July on the Ridge

On the British side, officers of repute and standing started arriving. Richard Baird Smith, the highly respected man of the engineers with a plan to put the Ridge in order, and from the wilds of the Punjab, Coke and his redoubtable Rifles swept into Delhi. In their wake came men who were eager to secure their place in history – the young Lieutenant Frederick Roberts down from the Punjab and the eager Lieutenant Vibart who had only recently fled Delhi with nothing but the clothes on his back. Anger bristled in his 19-year-old mind – for all he knew, his parents and siblings lay dead in Cawnpore, and he joined the ranks of men seeking retribution. Nor was he alone. Wigram Cunliffe was haunted by the horrific tales of his sister’s death, which occurred barely 12 hours after he had left her with the Jennings’ in Delhi and Lieutenant Thomason faired little better – his bride-to-be had died with Cunliffe’s sister. Skulking around the Ridge, like a demented pirate, was Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, simmering with fury at the dreadful loss of Metcalfe House, whose ruins he could see from the Ridge. Other haunted men who had lost their wives and families no longer cared if they lived or died but were eager to have a last shot at the rebels. They fought with merciless fury. William Hodson continued taking immense risks with his men, sending spy after spy into Delhi, and if the rumour was true, he had walked the ruined city’s desolate streets in disguise. All along the only open road to Delhi, officers were eagerly looking for transportation to the Ridge. Bereft of their regiments, they were looking for a way to redeem their conscience for losing their commands to mutiny and were eager to dive into the thick of things. Delhi was the place to be.
However, reinforcements were still only a handful. Between the end of June to the 25th of July, the following troops arrived:

Right wing of HM’s 8th Regiment of Foot under Col. Henry Hartley
HM’s 61st Regiment of Foot, under Col. William Jones, C.B., Grenadier, Light and Nos. 2,3, and 7 Companies, plus the band – 450 men
1 squadron of the 5th Punjab Cavalry, under Lt. George Younghusband (13th BNI)
1st Punjab Infantry “Coke’s Rifles” under Major John Cokes, 800 men
1 division with two guns, 1st Troop, 1st Brigade Horse Artillery
1 division, two guns, 5th (Native) Troop, 1st Brigade, Bengal Horse Artillery
Detachment of the 4th Battalion Bengal Artillery without any guns
New raised levies of Sikh Infantry and Punjab Artillery, with no guns
1 squadron 1st Punjab Cavalry, under Captain John Watson and the newly raised Sikh Irregular Cavalry known as Hodson’s Horse, under William Hodson.

July would be the darkest month for the British on the Ridge. They still numbered no more than 5800 fighting men with nearly 1000 either sick or wounded, and while the rebels sat safely behind walls with roofs over their heads, the Ridge remained a rocky outcrop, battered now by monsoon rain. As for ammunition, the rebels had a seemingly inexhaustible stock while the British had long since resorted to collecting whatever shell the rebels fired at them, and provided it was the same size as their ordnance, sending it back to the city. Every regiment that marched into Delhi brought with them their arms and munitions; as soon as the British had faced them in one skirmish, there always seemed to be more men, more guns. Some officers believed there was no way to win against those odds, and a few believed it would be best to abandon the Ridge altogether. Having got wind of this, Sir John Lawrence wasted no time in sending missive after missive to Delhi, reminding the commander that abandoning Delhi would lead to the destruction of the British in India. General Barnard, tired and weary, now found himself in a position he had never wanted in the first place. On one hand, he had Lawrence howling from the Punjab for him to hang on no matter what the odds; on the other, he had a camp drowning in mud, sickness, and he was still facing an insurmountable enemy. To make things worse, Mr Greathed, the commissioner, was taking his orders from Agra as his position belonged rightly to the North-Western Province and refused to listen to Sir John Lawrence. Greathed was all for abandoning Delhi because it was more important to establish authority over the Doab and reopen communications between Meerut and Agra. In the midst of this, bolder and more spirited officers continued harassing Barnard to put together an all-out assault on Delhi.
A plan was put together, once again with such secrecy that even some of Barnard’s staff were “sleeping soundly in blissful ignorance”, but it was not so much a secret in Delhi. The rebels knew every movement of the plan and were on alert. A large body was moved down by circuitous route into a walled garden in the rear of the Ridge, and if the storming party the British had intended to send to blow in the Kashmiri Gate had been allowed to set off, they would not have met with the mere guard they were expecting, but a very awake army.
Someone on the Ridge had the gumption to inform Barnard of the plan – and at the last minute, the whole idea to carry the city of Delhi by coup-de-main was once again called off. The question was not so much that the plan, had it been executed, would have undoubtedly failed; it was more who had betrayed it to the rebels. There were very few native troops on the Ridge – the Sirmur Gurkhas under Ried were beyond reproach, Rothney’s Sikhs and the Guides likewise, while Coke’s Rifles had only just arrived on the Ridge. Yet someone was telling the enemy what the British were doing even before they had done it.

