ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

or all, have fallen into the hands of a merciless foe, amounted, up to the evening of the 26th, to 535 officers and men. Brigadier-General Neill, commanding 1st brigade; Major Cooper, brigadier, commanding artillery; Lieutenant-Colonel Bazely, a volunteer with the force-are killed. Colonel Campbell, commanding 90th Light Infantry; Lieutenant-Colonel Tytler, my deputy-assistant quartermaster-general; and Lieutenant Havelock, my deputy-assistant adjutant-general, are severely but not dangerously wounded. Sir James Outram received a flesh wound in the arm, in the early part of the action near Char Bagh; but nothing could subdue his spirit; and though faint from loss of blood, he continued to the end of the action to sit on his horse, which he only dismounted at the gate of the Residency. As he has now assumed the command, I leave to him the narrative of all events subsequent to the 26th.

Enclosed is the return of casualties up to that date.

I have, &c.,

H. HAVELOCK, Brigadier-General,

Commanding Oude Field Force.

NAMES OF OFFICERS KILLED AND WOUNDED.

KILLED.

General Staff-Brigadier-General Neill; Brigadier (Major) Cooper, Artillery; Lieutenant-Colonel Bazely, Bengal Artillery.

Artillery.-Lieutenant Crump, Madras Artillery; Assistant-Surgeon

Bartrum.

12th Irregular Cavalry.-Lieutenant Warren.

Detachment, Her Majesty's 64th.-Lieutenant Bateman.

Her Majesty's 78th Highlanders.-Lieutenant Webster; Lieutenant Kirby.

Her Majesty's 84th.-Captain Pakenham; Lieutenant Poole.
Her Majesty's 90th Light Infantry.-Lieutenant Moultrie.

WOUNDED.

General Staff-Major-General Sir J. Outram, G. C. B.; Captain Becher, A. A. G.; Captain Orr, slightly.

Divisional Staff-Captain Dodgson, A. A. G.; Lieutenant Sitwell,

A. D. C.

Field Force Staff.-Lieutenant-Colonel Tytler, D. A. Q. M. G.; Lieutenant Havelock, D. A. A. G.

Engineers.-Captain Crommelin, slightly.

Artillery.-Captain Olpherts, slightly.

Volunteer Cavalry.-Lieutenant Lynch, Her Majesty's 70th, slightly; Lieutenant Palliser, 63rd Bengal Native Infantry, slightly; Lieutenant Swanston, 7th Madras Native Infantry; Lieutenant Birch, 1st Bengal Light Cavalry, severely.

Her Majesty's 5th Fusiliers.-Captain L'Estrange, severely; Captain Johnson, severely.

Her Majesty's 78th Highlanders.--Captain Lockhart, severely; Captain Hastings, slightly; Lieutenant Crowe, slightly; Lieutenant Swanson, severely; Lieutenant Grant, severely; Lieutenant Jolly,

2

Her Majesty's 32nd (attached), since dead; Lieutenant Macpherson, slightly.

Her Majesty's 84th.-Captain Willis, slightly; Lieutenant Barry, slightly; Lieutenant Oakley, severely; Lieutenant Woolhouse, severely. Her Majesty's 90th Light Infantry.-Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, severely; Lieutenant Knight, severely; Assistant-Surgeon Bradshaw, slightly; Lieutenant Preston, slightly.

1st Madras Fusileers.-Lieutenant Arnold, since dead; Lieutenant Bailey, severely.

Extract from a letter addressed by Sir James Outram to his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief.

Alumbagh, 2nd January, 1858. I trust that you will forgive me for bringing a small personal matter to your private notice which has caused me some slight annoyance, for such consideration as you may think it deserving of.

I perceive from the published despatch of Sir Henry Havelock, describing the operations connected with his entrance into Lucknow for the relief of the garrison, the lamented General therein states that, after taking the Chutter Munzil, we held a conversation, at which I recommended that we should remain where we were, while he advocated pushing on at once, and adopted the latter course.

It seems to me that a dispassionate peruser of the above passage would infer that the relief of the garrison was due to General Havelock's adoption of his own views in preference to mine, and I therefore wish to explain that I proposed a halt, of only a few hours' duration, in order to enable the rear-guard, with which were all our heavy guns, the baggage, and the doolies containing our wounded, to come up, by which time the whole force would have occupied the Chutter Munzil in security, which we were then holding, and from which we could have effected our way to the Residency by opening communication through the intervening palaces;

in a less brilliant manner, it is true, but with comparatively little loss; at the same time offering to show the way through the street if he preferred it. I submit that the result proved the soundness of my advice. General Havelock pushed on without waiting for the rear-guard, which was consequently cut off for two nights and a day, not effecting its entrance to the entrenchment until the morning of the 27th, and then only at a heavy sacrifice of life, and the loss of a ninepounder gun and much baggage, and, still more sad to relate, at the cost of the lives of very many wounded officers and men, who were cut up in their doolies. (N.B.-The return of killed during that period was 61, and 77 missing. The latter being the unfortunate wounded.) This disaster would have been prevented, had the rear-guard been allowed to come up before we vacated the Chutter Munzil, as our light artillery from thence would have kept down the fire from the Kaiser Bagh, which was the principal cause of all the casualties. And the wounded were murdered at the entrance of the Chutter Munzil, which we had vacated.

