The Lucknow of To-Day — 1879
It was in Cawnpore on my way up country, during the Prince of Wales’s tour through India, that there were shown to me some curious and interesting mementoes of the siege of Lucknow. The friend in whose possession they were was near Havelock as he sat before his tent in the short Indian twilight, a short time before the advance on Lucknow made by him and Outram in September 1857. Through the gloom of the falling twilight there came marching towards the General a file of Highlanders escorting a tall, gaunt Oude man, on whose swarthy face the lamplight struck as he salaamed before the General Lord Sahib. Then he extracted from his ear a minute section of quill sealed at both ends. The General’s son opened the strange envelope forwarded by a postal service so hazardous, and unrolled a morsel of paper which seemed to be covered with cabalistic signs. The missive had been sent out from Lucknow by Brigadier Inglis, the commander of the beleaguered garrison of the Lucknow Residency, and its bearer was the stanch and daring scout, Ungud. As I write the originals of this communication and of others which came in the same way lie before me; and two of those missives in their curious mixture of characters may be found of interest to readers of to-day.
LUKHNOW, Septr. 16th. (Recd. 19th.)
MY DEAR GENERAL—The last letter I recd. from you was dated 24th ult’o, since when I have rec’d [Greek: no neus] whatever from y’r [Greek: kamp] or of y’r [Greek: movements] but am now [Greek: dailae expekting] to receive [Greek: inteligense] of y’r [Greek: advanse] in this [Greek: direktion]. Since the date of my last letter the enemy have continued to persevere unceasingly in their efforts against this position & the firing has never ceased day or night; they have about [Greek: sixten] guns in position round us—many of them 18 p’rs. On 5th inst. they made a very determined attack after exploding 2 mines and [Greek: suksaeded] for a [Greek: moment] in [Greek: almost geting] into one of our [Greek: bateries], but were eventually repulsed on all sides with heavy loss. Since the above date they have kept up a cannonade & musketry fire, occasionally throwing in a shell or two. My [Greek: waeklae loses] continue very [Greek: hevae] both in [Greek: ophisers] & [Greek: men]. I shall be quite out of [Greek: rum] for the [Greek: men] in [Greek: eit dais], but we have been [Greek: living] on [Greek: redused rations] & I hope to be [Greek: able] to [Greek: get] on [Greek: til] about [Greek: phirst prox]. If you have not [Greek: relieved] us by [Greek: then] we shall have [Greek: no meat lepht], as I must [Greek: kaep] some few [Greek: buloks] to [Greek: move] my [Greek: guns] about the [Greek: positions]. As it is I have had to [Greek: kil] almost all the [Greek: gun buloks], for my men c’d not [Greek: perphorm] the [Greek: ard work without animal phood]. There is a report, tho’ from a source on which I cannot implicitly rely, that [Greek: mansing] has just [Greek: arived] in [Greek: luknow] havg. [Greek: lepht part] of his [Greek: phors outside] the [Greek: sitae]. It is said that [Greek: he] is in [Greek: our interest] and that [Greek: he] has [Greek: taken] the [Greek: above step] at the [Greek: instigation] of B[Greek: riti]sh [Greek: athoritae]. But I cannot say whether [Greek: su]ch [Greek: be the kase], as all I have to go upon is [Greek: bazar rumors]. I am [Greek: most anxious] to [Greek: hear] of yr. [Greek: advanse] to [Greek: enable mae] to [Greek: rae-asure our native soldiers].1—Yours truly,
J. INGLIS, Brigadier,
H.M. 32’d Reg’t.
To Brig’r Havelock, Commg. Relieving Force.
The other missive is of an earlier date, and was brought out in the same manner as the first.
August 16. (Recd. 23rd August.)
