The March to Kandahar- Roberts in Afghanistan Read online

  Roberts was still serving at Peshawar in the Punjab when news of the outbreak reached them; the spread of insurrection was aided by the incompetence of senior British officers and officials. Outside the Punjab, where the best men were in charge, he told his family, India was at the mercy of ‘idiot after idiot’, the government at Calcutta were ‘quite imbecile’, some of the officers were ‘perfect children – quite unable to take care of themselves’. He wrote: ‘Oh, my dear Mother, you would not believe Englishmen could ever have been guilty of such imbecility as has almost inevitably been displayed during this crisis ... We have a most dilatory, undecided Commander-in-Chief.’ This was Anson, who moved slowly to gather men and munitions, but others such as General Hewitt at Meerut – ‘a dreadful old fool, a sad stumbling block’, in the words of Brigadier Archdale Wilson – were equally bad. Only ‘the most strenuous measures and decided exertions will save India now,’ thought Roberts.9

  The early stages of the Mutiny impressed on Roberts the need for quick and decisive action, as taken by those in command at Peshawar in contrast to indecision and slowness elsewhere. Other than his father, the first man to influence Roberts profoundly in his pre-Afghan career was the redoubtable Deputy Commissioner of Peshawar, Lieutenant Colonel John Nicholson. Nicholson was a legend on the North-West Frontier for marches of extraordinary speed and endurance, and feats of incredible boldness. They began just before the 2nd Sikh War in the spring of 1848: although laid low with fever, he rose from his sick bed and led a force of mounted and unmounted irregulars on an all-night ride to seize Attock Fort on the Indus from superior forces. By sheer bluff, by the authority of his voice and by wrenching the musket from the hands of a sentry who was about to resist, he mastered the entire fort without a shot being fired. The Punjab, British India’s new province, was administered by the brothers Sir Henry and Sir John Lawrence, and the former’s band of young men, later celebrated by Kipling, among them Nicholson. Roberts wrote years later: ‘Nicholson impressed me more profoundly than any man I had ever met before or have ever met since. I have never seen anyone like him. He was the beau-ideal of a soldier and gentleman.’ In early letters he referred to him as ‘about the best man in India’.

  Roberts’s view must be tempered, however: Nicholson was a ruthless and determined soldier who readily dealt with his foes. He had been captured in the 1st Afghan War and seen the Afghans ignore the promise to treat their prisoners honourably by assaulting the Hindu sepoys with him and hacking to death all those Hindus – but not the English captives – who refused to convert to Islam on the spot. Thus he especially loathed Afghans as ‘the most vicious and bloodthirsty race in existence, who fight merely for the love of bloodshed and plunder’. In a withdrawal in the closing stages of the 1st Afghan War, riding through the Khyber Pass, he had come across the body of his brother Alexander, an officer serving with the British rearguard, killed in an Afghan ambush in a rocky defile at Ali Masjid – stripped, hacked to pieces, and his genitalia stuffed into his mouth. Did Nicholson tell Roberts the story? He certainly impressed him with many of his views, and the British Army of Retribution in which Nicholson served had, in the autumn of 1842, more than evened the score for the destruction of the Anglo-Indian army in the retreat from Kabul. In villages, no man above the age of fourteen was spared, the Afghan capital looted, the bazaar burnt amidst dreadful scenes of plunder.10

  When news of the revolt at Meerut, Delhi and elsewhere reached Peshawar, Nicholson and the Commissioner, Sir Herbert Edwardes, said that the only chance of keeping the Punjab and the frontier quiet lay in trusting the chiefs and the people, and in endeavouring to induce them to side with the British, outnumbered by sepoys four to one. Six days which Roberts spent at Rawalpindi later in May 1857, in the Chief Commissioner’s office, drafting or copying confidential letters and telegrams, made him aware of the magnitude of the crisis through which they were passing. Determined measures by Edwardes and Nicholson were equal to it. At Peshawar four native regiments were forcibly disarmed. The Subadar-Major of the 51st Bengal Native Infantry, whose letters called on the men of another regiment to join him in mutiny, had been intercepted by Nicholson’s police, was found guilty by a brief drumhead court martial, marched in front of each regiment on parade and hanged before the entire garrison. Until then, there had been very few recruits to the British from the men of the Punjab, whom Nicholson hoped would join them. By the time the parade was over, wrote Commissioner Edwardes, ‘the air was cleared, as if by the thunderstorm. We breathed freely again ... Hundreds of Khans and Urbabs [landowners] who stood aloof the day before, appeared as thick as flies and were profuse in offers of service.’11