[ocr errors]

It may seem to your Excellency that I should have made these observations before, and I have therefore to state, that I should certainly have requested the General to modify that passage in his despatch in which he mentions that I was desirous of a halt, had my name appeared in the official original which was forwarded through me by cossid to Captain Bruce, for transmission to your Excellency. But as such was not the case, I can only conclude that it was subsequently interpolated without the knowledge of General Havelock, when (on hearing that the original had miscarried) a copy was furnished which did not pass through my hands.

I am well aware that in surrendering the command to General Havelock, I left him at undoubted liberty to put

on record his own impressions regarding the conduct of the operations; but I am sure that if he were alive, he would at once assent to the correctness of what I have above stated.

It is with no desire of controversy, or any wish to reflect injuriously on the illustrious dead, that I mention the above facts for your private information. I think it only due to my professional reputation, however, to put you, my superior officer, in possession of the real facts of the case, because if the despatch, as it stands, gives you the impression (which, I think, I am justified in assuming it might do) that General Havelock accomplished such an achievement as that of the relief of Lucknow, by adopting a course of action contrary to that which I had recommended, it would naturally shake your confidence in me, and lead you, not unreasonably, to doubt my fitness to undertake the conduct of similar, or other military operations.

[In reference to this subject, the editor has received the following communication from an officer of the beleaguered garrison, to whom he submitted the foregoing letter, and from whom he solicited some explanatory information with reference to the amicable difference of opinion here referred to as existing between the two generals:- -]

Consult the plans, and bear in mind the circumstances of the case. Generals Outram and Havelock both believed that the garrison was on its last biscuit; and they had been unable to bring with them any provisions beyond the few days' rations the men carried in their havresacks. They came not to reinforce, but to extricate us. Their object, therefore, was not so much to accelerate their advance to our position as with the least possible sacrifice of those precious lives on which the safe removal of the garrison must be, in a great measure, dependent to open and keep open such communications with the Residency as should enable us to be withdrawn with our sick and wounded, women and children. In this view, the concentration of the entire relieving force, under the shelter of the palaces, appeared to Sir J. Outram preferable to pushing on at once, and leaving the rear-guard behind; and he thought it more advisable to open communications with the Residency

through the comparatively sheltered courts and gardens of the palaces (which, once occupied, could have been retained as long as was necessary), than to advance through crooked streets of loopholed houses, with the certainty of having either to repass these streets with the enfeebled and encumbered garrison, or to force a passage through the palaces, which the enemy would, in all probability, have by that time reoccupied. And it was a part of Sir J. Outram's plan to facilitate the arrival of the rear-guard at the Chutter Munzil (where he proposed making the halt), by ordering the field guns, then up with the main body, to open such a fire as should effectually divert the enemy's attention, if not altogether silence those guns of the Kaiser Bagh, from which he foresaw the rear-guard must otherwise suffer severely. As it was, the palaces had to be secured and occupied the next or the following day. It was through them that the garrison was eventually removed, two months later, by Sir Colin Campbell. Even after the arrival of the Commanderin-Chief's army, and notwithstanding the great extension in all directions which our position had ere then received, this was the only safe or practicable egress. And that it was not only practicable but safe, on the afternoon of September 25th, Sir James Outram, whose local knowledge was considerable, Captain Moorsom, on whose surveys of Lucknow the only accurate plans of the city are based, and Captain Alexander P. Orr, the commandant of a regiment in the late King of Oude's service, and who had for years been familiar with every inch of the locality, had satisfied themselves by a personal reconnaissance. Expecting that the relieving force would enter Lucknow by the regular Cawnpore road, the enemy had made their dispositions accordingly. A portion remained at their old batteries to keep the garrison in play, and prevent its making a diversion in favour of General Havelock; but the overwhelming majority had gone out to hold the barricades, breastworks, batteries, and loopholed houses, extending from the Charbagh bridge to the Residency, which had prepared to resist our relief. On finding that the British troops had, through the local knowledge and under the guidance of Sir James Outram (aided by Captains Moorsom and Orr), been enabled to baffle their arrangements by a flank movement, the sepoys, regular and irregular, began that evacuation of the city which they had completed on the morning of the following day; but the artillery stood to their posts, and the budmashes, Rajwarra troops, and matchlockmen hastened to retrieve their mistake by pouring down on the line of route actually adopted. They swarmed in the direction by which the rear-guard must advance to effect a junction with the main body then under the shelter of the neighbouring palaces; and they occupied the streets, and every position commanding the streets that led from the palaces to the Residency, as the casualties too plainly prove. But they had not been able to obtain possession of the palaces. These, as I have said, were quite deserted.

Though General Outram afterwards "concurred" in General Havelock's determination to push on without the rear-guard, and to take the street route, instead of that through the palaces, he retained his own opinion to the last. But, as he had voluntarily placed himself under General Havelock, it would have been unbecoming in him to persist in setting up his judgment in opposition to that of his commander. He

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »