My dreams were rudely broken into by the crash of a round-shot through the top of the tree under which I was lying, and I jumped up repeating aloud the seventh verse of the ninety-first Psalm, Scotch version:
A thousand at thy side shall fall,
On thy right hand shall lie
Ten thousand dead; yet unto thee
It shall not once come nigh.
It was a rude awakening on the 17th of November, for William Forbes-Mitchell. At least he would have a good breakfast. Several men had kindled a fire in one of the smaller rooms, the roof of which had been shelled the day before, leaving a gaping hole and in this instance, a convenient chimney for the smoke. In a copper pot left behind by the sepoys, they poured water and filled it with 2 dozen pigeons that had been abandoned in a dovecot in the compound. These with vegetables they had found and the chapatis the sepoys had not had time to eat before their flight on the 16th, it was an admirable stew. Forbes-Mitchell contributed his matchbox of salt, a piece of advice he had been given by an old soldier who had served in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, that a man should always carry salt in his haversack. It left Forbes-Mitchell thinking, quite soundly,
“I may here say that my experience is that the soldiers who could best look after their stomachs were also those who could make the best use of the bayonet, and who were the least likely to fall behind in a forced march. If I had the command of an army in the field my rule would be: “Cut the grog, and give double grub when hard work has to be done!”
Work had been going on since dawn – Forbes-Mitchell’s discovery of the gunpowder had given Captain Dawson a worrisome night – before light, he had organised a party of ordnance lascars from the ammunition park and several Ordnance Department officers to cart it away. It turned out to be nearly 5000lbs of loose powder, 20 ordinary powder barrels and what Forbes had not seen the night before, more than 150 loaded 8-inch shells. What the Europeans only just discovered the sepoys already knew; scarcely had the last cart left that they started to pour a “red-hot” fire on the Shah Najaf from their batteries at the Badshahbagh across the river, directly at the rooms where the powder had been stored. Had they started their shelling an hour earlier, there most likely would have been no Forbes-Mitchell left to eat stew in the morning.
“Immediately after the powder left by the enemy had been removed from the tomb of the Shâh Nujeef, and the sun had dispelled the fog which rested over the Goomtee and the city, it was deemed necessary to signal to the Residency to let them know our position, and for this purpose, our adjutant, Lieutenant William M’Bean, Sergeant Hutchinson, and Drummer Ross, a boy of about twelve years of age but even small for his years, climbed to the top of the dome of the Shâh Nujeef by means of a rude rope-ladder which was fixed on it; thence with the regimental colour of the Ninety-Third and a feather bonnet on the tip of the staff they signalled to the Residency, and the little drummer sounded the regimental call on his bugle from the top of the dome. The signal was seen, and answered from the Residency by lowering their flag three times. But the enemy on the Bâdshâhibâgh also saw the signalling and the daring adventurers on the dome, and turned their guns on them, sending several round-shots quite close to them. Their object being gained, however, our men descended; but little Ross ran up the ladder again like a monkey, and holding on to the spire of the dome with his left hand he waved his feather bonnet and then sounded the regimental call a second time, which he followed by the call known as The Cock of the North, which he sounded as a blast of defiance to the enemy.
When peremptorily ordered to come down by Lieutenant M’Bean, he did so, but not before the little monkey had tootled out—
There’s not a man beneath the moon,
Nor lives in any land he,
That hasn’t heard the pleasant tune
Of Yankee Doodle Dandy!
In cooling drinks and clipper ships,
The Yankee has the way shown,
On land and sea ’tis he that whips
Old Bull, and all creation.
When little Ross reached the parapet at the foot of the dome, he turned to Lieutenant M’Bean and said:
“Ye ken, sir, I was born when the regiment was in Canada when my mother was on a visit to an aunt in the States, and I could not come down till I had sung Yankee Doodle, to make my American cousins envious when they hear of the deeds of the Ninety-Third. Won’t the Yankees feel jealous when they hear that the littlest drummer-boy in the regiment sang Yankee Doodle under a hail of fire on the dome of the highest mosque in Lucknow!”