  Among the decisions taken by a speedy conference at Peshawar was one to form a ‘Movable Column’, which Roberts accompanied as a staff officer. Further measures included the blowing of two sepoys of the 35th Native Infantry from the mouths of cannon before the eyes of their comrades following court martial, a measure commonly used by the Moguls. It was, wrote Roberts, the ‘death that seems to have the most effect ... It is rather a horrible sight, but in these times we cannot be particular. Drumhead courts martial are the order of the day in every station, and had they begun this regime a little earlier, one half of the destruction and mutiny would have been saved.’ On 20 June, Nicholson joined the Movable Column to take command, accompanied by a ‘motley crew’ of frontier horsemen, following their leader without pay, but from personal devotion. Among them, Nicholson’s young orderly or frontier squire, Muhammed Hayat Khan, was intensely loyal to his chief, who had been a friend of his father, and was later to accompany Roberts to Kabul in fateful circumstances. On the road between Jullundur and Phillour Nicholson ordered the British 52nd Regiment and artillery to press on to a place selected by him and Roberts at an earlier reconnaissance. The guns were unlimbered and made ready. As the 35th and 33rd Bengal Native Infantry approached, they were successively covered by the gunners and their weapons taken. The disarming complete, an old Sikh colonel watching from the side rose to his feet and remarked that Nicholson had drawn the fangs of fifteen hundred serpents.12

  British hold on the Punjab was mirrored elsewhere. The south gave little trouble; many native princes were loyal. In Sind ‘the people remembered with gratitude how they were rescued by the British government from the grinding tyranny of the Amirs.’13 The revolt covered about a sixth of India and about a tenth of the population. In this area military mutiny was complemented by civil revolt and for a time the British lost control. The Mutiny in the Ganges plain resolved itself into the British siege of the capital Delhi and sepoy sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, and British attempts to relieve these garrisons. In late June, Roberts joined the staff of the force on Delhi ridge, and during the last stage of the siege did double duty as staff and battery officer. The outnumbered British with their Indian, Sikh and Gurkha allies were tested to the utmost. Roughly a third died lingering and painful deaths from illness or wounds. Intense heat and scorching sun without a vestige of shade tested the besiegers, assailed by the numerous enemy sallies from Delhi’s Kabul Gate barely half a mile distant, using the cover of a tangled mass of bazaars and garden walls. Roberts had several narrow escapes, culminating in a wound which would have been fatal had the round not struck an ammunition pouch which had twisted round accidentally and protected the base of his spine. He wrote home: ‘Am I not a lucky fellow, my own Mother, and has not God been merciful to me, I can never be sufficiently thankful.’14

  He commanded a section of two guns in the bombardment of Delhi’s defences, preparatory for an assault by five columns, planned by Nicholson. At dawn on 14 September 1857, the attackers hurled themselves at the breaches in the walls, the first column led by Nicholson. Roberts was a spectator as the columns penetrated the outer defences and hoisted British colours on the Kabul Gate. In the city the assault columns were brought to a halt by vicious street fighting. Roberts, sent to investigate the truth of a report that Nicholson had been wounded, found his hero abandoned by bear
ers in a doolie, a two-wheeled cart for wounded, stricken by a chest wound. Nicholson was lying inside the doolie ‘with death all over his face’, but he gave no sign of the agony he was suffering. Roberts said he hoped that he was not seriously wounded. Came the reply, ‘I am dying; there is no chance for me.’ The sight was almost too much for the young Roberts. To lose Nicholson, he later wrote, seemed at that moment to lose everything. With difficulty he collected a party and ordered them to take his hero direct to the field hospital. That was the last he saw of him. On 16 September, Roberts wrote to his mother: ‘General Nicholson is, I am afraid, mortally wounded. He led his Column like no other man could, and in him we lose our best Officer.’15

  By the time Nicholson died on 23 September, Delhi had been taken, Roberts, Lieutenant Arthur Lang and a party of fifty capturing the Burn Bastion on the 19th. The confused street fighting at Delhi was a memory that forever prejudiced Roberts against fighting in cities. Delhi had to be recaptured street by street, but its fall was a turning point, a tremendous blow to the mutineers’ morale, beaten by a force scarcely one-third their strength. Nicholson was buried on 24 September in a new cemetery between the Kashmir Gate and the Ridge, mourned by the men of the Delhi Field Force.16

  Roberts was not present. He was attached as DAQMG (Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General) to the force of 2,800 men detailed for the relief of Cawnpore. ‘Our way from the Lahore Gate by the Chandi Chauk led through a veritable city of the dead,’ he wrote. ‘Not a sound to be heard but the falling of our own footsteps; not a living creature to be seen. Dead bodies were strewn in all directions.’ The desolate city was littered with the debris of war, among them a portmanteau with the name ‘Miss Jennings’ on it, ‘an extremely pretty girl,’ wrote Roberts to his mother, ‘... murdered coming out of church on the 11 May.’ The scenes remained with Roberts all his life. Both sides in the Mutiny behaved mercilessly: the ambush and killing of most of the Cawnpore garrison who had surrendered under terms, and the subsequent slaughter of women and children on the approach of a relief column, provoked an explosion of anguished rage among the hardened soldiers and incited the avenging British to deeds of cruel retribution. Cawnpore remained a potent symbol in British Indian memories.

