XII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)…

XII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

Condition of India--The Bengal Army--Its Want of Discipline--Effects of Caste--System of Promotion-Independent Spirit of the Sepoys--Position of the Regiments--The Greased Cartridges--The Prudence of Hearsey--The Chupatties--At Berhampore--Mangul Pandy--Disarming of the 19th--Inactivity of Anson--The Sepoys at Lucknow--A Scene at Barrackpore--At Meerut--The Rebellion begins--The Rush on Delhi--The City is sacked--The Powder Magazine--It is exploded--The Fall of Delhi--Sir Henry Lawrence--The Telegraph saves the Punjab--Energetic Measures at Lahore--Philour and Jallandhar--Mutiny at Ferozepore--Kangra and Mooltan--Peshawur is saved--Anson at Simla--Action of the Civil Authorities--The Siege Train--Death of Anson--John Lawrence in the Punjab--Cotton disarms the Sepoys--Noushera and Hotee Murdan--The Trans-Indus Region is secure--Mutiny supreme elsewhere--Progress of the Rising--Lucknow--Oude ripe for Revolt--The first Outbreak suppressed--Shahjehanpore and Bareilly--Seetapore--The Ranee of Jhansi--The Five Divisions of Oude--The Province is free from British Control.

The stipulations of the Treaty of Paris had not been fully carried out by the high contracting parties ere Britain found herself involved in war with Persia on the west, and China on the east of her Indian Empire. The Persian war had been caused by the Shah's temporary occupation of Herat on the pretext of suppressing disorder, followed by certain insults to Mr. Murray, the British representative at Teheran, events in which Lord Palmerston saw "the first opening of the trenches against India by Russia." After a mission to Constantinople had failed to effect an arrangement of the dispute, an army was sent into the country under Outram. A few months of active hostilities brought the Shah to reason, and happily released the troops employed and enabled them to return to India; while the regiments sent out from England to quell the Cantonese arrived in the Indian Ocean just in time to lend material aid in suppressing the mutiny of the Sepoy army in Bengal; and the rebellion of the people of several native States. It was the spring time of 1857. Lord Canning had been one year Governor-General of India. The King of Oude had just been deposed, and his kingdom annexed to the British dominion by Lord Dalhousie, on the ground that he was utterly unfit to rule. This act was productive of the gravest consequences, and is technically indefensible; nevertheless it was justified by its later results, and apparently excited but little notice at the time. On the surface all was peace at the opening of the year. In a few weeks there was a sputter of mutiny; in a few months an army was in revolt from Calcutta to Peshawur; the British were lying dead, or flying for their lives, or fronting and conquering the mutineers, or shut up in forts; and the last of the Great Moguls was ruler in the famous city of Delhi. There was first a struggle for existence, then a fierce and determined effort to regain ascendency; finally, well-planned and successful measures to secure what had been won back literally from the jaws of death. The mutiny of the Bengal Sepoys is an event unique in modern history. It furnishes a story of confidence abused, treachery punished, and heroism rewarded. It vindicates the moral superiority of the European over the Asiatic. But if it has illustrated our strength, it has also illustrated our weakness and folly, for from them it sprang.

The Bengal native army was upwards of a hundred thousand strong. It consisted of troops of all arms. There were seventy-four regiments of regular and twenty of irregular infantry; there were ten regiments of regular and eighteen of irregular cavalry; and besides these there was a due proportion of artillery brigades. The distinction between regular and irregular regiments consisted mainly in this: that the regular had the usual number of European officers, while the irregular had only three or four. There was no substantial difference in drill and discipline. In addition to this fixed native establishment, there were five corps d'armée furnished by native States, and called contingents. They were drawn from Gwalior, Bhopal, Kotah, Malwa, and Joudpore. These were small armies complete in themselves: the Gwalior contingent, supplied by the Maharajah Scindia, was the most formidable of these forces, being strong in numbers of all arms, and admirably drilled. Like the regular and irregular regiments of the Bengal army, those of the contingents were officered by Europeans. In one short year the whole of this force, except five irregular cavalry regiments and three regular infantry regiments, and the whole of the contingents, had either mutinied or been disarmed.

In order to form any reasonable idea of the causes of the mutiny which we are about to describe, it is necessary to explain the nature of the instrument which broke in the hands of the rulers of India. In outward form it was splendid. From the drill-sergeant's point of view, few things in this world could be more perfect. The infantry were tall, shapely, handsome. They moved with precision and regularity. They made a brave show at parades. The cavalry were also well-made men, being excellent horsemen, with a dashing bearing. The artillery were famous for the neatness and accuracy of their movements, and their ability to serve and point their guns. Such was the appearance of these troops. Their officers were proud of them, and years of unquestioned fidelity and obedience had made these officers confident that their men would follow them anywhere. But, as Colonel Jacob wrote in 1851, "the thing was rotten throughout, and discipline there was none." The wonder to this observant soldier was, even then, that "the outward semblance of an army had still been maintained." For the officers of this army, from various causes, had ceased to possess a hold on the confidence and regard of the men. They were no longer accessible as of old. They lived apart. "Young men," writes Mr. Gubbins, "were no longer taught to take a pride in their regimental duty." They were taught to look out for staff employment, that is, employment in either civil or military tasks away from their regiments. It was not that there were few officers left behind to do the ordinary duty that caused the evil; it was "the want of interest felt in their work by the officers present with the corps." Nor was this the fault of the officers. It arose from a vicious system, gradually introduced, which deprived the commanding officer of his due share of power. "The commanding officer of a regiment in Bengal," to quote Colonel Jacob again, "is almost powerless for good. He is allowed to do nothing; his men are taught to despise him; and in many instances of late years the Sepoys have been allowed and encouraged to forward written complaints (secretly) against their commanders direct to headquarters. What can be worse than this? It is utterly destructive of military discipline and soldierlike pride."

Then there was the grave evil arising out of caste. The Bengal army was composed mainly of high-caste men from Oude and Behar and Rohilcund. A very large part came from the same districts and were relatives. The army was, in fact, a sort of military club, and caste, as in other clubs, determined admission or exclusion. But what were the consequences? The army became subject to the control of Brahmins and Fakirs. A man was not chosen on account of his fitness to be a soldier, but because he was tall and handsome and of high caste. "Whatever be his other qualifications," writes Colonel Jacob in 1851, as we must repeat, "if a man think that a stone with a patch of red paint on it is not to be worshipped as the Creator--still more, if he have been a shoemaker, etc.--he is not to be admitted into the ranks of the Bengal army, for fear of offending the lazy and insolent Brahmins. The consequences are ruinous to discipline. By reason of this, a native soldier in Bengal is far more afraid of an offence against caste than of an offence against the Articles of War, and by this means a degree of power rests with the private soldier which is entirely incompatible with all healthy rule. Treachery, mutiny, villainy of all kinds, may be carried on among the private soldiers unknown to their officers, to any extent, where the men are of one caste of Hindoos, and where the rules of caste are more regarded than those of military discipline." By this subservience to caste all real power rested in the hands of the private soldier. Thus the Bengal Sepoy would not form what is called a "working party," and it was thought a perfect wonder that in Afghanistan, when fighting for life, a Sepoy regiment handled the spade. A native cavalry regiment would not unsaddle, picket, feed, and groom its horses--a host of inferiors, grooms and grass cutters, were kept for those purposes. To such an extent was this system carried that men were kept to strike the gongs at the guard-houses; the high-caste Sepoy would not do it. And all this time--while the troops of all arms in Bengal were petted and ruined in this way, on the ground that no rule of caste must be infringed lest it should lead to mutiny--in Bombay, Sepoys from the same villages in Bengal, relatives of the pampered gentlemen we have described, did all that their officers required of them, and drilled, lived, and slept side by side with men of many inferior castes. The army wherein caste was the first thing thought of, and discipline and a soldier's duties the second, mutinied from end to end. The army wherein caste was not considered remained faithful, and did good service against the mutineers. Nor was this all. Colonel Jacob's splendid regiment of Scinde Irregular Horse was composed to a very great extent of exactly the same material as that of the Bengal army. It was disciplined on sound principles, in accordance, as we may say, with the laws of Nature. Consequently it did anything and went anywhere at the orders of its officers.

But there were other evils in this unhappy Bengal army. The bad system of promotion was, in the opinion of Colonel Jacob, the worst of all. "In the Bengal army," he says, "the promotion of natives is made to depend on seniority only, so that if a man keeps clear of actual crime, and lives long enough, he must become a commissioned officer, however unfit for the office. Under this system, the private soldier feels himself entirely independent of his officers; he knows that they neither hasten nor retard his advance in the service. He has nothing to do but to live and get through his duties with listless stupidity, and with the least possible trouble to himself. No exertion on his part can help him--neither talent, courage, fidelity, nor good conduct is of any avail. Confidence and pride in each other between men and officers cannot exist. There is no real co-operation; for the one being powerless to aid, the other becomes careless of offending. This is the effect on the private soldier. The system is equally if not more baneful as respects the native officers, commissioned and non-commissioned. The whole of the native commissioned officers are entirely useless; the amount of their pay is a dead loss to the State; every one of them is unfit for service by reason of imbecility, produced by old age, or where, in rare instances, the man may not be altogether in his second childhood, he is entirely useless from having been educated in a bad school."

With an army managed as this was, the really surprising thing is not that it mutinied in 1857, but that it did not mutiny years before; indeed, partial revolts were of fairly frequent occurrence, especially when the Sepoys were called upon to serve out of India. Except in the mere outward show, it was not an army at all, and all that was required to destroy it was opportunity. The fact that there were good officers in the Bengal army, beloved and trusted by their men, does not invalidate the opinion we have set forth. These officers had triumphed over the system in so far as the system tended to make the Sepoy despise his officers; but they could not triumph over the system in so far as it affected the men. That bad influence went on with unfaltering steadiness. Day by day the Sepoys felt that they became more and more the masters of India. Day by day a sense of their own importance grew and flourished in their breasts. They were able to conspire with safety under the very noses of the Europeans; and the gulf which separated them from their officers enabled intriguers to sow the seeds of mutiny unchecked and unseen. Thus the native army of Bengal became combustible, ready to take fire and flame up if a spark fell on it. This combustible state was not produced in a year or ten years; it had been growing for a quarter of a century. In short, it grew as the vicious system of depriving commanders of power was developed; as the Sepoys, on plea of caste, shirked more and more the duties of soldiers, and as the senile system of promotion by seniority produced its inevitable effects. The recent annexation of Oude, the late Russian war, the spread of British dominion beyond the Indus, the scanty garrison of Europeans actually in India in 1857--these were only the collateral influences, and only to a limited extent causes. They were, indeed, rather occasions than causes; the root of the whole colossal evil being the absence of discipline in the Bengal army.

Let the reader figure to himself this army scattered about the country in military posts, from the eastern provinces on the Irrawaddy to spurs of the mountains beyond the Indus on the north-western boundary. Here they are gathered in brigades of two or three regiments of all arms; there stands a solitary regiment of infantry or cavalry; in another place a squadron or a company. From Fort William in Calcutta, up the valley of the Ganges, and beyond it across the Punjab to Peshawur, ran a chain of military stations; throwing out detachments to the right and left, on one side towards the Himalayas and Nepaul, on the other over the jungles of Central India and Rajpootana, until the outposts touched those of Madras in Nagpore and the Deccan, and those of Bombay in the valley of the Nerbudda. In each of the stations there are the native lines with open parades in front, and the detached quarters of the European community; long rows of thatched dwellings, and cottages standing in gardens or "compounds." In some there are no European troops; indeed, so few are the Europeans in this vast region, that their presence is the exception and not the rule. For instance, the great fort and magazine of Allahabad, at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna, is in the hands of native troops. The fortified city of Delhi, with its two magazines, is entirely occupied by native infantry. In the whole of Oude there is only one European regiment, the 32nd, at Lucknow. At Cawnpore, a very important station, there are no Europeans. Mooltan, the key of the valley of the Indus, is, in like manner, almost destitute of Europeans. In other stations there are one or two European regiments or parts of regiments. Thus, at the great station of Dinapore there was the 10th Foot; at Agra, the 3rd Bengal Fusiliers; at Meerut, a whole European brigade of all arms, 6th Dragoon Guards, 60th Rifles, and artillery; at Lahore, the 81st Foot and some artillery; and at or near Peshawur the 27th, 70th, and 87th Foot. In the hill stations of the North-West and in the Punjab the European element was stronger than elsewhere, for there were fourteen regiments, including two of horse, scattered about in that quarter. There were thus about 12,000 Europeans north and west of Delhi, but there were upwards of 40,000 Hindostanees, and beside these several thousand Sikhs and Punjabees. Between the Jumna and the Nerbudda there was not a single European regiment. British India altogether was six regiments short of her complement of European troops; but four of these were in Persia making war on the Shah, and with them were Generals Outram and Havelock. Such was the state of affairs at the end of 1856, when India stood on the threshold of an awful calamity and knew it not. The country seemed to be profoundly tranquil, but there were 5,000 fewer British soldiers than was usual to secure or defend the sway of their race.