Long before daybreak, Sir Colin visited Lieutenant-Colonel Ewart and the 93rd at the European barracks – he gave him the sobering order that he was to hold the position as long as he had a man alive; he was not to attempt any “aggressive movement” but only to act on the defensive. Ewart asked if he had a gun or two to spare, but he replied,
“No, I cannot spare you a single one; you must depend upon your rifles and bayonets,” but he promised to send him infantry reinforcements. Two more companies of the 93rd – the grenadiers under Captain Middleton and No. 1 under Captain Clarke soon made the appearance, together with some Madras sappers who helped to put the position into defence. All the while, Ewart, who had been injured the day before, was suffering from the cut on his right arm, obliging him to put his arm in a sling he had made from his neck handkerchief. A supply of provisions came in from the Dilkusha and Ewart’s bearer came along with them, much to his relief. With the reinforcements came Arthur Moffatt Lang.
With Stephenson and Pritchard with the sappers and three companies of the 93rd, he was busy closing all the openings with sandbags, shutters and anything else that came to hand.
As for Ewart, who had gone to see Sir Colin at the Shah Najaf to report on the state of affairs at the barracks, and to complain the position was receiving heavy fire from the Kaiserbagh. Ewart proposed sallying out to the building and put the rebels to rout – when Sir Colin asked if he could do without losing a single man, Ewart had to admit he could not. He returned to his post to continue in a curious pastime of trying to shoot down the rebel sharpshooters out of the towers of the Kaiserbagh.
Presently, Lang was ordered off to the Mess House. Forbes (of the engineers) with 20 sappers was ordered to throw a bridge over the moat, while Lang was to lay mussocks (leather water bags made of inflated animal skins) of powder at the doors and blow them in. Luck was on their side – the rebels were too busy to pay much heed to Lang. In a few huts on the plain he laid out his mussocks, powder hoses and quick matches -they then watched the reconnoitring. Forbes went forward with some men to see if the pounding of the guns had dislodged the rebels. It soon became apparent the day of shelling had had some effect and Forbes proceeded unhindered – Arthur Moffatt Lang would not need to risk his limbs after all – “So my life was saved and Victoria Cross gone, thinks I!”
At the Shah Najaf, with their breakfast over, Forbes-Mitchell and his comrades told off in sections and proceeded to shoot back across the Goomti. Then they sponged out their rifles. After four days the rifles were so foul they were near impossible to load and the severe recoil left men’s shoulders black from bruises. As soon the rifles were cleaned, the next order was to try and silence the infernal racket from the Badshahbagh. To shorten the distance, the sepoys had brought their guns out into the open outside the gate to within 1200 yards of the Shah Najaf, on the river’s edge. Unfortunately for them, the 93rd was armed with Enfields – had they known, they might not have been so hasty.
Twenty of the best shots were called forward. They watched until a number of sepoys had gathered near the guns, then, raising their sights to full height and taking care to aim high, they fired a volley “by word of command slowly given – one, two, fire!” – and 6 sepoys fell dead. The rest quickly withdrew their guns inside the gate and closed it. Nothing was heard from them again.
As for Forbes-Mitchell, he was sent by Dawson to the field hospital. As events would have it, several men were wounded in an ongoing repartee with the rebel sharpshooters stationed in the high towers of the Moti Mahal from whence they could pepper the Shah Najaf at will. What the company had in the way of ammunition, they could not make for a missing surgeon and it fell on Forbes-Mitchell to find one. He raced back to the Sikandar Bagh only to be told by Dr Munro that no assistant surgeons or attendants could be spared as the attack on the 32nd Mess House would soon begin – he would, if time allowed, send a hospital attendant with a supply of lint and bandages to the Shah Najaf. By the time Forbes Mitchell had raced back, the attack had begun. In his wake came Sergeant Finlay with a single doolie and a scant few medical supplies.
The sick and wounded had faired badly during the night of the 16th. During the night they had been under constant threat of attack and heavy firing could be heard around the Sikandar Bagh where they lay under the walls, as the rebels engaged the picquets. It was decided to move the patients to a village 150 yards further back – it consisted of a square court surrounded by cottages whose doors opened onto the courtyard – the walls were thick enough to withstand an assault but the rebels were not going to let the move pass unhindered. The sick and wounded had barely been deposited in their new quarters when several round shot were sent flying into the court – the second one killed two camels and the third went through the roof of the building that Dr Dickson and the staff had taken for their quarters. On the 17th, they moved some of the wounded to the Dilkusha but more would soon be coming in.
