During the summer and autumn Colin Campbell passed an uneasy and
anxious time. It was not until the beginning of November that he had
the full assurance of being employed in the manifestly impending
campaign. By this time Cureton's cavalry brigade and Godby's infantry
brigade were in the Doab between the Ravee and the Chenab, and on
November 12th Colin Campbell joined Cureton there with two native
infantry regiments, taking command of the advanced force with the
temporary rank of brigadier-general. At length Lord Gough himself
took the field, and on the 19th he crossed the Ravee at the head
of an army of respectable strength. Apart from the division before
Mooltan and the garrison required for Lahore, he had available for
field service four British and eleven native infantry regiments. He
was strong in cavalry, with three fine British regiments, five of
native light cavalry, and five corps of irregular horse; and his
powerful artillery consisted of sixty horse and field-guns, eight
howitzers, and ten 18-pounders. On the early morning of the 22nd
his lordship, with Colin Campbell's infantry division and a cavalry
force under Cureton with horse and field artillery, marched from
Saharun towards Ramnuggur with the object of driving across the
Chenab some Sikh infantry reported to be still on the left bank. Some
small detachments hurrying towards the river were pursued somewhat
recklessly by horse-artillery, which had to retire under the heavy
fire opened from the Sikh batteries on the commanding right bank.
A gun and two waggons stuck fast in the deep sand and could not be
extricated. Colin Campbell suggested to Lord Gough the measure of
protecting the gun until it could be withdrawn at night, by placing
infantry to cover it in a ravine immediately in its rear; but the
Commander-in-Chief disapproved of this measure. The enemy lost no
time in sending the whole of his cavalry across the river to take
possession of the gun under cover of his overwhelming artillery fire.
Our cavalry was foolishly sent forward to charge the superior hostile
horse,--a folly which was committed, according to Colin Campbell,
under the personal direction of the Commander-in-Chief. Ouvry's
squadron of the Third Light Dragoons made a brilliant and useful
charge which materially aided the withdrawal of the artillery. In the
face of a heavy fire Colonel William Havelock, a noble soldier who
had fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, led on the Fourteenth
Light Dragoons to a desperate combat with the Sikh horse. The horses
of the dragoons were exhausted by the long gallop through the heavy
sand and the casualties were heavy. Among the slain was Havelock
himself, after a hand-to-hand combat; and while riding forward to
stay Havelock's last advance Brigadier-General Cureton, who had
raised himself to distinction from the ranks in which he had enlisted
as a runaway lad, was killed by a Sikh bullet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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