully bivouacked with them under the stars. But now
that the stress of campaigning was over, and when, he had reached
Lucknow from the Nepaul frontier, the irritation of the broken rib,
which was among the injuries he received in the accident that befell him
before Burgidiah, resulted in a sharp attack of inflammation of the
lungs. For some days he was very ill, and his surgeon Maekinnon found
him the reverse of a docile patient, for he hated medicine and could
scarce be induced to remain quietly in bed. He gradually, however,
recovered; and then, urged by Lord Canning to betake himself for rest to
the hills, he left Lucknow with the headquarters on March 1st and
proceeded by way of Agra and Delhi to Simla. At Delhi he spent several
days investigating with the keenest interest the scenes of the memorable
struggle there, and everything connected with the operations before that
fortress. At Umbala he reviewed the troops quartered in that station,
and reached Simla in the last week of April. His great work
accomplished, he had a right to believe that there had now come an end
to the cares which the rebellion entailed on him. In the bracing
atmosphere of the hills he looked forward to a perfect restoration to
health, and to the early realisation of his cherished hope of spending
his last years with friends at home. But scarcely had he settled himself
at Simla when tidings reached him of a grave danger confronting the
Government of India. When in November, 1858, the assumption of the
Government of India by the Crown was announced, some of the soldiers of
the Company’s European troops had set up an alternative claim for a free
discharge or a bounty on re-enlistment into the service of the Crown.
The law-officers of the Crown decided that the claim was inadmissible;
and therefore a not unnatural discontent was engendered which finally
culminated in the regrettable disturbance familiarly known as the “White
Mutiny.” It was well for the Government that in Lord Clyde there was
available to meet the crisis a man who understood and sympathised with
the nature and prejudices of the soldier. An actual collision was
imminent, and as Lord Clyde informed the Viceroy, “no one could tell
what would be the effect of a collision on the remainder of the local
army, and on the native mind throughout India.” A proclamation of a
temporising character issued to the local European troops at Meerut
produced a good effect, as establishing what the Commander-in-Chief
termed the “tranquillity of expectation” in place of open discontent.
But it was manifest, from the reports received from the stations where
troops of the late Company’s European force were serving, that the
feeling of dissatisfaction was general; and the Government, recognising
how wide was the agitation, became convinced of the necessity of
granting a discharge to every man who desired it. With a strange
inconsistency the Indian Government, notwithstanding that the
law-officers of the Crown had decided that the alternative claims of the
soldiers were alike inadmissible, granted them their discharges, but
obstinately refused to give a bounty on re-enlistment, a concession
which nine out of ten men would have accepted contentedly. The outcome
was a study in the art of “how not to do it.” The Company’s European
troops took their discharges and came home almost in a body,—from the
Bengal Presidency alone came seven thousand men—most of whom had been
fairly acclimatised to the Indian climate. The recruiting sergeants in
Charles Street re-enlisted them for the Queen’s service as they landed
or even when the transports were coming up the Thames; and the great
majority of the men who had been John Company’s soldiers were back in
India as soldiers of the Queen among the first reliefs. The operation,
involving as it did the cost of the double voyage and the enlistment
money at home, was not a brilliant sample of economy. The simpler method
would have been to give the men the two guineas per head bounty, which
was all they asked to transform them from Company’s into Queen’s
soldiers. The disaffection of the local European troops made a great
impression on Lord Clyde, and he expressed himself to the Viceroy on the
subject in the following terms: “I am irresistibly led to the conclusion
that henceforth it will be dangerous to the State to maintain in India a
local European army. I believe, as a consequence of this recent
experience, that it will be unsafe to have any European forces which do
not undergo the regular process of relief, and that this consideration
must be held paramount to all others. We cannot afford to attend to any
other considerations than those of discipline and loyalty, which may be
constantly renovated by the periodical return to England of all the
regiments in every branch of the service.”