The Mess House of the 32nd Regiment
Adjacent to the Moti Mahal stood the Kursheed Manzil – a large, 2-storey building, constructed by Nawab Sadaat Ali Khan and his son Ghazi-ud-Din Haider. The design and construction had been executed by Captain Duncan McLeod in 1811. The building had a central dome and 8 octangular towers which rose to the whole height of the building and were topped with battlements. McLeod then added certain features which would not have been amiss in a fanciful English lord’s castle, such as a 12-foot wide moat and two drawbridges. It was surrounded by this masonry-revetted ditch and stood on high ground in the middle of a large garden. Once a place where the Nawab entertained his foreign guests for breakfast and tea, it was nicknamed “Palace of the Sun” by the Marquis of Hastings who visited it in its glory in 1818. It too, served as the residence of one Captain Herbert, astronomer to the court of Awadh – being adjacent to the Tara wali Kohi – the observatory, Captain Herbert could indulge in his passion for watching the stars at just a stone’s throw from home. Following the annexation of Awadh, it became the mess house of the HM’s 32nd Regiment.
The last obstacles left for Sir Colin Campbell to capture were the 32nd Mess House and the Moti Mahal. This was not lost on Sir Henry Havelock nor on James Outram, and they had not been idle. During the night of the 16th of November, a battery was erected and armed in front of the Engine House -with Campbell’s guns, it would begin battering the Mess House on the morning of the 17th.
To protect his left flank, Sir Colin ordered Brigadier Russell to occupy the houses in the Hazratganj no less than 600 yards from the bridge over the road. With the support of Longden’s mortars which had been working ceaselessly since daybreak, Russell quickly achieved his objective. After occupying four bungalows that had previously been the homes of the officers of the 32nd, Russell pushed on towards Bank’s House. By crossing the canal by which the force communicated with the Dilkusha, he avoided the main road and under cover of artillery, forced the rebels out of the house. Subsequently, Bank’s House was held by 30 men of the 2nd Punjabis under Lieutenant Keen.
From early morning until three in the afternoon, Peel bombarded the Mess House with the support of Maude and Olphert’s batteries from their positions; from noon, Longden moved his mortars forward from the left and joined in. All fire from the left bank of the river was answered by the 18 pounders that had been placed in a small breastwork, constructed during the night by the engineers.
A half-hour before the assault a large body of rebels, some 600 men, whose retreat had been cut off to the city, now crossed from the Mess House to the Moti Mahal and formed up, under cover of some huts between the Shah Manzil and the Moti Mahal with the obvious thought of regaining the Shah Najaf.
“They debouched on the plain with a number of men in front carrying scaling ladders; Captain Dawson…ordered all men to kneel down behind the loopholes with rifles sighted for 500 yards and wait for the word of command. it was now our turn to know what it felt like to be behind loopholed walls, and we calmly awaited the enemy, watching the forming up for a dash oat our position. The silence was profound…”
Captain Dawson continued watching the advance of the enemy. Calculating their distance, he called out, “Attention 5oo yards, ready – one, two, fire!” In an instant, 80 rifles replied and the rebels went down “like ninepins.” The leader on his charger was hit as was his horse – he wheeled round and galloped off towards the river but both fell before they reached the water’s edge. After the first volley, the men in the Shah Najaf fired at will. Unfortunately for the rebels, they were caught between two fires – the force sent to secure the Moti Mahal and the Shah Manzil threw grape and canister at the rear while the fire from the Shah Najaf continued unslacking. In moments, they threw away their scaling ladders and bolted, routed back to the river. Only a quarter of the original number ever reached the other side for when they were in the river, “our men rushed to the corner nearest them to them and kept peppering at every head above water.” Those who managed to get across ran straight for the Badshahbagh.
By three p.m. they had almost completely stopped firing their muskets and the Commander-in-Chief called the attack.