MY DEAR GENERAL—A note from Colonel Tytler to Mr. Gubbins reached last night, dated “Mungalwar, 4th instant,” the latter part of which is as follows:—“You must [Greek: aid] us in [Greek: everae] way even to cutting y’r way out if we [Greek: kant phorse our] way in. We have [Greek: onlae a small phorse].” This has [Greek: kaused mae] much [Greek: uneasiness], as it is quite [Greek: imposible] with my [Greek: weak] & [Greek: shatered phorse] that I can [Greek: leave] my [Greek: dephenses]. You must bear in mind how I am [Greek: hampered], that I have upwards of [Greek: one undred & twentae-sik wounded], and at the least [Greek: two undred & twenae women], & about [Greek: two undred] & [Greek: thirtae children], & no [Greek: kariage] of any [Greek: deskription], besides [Greek: sakriphising twentae-thrae laks] of [Greek: treasure] & about [Greek: thirtae guns] of [Greek: sorts]. In consequence of the news rec’d I shall soon put the [Greek: phorse] on [Greek: alph rations], unless I [Greek: hear phrom] you. [Greek: Our provisions] will [Greek: last] us [Greek: then] till [Greek: about] the [Greek: tenth] [Greek: september]. If you [Greek: hope] to [Greek: save this no time must] be [Greek: lost] in pushing forward. We are [Greek: dailae] being [Greek: ataked] by the [Greek: enemae], who are within a few yards of our [Greek: dephenses]. Their [Greek: mines] have [Greek: alreadae weakened our post], & I have [Greek: everae] [Greek: reason] to [Greek: believe] that are carrying on [Greek: others]. Their [Greek: aeteen] [Greeks: pounders] are within 150 yards of [Greek: some oph our bateries], & [Greek: phrom] their [Greek: positions & [Greek: our inabilitae] to [Greek: phorm working] [Greek: parties], we [Greek: kanot repli] to [Greek: them. Thae damage done ourlae] is very [Greek: great]. My [Greek: strength] now in [Greek: europeans] is [Greek: thrae undred] & [Greek: phiphtae], & about [Greek: thrae hundred natives], & the men [Greek: dreadphulae] [Greek: harassed], & owing to [Greek: part] of the [Greek: residensae] having been [Greek: brought down] by [Greek: round shot] are without [Greek: shelter]. Our [Greek: native] [Greek: phorse] hav’g been [Greek: asured] on Col. Tytler’s authority of y’r [Greek: near] [Greek: aproach some twentae phive dais ago are naturallae losing konphidense], [Greek: and iph thae leave] us I do not [Greek: sae how the dephenses] are to be [Greek: manned]. Did you [Greek: reseive a letter & plan phrom] the [Greek: man] [Greek: Ungud]?—Kindly answer this question.—Yours truly,
J. INGLIS, Brigadier.
Cawnpore is an engrossing theme, and Bithoor alone would furnish material for an article; but my present subject is Lucknow, and I must get to it. There is a railway now to Lucknow from Cawnpore, but the railway bridge across the Ganges is not yet finished and passengers must cross by the bridge of boats to the Oude side. Behind me, as the gharry jingles over the wooden platform, is the fort which Havelock began, which Neill completed, and in which Windham found the shelter which alone saved him from utter defeat. Before me is the low Gangetic shore, with the dumpy sand-hills gradually rising from the water’s edge. A few years ago there used to ride at the head of that noble regiment the 78th Highlanders, a smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged, stooping officer on an old white horse. The Colonel had a voice like a girl and his men irreverently called him the “old squeaker”; but although you never heard him talk of his deeds he had a habit of going quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting and hardship philosophically as part of the day’s work. Those sand-banks were once the scene of some quiet, unsensational heroism of his. He commanded the two companies of Highlanders whom Havelock threw on the unknown shore as the vanguard of his advance into Oude. No prior reconnaissance was possible. Oude swarmed with an armed and hostile population. The chances were that an army was hovering but a little way inland, waiting to attack the head of the column on landing. But it was necessary to risk all contingencies, and Mackenzie accepted the service as he might have done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the night the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which Havelock essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness, it was Mackenzie’s task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in his vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached, unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves until it was possible to send a reinforcement. The charge of this vague, uncertain, tentative enterprise, fraught with risks so imminent and so vast, required a cool, steady-balanced courage of no common order.
“Onao!” shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to make a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically Private Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the hesitation of his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the mutineers. We jog on very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to India in point of slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at home; but every yard of the ground is interesting. Along that high road passed in long, strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde brought away from Lucknow—the civilians, the women, the children, and the wounded of the immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees under which the nhil gau are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock’s menacing position. No wonder though the outskirts of this town on the high road present a ruined appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene of three of Havelock’s battles and victories, fought and won in a single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where Havelock and Outram tramping on to the relief, fired a royal salute in the hope that the sound of it might reach to the Residency and cheer the hearts of its garrison. And now we are on the platform of the Lucknow station which has more of an English look about it than have most Indian stations. There is a bookstall, although it is not one of Smith’s; and there are lots of English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the train. The natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique from the people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and upright; he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his carriage is that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked by two earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.
