Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny 1857-59. William Forbes-Mitchell
the first advance of Havelock, and had not returned; and it needed no great powers of observation to fully understand that the whole population of Oude was against us.
The deserted villages gave the country a miserable appearance. Not only were they forsaken, but we found, on reaching our first halting-ground, that the whole of the small bazaar of camp-followers, consisting of goat-herds, bread, milk, and butter-sellers, etc., which had accompanied us from Allahabad, had returned to Cawnpore, none daring to accompany the force into Oude. This was most disappointing for young soldiers with good appetites and sound digestions, who depended on bazaar chupatties,[6] with a chittack[7] of butter and a pint of goat's milk at the end of the march, to eke out the scanty commissariat allowance of rations. What made the privation the more keenly felt, was the custom of serving out at one time three days' biscuits, supposed to run four to the pound, but which, I fear, were often short weight. Speaking for myself, I did not control my appetite, but commenced to eat from my haversack on the march, the whole of my three days' biscuits usually disappearing before we reached the first halting-ground, and believe me, I ran no danger of a fit of indigestion. To demolish twelve ordinary-sized ship's biscuits, during a march of twenty to twenty-five miles, was no great tax on a young and healthy stomach.
I may here remark that my experience is that, after a forced march, it would be far more beneficial to the men if the general commanding were to serve out an extra ration of tea or coffee with a pound of bread or biscuit instead of extra grog. The latter was often issued during the forced marches of the Mutiny, but never an extra ration of food; and my experience is that a pint of good tea is far more refreshing than a dram of rum. Let me also note here most emphatically that regimental canteens and the fixed ration of rum in the field are the bane of the army. At the same time I am no teetotaller. In addition to the bazaar people, our cooks and dhobies[8] had also deserted. This was not such a serious matter for the Ninety-Third just fresh from the Crimea, as it was for the old Indian regiments. Men for cooking were at once told off for each of our tents; but the cooking-utensils had also gone with the cooks, or not come on; the rear-guard had seen nothing of them. There were, however, large copper water-cans attached to each tent, and these were soon brought into use for cooking, and plenty of earthen pots were to be found in the deserted houses of the villagers. Highlanders, and especially Highlanders who are old campaigners, are not lacking in resources where the preparation of food is concerned.
I will relate a rather amusing incident which happened to the men of the colour-sergeant's tent of my company—Colour-Sergeant David Morton, a Fifeshire man, an old soldier of close on twenty years' service, one of the old "unlimited service" men, whose regimental number was 1100, if I remember rightly. A soldier's approximate service, I may here state, can almost always be told from his regimental number, as each man on enlisting takes the next consecutive number in the regiment, and as these numbers often range up to 8000 or even 10,000 before commencing again at No. 1, it is obvious that the earlier numbers indicate the oldest soldiers. The men in the Ninety-Third with numbers between 1000 and 2000 had been with the regiment in Canada before the Crimean war, so David Morton, it will be seen, was an old soldier; but he had never seen tobacco growing in the field, and in the search for fuel to cook a dinner, he had come across a small plot of luxuriant tobacco leaf. He came back with an armful of it for Duncan Mackenzie, who was the improvised cook for the men of his tent, and told us all that he had secured a rare treat for our soup, having fallen on a plot of "real Scotch curly kail!" The men were all hungry, and the tobacco leaves were soon chopped fine, washed, and put into the soup. But when that soup was cooked it was a "caution." I was the only non-smoker in the squad, and was the first to detect that instead of "real Scotch curly kail" we had got "death in the pot!" As before remarked we were all hungry, having marched over twenty miles since we had last tasted food. Although noticing that there was something wrong about the soup and the "curly kail," I had swallowed enough to act as a powerful emetic before I was aware of the full extent of the bitter taste. At first we feared it was a deadly poison, and so we were all much relieved when the bheestie, who picked up some of the rejected stalks, assured us that it was only green tobacco which had been cooked in the soup.
The desertion of our camp-followers was significant. An army in India is followed by another army whose general or commander-in-chief is the bazaar kotwal.[9] These people carry all their household goods and families with them, their only houses being their little tents. The elder men, at the time of which I write, could all talk of the victories of Lords Lake and Combermere, and the Caubul war of 1840–42, and the younger hands could tell us of the victories of Lords Gough and Hardinge in the Punjâb. The younger generations took up the handicrafts of their fathers, as barbers, cobblers, cooks, shoeblacks, and so forth, a motley hive bred in camps but unwarlike, always in the rear of the army. Most of these camp-followers were low-caste Hindoos, very few of them were Mahommedans, except the bheesties. I may remark that the bheesties and the dooly-bearers (the latter were under the hospital guard) were the only camp-followers who did not desert us when we crossed into Oude.[10] The natives fully believed that our column was doomed to extermination; there is no doubt that they knew of the powerful force collecting in our rear, consisting of the Gwalior Contingent, which had never yet been beaten and was supposed to be invincible; also of the Central India mutineers who were gathering for a fresh attack on Cawnpore under the leadership of Nânâ Sâhib, Kooer Sing, Tântia Topee, and other commanders. But we learned all this afterwards, when this army retook Cawnpore in our rear, which story I will relate in its proper place. For the present, we must resume our advance into Oude.
Every hour's march brought us three miles nearer Lucknow, and before we made our first halt, we could distinctly hear the guns of the enemy bombarding the Residency. Foot-sore and tired as they were, the report of each salvo made the men step out with a firmer tread and a more determined resolve to overcome all difficulties, and to carry relief to the beleaguered garrison and the helpless women and children. I may mention that the cowardly treachery of the enemy, and their barbarous murders of women and children, had converted the war of the Mutiny into a guerre à la mort—a war of the most cruel and exterminating form, in which no quarter was given on either side. Up to the final relief of Lucknow and the second capture of Cawnpore, and the total rout of the Gwalior Contingent on the 6th of December, 1857, it would have been impossible for the Europeans to have guarded their prisoners, and, for that reason, it was obvious that prisoners were not to be taken; while on the part of the rebels, wherever they met a Christian or a white man, he was at once slain without pity or remorse, and natives who attempted to assist or conceal a distressed European did so at the risk of their own lives and property. It was both horrible and demoralising for the army to be engaged in such a war. Looking back to those days, over my long experience of thirty-five years in India, I must admit that, with few exceptions, the European soldiers went through the terrible scenes of the Mutiny with great moderation, especially where women and children, or even unarmed men, came into their power.
On the 10th of November the total force that could be collected for the final relief of Lucknow was encamped on the plain about five miles in front of the Alumbâgh. The total strength was under five thousand of all arms, and the only really complete regiment was the Ninety-Third Highlanders. By this time the whole regiment, consisting of ten companies, had reached the front, numbering over a thousand men in the prime of manhood, about seven hundred of them having the Crimean medals on their breasts. By the afternoon of the 11th of November, the whole force had been told off into brigades. The Fifty-Third Shropshire Light Infantry, the Ninety-Third, and the Fourth Punjâb Infantry, just come down from Delhi with Sir Hope Grant, formed the fourth brigade, under Colonel the Hon. Adrian Hope of the Ninety-Third as brigadier. If I am not mistaken the whole of the Fifty-Third regiment were not present. I think there were only six or seven companies, and there was no field-officer, Captain Walton, late commandant of the Calcutta Volunteers, being the senior captain present.[11] Under these circumstances Colonel