To lead the advance, he called on Captain Wolseley and his company of the 90th. To the captain, Campbell made a “flattering little speech,” adding that if Wolseley could not take the building he was to place his men under cover and report back to Campbell what he had seen. Wolseley was left feeling that Campbell did not believe his men were up for the task, however, he was still “seventh heaven of delight and extremely proud at being thus selected for what Sir Colin evidently deemed a difficult and dangerous duty. Yet, in the back of his mind, Wolseley could not help thinking that his men were about to be used to open the way for Sir Colin’s darling regiment, the 93rd – if the 90th did not succeed it would be a 93rd charge once again. Wolseley’s men too, agreed.
“…the conviction that inspired them sharpened the rowels of the spur which stimulated all ranks in my company at the moment and made them determine that no breechless Highlanders should get in front of them that day. I overheard many of them express that determination in very explicit Saxon English. But some Scotch generals were at this time prone to magnify the noble deeds of Scotch battalions in a way that seriously irritated those from England and Ireland.”
The attacking party under Brevet-Major Wolseley of the 90th Light Infantry consisted of a company of his own regiment, Captain Hopkins and a picquet of the 53rd, Captain Powlett with a few men of the 2nd Punjabis and supported by Brantson’s Detachments now under Captain Guise of the 90th.
Forbes of the engineers and his men had managed to get up to the circular mud wall of the enclosure without any opposition. More men were sent forward and still no shots were fired. Sir Colin ordered the advance.
Wolesely front formed his men and they started at a “good double” towards the Mess House. He had with him three subalterns – Carter, Hereford and Haig; close behind his company came Captain Irby with whom trotted Dr Robert Jackson, the regimental surgeon. Wolesely steadied his men and “whipped them in ” at the garden wall – they rushed over it and made straight for the open doorway of the Mess House. The drawbridge, to Wolesley’s joy, was down and despite being damaged by the bombardment, was still holding. As Wolseley ran across it he saw not a soul. he then ran to the door on the opposite side of the house and saw the rebels scuttle “quickly from the bullets some of my men fired to help them on their way.” The bugler of the 90th sounded the call and the advance and the Mess House, and its myriad of outbuildings, were carried with a rush as the rebels beat a hasty retreat towards the Moti Mahal. They were followed across the road but the troops were stopped by a high wall which enclosed that position – not to be outdone, Wolseley sent for some sappers. With accustomed rapidity, they quickly opened a space for the troops to pass through.
In the midst of it all, an officer, who Woseley only remembered most politely by his face and not his name, asked Woseley who, pray tell, was the senior officer – he or Wolseley? The brevet-major answered in words “not couched in very polite terms” and the other officer vanished for the rest of the day.
Then, someone placed a flag in one of the turrets to allow Outram to gauge just how far the force had come and the Mess House was won.
The Flag on the Mess House
As the myths of the taking of Lucknow grew over the years, it was asserted the flag had been raised by Wolseley himself – he denied it but would go on to say it “had been taken by my company, immediately supported by Captain Irby’s company, also of the 90h Light Infantry.” Yet he had no idea who actually hoisted it. He also claims there was no flag on the Mess House as long as he was in it and this was done after his company had left to take care of the Moti Mahal.
The man responsible for hoisting the flag was Lieutenant Roberts. Requested to do so by Sir Colin so Outram could assess how far they had come, but having no flag at hand, Roberts had been given one of the Colours of the 2nd Punjab Infantry by their commander, Captain Green. He then galloped off to the Mess House where he met Sir David Baird, one of Sir Colin’s ADCs, and Captain Hopkins. With their help, Roberts managed to get the flag and its very inconveniently long staff up the narrow staircase and planted it on the turret nearest the Kaiserbagh only 850 yards distant. The rebels promptly shot the flag down. Resolute in his task, Roberts ran down, picked it up and positioned it a second time only to have it shot down again and this time, fall into a ditch just last as Lennox and Norman arrived on the roof who had been sent to report to Sir Colin Campbell as to what was happening in the Kaiserbagh. Undaunted, Roberts ran down again but found to his chagrin, that the flagstaff had been smashed in two. Shorter now he managed to prop it up again and at least for a while the rebels stopped shooting at it. The one man to doubt the entire incident was Francis Cornwallis Maude – in his estimation, the rebel artillery, unless they had developed a sudden talent for marksmanship was thoroughly incapable of shooting down the flag not once, but twice and he believed it had fallen over by itself.
