Читать книгу Colin Campbell - Forbes Archibald - Страница 3

The Ninety-Eighth had been moved to Plymouth in anticipation of departure on foreign service, and on the 20th of December, 1841, it embarked for Hong-Kong on H.M.S. Belleisle, a line-of-battle ship which had been commissioned for transport service. According to present ideas the Belleisle, whose burden did not exceed 1750 tons, was abominably overcrowded, especially for a voyage of six months or longer. The Ninety-Eighth embarked eight hundred and ten strong; and what with staff officers, details, women and children and crew, the ship carried a total of nearly thirteen hundred souls. Among her passengers was Major-General Lord Saltoun, the hero of Hougomont, who was going out as second in command of the Chinese expeditionary force. During a short stay in Simon's Bay Colin Campbell had the pleasant opportunity of visiting his old Demerara chief Sir Benjamin D'Urban, who since they last met had served a term of office as Governor of Cape Colony, and was now living in retirement among his orchards and vineyards a few miles from Cape Town. The Belleisle made a fairly quick voyage to Hong-Kong, where she arrived on June 2nd, 1842, and where orders were awaiting the Ninety-Eighth to make all haste to join the force of Sir Hugh Gough operating in the region of the estuary of the Yang-tse-Kiang. Active hostilities had for some time previously been in progress. After the capture of the town of Chapoo on May 18th the fleet carrying the expeditionary force had proceeded to an anchorage off the mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang, where it lay for a fortnight while the bar was being surveyed and buoyed. The Chinese had constructed a great line of defensive works about Woosung, but the British fleet anchored in face of the batteries on the 16th of June, and as the result of a two hours' bombardment the Chinese fire was crushed and the garrisons were driven from their batteries by the sailors and troops. Shanghai was occupied, and the expedition remained in the vicinity of Woosung while surveying steamers were prospecting the river. It was during this halt that the Belleisle with the Ninety-Eighth aboard joined the expeditionary force at Woosung on the 21st of June. The regiment was assigned to the first brigade under Lord Saltoun, and occupied part of the third division of vessels during the ascent of the river.

The expedition left Woosung on July 6th, its objectives being the great cities of Chin-Kiang and Nanking. The strength of it was overwhelming, for the fleet consisted of fifteen ships of war, ten steamers and fifty transports and troop-ships, on which were embarked nine thousand soldiers and three thousand disciplined seamen ready for service on shore in case of need. The Belleisle was off Chin-Kiang on the 19th, and on the morning of the 21st the troops disembarked in three brigades. The columns of Sir Hugh Gough and General Schoedde had some hard fighting with the Tartar garrison of the city commanded by the gallant Haeling. Lord Saltoun's brigade, with the Ninety-Eighth in advance, marched against a Chinese force occupying a low ridge some miles inland and to westward of the city. The opposition encountered was trivial, and was easily overcome by the light company of the Ninety-Eighth in skirmishing order supported by a few discharges from a mountain-battery. But the regiment, debilitated as it was by a long tropical voyage in an overcrowded ship, unsupplied with an equipment suitable for the climate and wearing its ordinary European clothing, was in no case to resist the fierce summer-heat of China. The sun had its will of the men, thirteen of whom died on the ground; and Colin Campbell, seasoned veteran as he was, was himself struck down, though he soon recovered. From this day forth for months, and even for years, disease maintained its fell grip on the victims of overcrowding, and Napier would have been puzzled to recognise in the shattered invalids of Hong-Kong the "beautiful regiment" which had sailed from Plymouth in fine physique and high heart. On the night following the disembarkation several cases of cholera occurred, and fever and dysentery became immediately prevalent. Within ten days from the landing at Chin-Kiang fifty-three men of the Ninety-Eighth had died, and the Belleisle was rapidly becoming a floating hospital.

