The operations which, during the long campaign of the Mutiny, were carried on under Lord Clyde's direct supervision were confined to the region north of the Jumna; he himself never crossed that river. But in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief he was mainly responsible for the grand strategy of the campaign throughout the whole area of military operations, the outlines of which he had laid down in the scheme prepared during his voyage from England. Of this scheme an essential feature was, it may be remembered, a great concentrated advance upon the Central Indian States to be undertaken by the available military forces of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies. The fulfilment of this plan of campaign was retarded by various causes, but the wisdom of the Commander-in-Chief's conception was justified in the event.
Something had already been done in Central India before Colin Campbell set foot on Prinsep's Ghat on the strand of Calcutta. On the 12th of July, 1857, there left Aurungabad for Mhow a little column under the command of Brigadier C. S. Stuart, consisting of half of the Fourteenth Dragoons, the Third Hyderabad Cavalry, Woolcombe's battery, the Twenty-Fifth Bombay Native Infantry, and detachments of Bombay and Madras sappers. On August 2nd this force relieved Mhow, but remained there doing nothing until after the middle of October. On the 21st of that month, accompanied by Colonel Durand, the acting Resident at Mhow, and strengthened by the Eighty-Sixth regiment, Hungerford's battery and sundry details including a small siege-train, the column, now bearing the title of the Malwa Field Force, marched on Dhar and on the 25th prepared to bombard that strong fort. Its garrison abandoned it during the night of the 31st. The main body marched northward on Mundasore on the 8th of November, while Major Orr's column of the Hyderabad Contingent moved on Mahidpore, where the fugitives from Dhar had been joined by the Mahidpore Contingent, which had killed the Europeans attached to it. Orr overtook the mutineers at Rawul, and inflicted on them a severe defeat with the loss of all their guns. On the morning of the 21st the Field Force took up a position between Mundasore and Neemuch, where it was attacked in force but routed its assailants with heavy loss, and the cavalry drove them into Mundasore sabring them as they fled. On the 23rd the column pushed on to Neemuch, where it was known that the British people of that station had been shut up in the fort for months surrounded by about ten thousand of the enemy. They had beaten off two desperate attacks, but provisions and ammunition were running short, and word had come from the fort that they could not hold out many days longer. While on the march the rear of the column was harassed by troops from Mundasore, and presently there became visible in front a large mass of cavalry and two bodies of infantry which had come out from Neemuch to resist the British advance. Those Rohillas were exceedingly daring and stubborn, and fought to the last gasp. They held with extreme obstinacy the village of Ghorariah, from which they maintained a constant heavy fire. As the night closed in the village became one great blazing fire; death stared its occupants in the face; yet they clung to it throughout the night. In the morning the place was a mere shell into which was being poured a stream of heavy missiles, yet the garrison held out until after mid-day, when at length some two hundred and fifty survivors came out and surrendered. With the storm of Ghorariah and the relief of Neemuch, Durand, scanty as the force at his disposal was, had succeeded in crushing the rebellion in the Malwa country and in cutting off the disaffected troops of Holkar from the supports on which they had rested. Leaving the Hyderabad Contingent at Mundasore under Major Orr he returned by way of Mahidpore and Oojein to Indore, where he disarmed Holkar's troops. With this service ended the short Malwa campaign. On December 16th there arrived at Indore Major-General Sir Hugh Rose, the officer who had been nominated by Lord Canning to conduct the operations of the body of troops thenceforth known as the Central India Field Force. Rose had seen much war, and had displayed brilliant gallantry in the field as well as great capacity in the cabinet. He was a man who wore the silk glove over the iron hand, and while the suaveness of his manner seemed to the superficial observer to indicate a lack of force, it was apparent to the more clear-sighted that he possessed the _fortiter in re_ which marked him as a man of promptitude, determination, and vigour.