Not to be undone, the rebels hoisted a Union Jack on top of the Kaiserbagh to mislead Campbell but soon after, with one well-aimed shot, Peel brought that erroneous flag tumbling down.
The Moti Mahal
Wolseley had no orders of what to do once he had the Mess House, so, “pointing to a very large and fine building to our left front, I said to my good cheery companion, Captain Irby – who laughed at everything – ‘You go and take it, whilst I take a place to our right.’ So Irby rallied his men and charged off to take the Tara wali Kothi or Observatory while Wolseley made for the Moti Mahal. At that moment he had no idea what this extensive place actually was nor that it joined the advanced position of the headquarters of his own battalion of the 90th in the Chattar Manzil.
The Moti Mahal or Pearl Palace, so named for its pearl-shaped domes, was commissioned by Nawab Sadaat Ali Khan. Situated on the right bank of the river and north-west of the Shah Najaf, it included two further structures that had been constructed by the Nawab’s son, Ghazi-ud-Din Haidar, the Mubarak Manzil and the Shah Manzil, both royal halls. Built supposedly for the entertainment of the Awadh royal family as a place where they could enjoy watching animal fights and birdwatching, the high towers were ideal for looking out into the countryside for any approach of enemies while the citadel-like appearance made it a formidable defensive position. It had initially been a part of the Kaiserbagh Complex.
After traversing the distance to the walls of the palace under heavy fire from the rebels in the Kaiserbagh, Wolseley found the palace was surrounded by a high detached wall in front of the entrance constructed so that while one could ride around it but there was no way to see in. The rebels had been busy in their building works and had “built up the two entrances round this tambour into the palace square, the fresh brick working being well loopholed.” From these loopholes, the rebels met Wolseley and his men with a fusillade; as his men fell wounded, it was imperative to gain the upper hand. They succeeded in driving a few of the rebels back from the loopholes by firing through them but this only emboldened the rebels to crawl along the ground with their muskets loaded and shoot through the loophole again without showing themselves, on the off chance they might hit someone. Wolseley sent for some sappers – if he could not climb the wall or blast through it, then he would crawl under it. It was his servant, Andrews, who first spotted the sappers but they were going off in the wrong direction – he hastened after them, only to be shot for his troubles. Wolseley ran into the road and taking Andrews in his arms, dragged him to cover – as he did so, another shot burst from a loophole and the shot went straight through the wounded man. He left him to the care of Dr. Jackson and went back to the fight.
Suddenly standing before him was Thomas Henry Kavanagh – unsure who this strange man was he quickly explained himself and claimed he could find another way into the Moti Mahal as he knew the complex well. Unfortunately not as well as Wolseley had hoped; the second entrance was as blocked up as the first so there was nothing for it but to continue digging. He ran back to his men.
“As I approached, I caught sight of the soles of a pair of boots and the lower part of a man’s legs, the rest of his body being through the small hole just made, which others were still working to enlarge. I asked who he was, “Ensign Haig” was the answer. I have seen many a reckless deed done in action, but I never knew a more dare-devil exhibition of pluck than this was. In any other regiment this young ensign would have had the Victoria Cross, but to ask for the decoration was not the custom in the 90th Light Infantry.”
The hole grew bigger until it was finally large enough to admit the men access into the tambour. Wolseley took them immediately around one side of the open courtyard – on the other, the rebels continued to fire from the open doors and windows. As he moved along, he was greeted by a man brandishing a tulwar which nearly “shaved my head off” but Wolseley was quicker and avoided the blow.
To complicate matters, the rebels began to fire through small loopholes that had been pierced through the walls of the buildings they were hiding in – “I had several of these holes covered over with little baskets, so common in all native buildings, which well propped up from without with sticks prevented those inside from aiming well at us outside.”
Full into the fight, Woselely was suddenly surprised by an explosion on the opposite side of the courtyard – when the dust and smoke cleared he was astonished to see the breach full of British soldiers and at their head Captain Tinling of his regiment – it was the men from the Residency, who in a sortie had blown a mine which brought the palace wall down with a crash and joined Wolsely in clearing the Moti Mahal. The two armies had met at last. Within half an hour, they cleared the Moti Mahal.