In the Corps of Guides, the loss of European officers had been severe – Quentin Battye killed, Daly, Kennedy, Hawes, Shebbeare, De Brett (of the 57th NI doing duty with the Guides), Chalmers (3rd BNI) Murray (42nd BNI) had all been wounded, some more than once, while in the 4th Sikhs who had but lately arrived, Yorke (3rd BNI) had been killed and Packe (4th BNI) and Pullan had been wounded. Although “gallantry and rash daring of young blood” could account for some of these casualties, it did not explain why some of the officers had fallen when the enemy was not firing and Packe’s injuries for sure had not occurred from the front, but from the back, in other words, some of the officers had been shot by their own men.
It transpired three of the purabiya (literally, “easterners” or men from the region of Bihar and Agra) sepoys had been attempting to sow discontent among the Sikhs of Coke’s Regiment. They had served long and hard in the service of the company, but now, before the walls of Delhi, the sepoys lost heart.
“Addressing themselves to a Sikh officer and bewailing the inevitable downfall of the English rule, they added, “What is the use of us staying here? Let us kill as many Feringhee as we can and make our way to Delhi. See how few they are! They will be shot in the end. From the King of Delhi, our reward will be magnificent, and our name will be great.”
The Sikh officer listened and, after apparently assenting to everything they said, promptly reported them to his commanding officer. Of the three men who were arrested, one was shot by the Sikh officer himself, while the other two were court-martialed and, within half an hour of being found guilty, hanged. The remaining purabiyas of the company, some 150 in number, were dismissed from service and sent off the Ridge. This did not stop the flow of information reaching the city of Delhi, but for a moment, it gave any mutinous minds left in the British ranks a moment’s pause.
What it did do, however, was to ferment a stronger mistrust towards Indians, soldiers or otherwise. Some officers saw foes everywhere – in their own servants, in harmless villagers, in camp followers. If fighting against an enemy they could see was not enough, some officers now imagined an enemy no one could see and used the mere idea of “suspicious behaviour” as sufficient reason to shoot harmless individuals – seven villagers fell to the wrath of one particularly bloody minded man on grounds of “spying” which he did not have to prove and they had no means to defend against. The war had taken on a cruelty of its own.

Alipore, 4th of July

On the 3rd of July, Bakht Khan turned out some 5000 men with several guns – however, contrary to expectations, there was no grand attack. Instead, he moved his men off to the right of the Ridge. Shortly after dark, he assembled his force and marched them off in the direction of Alipore, where the British were holding a small outpost manned by Younghusband’s squadron of the 5th Punjab Cavalry.
Reaching Alipore around midnight, they opened fire on the serai with artillery – giving the sowars just enough time to mount their horses and fall back on Rhai the next post some ten miles to the rear of the Ridge and garrisoned by the friendly troops of the Jhind Raja.
The sound of the artillery barrage could clearly be heard in Delhi – with some haste, a column under Major Coke was prepared to pursue the insurgents should they decide to push up the Trunk Road or, at the very least, cut them off should they try to return to Delhi. Besides the men of the 1st Punjab Infantry, Coke took with him one wing of the 61st Foot, six Horse and six Field Artillery guns, one squadron of Carbineers, one squadron of the 9th Lancers, and the Guides Cavalry – in all 800 infantry, 300 cavalry and 12 guns. As his staff officer, Coke was given the young Lieutenant Frederick Roberts.

It was generally supposed the enemy was attempting to cut off a supply train coming from the Punjab, which was known to be under Native guard. Coke was expecting a long, hard chase – but at daybreak, the mutineers were in plain sight, crossing in front of Coke’s column. They had pillaged Alipore in the night and were returning to Delhi, laden with plunder. “The rebels were moving on fairly high ground, but between us and them was a swamp rendered almost impassable by recent heavy rain. It extended a considerable distance on either side, and as there was no other way of getting at the rapidly retreating foe, it had to be crossed. Our Artillery opened fire, and Coke advanced with the Cavalry and Infantry. The swamp proved to be very difficult; in it, men and horses floundered hopelessly, and before we were clear, the enemy had got away with their guns; they were obliged, however, to leave behind all the plunder taken from Alipur and a considerable quantity of ammunition…”
The Carabineers and Guides set off in pursuit to cut up any stragglers, but the insurgents, proceeding with as much haste as they could muster, still managed to carry off all their guns.