A garrison was left in Chin-Kiang, and on August 4th the Cornwallis man-of-war anchored in front of that very gate of Nanking which twenty-six years earlier had been rudely shut in the face of a British ambassador. Opposite that same gate it was destined that severe terms should now be dictated by a victorious British force. The mass of the expedition reached Nanking on the 9th and preparations for the attack on that city were promptly begun. The Ninety-Eighth men fit for service were transferred from the Belleisle to a steamer which conveyed them to a point where a diversion was intended. Colin Campbell was too ill to accompany his regiment, and when he joined it a few days later he was again prostrated by fever. But Nanking escaped its imminent fate. Negotiations resulted in a treaty of peace which was concluded on August 26th; the expedition retraced its steps, and in October the Belleisle reached Hong-Kong with the wreck of the unfortunate regiment. Even after those long months fate still kept imprisoned on ship-board what remained of the hapless Ninety-Eighth. The regiment had to remain on the Belleisle until barracks could be built for its reception. Writing to his sister in December, Colin Campbell had the following sad tale to tell: – "The regiment has lost by death up to this date two hundred and eighty-three men, and there are still two hundred and thirty-one sick, of whom some fifty or sixty will die; and generally, of those who may survive, there will be some seventy or eighty men to be discharged in consequence of their constitutions having been so completely broken down as to unfit them for the duties of soldiers. This is the history of the Ninety-Eighth regiment, which sailed from Plymouth in so effective a state in all respects on the 20th of December of last year – and all this destruction without having lost a man by the fire of the enemy!" His estimate of the losses, grave as it was, did not reach the grim actual total. From its landing at Chin-Kiang on July 21st, 1842, up to February, 1844, a period of nineteen months, the unfortunate regiment lost by death alone four hundred and thirty-two out of a strength of seven hundred and sixty-six non-commissioned officers and men; and there remained of it alive no more than three hundred and thirty-four, an awful contrast to the full numbers with which it had embarked at Plymouth twenty-six months earlier.

When the expeditionary force was broken up at the end of 1842 Colin Campbell became commandant of the island of Hong-Kong, and he devoted himself to the care of the survivors of his regiment. The worst cases were sent to a hospital ship, those less serious to a temporary hospital on shore. The remainder of the corps, some three hundred and thirty men, at last, in February, 1843, quitted the Belleisle and occupied quarters at Stanley. While at Hong-Kong he learned that he had been made a Companion of the Bath and aide-de-camp to the Queen, the latter appointment conferring promotion to the rank of colonel. In January, 1844, he left Hong-Kong to succeed General Schoedde in command of the garrison quartered on the Island of Chusan, a transfer which gave him the position of brigadier of the second class. In the more bracing and salubrious climate of Chusan Campbell materially regained his health; and he had not been many months in his new command when he began his efforts to have the Ninety-Eighth removed from its unhealthy quarters in Hong-Kong to the reinvigorating atmosphere of Chusan. This he was able to accomplish in the earlier months of 1845, and he immediately set about the restoration of the regiment to its former efficiency. He was a rigorous task-master, but if he did not spare others he never spared himself. He seldom missed a parade, and except in the hot season there were three parades a day. Leave of absence except on medical certificate was refused to officers who had come from England with the regiment, on the ground that their experience was needed to instruct the comparatively raw material from the depôt. The officers of the Ninety-Eighth who belonged to the garrison staff were also required to perform their regimental duty. The painstaking and laborious chief thus notes in his journal the progress of the regiment in the midsummer of 1845: "Parade as usual morning and evening; men improving, but still in great want of individual correctness in carriage, facings, motions of the firelock, etc.; but they move in line and open column very fairly, and I confidently expect before the end of the year to have them more perfect than any battalion in this part of the world." When toward the close of the year the health of the regiment was fully re-established, its colonel conceived that it should undergo higher tests than the ordinary movements of the drill-ground afforded. He accordingly took it out into the open country and divided it into an attacking and a defending force, in order to train the men in the art of taking cover and skill in skirmishes over broken ground. By the beginning of 1846 he was "quite at ease as to the appearance the regiment would make on landing in India."