Lucknow is so full of interest and the objects of interest are so widely spread that one is in doubt where to begin the pilgrimage. But the Alumbagh is on the railway side of the canal and therefore nearest; and I drive directly to it before going into the town. From the station the road to the Alumbagh turns sharp to the left and the two miles’ drive is through beautiful groves and gardens. Then the plain opens up and there is the detached temple which so long was one of Outram’s outlying pickets; and to the left of it the square-walled enclosure of the Alumbagh itself with the four corners flanked by earthen bastions. The top of the wall is everywhere roughly crenelated for musketry fire, and on two of its faces there are countless tokens that it has been the target for round shot and bullets. The Alumbagh in the pre-Mutiny period was a pleasure-garden of one of the princes of Oude. The enclosed park contained a summer palace and all the surroundings were pretty and tasteful. It was for the possession of the Alumbagh that Havelock fought his last battle before the relief; here it was where he left his baggage and went in; here it was that Clyde halted to organise the turning movement which achieved the second relief. Hither were brought from the Dilkoosha the women and children of the garrison prior to starting on the march for Cawnpore; here Outram lay threatening Lucknow from Clyde’s relief until the latter’s ultimate capture of the city. But these occurrences contribute but trivially to the interest of the Alumbagh in comparison with the circumstance that within its enclosure is the grave of Havelock. We enter the great enclosure under the lofty arch of the castellated gateway. From this a straight avenue bordered by arbor vitae trees, conducts to a square plot of ground enclosed by low posts and chains. Inside this there is a little garden the plants of which a native gardener is watering as we open the wicket. From the centre of the little garden there rises a shapely obelisk on a square pedestal and on one side of the pedestal is a long inscription. “Here lie,” it begins, “the mortal remains of Henry Havelock;” and so, methinks, it might have ended. There is needed no prolix biographical inscription to tell the reverent pilgrim of the deeds of the dead man by whose grave he stands—so long as history lives, so long does it suffice to know that “here lie the mortal remains of Henry Havelock”—and the text and verse of poetry grate on one as redundancies. He sickened two days before the evacuation of the Residency and died on the morning of the 24th of November in his dooly in a tent of the camp at the Dilkoosha. The life went out of him just as the march began, and his soldiers conveyed with them, on the litter on which he had expired, the mortal remains of the chief who had so often led them on to victory.
On the following morning they buried him here in the Alumbagh, under the tree which still spreads its branches over the little garden in which he lies. There stood around the grave-mouth Colin Campbell and the chivalrous Outram, and stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the ever-ready Fraser Tytler; and the “boy Harry” to whom the campaign had brought the gain of fame and the loss of a father; and the devoted Harwood with “his heart in the coffin there with Caesar;” and the heroic William Peel; and that “colossal red Celt,” the noble, ill-fated Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to incompetent obstinacy. Behind stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the Ross-shire Buffs and the “Blue Caps” who had served the dead chief so stanchly, and had gathered here now, with many a memory of his ready praise of valour and his indefatigable regard for the comfort of his men, stirring in their war-worn hearts—
Guarded to a soldier’s grave
By the bravest of the brave,
He hath gained a nobler tomb
Than in old cathedral gloom.
Nobler mourners paid the rite,
Than the crowd that craves a sight;
England’s banners o’er him waved,
Dead he keeps the name he saved.
The burial-place was being temporarily abandoned, and as the rebels desecrated all the graves they could discover it was necessary to obliterate as much as possible the tokens of the interment. A big “H” was carved into the bark of the tree and a small tin plate fastened to its trunk, to guide to the subsequent investigation of the spot. Dr. Russell tells us that when he visited the Alumbagh before his return home after the mutiny in Oude was stamped out, he found the hero’s grave a muddy trench near the foot of a tree which bore the mark of a round shot and had carved into its bark the letter “H.” The tree is here still and the dent of the round shot, and faintly too is to be discerned the carved letter but the bark around it seems to have been whittled away, perhaps by the sacrilegious knives of relic-seeking visitors. There is the grave of a young lieutenant in a corner of the little garden and a few private soldiers lie hard by.
