province. There was to be a festival at Lahore on the night when the intelligence of the mutiny reached the commissioner-a grand ball and supper-and the entertainment was not postponed. It was in full swing while the leading civil and military officials held brief but earnest council. It was decided at once to disarm the native troops. A parade was ordered to be held at daybreak at Meean Meer, and when the four columns of Sepoys came on the ground, so well had the military disposition been made, that the head of the columns came in front of twelve guns charged with grape, the artillerymen standing ready to fire, and the European soldiers behind with loaded muskets. The word of command was given to the Sepoys to pile arms. There was nothing for it but to obey, or to be swept by the fire from the cannon, and shot down by a volley from the British infantry. The arms were piled and borne away in carts under the guard of European soldiers. Similar precautions were taken at Mooltan, in the lower province, and the Punjaub was saved. The great point, then, was to attack Delhi, and Lord Canning, knowing that there was not a moment to lose, boldly determined on an expedient which, though it required indemnification from the government, was the act of a man eminently capable of grasping even such a desperate situation as that in which he found himself. The termination of hostilities with Persia had fortunately released the forces from Herat, under Sir James Outram, Colonel Jacob, and Colonel Havelock, and they were hastening onward to the seat of the mutiny, but further reinforcements were needed in less time than that in which troops could arrive from England.

Lord Canning knew that a force had been despatched to China to put an end to the war there but the Chinese war could wait, while delay in India might be fatal: he therefore intercepted the troops which were on their way to Canton, and pressed them into the more imminent service of the suppression of the Indian mutiny.

At the end of May the mutiny broke out in the cantonments at Lucknow, amongst the lines of the 71st N. I., and soon became general. The Sepoys burned down some of the

buildings, and fired into the mess-room of the officers. One or two officers were afterwards shot dead; and it was not until a part of the 32nd had charged the rebels, and the artillery opened upon them, under the personal direction of Sir Henry Lawrence, that they gave way and quitted the cantonments. They retired to Moodripore, where they were joined by the 7th Light Cavalry, who murdered one of their officers on the spot.

The state of Lucknow now became threatening in the extreme; but Sir Henry Lawrence hoped by vigorous measures of repression to strike terror into the minds of the inhabitants and prevent a general rising. Numbers of men convicted of tampering with the troops were hanged on a gallows erected in front of the Mutchee Bhawn, and two members of the royal family at Delhi, and a brother of the ex-king of Oudh, were arrested and imprisoned there. The Residency itself was crowded with women and children, and every house and outhouse was occupied. Preparations for defence were continued, and thousands of Coolies employed at the batteries, stockades, and trenches, which were everywhere being constructed. The treasure and ammunition, of which, fortunately, there was a large supply, were buried, and as many guns as could be collected brought together. The Residency and Mutchee Bhawn presented most animated scenes. There were soldiers, Sepoys, prisoners in irons, men, women, and children, hundreds of servants, respectable natives in their carriages, Coolies carrying weights, heavy cannons, field-pieces, carts, elephants, camels, bullocks, horses, all moving about hither and thither, and continual bustle and noise was kept up from morning to night. There was scarcely a corner which was not in some way occupied and turned to account.

Sir Henry Lawrence was, as we have seen, governor of Oudh, to which he had removed from taking part in the government of the Punjaub in consequence of some difference of opinion between him and his brother John. Like the rest of the mutineers the irregular cavalry stationed near Lucknow had refused to bite their cartridges, and their discontent was communicated to the troops in the city

itself. Sir Henry was then suffering from severe illness, but he succeeded in disarming some of the mutineers, and fortified and provisioned the Residency at Lucknow. Directly he could place himself at the head of his troops he marched out against a body of rebels at a place called Chinhut, but they were already in such numbers that he was compelled to retire. On his return he found that the native troops at Lucknow, who had previously held aloof from the revolt, were in mutiny, and it required an immediate attack upon them by a part of the 32nd Regiment and the artillery to drive them to Moodripore, where, however, they were received by another body of mutinous Sepoys. The rebels were in such force that Sir Henry Lawrence found he could do nothing except prepare Lucknow for a siege and wait for help from without. The brave commander himself was to be one of the first victims. On the 2nd of July, he was up at daybreak at work, and, suffering from fatigue and the weakness of recent illness, was lying on a sofa that he might, by the rest which it afforded, continue to give directions. His nephew and another officer were with him. Suddenly the crash of a shell was heard, the room was filled with dust and smoke, one of the officers was flung to the ground, and, in fear for his chief, called out directly he could make his voice heard, "Sir Henry, are you hurt?" "I am killed," was the faint but calm reply, and it was found that a splinter of the shell had given the general a mortal wound in the thigh. On the morning of the 4th he died, still calm and uncomplaining. He had made all the arrangements possible for the work which his successor would have to perform, and before he died, desired that the epitaph on his tomb should be-"Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty." The task of relieving Lucknow was to fall to another great and faithful general, Henry Havelock, but it could not be immediately accomplished.