  Sir Henry Havelock’s small force had already marched to relieve Lucknow, penetrated to the Residency, but then were besieged there with the original garrison. Sir Colin Campbell, the new Commander-in-Chief, took charge of a stronger force for Lucknow’s relief on 9 November 1857, with Roberts serving on his staff. The heroic resistance of the garrison in a siege lasting from 30 June to 22 November exercised a mystique in British India equal to the massacre of Cawnpore. The 65-year old veteran Campbell coaxed the best from his men, especially the Scots of the Highland Regiments who vied with Sikhs, Punjabis and Pathans to be first in action. Approaching Lucknow Roberts led the column part of the way, was frequently in action, detached for dangerous missions, fired upon and was in hand-to-hand conflict. He was fortunate to survive in the lottery of death. Corporal William Forbes-Mitchell of the 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders recorded how two companies halted in a field of carrots before advancing into a park swarming with deer and enemy. When Roberts, who had been associated with the 93rd in several skirmishes and was familiarly known to the Highlanders as ‘Plucky wee Bobs’, galloped to the front to reconnoitre, an enemy masked battery opened fire from behind the Dilkusha Palace. One shot struck Roberts’s charger just behind him, cutting the horse in two, both horse and rider falling in a confused heap. Roberts, unwounded, got clear of his mount, struggled to his feet amidst the rousing cheers of the 93rd, found another horse and was soon in action again, bringing forward artillery. The shot that had killed his horse ricocheted at almost a right angle and took off the top of the skull of a young Highlander, Kenneth Mackenzie, killing him instantly. Moments before Mackenzie had been eating tasty carrots with his colour sergeant, whom he had begged to write to his mother if anything happened to him. ‘Poor lad! How can I tell his poor mother?’ the distraught Colour Sergeant asked Forbes-Mitchell. ‘He was her favourite laddie.’17

  At the storming of the Sikandarbagh, a low-walled enclosure of great strength with loopholes for defence, the garrison of 2,000 fought to the death, leaving bodies in piles, dead and dying inextricably tangled. Campbell then made an appeal to the 93rd, his favourite regiment, for a final effort. The last advance captured the Shah Najaf Mosque, a great white building whose dome, surrounded by thick jungle, stood out half a mile away, heavily garrisoned by desperate men. After its capture, Roberts lay down to sleep after almost sixty hours in the saddle. The following morning, 17 November, he hoisted regimental colours to show the Residency how close stood relief. As Campbell’s men continued to advance, the commanders of the besieged rushed out to meet them. Campbell with Roberts and another subaltern, Henry Norman, later a distinguished field marshal, went forward through a breach to meet them. At the same time another fire-eating young officer, Captain Garnet Wolseley of the 90th, led his company in an attack on the Moti Mahal, a palace surrounded by orange and lemon trees and a high brick wall. In his thirst for glory he had exceeded orders, enraging Campbell momentarily, but the success of the relief march restored his good humour. On 19 November, he withdrew the women and children from the city, the guns and stores over the next three days, and on 22nd-23rd the garrison.

  Campbell next turned his force towards Cawnpore where General Windham, who had been left in the city by Campbell, had been forced to withdraw by rebel forces. On 6 December, Campbell’s attack, surprising the enemy, routed them. Cavalry and horse artillery, Roberts with them, pursued them for 14 miles. ‘The sepoys scattered over the country, throwing away their arms and divesting themselves of their uniforms,’ he wrote. ‘Nineteen guns, some of them of large calibre, were left in our hands.’18 Next, Campbell’s column marched towards Fatehgarh, northwest of Cawnpore and Lucknow, scene of an infamous massacre of Christians in July 1857. The capture of Fatehgarh would open communications between the Punjab and Bengal. Roberts was attached to the cavalry force under Brigadier Sir James Hope Grant, and with them he won the Victoria Cross in a cavalry charge at the village of Khudaganj, for saving the life of a loyal sowar and capturing one of the enemy’s standards. He had already been mentioned in despatches for his services and thirsted for glory, as did many other young officers, writing to his mother that he wanted to win the V C ‘more than any other’. Recommending Roberts for the award, Hope Grant reported: ‘Lieutenant Roberts’s gallantry has on every occasion been most marked. On following up the retreating enemy on the 2 January, 1858, at Khadagunge [sic], he saw in the distance two Sepoys going away with a Standard. Lieutenant Roberts put spurs to his horse and overtook them just as they were about to enter a village. They immediately turned round and presented their muskets at him, and one of the men pulled the trigger, but fortunately the cap snapped [i.e. the weapon misfired] and the Standard Bearer was cut down by this gallant young Officer, and the Standard taken possession off by him. He also on the same day cut down another Sepoy, who was standing at bay, with musket and bayonet, keeping off a sowar. Lieutenant Roberts rode to the assistance of the horseman, and rushing at the Sepoy, with one blow of his sword cut him across the face, killing him on the spot.’ Many years later a neighbour of Rudyard Kipling’s at Bateman’s, Colonel Wemyss Feilden, formerly of the Black Watch, recounted how ‘he heard one morning as they were all shaving that “a little fellow called Roberts” had captured single-handed a rebel Standard and was coming through the Camp. “We all turned out. The boy was on horseback looking rather pleased with himself, and his mounted Orderly carried the Colour behind him. We cheered him with the lather on our faces.’”18