I turn my face now toward the Charbagh bridge, following the route taken by Havelock’s force on the 25th of September—the memorable day of the relief. There is the field where, as at a table in the open air Havelock and Outram were studying a map, a round shot from the Sepoy battery by the Yellow House ricochetted between them. There is the spot where stood the Yellow House itself, whence after a desperate struggle Maude’s artillerymen drove the Sepoy garrison and its guns. Presently with a sweep the road comes into a direct line with the Charbagh bridge over the canal. Now there is not a house in the vicinity; the Charbagh garden has been thrown into the plain and the steep banks of the canal are perfectly naked. But then the scene was very different. On the Lucknow side the native city came close up to the bridge and lined the canal. The tall houses to right and left of the bridge on the Lucknow side were full of men with firearms. At that end of the bridge there was a regular overlapping breastwork, and behind it rose an earthwork battery solidly constructed and armed with five guns, one a 42-pounder, all crammed to the muzzle with grape. Let us sit down on the parapet and try to realise the scene. Outram with the 78th has made a detour to the right through the Charbagh garden to clear it of the enemy, and, gaining the canal bank, to bring a flanking fire to bear on its defenders. There is only room for two of Maude’s guns; and there they stand out in the open on the road trying to answer the fire of the rebel battery. Thrown forward along the bank to the left of the bridge is a company of the Madras Fusiliers under Arnold, lying down and returning the musketry fire from the houses on the other side. Maude’s guns are forward in the straight throat of the road where it leads on to the bridge close by, but round the bend under cover of the wall the Madras Fusiliers are lying down. In a bay of the wall of the Charbagh enclosure General Neill is standing waiting for the effect of Outram’s flank movement to develop, and young Havelock, mounted, is on the other side of the road somewhat forward. Matters are at a deadlock. It seems as if Outram had lost his way. Maude’s gunners are all down; he has repeatedly called for volunteers from the infantry behind, and now his gallant subaltern, Maitland, is doing bombardier’s work. Maude calls to young Havelock that he shall be forced to retire his guns if something is not done at once; and Havelock rides across through the fire and in his capacity as assistant adjutant-general urges on Neill the need for an immediate assault. Neill “is not in command; he cannot take the responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon.” Havelock turns and rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at the long detention under fire. “Come out of that, sir,” cried one soldier, “a chap’s just had his head taken off there!” It is a grim joke that reply which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: “And what the devil are we here for but to get our heads taken off?” Young Havelock is bent on the perpetration of what, under the circumstances, may be called a pious fraud. His father, who commands the operations, is behind with the Reserve, and he disappears round the bend on the make-belief of getting instructions from the chief. The General is far in the rear but his son comes back at the gallop, rides up to Neill, and saluting with his sword, says, “You are to carry the bridge at once, sir.” Neill, acquiescing in the superior order, replies, “Get the regiment together then, and see it formed up.” At the word and without waiting for the regiment to rise and form the gallant and eager Arnold springs up from his advanced position and dashes on to the bridge, followed by about a dozen of his nearest skirmishers. Tytler and Havelock, as eager as Arnold, set spurs to their horses and are by his side in a moment. The brave and ardent 84th, commanded by Willis, dashes to the front. Then the hurricane opens. The big gun crammed to the muzzle with grape, sweeps its iron sleet across the bridge in the face of the gallant band, and the Sepoy sharpshooters converge their fire on it. Arnold drops shot through both thighs, Tytler’s horse goes down with a crash, the bridge is swept clear save for young Havelock erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting for the Fusiliers to come on, and a Fusilier corporal, Jakes by name, who, as he rams a bullet home into his Enfield, says cheerily to Havelock, “We’ll soon have the —— out of that, sir!” And corporal Jakes is a true prophet. Before the big gun can be loaded again the stormers are on the bridge in a rushing mass. They are across it, they clear the barricade, they storm the battery, they are bayoneting the Sepoy gunners as they stand. The Charbagh bridge is won, but with severe loss which continues more or less all the way to the Residency; and when one comes to know the ground it becomes more and more obvious that the strategy of Havelock, overruled by Outram, was wise and prescient, when he counselled a wide turning movement by the Dilkoosha, over the Goomtee near the Martinière, and so along its northern bank to the Badshah-bagh, almost opposite to the Residency and commanding the iron bridge.