Government had determined to arm the Sepoys with the Minié rifle. It followed, as a matter of course, that Schools for Instruction in Musketry were established. With the old musket instruction was of little avail, for Brown Bess could not be relied on to shoot straight for a distance of a hundred and fifty yards. Therefore, at various points men from several regiments of the native army met to be taught how to load and fire the new rifle. This weapon was loaded with a greased cartridge. It was usual in those days to bite the cartridge, in order to pour out the powder. At Dumdum, near Calcutta, there was an arsenal, and here these cartridges were made up, chiefly by native servants. Early in January one of these men asked a Sepoy of the 2nd Grenadiers for a draught of water from his lotah, or brass drinking-pot. The high-caste native was astonished at the insolence of the man, for he was low caste; and if the lips of the latter touched the pot, it would be defiled. He refused with disdain. The low-caste man was one of those who made up the cartridges, and he retorted with a sneer that the Sepoy need not be so particular about his caste; for the new cartridges were greased with bullock's fat, and every Sepoy would lose caste when he bit off the end. The Sepoy spread the tale abroad among his comrades. The Hindoos were told that the grease was the grease of the sacred cow, and the Moslem soldiers were informed that it was the fat of the unclean swine; and finally, to meet the case of both, the story ran that the grease was a compound of the fat of pigs and cows. This story has been received as authentic. Whether it be true or not in detail, it illustrates the feeling that the new cartridges, with their unctuous ends and ill odour, had aroused in the native mind. Here, then, was a plot to deprive the whole army of its caste, striking high and low alike, and with its caste of its religion! The fatal story flew on the wings of the wind from cantonment to cantonment from station to station. In a few weeks the native army was ready to rise and slay.

At first, indeed, the men at Dumdum appeared to be perfectly reasonable. Called on at parade to state complaints, they objected to the cartridge, and suggested the use of wax and oil. The Government ordered an investigation, and in the meantime changed the drill, so that in future the end of a cartridge was to be torn not bitten off. General Hearsey, an experienced soldier, well known to all the Sepoys, harangued his division at Barrackpore, showing them how impossible it was that they could be made Christians by the mere biting of cartridges. But all was of no avail. A native lieutenant informed the authorities that the Barrackpore brigade was preparing to mutiny. General Hearsey wrote to Calcutta, saying, "We have at Barrackpore been dwelling upon a mine ready for explosion." He admitted that the native officers were of no use, being afraid of their men, and he suggested that a European regiment should be sent up to the station.

At this time, the middle of February, another singular sign was observed. A native policeman entered a village of Oude, carrying two chupatties, or cakes. He ordered his fellow official there to make ten more, and give two to each of the five nearest village policemen, with the same instructions. In a few hours the whole country was astir with watchmen flying about with these cakes. This proceeding was and remains a mystery. One officer who saw a watchman run in with his cakes, asked what it meant. He was told that when the malik, or chief, required a service from his people, he sent round these cakes to prepare them for the execution of his orders. "And what is the order now?" inquired the officer. And the answer, with a smile, was, "We don't know yet." Whatever may have been the reason for this flight of cakes, there it stands in the forefront of calamity, and is regarded as one of its signs. "How little was it thought," writes Mr. Cave Browne, "that therein was really hidden an Eastern symbol of portentous meaning! Five centuries before (1368), the Chinese had, by a somewhat similar plan, organised and carried out a conspiracy by means of which their dynasty of Mongol invaders was overthrown." This is a far-fetched illustration. No doubt, the chupatty mystery had a meaning, though it may never have been clearly ascertained.

From Barrackpore a detachment of the 34th Native Infantry went to Berhampore, once a great and important station, 120 miles north of Calcutta. Here were quartered the 19th Native Infantry, the 11th Irregulars, and two guns. The 19th feasted their comrades, and these in return told the story of the cartridges with great additions. John Company had sent Lord Canning to convert India to Christianity, and he had been ordered to begin by destroying the caste of the whole army! The men of the 19th heard, and forthwith believed. They made no inquiries of the English officers. What were the "stranger gentlemen" to them? How could their words in such a matter affect what their brethren had told them? On the day after the detachment had come in, Colonel Mitchell, commanding at the station, ordered a parade for the following morning. The men were to meet for exercise with blank cartridge, and it was served out. These cartridges were not new, and had inadvertently been made of two kinds of paper, whereupon the Sepoys imagined that one sort must be the greased cartridges fatal to their caste. So the men refused to take them. Not ripe at the moment for mutiny, they yielded when threatened with a court-martial. But the same night their passions got the better of them, and they rose and seized their arms. Aroused by the noise and confusion, Colonel Mitchell ordered out the cavalry and the guns. But the night was dark. Torches were necessary. The ground was broken. Neither guns nor horsemen, it is said, could be used. Colonel Mitchell doubted whether he could depend on his native troopers and native gunners. He therefore harangued the mutineers, explained the groundlessness of their fears, and begged them to give up their arms. The Sepoys, still unready for revolt, made a counter-proposition. They would give up their arms if the Colonel would withdraw his cavalry and guns. He complied, and with this transaction the tumult ended. Here, then, was decided mutiny. It broke out with a running accompaniment of fires in different places, the work of wilful men bent on spreading the contagion of alarm and treason.

On learning what had happened at Berhampore, the Government in Calcutta called up the 84th Queen's Regiment from Burmah, and ordered the 19th Native Infantry to march to Barrackpore to be disbanded. As they were marching down, an emissary from the 34th met them with a proposal that, when within a march of the station, the 19th should murder their officers, while the 34th did the same; but the 19th refused, and marched quietly into the cantonment. Here they found the 84th, a wing of the 53rd Foot, two troops of horse artillery, and the Governor-General's body-guard of picked Sepoy troopers. Two days before they were disbanded, a Sepoy of the 34th, Mangul Pandy by name, endeavoured to rouse his regiment. In the presence of the guard, who stood by, he wounded Adjutant Baugh. While those were in deadly strife, the British sergeant-major dashed in; but he was cut down, and the native lieutenant and guard took part in the fray, striking the Europeans. A Mahometan, however, was faithful, and, with the assistance of General Hearsey and other officers Baugh was rescued and Mangul Pandy seized. Riding up to the mutinous guard, with a loaded pistol in one hand, and ordering them back, Hearsey threatened to shoot the first man who disobeyed him, and on this they returned to their posts. Mangul Pandy and the native lieutenant were hanged in due course, and the Mahometan and sergeant-major were rewarded; but for these acts, such was the style of management that prevailed in Bengal, General Hearsey was reprimanded! Otherwise the regiment was unpunished. On the 31st of March--a long delay caused by the fact that there was absolutely no regiment that could be trusted with the disarmament until the return of the 84th Foot from Burmah--the 19th were deprived of their arms, paid up all their arrears, solemnly lectured in the presence of the whole force at the station, European and native, disbanded, marched out of the station, and sent to their homes. The 19th were really not so much in fault as appeared, for they offered, if pardoned, to serve in China or anywhere; but Government held it necessary to make an example. For now the fires in cantonments were more rife than ever all up the valley of the Ganges, the midnight meetings of the Sepoys more numerous, and the excitement of the whole army was fast rising to a climax.

These symptoms of mutiny were manifest in Oude and in the North-West. General Anson, the Commander-in-Chief, was on his way to comfortable quarters in the hills. He was altogether unfitted for the deadly conflict impending. He did not understand its gravity, and if he had caught a glimpse of the facts, he would have been unable to deal with them. In the middle of March, with the 36th Native Infantry for escort, he went to Umballa. Two non-commissioned officers of this regiment were at the rifle school. They went out to meet their comrades, and were by them repulsed as outcasts--men who had touched greased cartridges and were defiled. In fact, these natives had not touched greased cartridges, for there were none in the school. But that made no difference to the infatuated 36th. The Sepoys pretended that the rifle with its cartridge was "a Government missionary to convert the whole army to Christianity." By this time the whole army had become aware of its strength, and was in communication from Calcutta to Peshawur. General Anson inspected the depôt, and suspended the musketry practice of the Sepoys until further orders. He ordered an inquiry, and when all the symptoms were disclosed to him, he actually censured the Sepoys who had made known the fact that they had been repulsed and treated as outcasts by their corps! He next forced the Sepoys, not yet ripe for revolt, to use the cartridge. They did so, but at night they burnt a number of Government buildings. A Sikh now reported the existence of a conspiracy which was to break out in the beginning of May, either at Delhi, Umballa, or Meerut. But General Anson would not believe the information. He was already nestled snugly in the hills, playing whist. And so the month passed away, lighted at its close by blazing cantonments, and marked by the most flagrant signs of universal military disaffection. In addition to this the agents of the King of Delhi and the Shah of Persia and the Moslem priests were at work, preaching a religious war by stealth, while the Hindoo pundits openly prophesied that the reign of the English had lasted its appointed time, and that it was now coming to an end.

The month of May came. It was the height of the hot season. There is little doubt that the Sepoys, who had seen that their European masters feared the sun, had calculated on its enervating effects. The storm was gathering to a head. The strife was going on sullenly at Meerut as well as at Umballa. At Lucknow, also, it was in progress. On the first days of May the 7th Oude Irregular Infantry refused to touch cartridges, which, they admitted, were in every respect such as they had been accustomed to. The men were in absolute, but passive mutiny. On the 3rd of May, threatening to kill the European officers, they seized their arms and the magazine; but a force of cavalry and artillery arriving, the mutineers were panic-stricken and gave up their arms. It was then discovered that the 7th Oude and the 48th Native Infantry were actually conspiring. Thus face to face with danger, Sir Henry Lawrence, Commissioner in Oude, began to make preparations that enabled him to cope effectually with the crisis. He had already struck down promptly the first mutinous regiment. He was destined to save the power of Britain in Oude, and to sacrifice his life in so doing.

This scene at Lucknow aroused the Government at Calcutta. But mild measures were the order of the day. A native lieutenant at Barrackpore had been caught in the lines of the 70th, urging his men to revolt. He was tried by a native court-martial and sentenced to dismissal. The effect on the Sepoys is indescribable. "This," they said, "the only punishment for mutiny! They are afraid of us; we can do as we like." But, alarmed by the mutiny at Lucknow, Lord Canning determined to disband another regiment. The corrupted 34th was to be so punished this time. Directing the 84th Queen's, a wing of the 53rd, and two batteries of artillery upon Barrackpore, he ordered the officer commanding at the station to disband the mutinous regiment. It was done, but the punishment was felt to be no punishment and the men went off exulting with their pay. In the order of the Governor-General, disaffected soldiers were told that mutiny would draw down upon them sharp and certain punishment like that inflicted on the 34th. But the Bengal Sepoys had been long hardened to radical insubordination, and the sharp and certain punishment of disbandment for mutiny had no effect on them. This scene occurred at Barrackpore on the 6th of May. It was the second instance of paltering with mutineers. The Government seem to have thought that they had destroyed the mutiny, root and branch. In five days from that time Meerut was sacked, and the streets of Delhi were running with European blood.

The town and station of Meerut lies about forty-five miles north of Delhi, in the upper part of the Doab of the Jumna and Ganges. As no European troops could be stationed in Delhi, without violating the arrangements made when the Great Mogul was dispossessed of his territories, Meerut was fixed on as a station for European troops, and here were the 6th Dragoon Guards, or Carabineers, the 1st Battalion of the 60th Rifles, and two troops of Horse Artillery. There were also the 11th and 20th Native Infantry and the 3rd Native Cavalry. The commander of the station was General Hewitt, a worn-out old officer, of whom it had once been reported officially that he was totally unfit for any command. As the disaffection of the Sepoys was manifest, Colonel Carmichael Smith, of the 3rd Cavalry, determined to bear it no longer. He paraded a part of the regiment, ninety men, and ordered them to take the cartridges, showing them, at the same time, that the end was to be torn not bitten off. Only five obeyed. The rest were deaf to exhortations and warnings. They stood still, in passive mutiny. This fact was reported to Brigadier Archdale Wilson, and by his order the whole of the mutineers were arrested. They were tried, as usual, by a native court-martial and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. On the 9th of May, by order of General Hewitt, the whole of the force in the cantonment, European and native, was paraded. As soon as they were drawn up, the Europeans were directed to load. Then the mutineers were marched in, and so placed that any resistance would be followed by their destruction. Their uniforms were stripped off and they were placed in irons. The only sign of emotion was one deep sigh which burst at once from all the battalions. The disgraced troopers actually reproached their comrades for permitting the execution of the sentence; and we may well believe that nothing but the loaded guns in front, and the grim men of the Rifles and Carabineers, prevented the armed Sepoys from attempting a rescue. The shackled troopers were marched off to the gaol and placed under a guard of native policemen; and the Sepoys returned to their lines to plot treason and communicate their intentions to the regiments at Delhi. The sun went down on that Saturday, May the 9th, and darkness covered up the meetings of swarthy soldiers planning a general revolt for the next day.

About five o'clock next day the quiet of the evening was broken. A rocket flew upwards in the Sepoy lines. The 3rd Cavalry rushed forth, seized their arms, and slew at once four of their officers. A party of them gallop away to the gaol, whirling their sabres over their heads. There is only a native guard at the gaol; the doors are thrown open with shouts; they set their imprisoned comrades free. Fourteen hundred convicts are at the same time let loose, who rush eagerly away to reap the harvest of plunder and violence. A party of the Sowars, with the 20th, went to the lines of the 11th, to turn the tide of disaffection in its ranks, for it was not yet entirely gained over. Colonel Finnis was there, endeavouring to address the men and keep them to their duty. They instantly fired at the unfortunate gentleman, whose death decided the wavering regiment. The Sepoys of the 11th now joined with the rest, but protected the officers and ladies. It was the plan of the mutineers to set upon and massacre the Europeans assembled in church. Fortunately, the signal was given too early. The Sepoys fall upon and kill everybody they meet; joined with the rabble of the bazaars, they run to plunder the long line of beautiful cottages in which the European families resided. They push their muskets into the thatch, and fire; in a few minutes they are all in a blaze. Ladies and children are seized with exultation and tormented to death. The Europeans who get clear fly away to the English barracks. All the bungalows in the native lines are burned and sacked. For two hours the work of hell goes on--tumult, murder, pillage, conflagration. They fight for the spoil and kill one another. And what are our soldiers doing? They are all armed and ready, panting with fury, eager to rescue their dying countrywomen, eager for blood and vengeance. To them thus ready for the fray General Hewitt's order comes. What is it? "Defend your lines!"

