Havelock Plans

The retribution would continue long after Havelock left Cawnpore – there was another man who had fewer scruples than the earnest and devout General, and his name was Brigadier-General James Neill. On the 20th of July, he would arrive in Cawnpore.
Havelock had also previously written to Neill, who was still at Allahabad.
Neill was to make haste towards Cawnpore and push up reinforcements of 300 Europeans – if not so many could be spared, then 200 would suffice. It was his intention to push on towards Lucknow, but a small force would be needed to watch over and maintain order in Cawnpore, in order to keep open the line of communication. Sickness, fatigue and exposure had taken their toll on his men, and without reinforcements from Allahabad, any attempt on Lucknow would be a fruitless endeavour. Havelock also needed ammunition for the Enfield, and against his own conscience, bid Allahabad to send stores of rum.
“If the road behind me, ” he said, “ is open, as I believe it to be, I trust, with the assistance of the rail, you will be able to prevent the necessity of our being reduced to half rations of rum, which would be a most trying deprivation to troops exposed to the fatigue and hardships that my men have endured, I am happy to say, hitherto, with the most creditable cheerfulness. In conclusion, I recapitulate my immediate and pressing wants. They are:

1. Enfield ammunition.
2. Gun ammunition.
3. European soldiers.
4. Field artillery.
5. Commissariat stores.”

The reinforcements Havelock expected consisted of the 5th Fusiliers from Mauritius and the 90th of Foot originally told off for the China Expedition, now on their way from England to India and any of the remaining detachments of the corps under his command. Unfortunately, Havelock was due to be disappointed. In a telegram from Sir Patrick Grant, he was informed the 5th and 90th would have other work to tend to and Havelock would have to contend with no reinforcements for some weeks to come. A fresh crisis had occurred – the mutiny at Dinapore, which now stretched the already lamentable resources of the EICo in Bengal in another direction. While reinforcements would continue to trickle into Cawnpore over the coming days, it would never be enough to take Lucknow by storm.
It was Lucknow on which Havelock now set his sights. The dispiriting news that his friend and comrade, Sir Henry Lawrence was dead only filled Havelock with desperate determination to provide assistance to the garrison, no matter what the odds would be. However, his main concern was the safety of Cawnpore.
On the 20th of July, as promised, Brigadier General Neill arrived from Allahabad bringing with him 227 men. The meeting between the two men was terse but cordial.
Neill had been impatiently biding his time at Allahabad, reinforcing the fort and making such arrangements as would permit him to leave. He had communications with the Commander-in-Chief at Calcutta, and from his own interpretation was under the impression Calcutta had lost confidence in Havelock and needed Neill’s talents to guide him. When the order came, Neill was almost too eager to take to the field. As he rode over the fields of Havelock’s battles, the stench of the dead was so dreadful his ADC rode with a handkerchief pressed firmly against his nose: Neill did not seem to notice it all.
He rode into Cawnpore as if he had been out on a stroll and straight into his first meeting with General Havelock.
“Now General Neill,” he said, “let us understand one another. You have no power or authority whilst I am here, and you are not to issue a single order.” It was not exactly what an impetuous man like Neill had hoped for and his humour would be further soured when Havelock informed him his place for the foreseeable future, to be Cawnpore and not in the field. Havelock gave him to understand he needed someone to keep the station secure while he was gone and that man was Brigadier-General Neill. Seething at the decision by “the old gentleman” he privately complained that Havelock was not up to the task he would be attempting and when all was told, jealous of Neill as his “heir-in-law,” liking him “no more than heirs-in-law usually were liked.”
Havelock was not leaving Cawnpore however undefended. Under his supervision and the direction of the engineers, he started a new entrenchment in Cawnpore, a little distance from the ferry on an elevated plateau. It was 200 yards in length and a hundred in breadth, situated on the bank of the river. It was sufficiently raised to give a commanding view of the surrounding country. Surveying the position, Havelock noted, at a distance of 500 yards, was an island partly submerged by the monsoon deluge. Between it and the Awadh side were two further islands – nothing more than sandbanks thrown up by the river, covered in water some three feet deep and only visible by the reeds that grew around them. Havelock wanted these islands to be turned “to good account” and if he was obliged to return to Cawnpore by recrossing the river, the entrenchment on the right bank could cover his movements and a causeway could be built, joining the islands. While the construction of the entrenchment was nearly completed when Havelock left Cawnpore on the 25th of July, the Causeway would not be completed until the 9th of August. It was a remarkable feat of engineering.