I recross the Charbagh bridge and bend away to the left by the byroad along the canal side by which the 78th Highlanders penetrated to the front of the Kaiser-bagh. Most of the native houses are now destroyed, whence was poured so deadly a fire on the advancing Ross-shire men that three colour-bearers fell in succession, and the colour fell to the grasp of the gallant Valentine McMaster, the assistant-surgeon of the regiment. And now I stand in front of the main entrance to the Kaiser-bagh, hard by the spot where stood the Sepoy battery which the Highlanders so opportunely took in reverse. Before me on the maidan is the plain monument to Sir Mountstuart Jackson, Captain Orr, and a sergeant, who were murdered in the Kaiser-bagh when the success of Campbell’s final operations became certain. I enter the great square enclosure of the Kaiser-bagh and stand in the desolation of what was once a gay garden where the King of Oude and his women were wont to disport themselves. The place stands much as Campbell’s men left it after looting its multifarious rich treasures. The dainty little pavilions are empty and dilapidated, the statues are broken and tottering. Quitting the Kaiser-bagh, I try to realise the scene of that informal council of war in one of the outlying courtyards of the numerous palaces. I want to fix the spot where on his big waler sat Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and his arm in a sling; where Havelock, dismounted, walked up and down by Outram’s side with short, nervous strides, halting now and then to give emphasis to the argument, while all around them were officers, soldiers, guns, natives, wounded men, bullocks, and a surging tide of disorganisation momentarily pouring into the square. But the attempt is fruitless. The whole area has been cleared of buildings right up to the gate of the Residency, only that hard by the Goomtee there still stands the river wing of the Chutter Munzil Palace with its fantastic architecture, and that the palace of the King of Oude is now the station library and assembly rooms. The Hureen Khana, the Lalbagh, the courts of the Furrut Bux Palace, the Khas Bazaar, and the Clock Tower have alike been swept away, and in their place there opens up before the eye trim ornamental grounds with neat plantations which extend up to the Baileyguard itself. One archway alone stands—a gaunt commemorative skeleton—a pedestal for the statue of a noble soldier. It was from a chamber above the crown of this arch that the sepoy shot Neill as he sat on his horse urging the confused press of guns and men through the archway. The spot is memorable for other causes. This archway led into that court which is world-famous under the name of Dhooly Square. Here it was that the native bearers abandoned the wounded in the doolies which poor Bensley Thornhill was trying to guide into the Residency; here it was where they were butchered and burned as they lay, and here it was where Dr. Home and a handful of men of the escort did what in them lay to cover the wounded and defended themselves for a day and a night against continuous attacks of countless enemies.
The via dolorosa, the road of death up which Outram and Havelock fought their way with Brazier’s Sikhs and the Ross-shire Buffs, is now a pleasant open drive amid clumps of trees, leading on to the Residency. A strange thrill runs through one’s frame as there opens up before one that reddish-gray crumbling archway spanning the roadway into the Residency grounds. Its face is dented and splintered with cannon-shot and pitted all over by musket-bullets. This is none other than that historic Baileyguard gate which burly Jock Aitken and his faithful Sepoys kept so stanchly. You may see the marks still of the earth banked up against it on the interior during the siege. To the right and left runs the low wall which was the curtain of the defence, now crumbled so as to be almost indistinguishable. But there still stands, retired somewhat from the right of the archway, Aitken’s post—the guard-house and treasury, its pillars and façade cut and dented all over with the marks of bullets fired by “Bob the Nailer” and his comrades from the Clock Tower which stood over against it. And in the curtain wall between the archway and the building is still to be traced the faint outline of the embrasure through which Outram and Havelock entered on the memorable evening. The turmoil and din and conflicting emotions of that terrible, glorious day have merged into a strange serenity of quietude. The scene is solitary, save for a native woman who is playing with her baby on a spot where once dead bodies lay in heaps. But the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind’s eye out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have passed through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men of the ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging with the stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like tenderness. And all around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of folk eager to give welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison, civilians whom the siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping tears of joy down on the faces of the children for whom they had not dared to hope for aught but death. There are gaunt men, pallid with loss of blood, whose great eyes shine weirdly amid the torchlight and whose thin hands tremble with weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy hands of the Highlanders. These are the wounded of the long siege who have crawled out from the hospital up yonder, as many of them as could compass the exertion, with a welcome to their deliverers. The hearts of the impulsive Highlanders wax very warm. As they grasp the hands held out to them they exclaim, “God bless you!” “Why, we expected to have found only your bones!” “And the children are living too!” and many other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. The ladies of the garrison come among the Highlanders, shaking them enthusiastically by the hand; and the children clasp the shaggy men round the neck, and to say truth, so do some of the mothers. But Jessie Dunbar and her “Dinna ye hear it?” in reference to the bagpipe music, are in the category of melodramatic fictions.