Such was the fatal order. Instead of attacking the mutineers with horse, foot, and artillery, he stood on the defensive. At length he was prevailed on to move; but when he did, the mischief had been completed and the mutineers were speeding southward to Delhi. Moving in the gloom, the angry Europeans came up within sight of some of their foes, and the guns poured a shower of grape into the darkness as the Sepoys vanished. There was no pursuit. Captain Rosser offered to ride after them with horsemen and guns, and follow them to Delhi; but General Hewitt would not hear of it, and returned to his lines!

In Delhi all was peace. There were no signs of mutiny in the city or cantonments. There had been a sign of Mahometan disaffection, for a placard had been posted on the walls of the Jumma Musjid, declaring that the Shah of Persia was coming to drive the Europeans from India. The old King of Delhi and his sons and grandsons could not be expected to love us or be loyal to us. They lived a life of conspiracy in those stormy times; they were all sensual, cruel, and idle; but they dared not act openly against the Company. There were three native regiments in the city and cantonments, the 38th, 54th, and 74th, and a native battery. Brigadier Graves commanded the brigade, and he and all the officers had the most complete confidence in the loyalty of their men. It was nine o'clock; from the magazine, which also looked on to the river, a sharp eye saw a body of troopers coming down the Meerut road. The news spread to the Europeans; one after the other they heard of these galloping horsemen. The brigadier, warned by Mr. Hutchinson, at once ordered the 54th, under Colonel Ripley, and two guns, to march. Sir Thomas Metcalfe warned Lieutenant Willoughby at the magazine, and wished that two guns might be planted to sweep the bridge. Fraser and Captain Douglas went into the palace to rouse and induce the king to exert his influence. In the meantime the troopers had ridden up to the bridge, had cut down the sergeant in charge, had crossed over, and were in the palace and the city.

They were prompt men, these troopers. So long as there was one white face left, they felt that they were not masters. So when Mr. Fraser expostulated with them, they shot at him, wounded Mr. Hutchinson, and killed a European clerk. Mr. Fraser seized a gun and shot a trooper; but there were none to aid him, and he had to fly. Sir Thomas Metcalfe tried the police; they stood unmoved. Sir Thomas drove away. As yet there were only troopers in the city; but they had been looked for by the native troops, and though few, they were sufficient, since there were none to oppose them. Fraser, Hutchinson, and Douglas had gone into the palace. There were the troopers, a mob from the city, and convicts delivered from gaol. The British gentlemen still faced the mutineers, reasoning, reproaching, exhorting. Suddenly one of the king's servants cut down Fraser, and then a body rushed up the stairs and there slew Hutchinson, Douglas, the Rev. Mr. Jennings, Miss Jennings, and Miss Clifford. The ladies were killed outright on the spot and suffered no dishonour. Then the troopers rushed forth to complete the massacre of the white men and the native Christians. They scoured through the European quarters, with reeking blades--the centre of a horde of ruffians steeped in cruelty, crying, "Deen! Deen!" and sparing none. Some gallantly resisted; some were smitten at their desks and employments. Mr. Beresford, at the bank, fought stoutly, but was slain, and all who belonged to his household. The dwellers in the College shared the same fate; the whole force of the Delhi Mission fell. In the midst of their fury they were not likely to forget the telegraph. The chief clerk was slain, but the rebels were not quick enough in getting to the office to prevent his assistant from sending his message to Lahore, ere the troopers cut him down "The Sepoys have come in from Meerut, and are burning everything. Mr. Todd is dead, and, we hear, several Europeans. We must shut up." They died; like good men and true, they fell at their posts, but they had saved the Punjab.

Brigadier Graves had not been idle. He first sent word that all Europeans in the city should muster at the Flagstaff Tower, a stone building, with battlements, standing on the centre of the ridge; but his orders were too late, or rather the troopers and felons were too speedy for the orders to be of service. Then, as we have stated, he sent the 54th, followed by two guns, to quell any tumult. But the 54th had no sooner entered the Cashmere Gate than some troopers rode up and shot Colonel Ripley and all his officers, except three who got away. Major Patterson now entered with the guns, and at sight of these the troopers rode off. But the 54th immediately broke up and joined the mutineers. Brigadier Graves sent down three companies of the 74th and two more guns. These only provided fresh mutineers, for not a man would obey orders. The guns were ordered back; but on their road a party of mutineers met them, wounded the horse of the officer in charge and carried the guns back to Delhi. All the Sepoys now became active mutineers.

There were two magazines in the station: a large one, containing above a thousand barrels of powder, placed two miles outside the city walls, and at anybody's mercy, and a smaller one within the walls, not far from the palace, containing not more than fifty barrels. It is of the latter we have to write. Sir Charles Napier had condemned this building. Its gates were so weak, he said, a mob could push them in. On the 11th of May there were nine officers and men to defend this magazine. They were Lieutenant George Willoughby in command, Lieutenants Forrest and Raynor; Conductors Buckley, Shaw, and Scully; Sub-Conductor Crow, and Sergeants Edwards and Stewart. Their memories are worthy of all honour. In the forenoon they were beset by a crowd, raging, tumultuous, demanding admission. Seeing this, Willoughby prepared for defence. He closed and barricaded the gates, and a train was laid by Conductors Buckley, Scully, and Sergeant Stewart, ready to be fired at a preconcerted signal, which was that of Conductor Buckley raising his hat from his head, on the order being given by Lieutenant Willoughby.

The mob had been balked at the outset. They had been reinforced by a body of the king's soldiers, but still they were kept at bay. But when the old king and his counsellors found that the troops in cantonments were in revolt, that the spies he sent out returned reporting that no British were coming from Meerut, and that the Native Infantry from Meerut had entered Delhi, then fresh troops poured down upon the magazine. The whole of the besieging crowd were eager for powder and arms. The king's soldiers summoned the Europeans to surrender. They were defied. Then the crowd swarmed to the attack and opened fire. At the first round the natives in the magazine fled. But the nine Englishmen remained. Scaling-ladders were brought; Sepoys mounted the tombs in the burial-ground overlooking the enclosure, and fired on the little garrison. These plied their foes with grape, but as fast as the iron sleet swept away one body, another followed. For five hours the gallant nine maintained the unequal contest. Scully stood by the trunk of a tree, ready to fire the mine. Every moment the attack grew hotter and the defence weaker: for Edwards and Crow were killed; Forrest and Buckley were wounded. All hope was gone. Willoughby passed the word to Buckley to raise his hat, the signal for firing the train, and Scully coolly and with deliberate care applied the match. In a moment the whole building was rent by the explosion, and hundreds of the enemy, crowding on, were buried in the ruins. Forrest, Raynor, Willoughby, Buckley, and Scully made their way out, scorched and bruised, but alive. A trooper cut down the brave Scully, and Willoughby was killed by marauders in a village on the road to Meerut; but Forrest, Raynor, Stewart, and Buckley succeeded in reaching that place alive, and each received the Victoria Cross as a reward.

The explosion of the magazine may be regarded as the last act in defence of Delhi. The fugitives who had reached the Flagstaff Tower were now crowded within it, uncertain of their fate. The Sepoys who surrounded the two guns were watched by armed Europeans from the roof of the tower; but it would have been destruction to fire. The ladies were loosening cartridges, and the men were resolving on defence when defence was hopeless. One by one the fugitives had come in. Major Abbott had brought up a cartload of dead and wounded officers. The Sepoys were growing defiant. When the magazine blew up they became excited; they had long refused to obey orders; they now told the officers they had better be gone, "this was no longer a place for them." The words were true. All who could got carriages or horses, and those who could get neither, set out on foot. The Sepoys did not oppose them. The brave Brigadier Graves, Captain Nicholl, and Dr. Stewart lingered to the last; but at length these went also, and Delhi was in the power of the king and the Sepoys. An attempt had been made to blow up the great magazine, but the Sepoys frustrated it, and so ended the scene. One Sepoy only followed the officers in their flight. The fugitives bent their steps towards Kurnaul, and only some arrived. They were beset by the village marauders, who robbed and wounded, or murdered, all parties alike. Some were nearly naked, their clothes having been torn from them; some were severely wounded; some lay down to die from fatigue and grief. It was a dreadful night; and in Delhi there were still forty-three persons, chiefly women and children. They had taken refuge in the palace; on the 18th of May the poor creatures were given up to the mutineers, and massacred in a body by them and the king's brutal sons.

Sir Henry Lawrence, ever vigilant and prompt, saved Lucknow for a time, by disarming the 7th Oude Irregulars, on the 3rd of May. On the 12th Sir Henry held a durbar, and rewarded, with solemn forms, a subahdar, a havildar, and two Sepoys, who had been instrumental directly in arresting emissaries who were preaching sedition. Sir Henry made a noble speech to the soldiers representing all the native forces in the cantonment, praised, warned, exhorted them, and so he gained a month to prepare for a doom that was inevitable; a month to prepare and provision a fortified post in the heart of Lucknow, where a handful of Europeans and a few faithful natives were destined, with endless honour, to uplift and keep flying the British standard in one of the centres of rebellion.

The electric telegraph saved the Punjab. We have already told how from the office in Delhi went a message along the wire to Lahore. It was read at Umballa, en route; it was read at Lahore; it was shot north-westward to Sir John Lawrence at Rawul Pindee, and to Herbert Edwardes, John Nicholson, and Sydney Cotton at Peshawur. They had it by noon in Lahore: a messenger coming in from Meerut confirmed it. By eventide Sir John Lawrence had read the momentous words at Rawul Pindee; by midnight they were scanned at Peshawur. They fell into the hands of men prompt to face and to overcome danger; keen of sight and swift of action. There was to be no paltering with mutiny in the Punjab. The Britons were resolved to be masters in that land. The morning of the 12th of May brought fresh and fuller tidings, and out of them grew a fixed resolve. The Europeans had kept the secret imparted by the magic dial, and determined to be first in the field.

There were at Mean Meer, six miles from Lahore, three regiments of native infantry and one of cavalry. These Brigadier Corbett and Mr. Montgomery and others, after brief deliberation, resolved to disarm. The means at hand were slight, but sufficient for brave men. They were the 81st Queen's, and two troops of horse, and four companies of foot artillery. A ball had been appointed for the night of the 12th, and it was agreed that this festivity should be held, and that the troops should parade on the morning of the 13th. The 12th brought fresh news. A Sikh discovered and revealed a plot to seize the fort in Lahore, and massacre every white man. The authorities kept their discovery to themselves, and prepared by a bold stroke to anticipate the conspirators. The ball was held. The revel was kept up till nearly dawn, when the officers stole away to attend a parade which was to determine the fate of British rule in the country of the five rivers. During that night a company of the 81st were driving along in carts to Govindghur, three companies were held in readiness to relieve the conspirators of the 26th in Lahore Fort, and six companies were left in cantonments to perform a principal part on the parade ground. The pretence for the parade was to read a general order touching the disarmament of the 34th, at Barrackpore. When the regiments were in line, an order was read aloud to the Sepoys, explaining to them that they were about to be deprived of their arms to prevent them from disgracing themselves and their colours by yielding to the temptations of bad men, and rising in mutiny. At the conclusion of the reading, the order went forth to "pile arms." By this time the 81st had moved to the rear of the guns. There were twelve, each loaded with grape, and by each gun stood an artilleryman port-fire in hand. Colonel Renny of the 81st also gave the order to load, and the ring of the steel ramrods told the Sepoys there was no hope for them. The infantry piled arms, the cavalry took off their sabres and pouches; a company of the 81st swept them up; the crisis was past, and Lahore was saved on the third morning after the outbreak at Meerut. On that memorable morning, too, three companies of the 81st marched into the fort of Lahore. The 26th, astonished and surprised, laid down their arms without a murmur.

On the same day there were other deeds performed between the Ravee and Sutlej. On the right bank of the latter river, and commanding the Great Road from Delhi to Lahore, stands the fort of Philour. To the south-east, over the river, is the cloth-working town of Loodiana, also on the Great Road, and to the north-west the cantonment of Jallandhar. Philour was wholly in the hands of the Sepoy guard, and a native regiment, the 3rd, was encamped under its walls. There were only eight Europeans in the fort, one of whom, Mr. Brown, had arrived on the 12th of May with telegraphic apparatus to open communication with Jallandhar. For when the officer commanding at the latter station heard of the mutiny, his first thought was for the safety of Philour. He sent Mr. Brown and his apparatus in a light cart, and he marched out 150 men of the 8th Queen's at night to garrison the fort. The gallant eight had one gun. They closed the fort, and loaded the piece with grape; and kept watch over the Sepoys within and the Sepoys without. It was an anxious night, and the gun was not quitted for one moment. Before day had dawned, up came the men of the 8th, with the welcome addition, picked up on the road, of two horse-artillery guns and some Punjabee troopers, under the chivalrous Probyn. The Sepoys in the fort were surprised and dismayed when they were relieved, and marched out of the fort. They, too, were to have risen on the 15th, and Philour was to have been the rendezvous of all the mutineers in the Punjab.

At Jallandhar itself very vigorous measures had been taken. We have seen how Philour was saved. Mr. Ricketts, at Loodiana, was also warned to look sharply after the bridge of boats which carries the traffic of the Great Road over the Sutlej. The troops at Jallandhar were, the 6th Cavalry, the 36th Native Infantry, and the 61st Native Infantry, the 8th Queen's, and one troop of Horse Artillery. Brigadier Hartley would have disarmed the natives, but he feared for the out-stations; so he contented himself with taking ample precautions, by an able disposition of his guns and his European infantry. The civil chief of the station appealed for aid to the Rajah of Kuppoorthulla, a Sikh chief, whose territories lie between the Beas and the Sutlej, and the Rajah responded with promptitude, bringing up at once a body of troops and guns. This was the first evidence of the goodwill of the Sikh chieftains in this district. They were destined to render the most valuable services in the trying days at hand. Thus was mutiny for a time parried at Jallandhar.

