The story of Windham’s disastrous fight at Cawnpore is a sort of bloody appendix to Campbell’s march on Lucknow. It must be told here to make the tale complete.
Windham was a soldier of a fine, if not of the highest type, a man of immense energy and of cool daring which, if it always saw the peril, scorned to turn aside on account of it. His sobriquet was “Redan” Windham, and no one who has read the story of how, on September 8, 1855, he led the British stormers through the embrasures of the Redan can doubt that Windham’s courage was of a lion-like quality. He was the first of the stormers of the Second Division to cross the great ditch in front of the Redan, and the first to clamber through an embrasure. When his men—young soldiers belonging to half-a-dozen separate regiments—hung back under the great ramparts of the Redan, Windham thrice ran forward alone with his brandished sword into the centre of the work, calling on the men to follow. He has told the story of how, again and again, he went back to his men, patted them on the back, and begged them to follow him.
Five times he sent to the rear for reinforcements, and it shows the coolness of the man in the hell of that great fight that, determined at last to go himself in search of additional troops, he first turned to an officer standing near and asked his name. Then he said to him, “I have sent five times for support, now bear witness that I am not in a funk”—at which the officer smiled—“but I will now go back myself and see what I can do.”
He went back, but before he could bring up new troops, the men still clinging to the Redan gave way, and the attack failed. Windham’s judgment was challenged, but he was as brave as his own sword. He no doubt had his limitations as an officer. Russell, a perfectly good critic, says that he “seemed always to have something to do in addition to something that he had done already.” There was a certain note of hurry in his character, that is, which does not add to the efficiency of a leader. His failing as an officer, Russell adds, was “reckless gallantry and dash”—grave faults, no doubt, in a general, but faults which are not without their compensations in a mere leader of fighting men. This was the man whom Campbell chose to keep the bridge at Cawnpore while he made his dash for the relief of Lucknow.