The position which bears and will bear to all time the title of the Residency of Lucknow, is an elevated plateau of land, irregular in surface, of which the highest point is occupied by the Residency building, while the area around was studded irregularly with buildings, chiefly the houses of the principal civilian officials of the station. When Campbell brought away the garrison in November 1857 it lapsed into the hands of the mutineers, who held it till his final occupation of the city and its surroundings in March of the following year. They pulled down not a few of the already shattered buildings, and left their fell imprint on the spot in an atrociously ghastly way by desecrating the graves in which brave hands had laid our dead country-people and flinging the exhumed corpses into the Goomtee. When India once more became settled the Residency, its commemorative features uninterfered with, was laid out as a garden and flowers and shrubs now grow on soil once wet with the blood of heroes. The débris has been removed or dispersed; the shattered buildings are prevented from crumbling farther; tablets bearing the names of the different positions and places of interest are let into the walls; and it is possible, by exploring the place map in hand, to identify all the features of the defence. The avenue from the Baileyguard gate rises with a steep slope to the Residency building. On either side of the approach and hard by the gate, are the blistered and shattered remnants of two large houses; that on the right is the banqueting house which was used as the hospital during the siege; that on the left was Dr. Fayrer’s house. The banqueting house is a mere shell, riven everywhere with shot and pitted over by musket-bullets as if it had suffered from smallpox. The ground-floor has escaped with less damage but the banqueting hall itself has been wholly wrecked by the persistent fire which the rebels showered upon it, and to which, notwithstanding the mattresses and sandbags with which the windows were blocked, several poor fellows fell victims as they lay wounded on their cots. Dr. Fayrer’s house is equally a battered ruin. In its first floor, roofless and forlorn, its front torn open by shot and the pillars of its windows jagged into fantastic fragments, is the veranda in which Sir Henry Lawrence, 4th July 1857, died, exposed to fire to the very last. At the top of the slope of the avenue and on the left front of the Residency building as we approach it—on what, indeed, was once the lawn—has been raised an artificial mound, its slopes covered with flowering shrubs, its summit bearing the monumental obelisk on the pedestal of which is the terse, appropriate inscription: “In memory of Major-General Sir Henry Lawrence and the brave men who fell in defence of the Residency. Si monumentum quaeris Circumspice!” Beyond this lies the scathed and blighted ruin of the Residency House, once a large and imposing structure, now so utterly wrecked and shivered that one wonders how the crumbling reddish-gray walls are kept erect. The veranda was battered down and much of the front of the building lies bodily open, the structure being supported on the battered and distorted pillars assisted by great balks of wood. Entering by the left wing I pass down a winding stair into the bowels of the earth till I reach the spacious and lofty vaults or tykhana under the building. Here, the place affording comparative safety, lived immured the women of the garrison, the soldiers’ wives, half-caste females, the wives of the meaner civilians and their children. The poor creatures were seldom allowed to come up to the surface, lest they should come in the way of the shot which constantly lacerated the whole area, and few visitors were allowed access to them. Veritably they were in a dungeon. Provisions were lowered down to them from the window orifices near the roof of the vaulting, and there were days when the firing was so heavy that orders were given to them not even to rise from their beds on the floor. For shot occasionally found a way even into the tykhana; you may see the holes it made in penetrating. The miserables were billeted off ten in a room, and there they lived, without sweepers, baths, dhobies, or any of the comforts which the climate makes necessities. Here in these dungeons children were born, only for the most part to die. Ascending another staircase I pass through some rooms in which lived (and died) some of the ladies of the garrison, and passing from the left wing by a shattered corridor am able to look up into the room in which Sir Henry Lawrence received his death-wound. Access to it is impossible by reason of the tottering condition of the structure; and turning away I clamber up the worn staircase in the shot-riven tower on the summit of which still stands the flagstaff on which were hoisted the signals with which the garrison were wont to communicate with the Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are scratched and written all over with the names of visitors; many of the names are those of natives, but more are those of British soldiers, who have occasionally added a piece of their mind in characteristically strong language.
