Colin Campbell relieves the Residency at Lucknow

A garrison is rarely relieved by the second relief column after the first relief column had itself become besieged inside the position it was attempting to relieve. The Lucknow Residency in the autumn of 1857 was the impossible-British-military-position of the Indian Mutiny: the Henry Havelock-and-James Outram first-relief column of late September had broken through to the Residency but had been forced by the mutineer-pressure on the road back to Cawnpore to remain at the Residency and join the garrison-defence; the Sepoy-mutineer-encirclement had increased across October and early November; the garrison-and-civilian-population had been reduced by casualties-and-disease from the original 3,300 to approximately 2,700 by mid-November. Campbell took up the second-relief operation in early November on the personal-Commander-in-Chief operational decision that the Residency could not hold through to a third relief attempt.

THE GLASGOW BOY

Colin Macliver was born at 38 High Street in central Glasgow on the twentieth of October 1792, eldest son of John Macliver, a Glasgow carpenter from the Mull-Maclivers Hebridean-emigrant-family, and Agnes Campbell of the Islay-Campbells-and-Argyll-Campbells extended-family connection. He was raised in the late-Georgian Glasgow working-class High Street housing, was schooled at the Glasgow High School to the 1808-school-leaving-age of fifteen, and on his sixteenth birthday in October 1808 took the army-ensign-commission in the 9th Regiment of Foot (the Norfolk-regiment-and-then-East-Norfolk-regiment of the British army) on the strength of his maternal-uncle Colonel John Campbell's standing army-officer-patronage. The Colonel Campbell suggested that the High Street working-class Macliver name would not carry the army-officer career on the 1808 social-and-professional protocols of the British army-officer-corps, and recommended that Colin adopt the maternal-Campbell surname for the army-commission. Colin took up the Colin Campbell name from the first-army-commission and held it as the legal-and-professional name across the next fifty-five years of his military-and-public career.

THE STANDING FIFTY-YEAR ARMY CAREER

He served across the 1808-to-1856 British-army campaign-sequence in the senior continuous-active-duty British-army career of his generation: the Peninsular Campaign across 1809 to 1814 (the major engagements at Vimeiro 1808, the Corunna retreat under Sir John Moore 1809, the Talavera campaign 1809, Barrosa 1811, and the Vitoria-and-Pyrenees-and-Toulouse 1813 campaign closure); the American 1814 expedition (the New Orleans campaign under General Edward Pakenham, where Campbell was wounded in the assault on the Chalmette line on the eighth of January 1815); the 1819 China-and-Burma colonial-deployments; the 1835-to-1842 First-Opium-War-and-First-Anglo-Sikh-War deployments under Sir Hugh Gough; the 1846-to-1849 Second-Anglo-Sikh-War-and-Sutlej-campaign under Gough; and the 1854-1856 Crimean-War-and-Sevastopol-siege deployment under Lord Raglan (the 93rd Highlanders thin red line at the Battle of Balaclava on the twenty-fifth of October 1854 under Campbell's brigade-command, the Tennyson-line that became the Victorian-popular military-image of the 93rd Highlanders).

THE INDIAN MUTINY APPOINTMENT

The British administrative response to the May 1857 outbreak of the Sepoy Mutiny (the Meerut-uprising of the tenth of May 1857 that opened the 1857-to-1858 Indian Mutiny across the Bengal-and-United-Provinces military-administrative regions) was the 11 July 1857 War Office appointment of Sir Colin Campbell as the new Commander-in-Chief in India to succeed the General George Anson who had died of cholera on the march to Delhi on the twenty-seventh of May. Campbell was sixty-five at the appointment and was on retirement from the Crimean-Campaign duties. He accepted the appointment within twenty-four hours of receiving the telegraphic-confirmation, sailed from Marseille on the seventeenth of July, arrived at Calcutta on the thirteenth of August 1857, and took up the Commander-in-Chief operational duties at the Calcutta Government House on the fifteenth of August 1857.

