Clan Campbell · 1857
Colin Campbell relieves the Residency at Lucknow
On the afternoon of Tuesday the seventeenth of November 1857, on the small Gomti-river plain at the north-east of the city of Lucknow in the central United Provinces of British India, the sixty-five-year-old Glasgow-born British Commander-in-Chief in India Sir Colin Campbell, the standing senior British army-officer of the standing 1854-to-1857 Indian-and-Crimean campaigns, completed the Second Relief of the Lucknow Residency at the close of a fourteen-day rescue-operation in which Campbell, at the head of an approximately 4,500-soldier-and-1,000-civilian relief column from the standing British Cawnpore base under General Hugh Rose, fought his way across the standing 47-mile Cawnpore-to-Lucknow road, through the standing Indian-sepoy-mutineer forces blocking the standing approach-routes, into the central Lucknow residential and administrative compound to relieve the standing besieged British garrison of approximately 2,000 soldiers and approximately 1,300 women and children who had held the Lucknow Residency under siege continuously since the standing first Sepoy-mutineer assault of the third of July 1857 (the standing Lucknow siege ran for 87 days under the standing first British relief by Sir Henry Havelock and Sir James Outram in late September, then continued under the joint Havelock-and-Outram garrison for the further 53 days to the Campbell relief), and successfully evacuated the standing garrison and civilian-population through the standing rear-guard withdrawal across the standing 22 and 23 November to the standing British Alambagh base outside Lucknow. The Second Relief of Lucknow is the central single British military operation of the standing 1857-to-1858 Indian Mutiny campaign and the foundational Victorian rescue-of-the-besieged-garrison narrative that became, on the strength of the standing Tennyson 1879 poem The Defence of Lucknow and the standing G. F. Watts 1860 painting The Relief of Lucknow, the standing Victorian-popular-memory single-image of the standing 1857 campaign. Campbell was elevated to the peerage as 1st Baron Clyde of Clydesdale in 1858 on the strength of the Lucknow relief, was promoted Field Marshal in 1862, and is the standing senior Glasgow-Campbell military figure of the Victorian-era British army.
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 standing-impossible-British-military-position of the Indian Mutiny: the standing Henry Havelock-and-James Outram first-relief column of late September had broken through to the Residency but had been forced by the standing mutineer-pressure on the road back to Cawnpore to remain at the Residency and join the standing-garrison-defence; the standing Sepoy-mutineer-encirclement had increased across October and early November; the standing-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 standing-second-relief operation in early November on the standing personal-Commander-in-Chief operational decision that the standing 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 standing Mull-Maclivers Hebridean-emigrant-family, and Agnes Campbell of the standing Islay-Campbells-and-Argyll-Campbells extended-family connection. He was raised in the standing late-Georgian Glasgow working-class High Street housing, was schooled at the standing Glasgow High School to the standing 1808-school-leaving-age of fifteen, and on his sixteenth birthday in October 1808 took the standing army-ensign-commission in the standing 9th Regiment of Foot (the standing Norfolk-regiment-and-then-East-Norfolk-regiment of the standing British army) on the strength of his maternal-uncle Colonel John Campbell's standing army-officer-patronage. The standing Colonel Campbell suggested that the standing High Street working-class Macliver name would not carry the standing army-officer career on the standing 1808 social-and-professional protocols of the standing British army-officer-corps, and recommended that Colin adopt the standing maternal-Campbell surname for the standing army-commission. Colin took up the standing Colin Campbell name from the standing first-army-commission and held it as the standing legal-and-professional name across the next fifty-five years of his standing military-and-public career.
THE STANDING FIFTY-YEAR ARMY CAREER
He served across the standing 1808-to-1856 British-army campaign-sequence in the standing senior continuous-active-duty British-army career of his generation: the Peninsular Campaign across 1809 to 1814 (the standing-major engagements at Vimeiro 1808, the Corunna retreat under Sir John Moore 1809, the Talavera campaign 1809, Barrosa 1811, and the standing 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 standing assault on the Chalmette line on the eighth of January 1815); the standing 1819 China-and-Burma colonial-deployments; the standing 1835-to-1842 First-Opium-War-and-First-Anglo-Sikh-War deployments under Sir Hugh Gough; the standing 1846-to-1849 Second-Anglo-Sikh-War-and-Sutlej-campaign under Gough; and the standing 1854-1856 Crimean-War-and-Sevastopol-siege deployment under Lord Raglan (the standing 93rd Highlanders thin red line at the Battle of Balaclava on the twenty-fifth of October 1854 under Campbell's standing brigade-command, the standing Tennyson-line that became the standing Victorian-popular military-image of the standing 93rd Highlanders).