I set out on a pilgrimage under the still easily traceable contour of the intrenchment. Passing “Sam Lawrence’s Battery” above what was the water-gate, I traverse the projecting tongue at the end of which stood the “Redan Battery” whose fire swept the river face up to the iron bridge. Returning, and passing the spot where “Evans’s Battery” stood, I find myself in the churchyard in a slight depression of the ground. Of the church, which was itself a defensive post, not one stone remains on another and the mutineers hacked to pieces the ground of the churchyard. The ground is now neatly enclosed and ornamentally planted and is studded with many monuments, few of which speak the truth when they profess to cover the dust of those whom they commemorate. There are the regimental monuments of the 5th Madras Fusiliers, the 84th (360 men besides officers), the Royal Artillery, the 90th (a long list of officers and 271 men). The monument of the 1st Madras Fusiliers bears the names of Neill, Stephenson, Renaud, and Arnold, and commemorates a loss of 352 men. There is a monument to Mr. Polehampton the exemplary chaplain, and hard by a plain slab bears the inscription, “Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty; may the Lord have mercy on his soul!” words dictated by himself on his deathbed. Other monuments commemorate Captain Graham of the Bengal Cavalry and two children; Mr. Fairhurst the Roman Catholic chaplain; Major Banks; Captain Fulton of the 32nd who earned the title of “Defender of Lucknow;” Lucas, the travelling Irish gentleman who served as a volunteer and fell in the last sortie; Captain Becher; Captain Moorsom; poor Bensley Thornhill and his young daughter; “Mrs. Elizabeth Arne, burnt with a shell-ball during the siege;” Lieutenant Cunliffe; Mr. Ommaney the Judicial Commissioner; and others. The nameless hillocks of poor Jack Private are plentiful, for here were buried many of those who fell in the final capture; and there are children’s graves. Interments take place still. I saw a freshly-made grave; but only those are entitled to a last resting-place here who were among the beleaguered during the long defence. I have seen the medal for the defence of Lucknow on the breast of a man who was a child in arms at the time of the siege, and such an one would have the right to claim interment in this doubly hallowed ground. From the churchyard I pass out along the narrow neck to that forlorn-hope post, “Innes’s Garrison,” and along the western face of the intrenchment by the sides of the sheep-house and the slaughter-house, to Gubbins’s post. The mere foundations of the house are visible which the stout civilian so gallantly defended, and the famous tree, gradually pruned to a mere stump by the enemy’s fire, is no longer extant. Along the southern face of the position there are no buildings which are not ruined. Sikh Square, the Brigade Mess House, and the Martinière boys’ post, are alike represented by fragmentary gray walls shivered with shot and shored up here and there by beams. The rooms of the Begum Kothi near the centre of the position, are still laterally entire but roofless. The walls of this structure are exceptionally thick and here many of the ladies of the garrison were quartered. All around the Residency position the native houses which at the time of the siege crowded close up on the intrenchment, are now destroyed; and indeed the native town has been curtailed into comparatively small dimensions and is entirely separated from the area in which the houses of the station are built.
Quitting the Residency I drive westward by the river side, over the site of the Captan Bazaar, past also that huge fortified heap the Muchee Bawn, till I reach the beautiful enclosure in which the great Imambara stands. This majestic structure—part temple, part convent, part palace, and now part fortress—dominates the whole terrain, and from its lofty flat roof one looks down on the plain where the weekly hât or market is being held, on the gardens and mansions across the river, and southward upon the dense mass of houses which constitute the native city. Sentries promenade the battlements of the Muchee Bawn, and the Imambara—an apartment to which for space and height I know none in Europe comparable—is now used as an arsenal, where are stored the great siege guns which William Peel plied with so great skill and gallantry. Just outside the Imambara, on the edge of the maidan between it and the Moosabagh, I come on a little railed churchyard where rest a few British soldiers who fell during Lord Clyde’s final operations in this direction. Then, with a sweep across the plain to the south and by a slight ascent, I reach the gate of the city which opens into the Chowk or principal street—the street traversed in disguise by the dauntless Kavanagh when he went out from the garrison to convey information and afford guidance to Sir Colin Campbell on his first advance. The gatehouse is held by a strong force of native policemen, armed as if they were soldiers; and as I pass the guard I stand in the Chowk itself, in the midst of a throng of gaily clad male pedestrians, women in chintz trousers, laden donkeys, multitudinous children, and still more multitudinous stinks. All down both sides the fronts of the lower stories are open, and in the recesses sit merchants displaying paltry jewelry, slippers, pipes, turban cloths, and Manchester stuffs of the gaudiest patterns. The main street of Lucknow has been called “The Street of Silver,” but I could find little among its jewelry either of silver or of gold. The first floors all have balconies, and on these sit draped, barefooted women of Rahab’s profession. The women of Lucknow are fairer and handsomer, and the men bolder and more stalwart, than those in Bengal, and it takes no great penetration to discern that Lucknow is still ruled by fear and not by love.