With the fierce sun burning overhead and the soldiers already “much distressed” for having been under arms for more than ten hours, Coke halted the infantry on the banks of the Western Jamuna Canal instead of marching straight back to Delhi, allowing the cavalry and artillery to proceed without them. They piled arms and watched as the guns and cavalry crossed the canal – a troop of elephants had been brought out to bring in the wounded, adding to the sight. All of a sudden, from the left, and with no warning, shots came flying out of the jungle, hitting some men lying on the ground. The men quickly fell in and moved in the direction from which the shots were coming.
Terrified by the sound of the firing, the elephants panicked and dashed off across the canal. With loud trumpeting, and their trunks held up well over their heads, they plunged into the water, their mahouts vainly trying to stop them. The elephants refused to pay any heed at all, their flight ending when they were safely back in their own camp.
In the meantime, the shots were “thick and fast,” while the regiment advanced in line until they came to an open space and could see the enemy, which to their horror, outnumbered them four to one. An all-out attack would have been suicidal, and prudently, Major Coke “deemed it prudent to retire.” Retreating firing, the regiment retraced its steps back to the canal and, crossing the bridge, lined the bank on each side. A young officer named Griffiths left the following account:

“The enemy followed, their men forming opposite us and keeping up a steady fire at a distance of from 100 to 150 yards. I was on the right of the line with the Grenadiers, when, half an hour later, I was directed by the Adjutant to march my men to the left of the bridge to reinforce the Light Company, who were being hard pressed by the insurgents, some of whom were wading through the canal, with the evident intention of turning our left flank. We crept along the bank and were received with joy by our comrades, one of them, I well remember, welcoming us in most forcible language and intimating that they would soon have been sent to – – – if we had not come.
The file-firing here was continuous, a perfect hail of bullets, and it was dangerous to show one’s head over the bank. Shouting and taunting us, the rebels came up close to the opposite side and were struck down in numbers by our men, who rested their muskets on the bank and took sure aim. Still, the contest was most unequal; the enemy wading in force through the water on our left and the day would have gone hard for us from their overwhelming numerical superiority…”
Suddenly, from the rear, the men heard the sound of galloping horses and the noise of wheels – Major Tombs and six-horse artillery guns “came thundering along the road…They passed with a cheer, crossed the bridge at full speed, wheeled to their left, unlimbered as quick as lightning and opened fire on the rebels.” Taken completely by surprise, the rebels fled in disorder back to Delhi, leaving their dead and wounded behind.
The engagement cost the life of one of Coke’s dearest friends from the Frontier, a man who had followed him purely from personal attachment from his wild home on the Kohat border “Chief Mir Mubarak Shah. He was a grand specimen of a frontier Khan, and on hearing that the 1st Punjab Infantry was ordered to Delhi expressed his determination to accompany it. He got together a troop of eighty of his followers, and leaving Kohat on the 1st of June, overtook Coke at Kurnal on the 27th, a distance of nearly 600 miles.” A ride which was barely outmatched by the Guides.
Shortly before sunset, the force completed the four-mile march back to the Ridge – many men died on the way from heat apoplexy and sunstroke, while the wounded and the dead were piled onto the backs of a fresh batch of elephants. Waiting to greet them was General Sir Henry Barnard with kind words of encouragement – it was almost the last thing the poor man would do; within hours, he was lying on his deathbed bed caught in the agonising throes of cholera. He would be dead before noon the next day.

Command was now left to General Reed, the old, nearly senile general sent down from the Punjab. He had scarcely stirred from his bed from the day he arrived on the Ridge and, although senior to Barnard, had left everything up to him. With Barnard gone, Reed officially retired from the Ridge on the 17th of July, leaving Wilson commander in chief of the Delhi Field Force, superseding three senior officers. In absolute disgust at being passed over for the position, Colonel Graves, who had been Brigadier at Delhi before the mutiny, left the Ridge. Congreve took over as Acting Adjutant-General, and Longfield filled in for Graves.