Outram had not greatly extended his positions until he was sure the relieving force was at hand. While Sir Colin had worked his way towards him on the 16th, Outram had continued occupying buildings that lay in the direction of the advance. Watching the proceedings from the Chattar Manzil it soon became clear all that was left was the open ground between the Steam Engine House and the Moti Mahal.
Proceeding from the Moti Mahal, Kavanagh traversed over the Martin’s House where he met a soldier of the 64th from the Residency. In his company, Kavanagh ran the gauntlet with him to the Steam Engine House where he was greeted with some surprise by Sir James Outram. The honour of bringing the two armies together had been left to him alone.
“From the point now occupied, however, to the Moti Mahal, the most advanced position held by Sir Colin’s troops, about half a mile intervened; and the way from one place to the other was exposed to the enemy within easy musket shot… the risk did not prevent the two gallant generals and their staff from crossing the space to meet the Commander-in-Chief. They started — eight officers and one civilian. They were Outram, Havelock, Napier (now Lord Napier of Magdala), Vincent, Eyre, young Havelock (now Sir Henry Havelock), Dodgson, the Deputy Adjutant-General, the aide-de-camp Sitwell, the engineer Russell, and the gallant Kavanagh. They had not gone many paces before they were seen by the enemy, and the musketry fire from the Kaisarbagh redoubled. Napier was struck down, young Havelock was struck down, and Sitwell and Russell were struck down. Outram, Havelock, Eyre, Dodgson, and Kavanagh, alone reached the Moti Mahal uninjured.”
From the top of the Mess House, Norman could report to his commander that Outram and Havelock were indeed standing outside the western wall of the Pearl Palace. Some of Lennox’s sappers set to work and made the breach large enough for the two gentlemen to pass into the grounds – while Outram was still looking fit for a fight, Havelock on the other hand, was worn out and depressed. He was too weak to cross the breach himself and had to be lifted through it by Lieutenant Palliser and his faithful bugler, Dick Pearson of the 78th.
Inside the Moti Mahal, the party of soldiers were led by a “gigantic red-bearded officer” – Adrian Hope – and they flocked around Havelock. Soon after Hope Grant was able to congratulate him on being relieved and the men gave three cheers, Havelock’s breast heaved and his eyes filled with tears.
“Soldiers, I am happy to see you; soldiers, I am happy to think you have got into this place with a smaller loss than I had.” He brightened a little when Norman told him he was now a KCB.
With the firing from the Kaiserbagh to send them on their way, the party made their way to the Mess House where Sir Colin Campbell greeted them on the sloping grounds – a “happy meeting and a cordial shaking of hands took place.”
Arthur Moffatt Lang had been ordered to stay where he was and missed out on the fighting but he listened as cheers broke out, “from house to house, gun to gun, regiment to regiment, down the road, conveyed the news that the junction was effected and the Relief…had met Sir Colin. How we all did cheer! That night all the Gomati bank (right) was ours from Residency to Dilkusha.”
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw08481/The-Relief-of-Lucknow-1857
Sources:
How I Won the Victoria Cross – Thomas Henry Kavanagh (1860)
The Shannon’s Brigade in India – Edmund Hope Verney (1862)
Incidents of the Sepoy War, compiled from the private journals of General Sir Hope Grant – Henry Knollys (1873)
James Outram – a Biography Vol.II – Major-General Sir F.J. Goldsmid (1881)
Story of a Soldier’s Life or Peace, War and Mutiny – Lieut.-General John Alexander Ewart (1881)
Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny – William Forbes-Mitchell (1893)
Memories of the Mutiny Vol II – Francis Cornwallis Maude (1894)
The Highland Brigade its Battles and its Heroes – James Cromb (1902)
The Story of a Soldier’s Life, Vol. 1 – Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley (1903)
Forty-One Years in India, Vol I – Field Marshall Lord Roberts (1911)
The Devil’s Wind: the Story of the Naval Brigade at Lucknow from the letters of Edmund Hope Verney, and other papers concerning the enterprise of Ship’s Company of H.M.S. Shannon in the campaign in India 1857-58 – Major General G.L. Verney (1956)
Through the Indian Mutiny – the Memoirs of James Fairweather – William Wright (2011)
Lahore to Lucknow – the Indian Mutiny Journal of Arthur Moffatt Lang – edited by David Blomfield (1992)
Mutiny Reflections 