For three months, night and day, the garrison were employed in beating back their assailants, who were able to take up positions in the mosques and other buildings outside the town, where at a short distance they could fire tremendous volleys of musketry into the

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British position. It was declared that 8000 men sometimes fired at once upon the defenders; but the British held their own, made sorties and spiked the enemies' guns, worked countermines, and so harassed their assailants by repeated sallies, that at last it was a conflict between a comparative handful of brave and determined men, who would fight against any odds, and a horde of bloodthirsty wretches who, like wolves, prowled round the place but feared to approach too near, as the terrible Sahibs would rush out upon them, and in spite of numbers, drive them back with repeated loss.

But meantime a still more fearful struggle had been going on at another city about fifty miles (as the crow flies) from Lucknow. The very name of Cawnpore is still remembered as a word of horror, even though it may be hoped that it has long ceased to be associated with feelings of vengeance; but in the last months of 1857, it could not be mentioned either here or in India without exciting a passion of indignation which it was painful to witness. The atrocities perpetrated at Cawnpore roused the British troops, officers and men, to a pitch of fury that impelled them to attack almost single-handed whole companies of the mutinous Sepoys, and without a moment's hesitation to fight against numbers so overwhelming, that apparently only the frenzy of hate and a fierce determined purpose of revenge could have sustained the physical power which enabled them to break and scatter the opposing hosts, and to slay without pause, and with no more thought of fear than of mercy.

Cawnpore was one of the first-class military stations in India, for on the annexation of Oudh it had become necessary to maintain a strong military force there. It commanded the bridge over which passed the highroad to the town of Lucknow, the capital of the province. When the mutiny broke out in Meerut, there were in Cawnpore about 3000 native soldiers, consisting of two infantry and one cavalry regiment and a company of artillerymen. There were only about 300 English officers and soldiers, and the population of Europeans and the mixed race numbered about 1000, including the women and chil

keepers, and their families. The native population was about 60,000. The garrison was under the command of Sir Hugh Wheeler, an old Bengal officer who had nearly reached his 75th year at the time of the breaking out of the mutiny. The whole territory represented by the surrounding stations was now in insurrection, and at all these places the rebels, many of whom at first pretended to be faithful that they might disarm suspicion, begun to murder indiscriminately all the Europeans, not sparing the ladies and children. In some cases the most solemn oaths were taken by the rebels that, if the English officers would give up their arms and cease further resistance, the lives of all in the place should be spared; but the oaths were not kept, the officers being killed, the children cut to pieces in presence of their mothers, and the women sabred one after the other with fiendish cruelty. At Allahabad the officers were shot down, and a Mohammedan moolvie having set himself up as the officer of the King of Delhi, all the Europeans who could be secured were barbarously murdered and many of them tortured. The place was taken less than a week after by Lieutenant-colonel O'Neill, who drove out the enemy and burnt the village to the ground. Where the Europeans contrived to escape to a fortified station, they were scarcely able to hold their own until the arrival of the English troops. In several cases they failed to do so and were murdered. Cawnpore was an important, but at the same time a poorly fortified place, standing on a peninsula between the Ganges and the Jumna, and built on the south bank of the Ganges, there nearly a quarter of a mile broad in the dry season, and more than a mile across when swelled by rains. Seeing the dangerous temper of the Sepoys, Sir Hugh Wheeler had begun to form an intrenched camp round the hospital barracks, between the soldiers' church and some unfinished lines for European troops. It was an ineffectual defensive position, and so far as could afterwards be judged it would have been better if he had concentrated his force at the treasury and the magazine, for his intrenchment was formed only by a mud wall

European non-military residents at Cawnpore had moved into the church and other buildings near the intrenchment, within which the records and the commissariat treasure chests were placed; a quantity of ammunition had been buried under ground, though from some extraordinary oversight the magazine which had been deserted had not been blown up. Sir Hugh Wheeler's position was a desperate one, and he had sent a secret messenger more than once to Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow to ask for aid if he could possibly send it; but Sir Henry was obliged to reply that he could not spare a single man, for he was himself in a sore strait waiting for relief from without.