THE INDIAN MUTINY APPOINTMENT
The standing British administrative response to the standing May 1857 outbreak of the Sepoy Mutiny (the standing Meerut-uprising of the tenth of May 1857 that opened the standing 1857-to-1858 Indian Mutiny across the Bengal-and-United-Provinces military-administrative regions) was the standing 11 July 1857 War Office appointment of Sir Colin Campbell as the new Commander-in-Chief in India to succeed the standing General George Anson who had died of cholera on the standing march to Delhi on the twenty-seventh of May. Campbell was sixty-five at the appointment and was on standing-retirement from the standing Crimean-Campaign duties. He accepted the appointment within twenty-four hours of receiving the standing telegraphic-confirmation, sailed from Marseille on the seventeenth of July, arrived at Calcutta on the thirteenth of August 1857, and took up the standing Commander-in-Chief operational duties at the Calcutta Government House on the standing fifteenth of August 1857.
He led the standing British Indian Army across the standing remainder of 1857 in the standing systematic suppression-and-recovery campaign across the central-United-Provinces region. The standing first-priority was the standing Delhi-recovery campaign under Sir Archdale Wilson (Delhi was retaken on the standing twentieth of September 1857 after the standing six-week siege-of-Delhi operation). The standing second-priority was the standing Lucknow Residency relief.
THE STANDING LUCKNOW RESIDENCY SITUATION
The Lucknow Residency had been under standing mutineer-siege since the third of July 1857. The standing first-relief column under Sir Henry Havelock and Sir James Outram had broken through to the Residency on the standing twenty-fifth of September 1857 after the standing 27-day Cawnpore-to-Lucknow forced-march operation, but the standing Havelock-and-Outram column (approximately 2,800 soldiers) had been forced by the standing mutineer-encirclement of the standing Cawnpore-to-Lucknow road to remain at the Residency and join the standing garrison-defence. The combined standing garrison of approximately 2,000 soldiers (the standing original-garrison plus the standing Havelock-and-Outram column-survivors) and approximately 1,300 women-and-children-civilians had held the standing Residency-defensive-position continuously to mid-November 1857 under the standing artillery-and-musket-pressure of the standing approximately 60,000-strong Sepoy-mutineer encirclement.
Campbell took up the standing-Second-Relief operational planning at the Cawnpore-base on the standing third of November 1857. He assembled the standing-Second-Relief column of approximately 4,500 soldiers across the standing 9-to-13 November preparation period (the standing 93rd Highlanders, the standing 53rd Foot, the standing 4th Punjab Rifles, the standing 9th Lancers, the standing Royal Artillery battery, and the standing camp-followers-and-supply-train), and on the standing 9 November opened the standing Cawnpore-to-Lucknow advance across the standing 47-mile road-route.
THE SEVENTEENTH OF NOVEMBER
The standing Campbell-Lucknow-relief operation across the standing 9-to-17 November 1857 ran through the standing systematic-engagement-and-recovery sequence on the standing Cawnpore-to-Lucknow road. The standing engagement at Alambagh outside Lucknow on the standing 14 November cleared the standing approach-routes to the standing south-eastern Lucknow perimeter. The standing engagement at the standing Sikandar-Bagh on the standing 16 November cleared the standing mutineer-position on the standing north-east Lucknow approach. The standing final relief-march from Sikandar-Bagh to the standing Residency on the morning of the standing seventeenth of November 1857 cleared the standing remaining mutineer-positions across the standing approximately 2 miles between the standing Sikandar-Bagh and the standing Residency-position.
Campbell reached the standing Residency at the standing approximately 4 PM of the seventeenth of November 1857, was received at the standing Residency-gate by Sir James Outram and Sir Henry Havelock (Havelock died of dysentery at the standing Residency on the standing 24 November, eight days after the standing relief), and effected the standing systematic evacuation of the standing-garrison and the standing 1,300 women-and-children-civilians across the standing 22-and-23 November to the standing Alambagh base outside Lucknow. The standing evacuation-and-withdrawal-from-Lucknow-Residency was completed on the standing twenty-third of November 1857.
THE STANDING BARON CLYDE AND THE STANDING FIELD MARSHAL
Campbell took the standing British administrative-and-political recognition for the standing Lucknow-Relief on the strength of the standing 1858 War Office despatches and the standing public-popular Victorian-Indian-Mutiny popular-recognition. He was created the standing 1st Baron Clyde of Clydesdale on the standing 16 August 1858 (the standing barony-of-the-Clyde naming-association with his standing Glasgow-Clyde-river birth-and-origin), was promoted Field Marshal on the standing 9 November 1862, and held the standing British-Army-Commander-in-Chief-India duties through to his standing 1860 retirement from India and his standing 1862 retirement from active duty.
He died at his standing Chatham retirement-residence on the standing 14 August 1863 at seventy, and is buried at Westminster Abbey under the standing Field Marshal-burial honours. The standing Lucknow Residency-relief is the central single Victorian-British-military rescue-narrative; the standing G. F. Watts 1860 painting The Relief of Lucknow (held at the National Portrait Gallery in London) and the standing Tennyson 1879 poem The Defence of Lucknow are the standing Victorian-popular-cultural single-image of the standing Lucknow-relief and the standing 1857-Indian-Mutiny British-military narrative. The Campbell name in modern British military history carries the weight of the November afternoon at the standing Lucknow Residency on the seventeenth of November 1857.