“When the water was not deep, double rows of platforms, weighted with clods of earth, were placed lengthways, and over these, a second, third and sometimes fourth, and even a fifth double row were piled, and when a height or clear-of-flood level, was gained, grass was packed upon them and spread over with a sufficient coating of earth. Where the water was deep, brushwood was thrown in, arranged in layers of bundles, and trodden by the workman into a compact mass, and then held in position by stakes driven through it. By this arrangement, the flow of water was not altogether obstructed, and a height of two feet of Causeway was rapidly acquired and covered over with double rows of platforms, grass and earth. The entire Causeway thus thrown up, was about twelve feet wide.
On the 9th of August, the Causeway, between the two designated points was completed, and a pile bridge with two fifteen-foot openings thrown across the main stream. On the 10th, two boat bridges of four and six boats were thrown across the two minor channels nearest to the Left Bank.
On the 11th a long Pier-head was constructed on the centre Island, for embarkation; and two Pier-heads for the dis-embarkation on the Cawmpore side of it – a third bridge of twelve boats placed over the broadest of the three minor channels – and the whole length of the Causeway completed.”
For the construction of the entrenchment and subsequently of the Causeway, up to 4000 labourers were employed from Cawnpore who Havelock ordered should be paid punctually every evening; any European of the force with engineering or mechanical skill were likewise sent into this new service, at a gratuity of six pence a day. The disarmed portion of the Irregular Cavalry were likewise set to work and any European who was not too ill or invalided and could wield a spade.

Meanwhile, Havelock was preparing to leave Cawnpore but he could not wait for the Causeway – he needed to move his men across the river. For this purpose he needed boats. To collect those he needed, the steamer Berhampooter which had been sent up from Allahabad under Captain Spurgin with 100 men of the 1st Madras Fusiliers to add assistance initially to Renaud, had arrived in Cawnpore and would now be employed up and down the river, collecting boats. It was foolhardy to entrust the boats to anyone but experienced boatmen but these were less forthcoming, fearing they would blamed for the affair at Satichaura Ghat. Spurgin told them that any previous misdemeanours would be overlooked if they would provide their services nobly now. Even with this assurance, he was not able to collect more than 20 but those that did come forward with their crafts were embodied as a corps with fixed pay.

Starting on the night of the 21st of July, in pouring rain and with only 20 boats to assist the crossing as the Berhampooter turned out to be useless against the current, it would take Havelock until the 28th of July to assemble his force at Mangalwar, 6 miles away from the river. They would advance the next day to the town of Onao and General Havelock would open his Oudh Campaign, to relieve Lucknow.

As for Neill, he watched Havelock disappear in the distance – Cawnpore was now under his control and he gave no more thought to Havelock or indeed anyone else. If the city had feared retribution before, it would be Neill who intended to show them what terror was.
“I saw that house when I first came in, “wrote Neill, “One cannot control one’s feelings. Who could be merciful to one concerned? Severity at the first is mercy in the end. I wish to show the Natives of India that the punishment inflicted by us for such deeds will be the heaviest, the most revolting to their feelings, and what they must remember. “
On the 25th of July, the first such punishment was enforced and Brigadier General Neill will forever be known as the man who forced men on their knees, by the threat of the whip, to clean a portion of the bloody floor of the Bibighar with their tongues before being hung at a gallows erected suitably close to the house to avoid any delay. How a man who had covered himself with glory in the 2nd Burmese War and served in pride in Crimea would live on in history as nothing more than a bully, a butcher and when all things are told, a self-righteous brute. Kaye has asked us not to judge Neill too harshly, considering his times and the unusual circumstances in which he was placed but even he must concur, in his own words,

“What is dreadful in the record of retribution is, that some of our people regard it not as a solemn duty or a terrible necessity, but as a devilish pastime, striking indiscriminately at the black races and slaying without proof of individual guilt. That Neill was fully assured in his own mind that the men on whom he had inflicted the terrible punishment thus described in his own words, were among the actual perpetrators of the great crime which was called upon to punish, cannot be questioned, and we was must all devoutly hope that he was right.“

While the revolting deed for which Neill is remembered was only carried out twice to the knowledge of Sherer and others who had remained in Cawnpore it would reach the news and history in exaggerated proportions. Sherer’s own meeting with Neill had been strained at best. He informed Sherer most civilly he wished to have charge of the city himself and wanted the people of Cawnpore to understand the present occupation was a military one. Sherer was further instruched to cooperate with Neill regardless and as such, with his powers curtailed, as magistrate Sherer could do nothing to hold back the orders of Brigadier General Neill. He was a much maligned man and he now set his sights on bringing down the one who had stung him the most – Sir Henry Havelock. For all his machinations, however, it was Havelock who had taken to the field and for the remainder of July, into August and until he reached Lucknow in September, it would be Havelock who would have to carry the brunt of the disappointments yet to come.

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