It was at this juncture that Sir Hugh Wheeler, after some hesitation, came to the fatal conclusion to ask aid of the Chief of Bithoor. He was the son of a Brahmin of the Deccan, and had been adopted by Bajee Rao, the ex-Peishwah of Poonah, whose large compensatory pension of 800 lacs of rupees he had expected to inherit. Lord Dalhousie had in his settlement of Oudh either neglected or had refused to entertain this claim, and so Doondhoo Punth, or, as he was more frequently called, Nana Sahib, had become a doubtful friend if not a concealed foe to the British government. It is not easy to say whether, when Sir Hugh Wheeler sent to him at his house at Bithoor, a small town about twelve miles up the river from Cawnpore, he was already decidedly hostile or whether he was still treacherously uncertain-waiting to see what turn affairs might take-but it soon became evident that he had no good intentions. That Nana Sahib was a crafty, cruel, and treacherous villain there can be no doubt; but he had mixed much with Europeans, and though he was unacquainted with the English language, had acquired manners of refinement which distinguished him as a native gentleman, while at the same time he was regarded as a friend to the British residents, among whom he had been so often well received. He lived in a semi-princely state, his house was fortified, and he was allowed a retinue of 200 soldiers and three field-pieces. To him Sir Hugh Wheeler applied, and he

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came with his guns and his men to Cawnpore. This pleasant gentleman, who had so often been the host and the guest of the English military and civil officials, and whose fat unwieldy person and slow easy-natured manner were as well known in the district as his luxurious mode of living, was either a deep dissimulator waiting for an opportunity to wreak vengeance for the refusal of his claim to a pension, or his supposed wrongs flamed up when they met the spark of opportunity, and all the wild beast nature in him, long subdued by custom, grew into sudden ferocity. What happened when he reached Cawnpore seems to have been this: the mutineers demanded that he should become one of their leaders, if not their chief, and lead them on to Delhi, the centre of the revolt. The smooth Azimoolah Khan, his confidential adviser, opposed this. Why should he, who had his own cause to make good as an hereditary ruler with a grudge against the hated English, be absorbed in the pretensions of the family of Tippoo Sahib? Let him act there and then, by taking possession of the country round Cawnpore. He yielded so soon, that it must be doubted whether he had not all along reserved the notion of turning against the English, and he at once called on Sir Hugh Wheeler to surrender the intrenchments. The surrender was not made, and the mutineers were ordered to make a general assault on the mud walls behind the open space. That assault was repulsed with heroic bravery by about 400 men who could fight, out of 465 who were there within the frail defences, with about 280 married women and girls and as many children. It was then that the answer was brought back from Lucknow that Sir Henry Lawrence had not a man to spare. The beleaguered garrison at Cawnpore would have to resist to the bitter end unless assistance arrived from afar to release them. It seemed as though the intrenchments would inclose only the dead or the dying before that succour could arrive. The fire of the mutineers continued night and day, and the rebel army was reinforced by swarms of the vilest miscreants of Oudh, the slinking ruffians who had escaped from jail, or being in hiding had

