The victory, in a word, was complete. The Gwalior contingent was destroyed as a military force: its camp, magazines, and guns fell into the hands of the British, and Campbell urged a furious pursuit of the broken soldiery along the Calpee road. For fourteen miles the cavalry and horse artillery rode at the gallop, capturing ammunition waggons and baggage carts, dispersing and slaying such of the infantry as still tried to keep some formation, till at last the panting rebels flung away their arms, and fled into the jungle, or crouched in the fields of sugar-cane, seeking cover from the red sabres and lances of the horsemen. The enemy’s centre had no choice but to abandon the town, and fall hurriedly back and melt into the general stream of fugitives.
Nana Sahib, with the left wing, had the Bithoor road, diverging widely from the Calpee road, for his line of retreat, and Campbell pushed forward a strong force under General Mansfield, his chief of staff, to thrust the flying enemy off that road.
Mansfield was a brave man, singularly expert in the routine work of a military office, but quite unfitted for the rough shock of the battlefield. For one thing, he was very short-sighted, and, as Malleson puts it, “was too proud to trust to the sight of others.” He reached the point where he commanded the road, but halted his men, stared with dim and spectacled eyes at the stream of fugitives, with their guns, and allowed it all to flow past him undisturbed and unpursued. Nana Sahib himself, as it happened, rode somewhere amongst the fugitives, unsmitten by British lead! Campbell had to despatch Hope Grant the next day along the Bithoor road, in pursuit of this wing of the fugitives, and that fine soldier overtook the flying enemy after a march of twenty-five miles, captured all their guns, and tumbled them into hopeless ruin.
Campbell’s victory was splendid and memorable. With 5000 men he had overthrown 25,000, captured thirty-two guns and the whole of their baggage, and driven his enemy in flying rout along two diverging lines of retreat. And it was a victory won rather by the brains of the general than by the bayonets of the soldiers. Campbell’s entire loss in killed was only ninety-nine of all ranks. The army of 25,000 Campbell overthrew so utterly, it must be remembered, included the best-trained and most perfectly-equipped native force in all India—the Gwalior contingent, at least 10,000 strong.