The time fixed by the treaty of Nanking for the evacuation of the island of Chusan by the British troops was now approaching, and on May 10th the Chinese authorities resumed jurisdiction over the island. Until then Campbell's duties had not been purely military, the entire civil charge of Chusan having been vested in his hands. The most friendly relations existed between the British Brigadier and the Chinese Commissioners. Arrangements were made without a trace of friction for the preservation of the European burial-grounds and in regard to other matters. Campbell was the recipient of an interesting letter from the Commissioners, passages in which deserve to be quoted: – "While observing and maintaining the treaty, you have behaved with the utmost kindness and the greatest liberality towards our own people, and have restrained by strict regulations the military of your honourable country… The very cottagers have enjoyed tranquillity and protection, and have not been exposed to the calamity of wandering about without a home. All this is owing to the excellent and vigorous administration of you, the Honourable Brigadier… Now that you are about to return to your own country crowned with honour, we wish you every happiness."

Notwithstanding occasional attacks of ague which rendered him liable to depression and irritation, Campbell appears to have been fairly happy during his stay in Chusan. He writes on the eve of his departure of "'my last walk' in Chusan, where I have passed many days in quiet and peace, and where I have been enabled to save a little money, with which I hope to render my last days somewhat comfortable. My health upon the whole is pretty good; and altogether I have every reason to be thankful to God for sending me to a situation wherein I have been enabled to accomplish so much for my own benefit and the comfort of others, whilst my duty kept me absent from them." The latter allusion was to his father and sister, for both of whom he had been able to make provision in the event of his predeceasing them. Having left England heavily embarrassed, the increase of his emoluments during his stay in China had enabled him to relieve himself of liabilities, and this without being at all niggardly in the hospitalities which he dispensed.

Sailing from Chusan on July 5th in the transport Lord Hungerford, the colonel and headquarters of the Ninety-Eighth landed at Calcutta on October 24th, 1846; the last of the detachments carried by other transports arrived at the end of November, when the regiment was complete. Colin Campbell meanwhile had been in charge of Fort-William, but when the regiment began its march to Dinapore in December he resumed its command. He really seemed to live for the Ninety-Eighth. Lord Hardinge had expressed his intention of appointing him a brigadier of the second class. "This," writes Campbell, "is very flattering; but I would prefer to remain with my regiment." He writes with soldierly pride of its conduct on the route-march: "The march of the regiment has been conducted to my entire satisfaction, no men falling out, and the distance of sections so correctly preserved that their wheeling into line is like the operation of a field-day. Those who follow me will benefit by this order and regularity in conducting the line of march." On arrival at Dinapore in the end of January, 1846, he found his appointment in general orders as brigadier of the second class to command at Lahore. Before starting for his new sphere he held what proved to be his last inspection of the Ninety-Eighth. "Men steady as rocks," he writes, "moving by bugle-sound as correctly as by word of command – equally steady, accurate, and with the same precision." In the evening he spoke to the regiment some simple manly, soldierly words, to which the men must have listened with no little emotion. He dined with the mess the same night, when the president rose and proposed his health in connection with the day's inspection of the regiment and the exertions he had made as commanding officer to produce such results. "The toast," he wrote, "was received with great warmth and cordiality… I could not speak without emotion, and my manner could not conceal my deep anxiety respecting a corps in which I had served so long. I begged that, if their old colonel had been sometimes anxious and impatient with them, they would forget the manner and impatience of one who had no other thought or object in life but to add to their honour and reputation collectively and individually."

