Colin Campbell

Colin Campbell got the Lucknow garrison out, which Havelock had not been able to do, and had spent forty-five years reaching a position to be asked. He was a Glasgow carpenter's son named Macliver, given a commission at sixteen under his uncle's surname because the duke who signed it assumed it was his, and he never corrected it. He fought in the Peninsula, was severely wounded twice, and then spent three decades in the West Indies, China and India, passed over repeatedly because he had no money and no connections. The Crimea made him: the 93rd Highlanders standing in a line two deep against Russian cavalry at Balaclava became the thin red line, a phrase from the reporter William Russell. Sent to India as commander-in-chief in 1857, he was cautious to the point of complaint from London, relieved Lucknow in November and evacuated the civilians rather than hold the position, then took the city properly in March 1858 and spent a year on the slow reduction of Awadh. He was made Baron Clyde, promoted field marshal, and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Havelock died of dysentery inside Lucknow eight days after Campbell reached him, so the relief he completed was also the one that came too late for the man who had begun it. He commanded the Highland Brigade at the Alma before Balaclava. London and the press attacked him throughout 1858 for slowness, and his answer was that he would not spend soldiers to satisfy newspapers. He never married. He was promoted field marshal in 1862 and died the following year. The thin red line entered English as a phrase for a thinly held defence and has stayed there.

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