It remained for me still to investigate the scenes of the route by which Lord Clyde came in on both his advances; but to do justice to these would demand separate articles. Let me begin the hasty sketch at the Dilkoosha Palace, two miles and more away to the east of the Residency; for on both occasions the Dilkoosha was Clyde’s base. Wajid Ali’s twenty-foot wall has now given place to an earthen embankment surrounding a beautiful pleasure park, and there are now smooth green slopes instead of the dense forest through which Clyde’s soldiers marched on their turning movement. On a swell in the midst of the park, commanding a view of the fantastic architecture of the Martinière down by the tank, stands the gaunt ruin of the once trim and dainty Dilkoosha Palace or rather garden-house. From one of the pepper-box turrets up there Lord Clyde directed the attack on the Martinière on his ultimate operation; and here it was that, as Dr. Russell tells us, a round shot dispersed his staff on the adjacent leads. After quietude was restored the Dilkoosha was the headquarters for a time of Sir Hope Grant, but now it has been allowed to fall into decay although the garden in the rear of it is prettily kept up. On the reverse slope behind the Dilkoosha was the camp in one of the tents of which Havelock died. We drive down the gentle slope once traversed at a rushing double by the Black Watch on their way to carry the Martinière, past the great tank out of the centre of which rises the tall column to the memory of Claude Martine, and reach the entrance of the fantastic building which he built, in which he was buried, and which bears his name. We see at the angle of the northern wing the slope up which the gun was run which played so heavily on the Dilkoosha up on the wooded knoll there. The Martinière is now, as it was before the Mutiny, a college for European boys, and the young fellows are playing on the terraces. Grotesque stone statues are in niches and along the tops of the balconies; you may see on them the marks of the bullets which the honest fellows of the Black Watch fired at them, taking them for Pandies. I go down into a vault and see the tomb of Claude Martine; but it is empty, for the mutineers desecrated his grave and scattered his bones to the winds of heaven. Then I make for the roof, through the dormitories of the boys and past fantastic stone griffins and lions and Gorgons, till I reach the top of the tower and touch the flagstaff from which, during the relief time, was given the answering signal to that hoisted on the tower of the Residency. I stand in the niches where the mutineer marksmen used to sit with their hookahs and take pot shots at the Dilkoosha. I look down to the eastward on the Goomtee, and note the spot where Outram crossed on that flank movement which would have been very much more successful than it was had he been permitted to drive it home. To the north-east beyond the topes is the battle-ground of Chinhut, where Lawrence received so terrible a reverse at the beginning of the siege. Due north is the Kookrail viaduct which Outram cleared with the Rifles and the 79th, and in whose vicinity Jung Bahadour, the crafty and bloodthirsty generalissimo of Nepaul, “co-operated” by a demonstration which never became anything more. And to the west there lie stretched out before me the domes, minarets, and spires of Lucknow, rising above the foliage in which their bases are hidden, and the routes of Clyde in the relief and capture. The rays of the afternoon sun are stirring into colour the dusky gray of the Secunderbagh and of the Nuddun Rusool, or “Grave of the Prophet,” used as a powder magazine by the rebels. Below me, on the lawn of the Martinière, is the big gun—one of Claude Martine’s casting—which did the rebels so much service at the other angle of the Martinière and which was spiked at last by two men of Peel’s naval brigade, who swam the Goomtee for the purpose. That little enclosure slightly to the left surrounds “all that can die” of that strange mixture of high spirit, cool daring, and weak principle, the famous chief of Hodson’s Horse. By Hodson’s side lies Captain da Costa of the 56th N.I., attached to Brazier’s Sikhs. Of this officer is told that, having lost many relatives in the butchery of Cawnpore, he joined the regiment likeliest to be in the front of the Lucknow fighting, and fell by one of the first shots fired in the assault on the Kaiser-bagh.
Descending from the Martinière tower I traverse the park to the westward passing the grave of Captain Otway Mayne, cross the dry canal along which are still visible the heaps of earth which mark the stupendous first line of the rebels’ defences, and bending to the left reach the Secunderbagh. This famous place was a pleasure garden surrounded with a lofty wall with turrets at the angles and a castellated gateway. The interior garden is now waste and forlorn, the rank grass growing breast-high in the corners where the slaughter was heaviest. Here in this little enclosure, not half the size of the garden of Bedford Square, 2000 Sepoys died the death at the hands of the 93rd, the 53rd, and the 4th Punjaubees. Their common grave is under the low mound on the other side of the road. The loopholes stand as they were left by the mutineers when our fellows came bursting in through the ragged breach made in the reverse side from the main entrance by Peel’s guns. Farther on—that is, nearer to the Residency—I come to the Shah Nujeef, with its strong exterior wall enclosing the domed temple in its centre. It is still easy to trace the marks of the breach made in the angle in the wall by Peel’s battering guns, and the tree is still standing up which Salmon, Southwell, and Harrison climbed in response to his proffer of the Victoria Cross. Opposite the Shah Nujeef white girls are playing on the lawn of that castellated building, for the Koorsheyd Munzil, on the top of which there was hoisted the British flag in the face of a feu d’enfer, is now a seminary for the daughters of Europeans. A little beyond, on the plain in front of the Motee Mahal, is the spot where Campbell met Outram and Havelock—a spot which, methinks, might well be marked by a monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the extent of the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork as to the precise localities.
Notes
1 The reader will observe that the words are English, though the characters are Greek.