Lord Clyde had been intending to tender his resignation
and return to England about the end of February, 1860, when events
occurred which were to detain him some months longer in India. In the
spring of 1859 the English and French Ministers to China, finding that
the Chinese Government were raising obstacles to their visit to the
capital for the purpose of exchanging ratifications of the treaty of the
previous year, put themselves in the hands of the Admiral in command of
the British Squadron. The attempt to force the passage of the Peiho and
seize the Taku forts was repulsed so severely as to necessitate the
return of the expedition to Shanghai. It was obvious that the
enforcement of reparation would necessitate a joint expedition on a
large scale to be undertaken by England and France. The troops and
material of the former Power were to be, supplied mainly from India, and
Lord Canning was empowered to make the necessary arrangements acting in
concert with the Commander-in-Chief. The latter made the wise suggestion
which was acted on, that Sikh troops would be more useful in China than
either Hindostanis or Madrassis. His recommendations in regard to the
clothing and provisioning of the 'force proved most valuable; and his
sendees were so essential that Lord Canning, who depended greatly on his
counsel and recommendations, prevailed on him to delay his departure for
some months longer. In the beginning of October Lord Clyde left Simla,
and inspecting the military stations on the way joined at Cawnpore the
camp of the Viceroy who was accompanied by Lady Canning. After a visit
to Lucknow the Viceregal tour was extended through the military stations
of the NorthWest Provinces and the Punjaub to the frontier at Peshawur.
Lord Clyde, who had shared in most part of this expedition, then
accompanied the Viceroy to Calcutta, where on the eve of his departure
he issued the following soldierly and modest farewell order:
“On leaving this country I take the opportunity of
thanking the officers and soldiers of the two services for their valour
and endurance, so severely tried, especially in the early part of the
insurrection. History does not furnish a finer display of heroical
resistance to many adverse conditions than was shown by the British
troops during those mutinies. The memory of their constancy and daring
will never die .out in India; and the natives must feel that while
Britain possesses such sons the rule of the British Sovereign must last
undisputed. Soldiers, both British and native, I bid you farewell; and I
record as my latest word, that the bravery and endurance of which I have
spoken with admiration, could not alone have insured success. That
success was owing in a great measure to your discipline, which is the
foundation of all military virtues, and which, I trust, will never he
relaxed.”
India had relapsed into a state of profound peace and
security: the Chinese expedition under the efficient command of Sir Hope
Grant had embarked; and his work accomplished, Lord Clyde gave over the
command to his successor Sir Hugh Rose and sailed from Calcutta on June
4th after taking a final and touching farewell of Lord Canning, Honours
met him before he reached his native land. On his arrival in Paris the
Emperor Napoleon summoned him to an audience; the Duke of Cambridge
hastened to announce to him that her Majesty had graciously conferred on
him the colonelcy of the Coldstream Guards. He reached London in time to
take his seat in the House of Lords, and to speak and vote in favour of
the Bill for the amalgamation of the armies of India. Nothing could he
more flattering than his reception by all classes of his countrymen, but
with the retiring modesty which characterised him, he shrank from all
attempts to make him an object of popularity. The freedom of the City of
London had already been conferred upon him in his absence by a vote of
the Court of Common Council and soon after his return he and Sir James
Outram were the recipients of Swords of Honour presented by the
conscript fathers of the city, followed by a banquet at the
Mansion-House. A few weeks later, when the thanks of the House of Lords
were voted to the China force whose exertions had resulted in a
satisfactory peace, Lord Clyde declined to receive the tribute paid him
for his services in the preparation of the expedition, unless it was
shared in by his coadjutor Lord Canning.
After a visit in Paris to his old Crimean comrade General
Vinoy, he travelled on the Italian battlefields of 1859 and held some
pleasant interviews with Della Marmora and Cialdini, old soldier-friends
of the Sardinian Contingent in the Crimea. In the autumn of 1861 he was
selected to represent the British military service at the manoeuvres of
the Prussian army, and on the termination of the manoeuvres he had the
honour of being received by the Royal Family at Briihl. In .November of
the same year he accompanied Sir John Lawrence to Windsor on the
occasion of the first Chapter of the newly established order of the Star
of India being held by Her Majesty, and was installed as a Knight of the
Order.
But in the midst of these triumphs a twofold blow was to
strike his heart. Ever since leaving India he had maintained an
affectionate correspondence with Lady Canning. That cherished friend he
was now deprived of to his great sorrow. Her constitution impaired by
the climate and by the anxiety which she had suffered during the strain
of the Mutiny, Lady Canning fell a victim to an attack of fever. Lord
Clyde’s last letter to her arrived after her death, and was acknowledged
by Lord Canning, who expressed in a few touching words, “how cordially
she whom he had lost reciprocated the regard Lord Clyde entertained for
her.” A few months later Lord Canning himself, on whose constitution,
enfeebled by climate, labour, and anxiety, disease had made rapid
inroads, died on the day of his arrival in England, Of the many who
followed to their grave in Westminster Abbey the remains of the first
Viceroy of Queen Victoria’s Indian Empire, none mourned him more deeply
than did his former Commander-in-Chief, who had been his associate in
the triumph of restoring British ascendency in the East. By the grave of
their dead master and friend Clyde and Outram stood arm in arm, both
destined at no long interval to be laid in the earth now covering the
coffin of their revered Chief.