Far different had been the incidents of the crisis at Ferozepore. This town stands on the left bank of the Sutlej, nearly due south of Lahore, and below Loodiana; it contained the largest arsenal in Upper India and its importance was immense. The brigade at the station consisted of the 10th Cavalry, the 45th and 57th Native Infantry, the 61st Queen's, and three batteries; the whole under Brigadier Innes, who had just arrived from Mooltan. Strong symptoms of disaffection had appeared among the 57th but not in the 45th, or the 10th Cavalry. When on the 13th decisive news arrived, the brigadier held a council of war; but here, as in all other stations, his avowed suspicions of the native troops were sharply combated by their own officers. He adopted a half measure: he resolved to divide the two native regiments, placing them so that the Europeans and the guns would be between them, and he intended to disarm them the next day. On the evening of the 13th he held a parade, at the same time threw a hundred men of the 61st into the magazine, and selected the best positions for his artillery. From the parade he directed the 57th to march in one direction, and the 45th in another. The former obeyed, and encamped quietly in their new quarters; but the 45th took a route that brought them in sight of the magazine, which they made an unsuccessful attempt to rush. In the meantime the 61st had to guard the barracks, where the women and children had sought shelter, as well as the magazine, and thus were compelled to look on while the mutineers and the mob burnt the cantonments. The 57th took no part in the mischief, and the next day gave up their arms and colours. The 45th were still bent on wrong doing, and as a precaution, the brigadier blew up the regimental magazines. Then the 45th, except a few, broke into open mutiny, and set out for Delhi, pursued by the Europeans and the 10th. Very few escaped, for the 10th caught some, and the villagers brought in others. Brigadier Innes had now leisure to secure all the powder and stores. Of the native force, the 10th alone retained their arms and received General Anson's thanks for their loyalty. In a few weeks they too were mutineers.

There were three other points of moment: one of supreme importance in the Punjab-Peshawur. The others were Kangra and Mooltan. Kangra was to the Rajpoots of the hills what Umritsir was to the Sikhs of the plains--a place invested with a moral prestige. Major Lake, getting one of Mr. Montgomery's notes from Lahore, marched a body of Punjab police into Kangra and it was secured. We have already seen the men of the 8th enter Philour at dawn. Mooltan, standing on the left bank of the Chenab, a few miles above its junction with the Indus, was the key of the whole country around the point where the five rivers become one. It commanded the navigation; it was the connecting link between the Punjab and Scinde and the Punjab and South Afghanistan. There were only sixty Europeans there, and 3,500 natives. Of these the most dreaded were the 62nd and 69th Native Infantry; their officers alone were full of trust in them. Major Crawford Chamberlain could rely only on his sixty Europeans and some 250 Punjabees; he had hopes of a regiment of irregular cavalry, his own regiment, known all over India as Skinner's Horse. His policy was to temporise and prepare; and most ably he did both. It was pluck and skill which saved Mooltan.

Peshawur was, after all, the critical point in the Punjab. Five infantry regiments of the Bengal army were there, the 21st, 24th, 27th, 51st, and 64th; three cavalry regiments, the 5th Regulars, and the 17th and 18th Irregulars. In three adjacent forts were detachments of a Hindoo regiment, called the Khelat-i-Gilzies. The British force consisted of the 70th and 87th, and four batteries; in all about 2,000 men. At Noushera, the station at the east end of the Peshawur Valley, and more than twenty miles off, were the 27th Queen's, the 55th Native Infantry, the 10th Irregulars, and a battery. At Hotee Murdan, a mountain station, sixteen miles north of Noushera, were the Guides, natives, but true as steel, because raised, officered, and disciplined on sound principles. These were the forces, native and British, north of the Indus. The Europeans were outnumbered by three to one.

The telegram from Lahore was received here and kept secret. The men who had to deal with probable mutiny were Brigadier Sydney Cotton, Colonels Edwardes, Nicholson, and Neville Chamberlain, for General Reid, the Commander-in-Chief, was not one of the prime moving spirits. On the morning of the 12th a council was held, and swift were its decisions. The bold spirit of John Nicholson suggested at once that the British should take the initiative and form a movable column, so that aid might be rendered where it was required, and visible tangible power shown to all. To form this column, the 55th Native Infantry were ordered to occupy Hotee Murdan; so that the Guides might join the 27th Queen's at Noushera, and that these two should form the kernel of the column. At the same time the 64th Native Infantry were split up into three parts, and sent to the forts near Peshawur. The next morning, the 13th, the council heard the news of the disarming at Lahore, and proceeded with the work. Sir John Lawrence, though at Rawul Pindee, talked with his coadjutors by telegraph, and at his suggestion General Reid joined him, and thus the heads of the two public services were united. The measures taken extended over a wider field. The Punjabee infantry and the Sikh regiments, the remains of the old Khalsa army, were called in from all quarters to join the movable column. Not only was the station made safe, and the passage of the Indus at Attock secured, but Edwardes and Nicholson took advantage of their popularity on the frontier to call for aid from the very tribes whom it had been their business to rule, and to rule with no unsteady hand. For the moment these men, by boldness, promptitude, and sagacity, held down the raging element of mutiny on both banks of the Indus, and finally drew its teeth with little loss.

But for the present we must leave them with these armed traitors all around, to show what General Anson was doing in the first week after the outbreak at Meerut.

We have already caught a glimpse of General Anson, whose distinction among men it was to be the greatest whist-player in either hemisphere. We have seen him at Umballa, misunderstanding the mutiny, and snubbing Sepoys and Sepoy officers for telling tales. He was on the road to Simla, and to Simla he went. Below him were spread out the Cis-Sutlej States, governed chiefly by native Sikh chiefs who owned allegiance to the Company. It was among these that we had sought and found our earliest allies. We have seen how the Rajah of Kuppoorthulla cast his lot at once with ours. There were others ready to follow his example. The whole country below had been for three days in the ferment of mutiny; the troops at Lahore had been disarmed; the movable column had been formed, an outbreak of the 5th and 60th Native Infantry at Umballa on the 10th of May had been frustrated by a mere accident; and blood had been shed at Ferozepore, before General Anson heard that there was any serious mutiny in the army. When the famous message from Delhi reached Umballa, General Barnard sent off Captain Barnard, his aide-de-camp, to inform the Commander-in-Chief. As he passed through Kussowlie, he warned the 75th Foot to be ready to march at a moment's notice. On the 12th he astonished the Commander-in-Chief by presenting the Delhi telegram! It was fortunate for General Anson that he had with him at that moment men like Colonel Chester and Major Norman. Whatever indecision there may have been in the mind of the chief, there was none in that of his subordinates, and when he could not decide, they decided for him. Orders were sent that very night for the march of the 75th and for the 2nd Fusiliers to be ready for marching, and the 1st Bengal Fusiliers at once to Umballa; But General Anson did not stir. Fresh news came in on the 13th, as precise as it was horrible. The 2nd Fusiliers were ordered to march. On the 14th the general and his staff quitted Simla, and the next day they were at Umballa. The 1st Fusiliers arrived the same day; having marched in two nights sixty miles. The 75th had come in, and these, with the 9th Lancers, under Colonel Hope Grant, and two troops of horse artillery, formed a weak but respectable brigade. On the 17th they were joined by the 2nd Fusiliers.

Pending the arrival of General Anson the civil authorities had not been idle. Acting under the inspiration and on the orders of Sir John Lawrence, whose comprehensive mind embraced the whole state of affairs north of Delhi, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Forsyth had called upon the Maharajah of Putteeala, and the Rajahs of Jheend and Nabha, for the aid of troops, provisions, carriage, and it was instantly granted. Detachments of their forces were sent to guard fords and places of importance in the country, to Loodiana, and on the road to Kurnaul. The military commissaries could not meet the immense demand for transport; it was met by the civilians. These were days of vast activity. For the first time European soldiers mounted sentry, and European officers rode and walked in the burning sun. With the aid of the native princes the civilians took firm hold on the country between the Jumna and the Sutlej, and thus secured the road from Delhi to the Punjab, whence troops and ammunition and spirited counsels alone could come.

One of the first acts of General Anson, or rather of his able staff officers, was to organise a siege train at Philour. The order, however, did not reach that fort until the 17th, and four days elapsed before it could be prepared. In the meantime, a Ghoorka battalion near Simla, which nobody doubted was badly managed, broke into mutiny, creating a disgraceful panic at Simla. The siege train had to be entrusted to the escort of the 3rd Native Infantry, encamped at Philour. Part of this regiment, and of the 4th Cavalry, had already been sent to guard a small supply of ammunition for the Europeans. It was said the 3rd had sworn the siege-train should never reach Delhi, and it is not an improbable story; nevertheless, when, hearing that the Ghoorkas were in revolt, they volunteered to act as escort, the offer was accepted. The train crossed the Sutlej, and two hours afterwards the bridge was carried away. Perplexed and harassed by the responsibility thrown upon him, General Anson reached Kurnaul on the 25th; on the 26th he was attacked by cholera, and on the 27th of May he died. It may be said he died of a consciousness of his own incapacity to contend with the gigantic difficulties around him. It was not his fault that he was neither a Lawrence nor a Montgomery, neither a Havelock nor a Campbell; but it was the fault of the British Government that they selected a man of such moderate abilities and no force of character to command the Indian army. On the 26th the Delhi Field Force under Sir Henry Barnard reached Kurnaul, and Sir Henry assumed command. It was now nearly the end of May, twenty days since the mutiny began; and here were the troops from Umballa and the brigade from Meerut converging on a point, to effect a junction and lay siege to Delhi.

By this time the Punjab had been the theatre of more decision and vigour. Sir John Lawrence, Mr. Montgomery, and their able coadjutors had shown how mutiny should be dealt with. No half measures were adopted. They went upon the time-honoured principle that he who is not for us is against us. "Treason and sedition," writes one of the Punjab men, "were dogged into the very privacy of the harem, and up to the sacred sanctuaries of the mosques and shrines." Mr. Montgomery banished red tape. All letters were intercepted; all important ferries, fords, and roads were watched. Rewards were offered for fugitive mutineers, dead or alive. It was soon found that the population were on our side, and the villagers ready to stop mutineers, or to report their movements. The Hindostanee soldiers had boasted throughout the Punjab that they had conquered it, and now it was the turn of the Sikh and the Punjabee. The Sikhs were burning to march on Delhi. More than a century and a half before, Aurungzebe, the Great Mogul, had beheaded a prophet of the Sikhs in his palace at Delhi, and there was a prophecy current that the Sikhs, in conjunction with the British, should sack Delhi, and avenge the death of their martyr Gooroo. This made the work of the British leaders less difficult; but it was, in the middle of May, still a problem whether we should stand or fall.

The Punjab still had to be made safe. Peshawur was not yet secure. The blow to be struck there by the Sepoys had only been parried. The hill tribes looked on with suspicion and doubt. The cantonments were full of intrigue. The Sepoys were the first to draw down on themselves the doom awaiting them. The 55th had been sent from Noushera to Hotee Murdan, and the 64th into their forts near Peshawur. This had reduced the force to be watched to four infantry and three cavalry regiments. They had all heard of the success of their "brothers" at Meerut and Delhi. In spite of vigilant watching and severe measures, these regiments were in close communication. But some of the letters seized not only showed that an extensive conspiracy existed, but revealed its nature. Happily, Colonel Nicholson felt danger in the air, and induced Sir John Lawrence to send back half the 27th Foot to the Indus. Happily, also, the Punjabee troops on the frontier were coming in. But there was no time to lose. The Sepoys in the station were ripe for revolt, and the plot formed was only discovered eight-and-forty hours before the time fixed for its execution. The 51st Native Infantry at Peshawur sent a letter to the 64th and the Khelat-i-Gilzies, inviting them to march into Peshawur on the 22nd of May, and hinting what should then be done. The letter got safely to hand, but the Sepoy who received it took it to the officer commanding at one of the three forts. The officer sent it back instantly to Peshawur, and thus saved the station. Now was the time to disarm the whole of the native troops. It was the 21st of May. Edwardes had just come in from Rawul Pindee. Promptly a council was held, and although the colonels of the Sepoy regiments--as they did every where--vehemently refused to believe that their men were mutinous, Cotton, Edwardes, and Nicholson saw more clearly, and would not be gainsaid. News from Noushera and Hotee Murdan quickened their resolves into acts. The 55th were in open mutiny. Brigadier Cotton decided that the 24th, 27th, and 51st Native Infantry, and the 5th Cavalry should be disarmed on the 22nd. The 21st Native Infantry and the 7th and 15th Irregular Cavalry were still trusted. The hazardous operation was performed with complete success. The British had won again. While the issue was doubtful, the chiefs of the valley had refused to take sides. "Show us that you are stronger," they said, "and there shall be no lack of support." The demonstration of strength was given. On that very day recruits came in by the hundred. "The chiefs of the valley crowded in upon General Cotton, flung their swords on the ground at his feet, and tendered the services of themselves and their vassals." Such it is to be morally intrepid at the right moment and in the right way.

More had to be done, for the 55th were in open mutiny at Noushera and Hotee Murdan. The first-named station lies on the road from Peshawur through Attock on the Indus to Rawul Pindee and Lahore. The second lies to the north, over the Cabul river, which, twisting down through the rocky bottom of the Khyber pass, joins the Indus near Attock. The 55th had marched to Noushera on the 13th. The 27th Foot had gone eastward. The Guides were hurrying towards Delhi. The 55th held Hotee Murdan, had two companies at Noushera, and one on the right bank of the Indus, opposite Attock. There, too, were a hundred Pathans, under Futteh Khan, once a captain in the Guides, and in the fort of Attock were the 5th Punjabees. The 55th men opposite Attock tried to seduce the Pathans from their allegiance; but these were true and revealed the secret. Finding they were discovered, the 55th men mutinied and made for Noushera. Here they were met and captured by the 10th Irregulars, but from these they were rescued by their comrades in the station. It happened that Lieutenant Davies had under his orders a few men of the 27th Foot, who were guarding the sick, and the women and children of the regiment, and these, though few in number, displayed so bold a front that the mutineers recoiled, and hurried away to Hotee Murdan. But, finding that the bridge of boats over the Cabul river had been broken, the greater part marched back and only a few joined their regiment. When the 55th heard that a force under Nicholson was coming against them from Peshawur, they prepared to hurry off into the hills, but were caught and scattered like dust before the wind.

