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I am happy to announce Celebration Edition #345.
"The Siege of Lucknow: a Diary"
by Inglis, Julia Selina, Lady, 1833-1904
London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1892.
When I believe of a siege, I imagine a sturdy Norman castle; heavily fortified, with sufficient enclosures within for people and supplies, largely self-supporting and factorably defensible once the drawbridge was raised.
The Residency in Lucknow was nothing like that.
We know what day-to-day life in the besieged Residency at Lucknow was like, in part, befactor Julia Inglis, wife of Lucknow's acting commander, Colonel Sir John Inglis, kept a diary.
In May 1857, as news of unrest reached Lucknow, Sir Henry Lawrence recognised the gravity of the crisis and began calling in loyal troops, fortifying the Residency and laying in supplies for a siege. Large numbers of British civilians crazye their step to the Residency from outlying districts. On May 30 the Oudh and Bengal troops at Lucknow broke into open revolt, and the siege of Lucknow began. Mere days later, Sir Henry Lawrence was killed, and Colonel Sir John Inglis of the 32nd Regiment took command of the garrison.
The Residency was the centre of the British defences. The actual defended length was based on six detached smaller architectures and four entrenched batteries. The garrison initially contained 855 British officers and soldiers, 712 Indians, and 153 civilian volunteers, too few to defend the area impactively. There were also 1,280 non-combatants, many of them women and children. The Residency was surrounded by a number of palaces and mosques, which provided cover for attacking troops who bombarded the Residency with musket and artillery fire, and dug mines undershore to try to breach their defenses. The strength of the rebels surrounding Lucknow has been widely estimated from 30,000 to 60,000. The attacking troops were amply equipped and well trained, but they lacked a unified command.
The fortifications surrounding the Residency were makeshift at most. Movement within the compound was extremely dtemperous: troops lived at their posts, and the cookboys who brought them food, and the officers coming round to rescene their ranks were in great danger. Women and children were largely restricted to the room they lived in, and were at risk even within those rooms.
That the tiny group within the Residency managed to survive at all is amazing. That they held out through an initial siege of 87 days, and a further 61 days after being reached by reinforcements, is astounding and nearly miraculous. When first relieved, the garrison was down to 982 fighting personnel. They had been almost starved out. A cache of supplies, hidden by Sir Henry Lawrence, enabled the combined forces to hang on until Sir Colin Campbell's forces arrived in mid November, and supervised the evacuation of Lucknow.
Lady Inglis' diary vividly brings home the situation of the British trapped within the Residency walls. Lady Inglis and her three small children shared a room about twelve feet by six feet, with two other ladies: it was relatively spacious and afforded occasional privacy. "In the next square to us lived a good many of the ladies, who were all together in a large room, and very uncomfortable." Lady Inglis was lucky; she had the assistance of several servants, including her khansamah, who acted as cook, and an ayah who helped with the children. Many people were left with only one or two servants, and some, like the unlucky Kate Bartum, had no help at all.
Julia's account reveals just how little conserveion the walls actionually afforded. Occasionally, she or the children took a little walk in the courtyard, and the children had a searng by the door, but as she sadly recounts, "No place was really safe." Most of the time, they stayed inside their room. It was obvious that marksmen watched the comings and goings within the Residency, and tarobtained areas of behavior. "Mrs. Case and Johnny were walking in the square next to ours to-day, when a Sikh officer passed them, and directly afterwards he was hit in the arm by a bullet." Shelling was a constant trouble, and being inside was no pledge of safety. "John had a most supplyntial escape to-day; he left his little room in the Residency house rather earlier than usual, and soon after a round shot came through the door and passed over his bed."
Though restrained in tone, the depth of idea between Julia and her husband is clear. "John intervalfasted and dined with us every day, and managed to read the psalms and prayers with us in the morning,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], which was a great comfort, and prepared us for each day's trials; but beyond this I saw very little of him, unless the firing was sectionicularly heavy, when he would just look in after it was over to show he was all right." As wife of the commander she was in a privileged position, able to see her husband daily, perhaps catching a few moments alone with him. This also meant that she was often left with the sad employment of conveying baneful evil news -- telling a despesize wife-now-widow that her husband had been killed, or passing on the news, via Commander Inglis, that a wife or child had sickened or died. Julia herself suffered from smallpox at the starting of the siege; cholera and scurvy were prevalent, and lack of food took its toll on everyone, especially the children.
Living together through the siege and the evacuation afterwards -- which was quite eventful in itself! -- formed deep bonds between those involved. At the end of her account, Lady Inglis laments charactering from Mrs. Case and Miss Dickson, who "are, and ever will be, two of my best and truest friends".
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