His latest honour was the highest to which a British
officer can attain. In an Extraordinary Gazette published on the 9th of
November 1862,—the twenty-first anniversary of the birth of the Prince
of Wales—it was intimated that the Duke of Cambridge, Sir E. Blakeney,
and Lords Gough and Clyde were promoted to the rank of Field-Marshal. If
Colin Campbell had served for over forty-six years before attaining the
rank of major-general, his subsequent promotion had been exceptionally
rapid, since in eight years he had run up through the list of general
officers into the highest position of the military service.
With the exception of health, Lord Clyde had “all which
should accompany old age—honour, love, troops of friends.” But he was
visibly, if gradually, breaking up. He had never spared himself when
duty called, but when the strain slackened with the extinction of the
mutiny, his constitution began to fail. His illness in Lucknow after
leaving the Nepaul frontier was the first premonition of decay. During
his stay in Simla he had begun to relax his custom of early rising and
to manifest an indisposition to take his morning walk; while a casual
cold, of which a year earlier he would have thought nothing, resulted in
a sharp attack of influenza accompanied by fever and inflammation of the
eyes. When on his subsequent tour up-country with the Viceroy, he began
to evince a disinclination for the saddle, and preferred, contrary to
his old predilection, to be driven in a wheeled vehicle. Later, after
returning to Europe, he suffered much at times from fever and ague which
he traced back to the old Walcheren days; and in the end of 1861 he had
a serious illness which left him permanently enfeebled even after he had
been pronounced convalescent. Yet he was still able to make long
journeys, and he commanded the Volunteer Review on the Brighton Downs on
the Easter Monday of 1862, when some twenty thousand men were in the
field. He expressed his surprise at the steadiness and intelligence of
the citizen soldiery. “It was not,” he wrote, “a simple affair of
marching past and saluting, but a readiness of movement and facility of
change of position not always surpassed by the oldest and most practised
troops.” This was the last occasion of his appearing at the head of
troops in the field.
The end of the old warrior came at last somewhat
suddenly. Derangement of the heart had been discovered. and in May,
1863, he had an attack of so alarming a character that his medical
advisers recommended him to put his affairs in order. Near the end of
June he went to Chatham to be with his dearest friends General and Mrs.
Eyre. There he gradually grew worse. Almost to the last his memory would
revert to the Highland soldiers who were always so eager to follow where
he led, and he would express his gratitude for their staunch fidelity to
the Chief who loved them so well. When the news of his illness reached
the Queen, her Majesty directed Sir Charles Phipps “to say in her name
everything to her old, loyal, faithful servant that could be said of
sympathy and sincere regard.” “He was,” added Sir Charles, “a very great
favourite of her Majesty; and if he still can listen to such
expressions, it may soothe him to hear how deep is the Queen's feeling
for him.” After several rallies, it became evident about noon of the
14th of August that Lord Clyde was sinking fast; and half an hour later,
while his sister, General and Mrs. Eyre, and his faithful
soldier-servant White knelt around him, the veteran of many battles
calmly passed to his rest.
In accordance with Lord Clyde's desire that his funeral
should be devoid of all ostentation, preparations were made for his
interment in Kensal Green Cemetery. But the Government, rightly
interpreting the public feeling and in unison with the ecclesiastical
authorities, held it fitting that a national tribute should be paid to
his memory by according to his remains a grave in Westminster Abbey.
Thither accordingly without ostentation all that was mortal of him who
had died the foremost soldier of England was borne on August 22nd; and
with every demonstration of respect from the highest and noblest of the
land and in the presence of a great company of his friends and
followers, Lord Clyde was laid to his rest among the brother-warriors,
the statesmen, and the other illustrious men who sleep around him. On a
plain stone marking his grave is inscribed the following epitaph :—
BENEATH THIS STONE BEST THE REMAINS OF COLIN CAMPBELL,
LORD CLYDE, WHO, BY HIS OWN DESERTS, THROUGH FIFTY YEARS OF ARDUOUS
SERVICE FROM THE EARLIEST BATTLES IN THE PENINSULAR WAR TO THE
PACIFICATION OF INDIA IN 1858, ROSE TO THE RANK OF FIELD-MARSHAL AND THE
PEERAGE. HE DIED LAMENTED BY THE QUEEN, THE ARMY, AND THE PEOPLE,
14th august 1863, IN THE 71ST YEAR OF HIS AGE.
THE END |