From Hotee Murdan, the Peshawur column, under Colonel Chute, moved upon the three forts, garrisoned by the 64th Native Infantry and the Khelat-i-Gilzies. Chute reached the first fort, Aboozai, and easily disarmed the men of the 64th who were there. He reached Subkuddur the next day, and disarmed the men of the 64th, both in that fort and in Fort Michnee. Peshawur was no longer in danger; the whole of the trans-Indus region had been secured. It had been shown that although the Irregular Hindostanee Cavalry could not be trusted, yet that the Punjabees were true, for the men of the 5th had not hesitated a moment to shoot a cavalry mutineer, who had incited his comrades to murder an officer. Improving on their bold policy, the leaders at Peshawur levied new corps among the frontier tribes--hitherto our direst foes--and found them trusty warriors; drew enough men from the British Infantry to make a squadron of horse, and mounted them on the chargers of the disarmed native cavalry; formed in like manner a battery, took the Sikhs out of the disarmed regiments, re-armed them, and placed them in a separate regiment. The old Sikh leaders eagerly came forward, and soon there was the nucleus of a new and trusty native army of Sikhs and Punjabees. It is recorded of a frontier chief that when he heard the story of the Meerut and Delhi atrocities, filled with rage, he spat on the ground, and said with wrath, "Who can charge us with ever touching a helpless woman or defenceless child? No! we would not do it, not for a prince's ransom!" And it was true.

The North-West was now completely cut off from Calcutta. The 9th Native Infantry, stationed at different towns on the trunk road between Agra and Delhi, mutinied on the 20th, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of May, and marched to Delhi. Some gallant Europeans--Mr. Patterson Sanders, a zemindar of those parts, among them--forming a little squadron of cavalry, remained for months afterwards about Allyghur; but with this exception British rule ceased in the Doab below Delhi. At Agra, indeed, the British stood out bravely amid a sea of mutiny roaring around them, suffered their moments of peril, had their combats and hair-breadth escapes, but nevertheless survived. At the end of May mutinies increased on all sides. Let the reader bear in mind that, from the 10th of May onwards, there were, day after day, incessant explosions of Sepoy regiments, sometimes bloody and cruel, sometimes mild--that is, not followed by the slaughter of many of our kin. The track of the mutiny ran from the Delhi country eastward, through the Doab into Behar, and north and south, marking Rohilcund and Oude, and Central India, with many bloody spots; for the Sepoys were many, and the British were few--so few, that they could be reckoned by hundreds, while their exasperated foes were numbered by thousands and tens of thousands. While the Delhi field force was getting itself together, siege train and all, while the men of the Punjab were fighting their great fight with their Sepoys, the military revolution was growing supreme in every province garrisoned by Hindostanees, until only Agra and Lucknow, like rocks in that turbulent ocean, were left to bear the British flag and shelter men of British race. Before following the army to Delhi, let us look nearer at the mutiny, now blazing so far and wide.

We shall take the events in chronological order. On the 16th of May the native sappers stationed at Roorkee were ordered to march to Meerut. They mutinied, slew Captain Fraser, and strode away to Delhi. On the 20th, a spy, caught and surrendered by the 9th Native Infantry at Allyghur, was hanged in the presence of the regiment, the bulk of whom seemed to approve. But one suddenly crying, as he pointed to the corpse, "Behold a martyr to our religion!" the whole of the companies present broke into mutiny. They spared the officers, but plundered the place, liberated the convicts, and marched to Delhi. In four days the whole regiment was in revolt; but it is distinguished among other regiments, because it did not commit murder. At Mynpooree, Lieutenant De Kantzow rendered himself conspicuous by his sterling courage. He stood up against the mutineers, exhorting, remonstrating, threatening. When some pointed their muskets at him, he folded his arms and bade them fire if they dared. When they tried to storm the treasury, he was there to resist, and, aided by the gaol-guard, he induced the raging multitude to turn away. They went off to Delhi, and De Kantzow received the thanks of Lord Canning, and a command. On the 28th the Hurrianah battalion rose at Hansee and Hissar, a few miles south-west of the Great Road from Delhi to Kurnaul, and murdered every European they could overpower; and on the same day, showing how the mutineers acted from a common feeling, the 15th and 30th Native Infantry stationed at Nusseerabad, in Rajpootana, seized their arms and a native battery, and began to shed blood. The 1st Bombay Lancers charged them, but without effect, and then retreated, with the surviving Europeans, to a place of safety, while the mutineers went forth towards the common centre, Delhi.

Two days afterwards, the Lucknow Brigade showed itself in its true colours; within twelve hours the Bareilly Brigade revolted, and within a week the whole of Rohilcund and Oude, save Lucknow, had been wrested from British rule. Lucknow city stands on the right bank of the Goomtee, one of the tributaries of the sacred Ganges. Within the city was a most turbulent population; without, a camp swarming with mutinous Sepoys. The only men who could be trusted wholly were the 32nd Foot and the Europeans, civilians, merchants, and traders dwelling in Lucknow. The chief commissioner was Sir Henry Lawrence; the Financial Commissioner, Mr. Gubbins. Another commissioner was Major Banks. Colonel Inglis commanded the 32nd Foot, and Brigadier Gray the native troops. In and near the cantonments were 4,800 foot, and 2,100 horse, with two batteries of artillery. In the whole of Oude there were 19,200 native troops, and only one British regiment and one company of British artillery, in all 800 men. These last were at Lucknow. Thus, there were upwards of twenty to one against us. But in the mutinies about to occur, all our enemies did not turn upon us at once; and such preparations had been made to secure a stronghold, that, when nearly all had fallen away, there still remained a place of refuge for the civilians and traders, and a place for all to defend.

Nearly the whole of the troops in Oude were ripe for revolt, and the people were becoming suspicious of our ability to maintain our power. The state of transition from the rule of the ex-king to that of the Governor-General helped to create disaffection. The sway of the former was irregular and inequitable; the sway of the latter, though regular and equitable, had not come fully into play. In Oude, the maxim of all was, and had long been, every one for himself. The villagers were accustomed to resistance; the talookdars, rulers of petty and sometimes extensive districts, were accustomed to revolt. In the latter end of May Sir Henry Lawrence sent a small column, under Captain Hutchinson--who wrote an interesting memoir of the mutinies--to move about between the Goomtee and the Ganges, and fourteen miles from Lucknow this column was watched by armed villagers. The great province of Oude, so full of fighting men, had not, like the Punjab, been disarmed when it was annexed, and we were about to pay the penalty of over-confidence. This column had not been gone two days before the troops in the cantonment mutinied.

As usual, they gave no premonitory sign. It was well known that the native troops might break out any day, and on the 30th of May a Sepoy reported that the troops would rise in the evening; but the brigadier did not believe the report, and did not forward it to Sir Henry Lawrence. In the twilight the 71st and the 7th Cavalry turned out and began firing. They tried to surprise the officers and the mess-house, but these were too quick for them. Sir Henry repaired to the camp of the 32nd, which was soon under arms, with the guns ready for action. The mutineers shot Brigadier Handscomb dead, and then essayed to charge the 32nd and the guns. But grape shot proved enough for them. Falling back, they slew Lieutenant Grant, The 13th and 48th were drawn up on parade, but would not act, and only a few of the 71st, and 200 of the 13th, and fifty-seven of the 48th could be got to follow their officers to the side of the British. The Sepoys seized the magazine, and plundered the officers' bungalows, in spite of some gallant efforts to prevent them. The 32nd, with the few faithful Sepoys, remained under arms all night. In the morning Sir Henry pursued the mutineers, who fled away before him. The scoundrels in the city now rose, but they were speedily and severely punished; and Sir Henry was able to raise 3,000 police, who, under Captain Carnegie, did good service. Some of the mutineers struck across country for the Ganges and Delhi.

On the very day after this outburst at Lucknow, on Sunday, the 31st, Bareilly and Shahjehanpore were the scenes of horrible atrocities. At the latter, the 28th Native Infantry selected the moment when the Europeans were at church, and tried to slay them altogether; but they failed. Mr. Ricketts was killed in the church, with others, and Major James fell on the parade ground. The greater number took to the country, and reached Mohumdee. Here they found Captain Patrick Orr, with a company of the 9th Oude, and these were reinforced by fifty men from Seetapore. Captain Orr extracted from the native officers an oath binding them to escort the whole party to Seetapore; but they had not gone far before the troops turned them adrift to go where they pleased. They went, but the ruffian Sepoys soon followed, and near Aurungabad began the work of murder. The Sepoys, strangely enough, saved Orr and a drummer boy, and took them to Lonee Singh, of Mithowlee.

The tragedy at Bareilly made a deep impression. That Sunday was a day fatal to the British. At Bareilly there were two regiments of native infantry, one of cavalry, and a battery, under Brigadier Sibbald. Happily, the women and children had been sent to the hills. There were no European troops in Rohilcund; the Sepoys had nothing to fear. They had only delayed the execution of their intentions in the hope that their officers could be induced to call their wives and children from Nynee Tal. Finding the hope vain, they mutinied in the most complete way. On that quiet Sunday, being all agreed, they suddenly opened with both grape and musketry on the officers, while a detachment released 3,000 felons, and the fierce Rohillas rushed out to burn and slay. The devastation of the camp completed the day's work. Khan Bahadar Khan, an old servant of the Company, proclaimed himself king, and appointed a native officer of artillery to be his general. Then he held a court, tried two European judges, found them guilty, and caused them to be hanged. The Bareilly Brigade was not long in marching to Delhi, but nothing, except the fatuity of General Hewitt, saved it from disruption, if not destruction, at a ferry over the Ganges.

Seetapore, in the westernmost division of Oude, lies on the Sureyan river, about fifty miles north of Lucknow. It was the seat of government for Khyrabad. The commissioner there was Mr. George Christian. The troops there consisted wholly of natives, one regiment being the 41st Native Infantry, the others being Oude Irregulars. Here, too, mutiny was felt to be in the air. Here, too, the British officers refused to believe that their men could revolt, and even Mr. Christian believed he could trust the Oude Irregulars. All the troops were paid on the 2nd of June; on the 3rd they broke into mutiny. Like the regiments at Bareilly, these men reproached their officers because they had sent their women and children into the commissioner's house. How many were actually slain at Seetapore is not known, but twenty-four can be named and numbered--among them Mr. and Mrs. Christian. Among those who escaped towards the hills on the north was Captain Hearsey of the Military Police, whose men protected him and even saved two ladies. The wanderings of Captain Hearsey and the fugitives from different quarters whom he met, surpass in romantic incidents the inventions of the novelist. After eight months' wanderings, Hearsey rejoined the army of Sir Colin Campbell, by making an immense detour through the hills, and issuing into the plains far north of Meerut.

The mutiny of Jhansi was even more tragic than this of Seetapore. Jhansi was formerly one of the independent principalities of the extensive region known as Bundelcund. It stands between the Betwa and the Sinde rivers, two affluents of the Jumna, and is 100 miles from Calpee and 150 from Agra. It had been annexed by Lord Dalhousie. He had refused to recognise the adopted heir of the last Rajah, and the Ranee, his wife, refused, so angered was she, to accept a pension from the British Government. There were parts of two regiments at Jhansi. The Ranee, an able and bold woman, saw her opportunity for revenge had come. As soon as she heard of the successful mutinies of the Sepoys in the North-West, she instigated the regiments in her city to follow their example. The Europeans had determined to make a stand in the fort, and this they provisioned; but a company of Sepoys entered on the 4th of June, and declared they intended to hold the fort, thus depriving the British of a defensible post. A parade was held; the Sepoys were respectful, and swore to stand by their officers. The place of refuge now selected by the residents was the town fort. In a few hours the whole native force was in revolt. The cavalry began the fray. Riding over the plain, they met and shot two officers of the 12th Native Infantry. "They then made a rush at their own commanding officer, who, well mounted, was making for the fort; but, though they managed to wound him, he reached the fort in safety, and our countrymen on the ramparts, opening fire on his pursuers, killed some five or six of them.... With loud shouts, the mutineers then proceeded against the fort, and on the second day the Ranee sent her guns and elephants to assist them. But there was not only force without, there was treachery within. The Europeans numbered only fifty-five, including women and children; the natives who were with them were numerically superior. Two of these, brothers, were discovered in the act of opening one of the gates to the enemy. Lieutenant Powys, who saw them, instantly shot one dead, and was himself cut down by the brother. Captain Burgess avenged him in a second, and the assassins lay side by side in the ditch. But provisions were failing them; two attempts to communicate with Nagode and Gwalior had been abortive; some Europeans who had tried to escape over the parapet had been caught and killed; all appeared hopeless. At this crisis the Ranee sent to say that if they would surrender their lives should be spared, and they should be sent safely to some other station. She swore, the troopers of the cavalry swore, the Sepoys swore, the native gunners swore, to adhere to these terms. Seizing this as the only chance of life--unable, indeed, to hold out for twenty-four hours longer--the garrison surrendered. They came out, two and two; as they advanced through the line of cavalry and infantry, they saw none but hostile faces; but there was no movement against them. At last, every Christian had quitted the fort. Then was commenced a deed of ruthless treachery, unsurpassed even by the Nana Sahib. The gates were shut behind them; they were seized, the men and women separated, and tied together in two rows, facing one another; the children standing by their mothers. The men were then decapitated, the children were seized, and cut in halves before their mothers' eyes; and last of all, the ladies found what, under those circumstances, they must have felt to be a happy release in death."