Next day he started for Lahore, "feeling," as he records in his restrained yet sincere manner, "more than I expected when taking leave of the officers who happened to be at my quarters at the moment of my departure." He had a pleasant meeting at Cawnpore with his old West Indian comrades of the Twenty-First Fusiliers; and on the road between Kurnal and Meerut he had an interview with the Governor-General. Lord Hardinge received him with the frank kindness of an old Peninsular man to a comrade, described Henry Lawrence, the British Resident in the Punjaub, as "the King of the country, clever and good-natured, but hot-tempered," and gave Campbell to understand that if any part of the force in the Punjaub should be called upon to take the field, he should have a command. A few days later he reached Saharunpore, the headquarters for the time of Lord Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, also an old Peninsular man, whom he found most cordial and friendly. The old Chief asked him whether he could be of any service to him. Colin Campbell, sedulous as ever for the welfare of the Ninety-Eighth, replied that he had no favour to ask for himself, but that his lordship would give him pleasure by removing his regiment nearer to the frontier as early as might be, away from its present station which afforded the men so many temptations to drink. On his arrival at Lahore in the end of February, 1847, he was cordially received by Henry Lawrence, whose guest at the Residency he became until he should find accommodation for himself.

Campbell came into the Punjaub at a very interesting period. The issue of the war of 1845–46 had placed that vast territory at the mercy of the British Government, and Lord Hardinge might have incorporated it with the Company's dominions. But he desired to avoid the last resource of annexation; and although he considered it necessary to punish the Sikh nation for past offences and to prevent the recurrence of aggression, he professed his intention to perform those duties without suppressing the political existence of the Punjaub State. The Treaty of Lahore accorded a nominally independent sovereignty to the boy Prince Dhulip Singh, a British Representative was in residence at Lahore, and the Sikh army was being reorganised and limited to a specified strength. Within a few months Lall Singh, who had been appointed Prime Minister, had been deposed, and a fresh treaty was signed in December, 1846, which provided that a council of regency composed of eight leading Sikh chiefs should be appointed to act under the control and guidance of the British Resident, who was to exercise unlimited influence in all matters of internal administration and external policy. British troops were to be stationed in various forts and quarters throughout the country, maintained from the revenues of the State. The management was to continue for eight years until the Maharaja Dhulip Singh should reach his majority. The treaty conferred on the Resident unprecedented powers, and Major Henry Lawrence, an officer of the Company's artillery, became in effect the successor of Runjeet Singh.

This settlement had a specious aspect of some measure of permanency. It might have lasted longer if the state of his health had enabled Henry Lawrence to remain at his post; but it was unsound at the core, for a valiant and turbulent race does not bow the neck submissively after a single disastrous campaign on its frontier. But the Punjaub seemed in a state of unruffled peace when Colin Campbell shook hands with Henry Lawrence in the Residency of its capital. In those days the familiar sobriquet of "Kubhur-dar," of which the English is "Take care!", had not attached itself to him; but Campbell, even when his Highland blood was aflame in the rapture of actual battle, was never either reckless or careless; and the motto "Be Mindful," which he chose for his coat of arms when he was made a peer, was simply a condensation of the principles of cool wisdom and shrewd caution on which he acted through life. A strong Sikh force, he found, was located in and about Lahore, and the population of the city had a name for turbulence. In order to inform himself as to how the troops were posted in relation to the defences of the city, as well against an interior as an exterior attack, one of his earliest concerns was to make a careful inspection of the positions along with the responsible engineer. In choosing his residence he held it to be his duty to have it in the proximity of his troops. Soon after his arrival there was a fête in the Shalimar gardens to which all the garrison had been invited, but he allowed only half of the officers of his command to be absent from their men, giving as his reason that "if the Sikhs wanted to murder all the officers, they could not have a better chance than when these were gathered four miles away from their men, enjoying themselves at a fête." In the measures of precaution which he adopted he had the approval of Henry Lawrence and of Sir Charles Napier, to the latter of whom he wrote on the subject. Napier expressed himself in his trenchant fashion: – "I am delighted at all your precautions against surprise. In India we who take these pains are reckoned cowards. Be assured that English officers think it a fine dashing thing to be surprised – to take no precautions. Formerly it was an axiom in war that no man was fit to be a commander who permitted himself to be surprised; but things are on a more noble footing now!"

