Part IV: Nineteenth-Century Wars in .NET framework

Generation QR Code in .NET framework Part IV: Nineteenth-Century Wars

Havelock began the final phase of the operation on 25 September He planned to storm the bridge over a canal marking the southern boundary of the city, then fight through the gardens of the palaces and other buildings beside the river until they reached the Residency The fighting was bitter in the extreme but the plan worked, thanks to the close-quarter blasting of the British artillery The gun crews suffered cruelly, but volunteers replaced those who had been shot down, while the infantry, with vengeful yells of Remember Cawnpore! , flung the rebels out of one position after another at the point of the bayonet At last they reached the Residency gates amid scenes of jubilation The cost of the final breakthrough amounted to a horrific 31 officers and 504 men killed or wounded This alone meant that Outram was now too weak to comply with his orders to evacuate the Residency In effect, the relief amounted to nothing more than a reinforcement If the mutineers rejoiced that Havelock and his men, so long a thorn in their side, were now penned inside the Residency, their joy was short-lived, as outlined in the next section

On 27 October the British received word that the advance guard of a second relief column, with Brigadier General Hope Grant in command and consisting of units that had taken Delhi, had reached Cawnpore On 6 November Hope Grant sent another message to the effect that he was well on the way to Lucknow, and was simply waiting for newly arrived reinforcements from England under the redoubtable General Sir Colin Campbell, the recently appointed Commander-in-Chief India On the morning of 10 November, two bedraggled figures arrived at Campbell s camp with a request to see the General One was a native spy in Outram s service, the other towered over him and, although he was wearing native clothes, a mixture of oil and lampblack stained his skin and a turban concealed his head of fair hair His name was Thomas Kavanagh (a clerk by trade not a soldier), and he and his comrade had slipped out of the Lucknow defences the previous night to guide the relief force in Leaving Lucknow, Kavanagh and his accomplice were picked up by a rebel patrol, talked themselves out of trouble, lost their way, and finally floundered through a swamp before reaching British lines Campbell said that their achievement was one of the most daring ever attempted Although a civilian, Kavanagh received the Victoria Cross (see the sidebar in 13) as he was under military command at the time of his exploit Campbell made excellent progress and had 5000 men and 49 guns available for the final advance on the Residency He decided to accept Outram s advice

and make this as close to the river as possible, even if it meant storming several riverside palaces he knew had been put in a defensible condition On 14 November the British drove the enemy from the walls of the Dilkusha Park, and then from the Martiniere School The following day they brought the heavy baggage and provision train into the Dilkusha Park, a necessary step because Campbell intended evacuating the Residency as soon as he had broken through Campbell was a patriotic Scot who favoured his fellow Scots above all others, but above all he favoured his beloved 93rd He ensured that its men were always in the thick of the fray, and they never let him down On 16 November they led the attack on the Secundrabagh palace, lying within a high-walled enclosure of strong masonry some 110 metres (120 yards) square, loopholed all round, and garrisoned to capacity with mutineers Two hours of concentrated gunfire battered a small hole between 09 metres (3 feet) and 12 metres (4 feet) square in the wall beside the gate The 93rd s pipers had roused them to fighting madness, so that when Campbell s drummer beat the advance they surged forward with a howl of pent-up rage One after another, the kilted figures, berserk with a fury that those within could never match, swarmed through the breach The fight for the gates was bitter in the extreme, but when the British threw them open the rest of the 93rd, followed by the 53rd (1/The King s Shropshire Light Infantry), the 4th Punjabis, and a composite battalion, poured through, hounding the mutineers across the courtyard, up stairs, along passages, and from room to room The British didn t knowingly leave a rebel alive in the Secundrabagh They carried some 2000 rebel bodies out afterwards, but a photograph of the interior, taken months later after the carrion had done their work, shows the courtyard still littered with skulls and bones Considering the nature of the fighting, British casualties were remarkably light the 93rd, for example, sustained only 22 killed and 75 wounded It was now afternoon and Campbell decided to tackle the Shah Najaf, a domed mosque inside a garden, surrounded by a loopholed masonry wall surmounted by a parapet Once again, the 93rd led the assault, followed by a composite battalion, once the attached naval guns under Captain Peel, RN, firing at pointblank range, had knocked a breach in the walls This proved to be more difficult than expected The crowds of mutineers on the walls, blazing away with their muskets at the British infantry, caused serious casualties, so the British fired rockets, clearing the wall like magic The British heard the rebel buglers inside sounding the advance, and for a moment the enemy appeared about to make a determined sortie Then silence ensued After a while, a patrol under Staff Sergeant John Paton discovered that the mutineers had escaped through a gate at the rear The British promptly occupied the building, and reached Outram s garrison the following day The events of 16 November 1857 produced the greatest number of Victoria Crosses ever won during a single day