In the interval between the 4th and the 10th of June the whole of the troops at Cawnpore and throughout Oude had revolted. Cawnpore demands a separate story, and we turn again to Oude.

There were five considerable stations. On the 8th the troops at every one became their own masters. The military station in the Bareytch division, north of Lucknow, was Secrora. The Commissioner of the Division, Mr. Wingfield, later Chief Commissioner of Oude, was at Secrora. Feeling that the two regiments and battery there would mutiny, the ladies and children were sent by the officers to Lucknow on the 7th, and were met halfway by a body of Sikhs and volunteer horse, and taken to the residency. Mr. Wingfield rode off to Gonda, determined to take refuge at Bulrampore. The next day all the remaining officers, except Lieutenant Bonham, started for Gonda, for the troops rose and bade them go. Lieutenant Bonham was protected by his men for a day. Then he, too, was obliged to leave, and he made his way across country to Lucknow. The Europeans at Gonda were now forced to retreat, and they were fortunate in finding shelter at Bulrampore, and they finally got into Goruckpore, and were saved. But three officers, all in the civil service, retreating from Bareytch disguised as natives, were recognised at the main ferry over the Gogra, and all murdered, after they had made a gallant defence.

The division of Fyzabad lies to the south-east of Lucknow, and extends from the Ganges to the Gogra. The chief station was Fyzabad, a town on the left bank of the Gogra, just then notorious for the sharp quarrel which had occurred in the previous February between the Moslems and Hindoos. Here lay in gaol that moulvie who had traversed Hindostan preaching sedition, and whose daring had compelled the Government to employ force against him, and to put him in prison. There were two regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and a horse battery at Fyzabad. These were known to be so disposed to mutiny that the civilians had sent their wives and children to Shahgunge, a fort belonging to Rajah Maun Sing, a powerful talookdar. Several other European women and children joined them, but some of the officers' wives remained. On the 8th it was clear that the dreaded moment was at hand. Mutineers were coming up the river from Goruckpore and Azimghur, notably the 17th Native Infantry, whose agents entered the lines at Fyzabad, and summoned the troops there to join. This they did on the night of the 8th of June. "They did not go through the form of pretending a grievance, but said they were strong enough to turn us out of the country, and intended to do it." Nevertheless, these men would not murder their officers. They provided them with money and boats wherewith to descend the Gogra, and then, with horrible treachery, instigated the 17th to waylay the boats at Begumgunge and kill the Europeans. Twenty officers and sergeants and one lady embarked in four boats. Of these only six escaped; for as the boats approached Begumgunge, the Sepoys of the 17th opened fire on the fugitives. Some fell wounded, others were killed.

At Sultanpore were Fisher's Irregulars and two foot regiments. Colonel Fisher, the commandant, sent away the ladies and children, who, befriended by Madho Sing, reached Allahabad, plundered, but alive. But the Military Police shot Colonel Fisher, his own men, who "liked him," looking on. They slew Captain Gibbings, and ordered Lieutenant Tucker to be gone. Mr. Block and Mr. Stroyan were also cruelly and treacherously murdered near Sultanpore. The British at Salone on the Sye, and Durriabad, north of the Goomtee, receiving protection from zemindars and talookdars, their lives were preserved. It was thus that, in ten days, all the native troops in Oude freed themselves from British control; and by a sort of common impulse directed their steps towards Nawabgunge Bara Baukee, which became the point of concentration for the meditated attack on Lucknow.

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XIII. Reign of Victoria (continued)

March of the British on Delhi--Battles on the Hindon--Wilson joins Barnard--Hodson reconnoitres Delhi--Battle of Badlee Serai--Behold Delhi!--The Guides arrive--Outbreak at Jallandhar--Johnstone and Ricketts--The Delhi Force in Position--The Enemy assume the Offensive--A "Mistake of Orders"--Destruction of a Battery--A Three Days' Battle--An Unfulfilled Prophecy--Reinforcements arrive--Lord Canning's Inaction--Lord Elphinstone's Discretion--Troops from Madras and Persia--Benares is saved--So is Allahabad--Cawnpore--Nana Sahib and Azimoolah--The Europeans in the Entrenchment--The Mutiny--The Sepoys start for Delhi--Nana Sahib brings them back--Sufferings of the Garrison--Valour of the Defence--The Well--The Hospital catches Fire--Incidents of the Siege--Moore's Sortie--Nana Sahib's Letter--The Massacre at the Ghaut--Central India--Lawrence fortifies the Residency at Lucknow--An ineffectual Sortie--The Defences contracted--The Death of Lawrence.

It is necessary to return to Delhi again, to bring the British force well up before its walls, and show the Punjab authorities once more in action. We left the troops under Sir Henry Barnard advancing slowly towards Delhi. Among them were the 60th Native Infantry; but instead of disarming them, he placed Colonel Thomas Seaton at their head, and sent them to Rhotuck, in the vain hope that they would escape the contagion. Of course in due time they mutinied, but did not kill their officers; and we may dismiss them here with the remark that the Sepoys swelled the rebel army, and the officers joined the British. Thanks to the journey made by the gallant Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, the Meerut force were under orders to march on Bhagput, where there was a bridge over the Jumna. They were to reach this place and cross on the 1st of June. Accordingly, on the 27th of May, Colonel Archdale Wilson collected his little brigade. It consisted of half a battalion of the 60th Rifles, two batteries, and two squadrons of the Carabineers, with a few native sappers and troopers. The King of Delhi had got wind of this movement, and he sent out a body of mutineers to meet the column. Wilson's force encamped on the 30th on the Hindon, a feeder of the Jumna, crossed by an iron bridge at Ghazeeoodeen Nugger. The rebel force took up a position on their own side of the river. The warning of their proximity given by the outposts was followed by the fire of their cannon. Two heavy round shot were flung into the camp, wounding two bearers. In a moment the force was under arms. A company of the Rifles took possession of the bridge. Major Tombs, with four guns and a troop of dragoons, dashed along the river and took the enemy in flank, while two 18-pounders, posted in front, soon shook the nerves of the rebel gunners over the river. Then, seeing their fire growing unsteady, the Rifles on the bridge were reinforced, and, led by Colonel John Jones, they charged and captured five rebel guns. Thus in a short time the mutineers were worsted in the first pitched battle. They hurried away so fast that pursuit was impossible, and were so cowed that the very Goojurs despoiled their stragglers of arms and accoutrements. We lost one killed and thirty-one wounded. But fresh forces came out from Delhi to retrieve their lost military honour. Our advance was now over the bridge in a burnt village. The enemy, who came up on Whitsunday, the 31st of May, posted themselves on a ridge, with a village on their left. The fight began by a fire from their heavy guns, which were rapidly answered, by Tombs and Light, with 9- and 18-pounders. For two hours the contest was one of artillery, during which the Carabineers were drawn up in the open ground to protect our guns. Then the Rifles charged upon the village occupied by the enemy, and forced them out. The Sepoys, in this fight, kept as far as possible out of musketry range and would not allow our soldiers a chance of coming to close quarters. As we moved on, although we were hundreds and they thousands, they fell back, and when we crowned the ridge the discomfited army was seen in the distance hurrying along the Delhi road. Our loss was six killed in battle, three by sunstroke and twelve were wounded. After this fight, Wilson's force halted four days, during which 100 Rifles and the Sirmour battalion of Ghoorkas, under Major Reid, came up from Meerut--a welcome addition to the brigade.

Marching towards the Jumna on the 4th of June, they crossed it on the 6th by the bridge of boats at Bhagput, which Hodson had taken care should be in order. On the 7th they joined the main body under Barnard, which had arrived at Alipore. The force now numbered 2,400 infantry, 600 horsemen, and twenty-two field guns. The siege train from Philour, with 100 European artillerymen, strengthened the little army, and all was ready for grappling with the enemy. Very early on the 7th Hodson rode out, accompanied by a dozen native troopers. He went up to the very parade ground before Delhi, scaring away the rebel vedettes and reconnoitring the place so well that it was on his information the general based his plans. The infantry were divided into two brigades; one, consisting of the 75th and the 1st Bengal Fusiliers, under Colonel Showers; the second, consisting of the 60th Rifles, the 2nd Bengal Fusiliers, and the Ghoorkas, under Brigadier Graves. With each brigade went some horse and guns; the remaining horse formed a cavalry brigade under Colonel Hope Grant, with two troops of horse artillery. These soldiers had come down from Umballa and Meerut, under a blazing sun of the Indian June with the wind blowing, when it blew, in a current of "liquid fire." Cholera had stricken down officers and men. The soldiers were fretful from impatience to fight. Few armies have ever marched to battle animated by so fiery a spirit of revenge.

Before daylight on the 8th of June the army began its forward movement. The Sepoys had taken a post of vantage a few miles north of Delhi. They formed across the Great Road at the serai of Badlee. A serai is a square walled enclosure, having a tower at each angle, one door, and a flat roof. It contains many small chambers for the use of travellers, and is loopholed all round. Thus, it is really a strong post. Badlee Serai lay a little to the west of the Great Road. Around it was the Sepoy camp; and in front, on a hillock commanding the road, they had made a sandbag battery for four heavy guns and an 8-inch howitzer for grape. On both sides of the road the ground is swampy, having pools here and there. The left flank of the Sepoys was covered by the Delhi canal, which ran parallel to the road, and was crossed by bridges not far from each other. This was the position which Hodson had looked at the day before. The plan of attack was simple. Sir Henry Barnard, with the main body, was to assail the front from the Great Road; while Hope Grant turned the left flank with three squadrons of the 9th Lancers, under Colonel Yule, fifty Jheend Horse, under Hodson, or 350 lances, and ten horse-artillery guns, under Tombs, Turner, and Bishop. This little force moved out of camp first, and crossed the canal near Alipore, with the intention of recrossing it in rear of the Sepoys, thus cutting them off from Delhi. The main column, 1,900 infantry, 170 horse, and fourteen guns, marched later, but still in the dusk before dawn. A march of five miles brought them within sight of the Sepoy camps, where the lights were still burning. As our troops were moving down the road the enemy opened fire, and our guns coming rapidly into action, the battle began. The left brigade, under Graves, was still in the rear, when the 75th and the 1st Fusiliers deployed to the right of the road, and soon felt the weight of the heavy shot from the sandbag battery, which our light guns could not silence. Time was precious, but men were more so, and it would never do to play at long bowls with the mutineers. Grant's horsemen were not in sight, but the left brigade were hurrying up, when Sir Henry Barnard ordered the 75th to carry the battery. The men eagerly obeyed. Moving on steadily over rough and watery ground, they were exposed to a fire so heavy that in a few minutes nearly a hundred fell. But without a halt they pressed on, and bringing down the bayonet to the charge, surged into the battery. The 1st Fusiliers had supported the 75th, and soon joined them, when the two regiments dashed at the serai and stormed it. The left brigade had now come up. Grant's cavalry, delayed by watercourses which obstructed the progress of the guns, debouched on the left rear of the rebels, and these scattering and fleeing, left our troops masters of their camp and the greater part of their guns.

The enemy had fled, but not yet into Delhi. They had halted on the ridge overlooking that city, and here seemed disposed to make a stand. Sir Henry Barnard, with one brigade and guns, moved to the left, upon the cantonment lines, while Brigadier Wilson with the remainder took the road to the Subzee Mundi, a suburb of Delhi, while Reid's Ghoorkas extended between the two. The march of the main body had to be performed under fire, which, as the troops were filing over a canal bridge, proved very galling. But they went on with a will, and emerging from the old lines, near the Flagstaff Tower, opened fire and instantly silenced the enemy's guns. The 60th and the 2nd Fusiliers, charging, took the guns, and sweeping along the ridge, arrived at a building at the right extremity, called the Hindoo Rao's house, and destined to be famous in the siege. Here the whole force rallied, Wilson having cleared the Subzee Mundi and captured a gun. All this time the Sepoys in Delhi cannonaded the British from the walls. It was now noon, and the troops withdrew behind the ridge to the camp, after posting pickets at the Hindoo Rao's house, and in the Flagstaff Tower. Thirteen guns had been captured; our loss was fifty-one killed and 152 wounded; among the former was Colonel Chester, Adjutant-General. The loss of the enemy is supposed to have been about 400 killed and wounded. So far, a good beginning had been made; but instead of rushing into Delhi with the enemy, here was the little force obliged to sit down and begin a siege destined to last three months.

At length, then, behold Delhi. There lay the prize which might have been seized by a bold march from Meerut, on the night of the 10th of May, under an Edwardes or a Nicholson, but which now, swarming with the soldiers of sixteen or eighteen corps of our own training, having in its arsenal and magazine a practically inexhaustible supply of guns and ammunition, defied the gallant few who, after a month's delay, once more looked down upon the handsome walls and beautiful buildings. And trooping along from all points were mutineers hastening to rally round the Great Mogul, and dispute for empire with the pale faces.

Early on the morning of the 9th there was a scene in camp well worth recording, because, in many respects, it illustrates forcibly the transition from the old to the new. There came into the camp squadrons of swarthy horsemen and dusky foot. An officer was out riding; suddenly horse and foot closed upon him, surrounding him, shouting, and "behaving like frantic creatures." They seized his bridle, his dress, his hands, his feet; they threw themselves before his horse, and wept for joy, hailing him in their own tongue as "Great in Battle." The officer was Hodson, the warriors were the horse and foot of the Guide Corps, which had started just three weeks before, from Hotee Murdan, beyond the Indus, 580 miles away. These real soldiers had crossed the Punjab and the Cis-Sutlej States in twenty-one days, doing thirty miles a day, and halting only three days, and then by order. Three hours after they entered the camp the Sepoys showed fight, and the Guides were at once to the front, engaging the enemy hand to hand, and coming out with one officer, Quentin Battye, mortally, and every other officer more or less, wounded. Such was the first exploit of the force which had been raised through the prescience of Sir Henry Lawrence.