In the end of 1847 Henry Lawrence left Lahore and went home to England in the same ship with Lord Hardinge. A week before they sailed from Calcutta Hardinge's successor, Lord Dalhousie, arrived there and took the oaths as Governor-General, – a potentate at whose hands a few years later Colin Campbell was to receive treatment which caused the high-spirited soldier to resign the command he held and leave India. In the Lahore Residency Henry Lawrence was succeeded temporarily by his brother John, who in March, 1848, gave place to Sir Frederick Currie, a member of the Supreme Council. The position was one which required the experience and military knowledge of a soldier, but Sir Frederick Currie was a civilian. In January Sir John Littler had been succeeded in the Punjaub divisional command by Major-General Whish, an officer of the Company's service, an appointment which disappointed Colin Campbell who had hoped for the independent command of the Lahore brigade.

The deceptive quietude of the Punjaub was now to be exposed. When Sir Frederick Currie reached Lahore, he found there Moolraj the Governor of Mooltan, a man of vast wealth who had come to offer the resignation of his position for reasons that were chiefly personal. Moolraj stipulated for some conditions which were not conceded, and ultimately he resigned without any other condition than that of saving his honour in the eyes of his own people. A new Governor was appointed in his place, who set out for Mooltan accompanied by Mr. Vans Agnew of the Bengal Civil Service and Mr. Agnew's assistant, Lieutenant Anderson of the Bombay Army. Moolraj marched with the escort of the new Governor, to whom, on the day after the arrival of the party in Mooltan, he formally surrendered the fort. After the ceremony Agnew and Anderson started on their return to camp, Moolraj riding alongside the two English gentlemen. At the gate of the fortress Agnew was suddenly attacked, – run through by a spear and slashed by sword-cuts. At the same moment Anderson was cut down and desperately wounded. Moolraj galloped off, leaving the Englishmen to their fate. Khan Singh's people carried them into a temple wherein two days later they were brutally slaughtered; their bodies were cut to pieces and their heads thrown down at the feet of Moolraj. What share Moolraj had taken in this treacherous butchery was never clearly ascertained; but every indication pointed to his complicity. This much is certain, that on the morning after the assassination he transferred his family and treasure into the fort, and placed himself at the head of the insurrectionary movement by issuing a proclamation summoning all the inhabitants of the province, of every creed, to make common cause in a religious war against the Feringhees.

News of the outrage and rising at Mooltan reached Lahore on April 24th. It was emphatically a time for prompt action, if an outbreak was to be crushed which else might grow into a general revolt throughout the Punjaub. It was extremely unlikely that the fort of Mooltan was equipped for an early and stubborn defence. To maintain our prestige was essential, for it was by prestige and promptitude only that we have maintained our pre-eminence in India. Sir Henry Lawrence would have marched the Lahore brigade on Mooltan without an hour's hesitation. Lord Hardinge would have ordered up the troops and siege-train from Ferozepore and the strong force collected at Bukkur; and would have invested Mooltan before Moolraj could have made any adequate preparations for prolonged defence. Marches through Scinde, from the north-western frontier, and from Lahore, could not have been made in the hot season without casualties; but, in the words of Marshman, "our Empire in India had been acquired and maintained, not by fair-weather campaigns, but by taking the field on every emergency and at any season."

On the first tidings from Mooltan Sir Frederick Currie ordered a strong brigade of all arms to prepare for a march on that stronghold, being of opinion that the citadel, described in poor Agnew's report as the strongest fort he had seen in India, would not maintain a defence when a British force should present itself before it, but that the garrison would immediately abandon Moolraj to his fate. Colin Campbell, on the other hand, held that since the fort of Mooltan was very strong it was to be anticipated that Moolraj would obstinately defend it; in which case a brigade sent to Mooltan would be obliged to remain inactive before it while siege-guns were being brought up, or, as seemed more probable, should no reinforcements arrive in support, it would have to retrace its steps followed and harassed by Moolraj's active and troublesome rabble. Eventually, in great measure because of the arguments advanced by Campbell, the movement from Lahore on Mooltan was countermanded; and the Commander-in-Chief, with the concurrence of the Governor-General, intimated his resolve to postpone military operations until the cold weather, when he would take the field in person.