the carnage. But though they kept up an incessant fusillade, they never attempted an assault on the position without being driven back in a fright, or falling dead in numbers before the desperate valour of the now diminishing defenders, who were not only in constant danger from the bullets of their enemies, but were suffering the pangs of thirst. No water could be obtained except from one well, which was constantly covered by the Sepoy guns, until an expedition to replenish the water-bottles became a "forlorn hope" never accomplished except at the expense of wounds, if not of the death of one or other adventurer. In all these long weeks not a bucket, not a spongeful of water could be spared for the purpose of personal cleanliness, and that in such a climate and among a community largely consisting of English ladies and children accustomed to habits of refinement. The magazine and the treasury had been taken by the Sepoys. The 3d Oudh battery which was in the trench with the Europeans began to mutiny, and were disarmed and sent out of the place, leaving about 300 fighting men including the officers of the native regiment, and eight mounted guns. Nana Sahib was joined by a large body of Oudh natives, who had the reputation of being the best fighting men in India, and he then ordered a grand assault, but with the usual result. The indomitable garrison, daily diminishing in numbers, with only such rations of water as could be drawn at great risk at night when the fire slackened a little, and with a diminishing supply of meat, because there were no sheltered places in which to preserve the cattle, yet drove back the enemy with such effect that the rest of the Sepoys began to think it was useless to attempt to scale those puny ramparts while there were any Englishmen left behind them. Unless Nana Sahib could take Cawnpore his influence would melt away rapidly, and therefore Hindoo craft and treachery took the place of courage. He conferred with his lieutenant Tantia Topee, and with his agent Azimoolah, and the result was a message to the intrenchments that all those who were in no way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie, and

who were willing to lay down their arms, should receive a safe passage to Allahabad.

The mutiny broke out at Cawnpore on the forenoon of the 7th of June, and from that day to the 24th an almost incessant fire had been kept up on the intrenched camp. It was on the last-mentioned day that this message was sent by Nana Sahib, offering in effect to allow all in the camp to go to Allahabad in safety, if they would abandon the intrenchment and give up the treasures and stores. What else was to be done? Allahabad was in the hands of the English. To the offer was added a promise of food and boats to carry the garrison, the women and children. There were many sick, and several dying. Some of the women and children who had died had been thrown at night into a well outside the intrenchments. There was no possibility of giving them burial. Scarcely a corner of the buildings had escaped the shot and shell of the enemy, who at last had thrown live-hot shells and had thus set fire to the barracks, which burned so fiercely that it was difficult to remove any of the women and children, and about forty of the sick and helpless perished. All the medicines were destroyed. Tents had been struck to preserve them from the bombardment. Who would have neglected a chance of release? The proposal was assented to by General Wheeler, and for the two days following, the frightened residents in the intrenchment enjoyed comparative quiet to prepare for the journey.

"On the 26th," wrote Lieutenant Delafosse (one of only four survivors of this treacherous scheme), "a committee of officers went to the river to see that the boats were ready and serviceable; and everything being reported ready, and carriages for the wounded having arrived, we gave over our guns, &c., and marched on the morning of the 27th of June, about seven o'clock. We got down to the river and into the boats without being molested in the least, but no sooner were we in the boats, and had laid down our muskets and taken off our coats to work easier at the boats, than the cavalry gave the order to fire. Two guns that had been hidden were run out and opened on us immediately, while Sepoys came

from all directions and kept up a fire. The men jumped out of the boats, and, instead of trying to get the boats loose from their moorings, swam to the first boat they saw loose. Only three boats got safely over to the opposite side of the river, but were met there by two field-pieces, guarded by a number of cavalry and infantry. Before these boats had got a mile down the stream, half our small party were either killed or wounded, and two of our boats had been swamped. We had now only one boat, crowded with wounded, and having on board more than she could carry. The two guns followed us the whole of the day, the infantry firing on us the whole of that night." Those in the boats who were not killed by the fire of the Sepoys were seized and carried back to Cawnpore, where the men were all shot, and the women carried to a building which had been formerly used as an assembly-room, and kept close prisoners. They were not kept long in suspense as to their fate. The Nana having learned on the 15th that the British troops had carried the bridge over the Pandoo Nuddee, and that nothing could stop the irresistible march of Havelock's column, issued, through the Begum, a frightful order to slay the entire company. His instructions were but too faithfully obeyed. The Begum approached the building in which the Europeans were confined, accompanied by five men, each armed with a sabre; two of them appeared to be Hindoo peasants, two were known to be butchers, Mohammedans, and one was dressed in the red uniform of the Maharajah's body-guard. "The horrible work commenced by half-a-dozen Sepoys discharging their muskets at random through the windows upon the defenceless victims. The five men armed with sabres were then observed to enter the building quietly, and close the doors. What next took place no one was spared to relate. Shrieks and scuffling were heard at significant intervals, acquainting those outside that the hired executioners were earning their pay. The one in the red uniform was observed to come to the door twice, and obtain a new sabre in exchange for one handed out hacked and broken. The