While the British, the Ghoorkas, and the Guides were establishing themselves before Delhi, a fresh mutiny in the Punjab threatened for a moment the safety of the Great Road to Lahore. The Sepoys broke out at Jhallandhar. The reader will remember that here were the 36th and 61st Native Infantry and the 6th Cavalry; that it was from this station the troops went out who secured Philour; and that here incipient mutiny, on the 12th of May, had been checked by menace and precaution. Brigadier Johnstone succeeded Colonel Hartley on the 17th of May, and from that time the effects of a feebler hand are discernible. The brigadier humoured the Sepoys, listened to the prayers of their colonels, who here, as elsewhere, were infatuated, and, on the plea of conciliation, gave in to their demands. He was exhorted to disarm Sepoys who could not be expected to resist the contagious example of their brothers, neither could he resist the reproaches and appeals of their officers. He had an ample European force. Captain Rothney halted his famous 4th Sikhs, and Charles Nicholson brought in the 2nd Punjab Cavalry, to aid in the disarming. The brigadier could not make up his mind; and these could stay no longer. At length, when it was too late, Brigadier Johnstone determined to do what he should have done before: too late, for the Sepoys took the initiative, rose on the 7th of June, led, as usual, by the Moslem cavalry, fired the station and shot some of their officers. They called on the native gunners to join, but these replied with grapeshot and would have given more such effective replies had not the brigadier stopped them. All was soon confusion. The Europeans were not allowed to act. The mutineers had it all their own way. For an hour and a half they burnt, plundered, and murdered, and then marched off, unpursued. About 200 remained staunch to their officers; and one whole company, kept in order by a subahdar, preserved the treasury, containing £10,000. The rest decamped, part going towards Loodiana, part taking the hill road, and striking the Sutlej higher up. The former got safely off, the latter met with unexpected resistance, being intercepted by Mr. Ricketts with a small force of Sikhs. And where was the European force from Jhallandhar? In camp near Philour, within hearing of the sound of Ricketts' solitary gun, yet forbidden to move by the brigadier, who thought them too fatigued! Had half the force marched up the river, and opened only on those mutineers who had not crossed, how different would have been the result! As it was, the mutineers were able to enter Loodiana, open the gaol, burn the church and the mission houses, try ineffectually to destroy the powder in the fort, and then fly in a panic across country towards Delhi. Had they moved down the Great Road they would have swept everything before them. A few days later Mr. Ricketts, having the passing aid of Coke's Punjabees, disarmed the town, seized and punished the ringleaders in the late riots and inflicted a heavy fine on the community. Sir John Lawrence also felt the necessity of securing Umritsir, and thither he sent Nicholson with the movable column; while at the other extremity of the Punjab, Crawford Chamberlain, acting on Sir John's orders, very deftly disarmed the native infantry and cavalry at Mooltan by the aid of two Punjab regiments and a European battery.

While these blows were parried in their rear, the army before Delhi had made good its position. It was strong and defensible. To the north of Delhi, some two miles, there is a sandstone ridge running nearly parallel to the course of the Jumna--that is, north-north-east. The slope from the city walls is gradual, but somewhat broken. The plateau on the summit is tolerably flat, and along the whole course of the ridge, but well in rear--that is, north of it,--lay the lines of the camp. The ridge, in fact, may be roughly described as the right bank of the Jumna, to which it approaches at its northern, and from which it recedes at its southern, end. This was the position of the besieging army. Its left rested on the ridge near the river; its centre was behind the Flagstaff Tower; its right at the butt end of the ridge, where the ground fell rapidly towards the Subzee Mundi and Kishengunge, suburbs of Delhi, facing its western walls and set in gardens and groves. At this end the ridge was crowned by a house formerly belonging to a Mahratta chief, and called the Hindoo Rao's house; and here we quickly established a battery, and made a strong post to defend that side. The Grand Trunk Road to Loodiana and Lahore, going from the Cashmere Gate, ascended the ridge, and crossed it to the east of the Flagstaff Tower, and a good road ran along the interior of the ridge parallel to it, thus tying together the position. From this ridge, but especially from Rao's house, Delhi was visible, standing up bold and distinct in the clear air, with its stout red walls and bastions, and white buildings embowered in trees. Between the ridge and the city the ground was rugged, and dotted all over with houses, mosques, tombs, and ruins, rising up among clumps of trees. Such was the base of our attack; for on the south, the whole of the country, as far as Agra, was in the hands of the enemy; the river protected the eastern face, and we had no choice but to assail the north.

As soon as the force settled down on the ridge, the enemy commenced a series of attacks which may be described as incessant. This was policy, for it harassed the besiegers, and kept the Sepoys in good heart, although they were invariably beaten. The first of these was on the 9th of June. They issued from the Lahore Gate on the west, covered by a cannonade from the Moree bastion, at the north-western angle, and, moving on the right flank of the position, strove to storm the ridge. But in vain. The Guides, coming up to support the Rifles and Ghoorkas, charged so vigorously that the Sepoys were driven up to the very walls with great loss. On the 10th and the 11th the mutineers sent up fresh men to turn and carry the right, and paid heavily for their temerity. The heavy guns were now in battery on a knoll forming part of the garden of the Hindoo Rao's house, but their fire was not sufficient to silence, barely to cope with, that of the enemy from his bastions. Our officers began to respect the rebel artillerymen, whose guns were so accurately laid that some could only account for it by supposing that there were European deserters in their ranks. On the 12th the enemy, tired of trying the right, fell unexpectedly on the left. There, in front and due east of the Flagstaff Tower, stood the house and grounds of Sir T. Metcalfe, just where the fertile soil ends and the sands of the Jumna begin. Here the mutineers had established a garrison and a battery; and from this, on the morning of the 12th, they pushed out a large force, which by stealthy movements approached within musket-shot of the Flagstaff Tower, without being detected. There were a few of the 75th and two guns in position. The Sepoys turned its flank and, pressing vigorously forward, gained the ridge and even crossed it. For a moment the whole of that side was in extreme peril; but the 75th soon rallied, and the guns began to play. Then supports came up--1st Fusiliers, Guides, Rifles. A steady charge was made, and the enemy, cut up and bayoneted, rolled down the hill. The charge became eager. The pursued went fast, but the pursuers were almost as speedy; and seeing the opportunity, chased the men into and out of Metcalfe's house, and up to the walls of Delhi. Thus won, this advanced post was held and made the most of, completely barring the way to any force directed on our left, and placing us so far nearer Delhi. This sharp onset had no sooner been repulsed than the enemy showed himself on the right. It was a clumsy attempt at a combined attack on both flanks. Issuing from the Subzee Mundi, on our right rear, the Sepoys made a fruitless effort to mount the hill. The Ghoorkas and Rifles on picket, and part of the 1st Fusiliers, met them, drove them back, and chased them out of the enclosures, killing a goodly number. No quarter was given. The loss inflicted on them in these fights was estimated at 400 killed.

On the 11th five young officers, Hodson, Wilberforce, Greathed, Chesney, and Maunsell, were directed to sit in council, and draw up a plan showing how they would take Delhi out of hand. Their plan was simple enough. They proposed that all the infantry available, some 1,800 men, should move at midnight down to the walls, blow in two gates with powder bags and, storming in, surprise and capture the place. The general took the plan, considered it, adopted it, and issued his orders. The thing was to be done on the night of the 12th, on the heels of the repulse inflicted that day. The young men were sanguine of success, and eager to try--none more so than Hodson. Part of the troops marched; they reached their stations, then halted and reconnoitred: all was still; but the remainder did not arrive; instead of the remainder, came an order to retire. Brigadier Graves refused to believe that the general intended to leave the camp in charge of native troops and horsemen; and in place of sending his infantry, went himself to remonstrate with Sir Henry Barnard. The brigadier admitted readily that the city could be taken, but doubted whether it could be held. Sir Henry hesitated, time was lost, and so he gave way. The conduct of the brigadier is described both by Hodson and Norman as a "mistake of orders." This mistake was bitterly censured at the time, but we cannot help agreeing with those who are thankful for the delay, since even success would have saved no one from massacre, and would have sent a horde of armed ruffians pouring down the unprotected south road; whereas for three months Delhi served as a rallying-place and the Sepoys were kept together.

Unsuspicious of the danger hanging over them, the enemy were still full of fight, and encounters, more or less sharp, continued every day. The front and flanks of the position were now more strongly secured, as it was plain that Delhi could not be taken until large reinforcements of infantry, more guns, and especially more gunners, arrived. Major Reid held the Hindoo Rao's house with his Ghoorkas, commanding Kishengunge and protecting the batteries. Major Tombs had charge of a post to the right rear, over against the Subzee Mundi. The whole front was strengthened by entrenchments, and Hodson kept both eyes on the rear. But they were not content to stand still and repel attacks. Few though they were, they could show their teeth on occasions. On the 17th the enemy, under cover of a very severe cannonade, threw a large force on to a hill near the Eedgah, a walled enclosure, and there began to work on a battery, which, when finished, would enfilade the position on the ridge. Sir Henry Barnard determined to stop this dangerous move; in the afternoon he formed two columns, one under Major Reid, the other under Major Tombs. Starting from our right flank, Reid pushed straight through Kishengunge, and emerged on the right of the new rebel battery, while Tombs, having made a detour, fell upon their left. The new battery was soon carried; the magazine blown up; the mutineers were hunted from garden to garden; the doors of four serais were destroyed, and one gun was carried off by the gallant Tombs. The enemy lost about 300 killed and wounded. Considering the nature of the country, our loss was trifling--three killed and twelve wounded.

The rebels, however, now received a large reinforcement. The brigade that had mutinied at Nusseerabad, in Scindia's country, on the 28th of May, entered Delhi on the 17th of June, and on the 19th were sent out to fight their old masters. Their tactics were new. They resolved to operate strategically, and cut us off from the Punjab. With this object they marched out with much ostentation at mid-day, filing bravely through the Lahore Gate, traversing Kishengunge, and disappearing from view to the westward. The movement had been, of course, observed by Reid and Tombs, and the whole force turned out, but they turned in again when the Sepoys vanished from view. But late in the afternoon news came in from the rear that the Sepoys had worked round, and were in position across the Great Road. This was serious. Colonel Hope Grant could only oppose them with seven troops of British cavalry and the Guides and twelve guns. Although the odds were so great against them--3,000 to about 350--Grant did not hesitate to attack. The guns, under Turner, Tombs, and Bishop, went rapidly into action. The cavalry, under Yule and Daly, of the Guides, charged with headlong gallantry as often as opportunities presented themselves. Right and left the mutineers were checked, by lance and sabre, and cannon, until night drew near. But the rebel infantry worked through the enclosures, and fired on our gunners, while their artillery, splendidly served, did considerable execution. Our cavalry and guns were obliged to fall back before the masses crowding in upon them on all sides, when 300 infantry from the camp reached the field. Yule had fallen dead; the Guides had brought off Daly wounded; two guns were in the hands of the Sepoys. At this moment our foot, Rifles and Fusiliers, went in with the bayonet, and in a few moments the tide of rebel success was arrested and the guns were won back. Night had fallen; the enemy retreated, covering himself with a random fire in the dark, and the action was over.

The next morning Colonel Hope Grant rode on to the field and found it abandoned; dead men and horses were lying about, and he brought in a deserted 9-pounder. Soon came a fresh alarm. The enemy brought up his guns--the famous Jellalabad battery, part of the "illustrious" garrison--and his round shot rolled through the camp. But his triumph was short. Sweeping down with every available bayonet, Brigadier Wilson closed with the rebels and swiftly drove them away. They hurried off, carrying away their guns, and, having had enough of strategy, returned by a roundabout march to Delhi. It was a critical moment in the history of the siege. We were triumphant, but our little force was diminished by 100 men killed and wounded. Precautions were now taken to guard the rear as effectually as the smallness of the force would permit. On the very day of the first attack, Captain M'Andrew, acting on a mere rumour of an attack, had drawn off the force guarding Bhagput Bridge over the Jumna, and Hodson was obliged to ride thither and restore this line of communication with Meerut. M'Andrew was censured for running away without even seeing an enemy.

On the 21st, the Jhallandhar Brigade augmented by the 3rd Native Infantry, picked up at Philour, entered Delhi. The rebels were now so numerous that they encamped outside the place, but out of our reach, and under their own guns. On the 23rd, 850 men, including Rothney's 4th Sikhs, arrived in the British camp. It was a timely succour. The 23rd of June was the anniversary of Plassey. For 100 years the British "raj" had endured. Now crazy, or wily, pundits brought to light a prediction that, on the 23rd of June, 1857, British rule would end. So the Delhi garrison moved out in great excitement to fulfil the prophecy. They paid for it, and dearly. Crowding into the Subzee Mundi, and bringing guns up to the Eedgah, they raked the right flank and skirmished up the slope with their infantry. These attacks were easily repulsed, but the artillery fire was very destructive; and Brigadier Showers begged Sir Henry Barnard to assume the offensive. He assented. The first attacks failed, with the loss of two officers and several men. Then the column was reinforced. The 4th Sikhs, and part of the 2nd Fusiliers, just in from a march of twenty-two miles, went gaily into action and, using the bayonet very freely, rapidly cleared the Subzee Mundi, killing great numbers of rebels, who had shut themselves up in a temple, and forcing the remainder to fly, galled by the fire of our batteries on the ridge. This action gave us the Subzee Mundi, which we occupied, connecting it by a breastwork with the ridge, thus securing the position on that side; but it cost us thirty-eight killed and 118 wounded to prove to the Sepoys that our "raj" had not yet come to an end.