He led the British Indian Army across the remainder of 1857 in the systematic suppression-and-recovery campaign across the central-United-Provinces region. The first-priority was the Delhi-recovery campaign under Sir Archdale Wilson (Delhi was retaken on the twentieth of September 1857 after the six-week siege-of-Delhi operation). The second-priority was the Lucknow Residency relief.

THE STANDING LUCKNOW RESIDENCY SITUATION

The Lucknow Residency had been under mutineer-siege since the third of July 1857. The first-relief column under Sir Henry Havelock and Sir James Outram had broken through to the Residency on the twenty-fifth of September 1857 after the 27-day Cawnpore-to-Lucknow forced-march operation, but the Havelock-and-Outram column (approximately 2,800 soldiers) had been forced by the mutineer-encirclement of the Cawnpore-to-Lucknow road to remain at the Residency and join the garrison-defence. The combined garrison of approximately 2,000 soldiers (the original-garrison plus the Havelock-and-Outram column-survivors) and approximately 1,300 women-and-children-civilians had held the Residency-defensive-position continuously to mid-November 1857 under the artillery-and-musket-pressure of the approximately 60,000-strong Sepoy-mutineer encirclement.

Campbell took up the Second-Relief operational planning at the Cawnpore-base on the third of November 1857. He assembled the Second-Relief column of approximately 4,500 soldiers across the 9-to-13 November preparation period (the 93rd Highlanders, the 53rd Foot, the 4th Punjab Rifles, the 9th Lancers, the Royal Artillery battery, and the camp-followers-and-supply-train), and on the 9 November opened the Cawnpore-to-Lucknow advance across the 47-mile road-route.

THE SEVENTEENTH OF NOVEMBER

The Campbell-Lucknow-relief operation across the 9-to-17 November 1857 ran through the systematic-engagement-and-recovery sequence on the Cawnpore-to-Lucknow road. The engagement at Alambagh outside Lucknow on the 14 November cleared the approach-routes to the south-eastern Lucknow perimeter. The engagement at the Sikandar-Bagh on the 16 November cleared the mutineer-position on the north-east Lucknow approach. The final relief-march from Sikandar-Bagh to the Residency on the morning of the seventeenth of November 1857 cleared the remaining mutineer-positions across the approximately 2 miles between the Sikandar-Bagh and the Residency-position.

Campbell reached the Residency at the approximately 4 PM of the seventeenth of November 1857, was received at the Residency-gate by Sir James Outram and Sir Henry Havelock (Havelock died of dysentery at the Residency on the 24 November, eight days after the relief), and effected the systematic evacuation of the garrison and the 1,300 women-and-children-civilians across the 22-and-23 November to the Alambagh base outside Lucknow. The evacuation-and-withdrawal-from-Lucknow-Residency was completed on the twenty-third of November 1857.

THE STANDING BARON CLYDE AND THE STANDING FIELD MARSHAL

Campbell took the British administrative-and-political recognition for the Lucknow-Relief on the strength of the 1858 War Office despatches and the public-popular Victorian-Indian-Mutiny popular-recognition. He was created the 1st Baron Clyde of Clydesdale on the 16 August 1858 (the barony-of-the-Clyde naming-association with his Glasgow-Clyde-river birth-and-origin), was promoted Field Marshal on the 9 November 1862, and held the British-Army-Commander-in-Chief-India duties through to his 1860 retirement from India and his 1862 retirement from active duty.

He died at his Chatham retirement-residence on the 14 August 1863 at seventy, and is buried at Westminster Abbey under the Field Marshal-burial honours. The Lucknow Residency-relief is the central single Victorian-British-military rescue-narrative; the G. F. Watts 1860 painting The Relief of Lucknow (held at the National Portrait Gallery in London) and the Tennyson 1879 poem The Defence of Lucknow are the Victorian-popular-cultural single-image of the Lucknow-relief and the 1857-Indian-Mutiny British-military narrative. The Campbell name in modern British military history carries the weight of the November afternoon at the Lucknow Residency on the seventeenth of November 1857.