Thus the position of the British before Delhi became gradually more extensive, stretching now from the Subzee Mundi to Metcalfe's house, and thus commanding both roads leading to our rear. Neville Chamberlain arrived to act as adjutant-general. Then came further reinforcements: half the 8th Foot, a hundred European artillerymen, and many score old Sikh gunners who had served at Sobraon, a battery, and the 2nd Punjab Cavalry, bringing up the force present to about 6,600 men of all arms. This was the force destined to hold on to that ridge, and two months afterwards, when aided by John Nicholson, to rush into Delhi. But now we must leave these heroes for a time, to track the bloody steps of mutiny on the Ganges and Jumna.

It cannot now be denied that at the outset of the mutiny the magnitude of the crisis was totally misapprehended at Calcutta. Lord Canning was new to India. He was a man of a powerful but a slow intellect. With time to think, he acted wisely. But on the first days of the mutiny the civil servants--the Grants, Beadons, Dorins, men of a stamp very different from the clear-sighted and determined statesmen of the Punjab--sadly misled him. They treated the mutiny in the army as a military squabble that would soon be quelled. The civil servants looked down on the military servants of the Company, and from the height of their conceit lived on in blessed ignorance of military affairs. To this we must trace the paltering way in which the Government dealt with the mutiny at the outset; and the severe rebuffs they administered to all--not of the Government--who offered either counsel or advice. It is true, the Governor-General had very few European troops under his hand--only the 53rd at Fort William, and the 84th at Barrackpore. But at an earlier, he ought to have done what he did at a later stage: he might have called in troops from Madras, Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Cape. On the 10th of May, before he knew of the outburst at Meerut, Sir John Lawrence had telegraphed his opinion to Calcutta that the whole regular army was ready to break out. And then he gave this large-minded counsel:--"Send for troops from Persia. Intercept the force now on its way to China, and bring it to Calcutta. Every European soldier will be required to save the country if the whole of the native troops turn against us. This is the opinion of all leading minds here"--in the Punjab. But at Calcutta, had the civilians been as quick-sighted as Lawrence, this advice would have been needless, for the course it recommended would have been adopted in March, or at least in April. After Meerut, it was too late to prevent, though not to cure. Lord Elphinstone, indeed, at Bombay, saw what was coming; and as soon as he knew that peace had been made with Persia--that is, in April--he pressed on General Outram the necessity of sending back to India the European troops at once. The Governor-General allowed him to act on his discretion, and Sir James, being discreet, complied with the urgent request of the Governor of Bombay. Yet General Havelock did not quit Mohamerah, at the head of the Persian Gulf, until the 15th, nor did he land at Bombay until the 29th of May, when he was astounded by the news that Delhi was in the hands of mutinous Sepoys. He at once set out for Calcutta by sea; but being wrecked off Ceylon, he did not reach Calcutta until the 17th of June. With him went from Madras Sir Patrick Grant, who, on the death of Anson, was appointed Commander-in-Chief. By this time the Bengal native army had practically "gone."

It was not until the middle of May that Lord Canning, getting some insight into the facts, sent to Ceylon, Mauritius, and Madras for troops, and despatched a steamer to lie in wait for the regiments bound to China, and ordered the late army of Persia to come to Calcutta. The first to arrive were the Madras Fusiliers, under Colonel Neill, a man swift to see and to strike, who did not understand the system of paltering with mutiny. The Madras Europeans arrived on the 23rd of May, and were at once, with the 84th, despatched towards the North-West.

While Neill was hastening onwards towards Benares, and Allahabad, and Cawnpore, the native regiments at these and other stations had thrilled to the shock of the news from Delhi and were prepared to imitate the example. There was one European regiment, the 10th Foot, and three native regiments, at Dinapore, near Patna, 130 miles from Benares; at Benares there were a Sikh regiment, and two Bengal regiments, and thirty European artillerymen; at Allahabad there were a few Sikhs under Braysher--a gallant soldier who had risen from the ranks--and the 6th Native Infantry. Benares, the sacred city, was the headquarters of Hindooism. Its population, numbered at 300,000, mainly Hindoos, was turbulent. Within its walls lived many dethroned princes, from Nepaul and Sattara, a branch of the Delhi family, and several Sikhs. Here, if anywhere, disaffection was certain to exist; and here were only thirty British soldiers and the civil servants. Among these civil servants was Mr. Frederick Gubbins, a very resolute man; and when news of the Meerut mutiny came, although he saw the peril, he determined to stand stiffly up against it and resist. On the 3rd of June the vanguard of the Madras Fusiliers arrived--sixty men--and the question of at once using them and the Sikhs to disarm the 37th Native Infantry was debated. News came that the 17th Native Infantry at Azimghur had just mutinied, and it was resolved on the 4th to disarm the regiment the next day. At this crisis Colonel Neill came in. He saw no good in delay. "As soon as the 37th hear of the mutiny at Azimghur," he said, "they will rise. Do it at once." Brigadier Ponsonby yielded. The troops were paraded; the Sikhs and irregular cavalry on the left, the artillery on the right, of the 37th. The latter at once mutinied, and began firing. Two or three officers fell. The artillery opened fire. By some mistake, never explained, the Sikhs fired on their officers and on the Fusiliers. Then the guns opened on them, and all was confusion. Brigadier Ponsonby fell from sunstroke. Neill took command, and with his handful of thirty gunners and Fusiliers, routed the rebels. The whole district around for many miles rose in revolt at once; but such was the stern energy of Neill, the occult and long-acquired influence of Gubbins, the devotion of men like Venables and Chapman, indigo planters, that not only was the city population held down, but in a very short time we regained our power here also. At this time gibbets were set up and, for many months, traitors and mutineers of every caste and rank were mercilessly hanged thereon.

The safety of Benares was important in a political point of view and it was guarded by thirty European artillerymen! The safety of Allahabad was essential in a military point of view and it did not contain a single European soldier! Its absolute masters were the 6th Native Infantry, a native battery, and part of the Ferozepore regiment of Sikhs. Yet what was Allahabad? It was not only a very strong fortress, commanding the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna; it was not only the point of passage over the Jumna into the Doab on one side, and thence to the north-west, and over the Ganges on the other into Oude and the valley of the Goomtee; it was the greatest arsenal in India--full of guns, stores, ammunition; our sole base of operations upwards towards Cawnpore and Lucknow. The 6th Native Infantry were quite ready to mutiny. Fortunately, Government in a moment of alarm--for it had its moments of alarm as well as its moments of confidence--ordered up from Chunar some sixty European artillerymen, all invalids, yet fit for garrison duty. These arrived on the 23rd of May, and entered the fort. They saved this invaluable post. The 6th had volunteered to march on Delhi, and Government was so delighted that on the 5th its commander, Colonel Simpson, was directed by telegraph to thank the regiment, and tell them the order would appear in the next Gazette. On that very day came news of the mutiny at Benares, and on the 6th of June, twenty-four hours after it had been thanked for loyalty, the 6th rose, and the men shot nearly every one of their officers. In the fort all was anxiety. The real nature of the contest raging in cantonments was not known until an officer, naked from a swim in the Jumna, ran in. Then, by the steadfastness and skill of Braysher, the Sikhs were induced to disarm the company of the 6th, and the fort was saved. But the rabble invested the fort! For five days this was permitted and not a gun allowed to be fired. Colonel Neill, with forty men, came up on the 11th from Benares. The bridge of boats was in the hands of the rebels, but he got a boat and crossed below it. Then, without resting, he organised a plan for recovering the bridge; and early next morning he executed it with vigour and promptitude. From that time he continued to regain the lost sway over the city. Neill became a name of terror all along the banks of the Ganges, and by his wise as well as severe measures he made it possible for Havelock to avenge Cawnpore.

Cawnpore is a large station. Seated on the right bank of the Ganges, it is midway between Lucknow and Calpee and Agra and Allahabad. Thus, it was one of the most important stations in the Doab of the Ganges and Jumna--a central point whence troops might move on an enemy or intercept one on four great lines. There were three regiments of native infantry, the 1st, 53rd, and 56th, and one regiment of native cavalry, in the station. There were about sixty European artillerymen and six guns. The commandant was Sir Hugh Wheeler, a soldier who had served under Lord Lake fifty-four years before, and who then and since had led Sepoys in battle in half a dozen great campaigns. There were at Cawnpore the wives and children of the men of the 32nd Foot; a number of ladies, wives of officers and civilians, and many merchants and traders and their families. Agitated by the earlier incidents of the mutiny, the natives were more deeply stirred by the outbreak at Meerut and Delhi, and General Wheeler felt that no trust could be placed in the men he commanded. But he was absolutely powerless. He had only sixty-one Europeans. He could not disarm the Cawnpore garrison. He could only wait and watch, and prepare some ark of refuge, however frail. Nor had he much time. News of the Delhi massacres arrived on the 14th of May. The troops gave no outward sign. A few days afterwards Mrs. Fraser entered the station. Her husband had been slain at Delhi, and she had travelled down 266 miles in safety. A native had undertaken to perform the journey, and he did. This lady was a real heroine, and in the dreadful days at hand, regardless of herself, she gave up everything to soothe and minister to the wounded.

On the 20th of May all communication with Delhi and Agra had ceased. Fires broke out in the native lines, and prophecies of evil were uttered. Sir Hugh Wheeler entrenched an old hospital--two brick buildings, one thatched, one roofed with stone. The entrenchment was so slight that a British horseman could have leaped in anywhere. In this enclosure the guns were placed, and the women and children were ordered to take up their quarters therein. Stores of food, but not sufficient, were laid up. Happily, ammunition was plentiful. There were nine guns in the work. Still there was no sign of mutiny. But, as the treasure was exposed, Sir Hugh and Mr. Hillersden requested the Nana Sahib of Bithoor to supply a guard. He complied, bringing down troops of his own, and taking up his quarters in the civil lines. Who was the Nana Sahib? He was the son of a Brahmin living near Bombay. His name was Seereek Dhoondoo Punt. Bajee Rao, the last Peishwa, having no issue of his own, adopted him; and when, for his treachery, Bajee Rao was dethroned, the Government granted him a pension, and sent him to live at Bithoor, on the Ganges, a few miles above Cawnpore. When he died, the Nana, by forging a will, obtained his enormous wealth; but Government refused to continue the pension allowed to the late Peishwa. That Nana Sahib never forgave, but he showed no sign of resentment. He lived a life of the lowest sensual indulgence in the splendid fort at Bithoor. He was on the most friendly terms with the British officers, frequently entertaining them at Bithoor, but accepting no hospitality in return. He had for prime minister, or chief agent, one Azimoolah, originally a waiter, then teacher in the Government schools at Cawnpore, then agent to Nana Sahib. Azimoolah was sent to London to pray the Board of Directors to grant the Nana his pension. He came in 1854, was a lion in society, much admired by the ladies, at one time nearly carrying off one to grace his harem. He returned to India by way of Constantinople, and was there in the depths of that dreary winter when our soldiers were holding the heights at so much cost.

After the 20th of May the Sepoys did not conceal their feelings. They held nightly meetings; the character of those meetings was known from spies. The 2nd Cavalry, especially, displayed hostility; and when Sir Hugh sought to remove the treasure, the Sepoys would not part with it, and it had to be left under the joint care of them and Nana Sahib. On the 21st, all the European residents, except one, Sir George Parker, cantonment magistrate, entered the entrenchment. The next day a company of the 32nd, under Captain Moore, arrived from Lucknow, lent by Sir Henry Lawrence. For a week there was dreadful suspense; then 160 men of the 84th Foot and Madras Fusiliers arrived, with the cheering news that more troops were on their way. On the 26th Sir Hugh thought he should soon be able to dispense with the 32nd men, and hold his own until troops came from Calcutta. But the mutinies at Benares and Allahabad put an end to the fulfilment of that hope. There is every reason to believe that at this time Nana Sahib was playing a double game, and that he found willing agents in the 2nd Cavalry. But up to the last moment the Sepoys affected loyalty, and actually gave up one man on a charge of spreading sedition. But the poison of mutiny had worked deeply into their hearts, and the day of disaster duly arrived.

Up to the 4th of June the officers had slept in the native lines. After that day Sir Hugh would not allow them to do so any more, and they found corners in the entrenchment. The signs of approaching mutiny were now plain. There were 210 soldiers of the artillery, the 32nd, the 84th, and the Madras Fusiliers, about a hundred officers, the same number of merchants and clerks, and forty drummers; giving a total of 450 fighting men, and nine guns. It has been well said that these could have fought their way out in any direction; but encumbered with 330 women and children, they could do nothing but remain and wait for succour. On the night of the 6th of June the 2nd Cavalry rose. Captain Thomson, one of the few survivors of the Cawnpore tragedy, thus describes the mutiny: "An hour or two after the flight of the cavalry, the 1st Native Infantry also bolted, leaving their officers untouched upon the parade ground. The 56th Native Infantry followed the next morning. The 53rd remained till, by some error of the general, they were fired into. I am at an utter loss to account for this proceeding. The men were peacefully occupied in their lines, cooking; no signs of mutiny had appeared amidst their ranks; they had refused all the solicitations of the deserters to accompany them, and seemed quite steadfast, when Ashe's battery opened upon them, by Sir Hugh Wheeler's command, and they were literally driven from us by 9-pounders. The only signal that had preceded this step was the calling into the entrenchments of the native officers of the regiment. The whole of them cast in their lot with us, besides 150 privates, most of them belonging to the Grenadier company. The detachment of the 53rd posted at the treasury held their ground against the rebels about four hours. We could hear their musketry in the distance, but were not allowed to attempt their relief. The faithful little band that had joined our desperate fortunes was ordered to occupy the military hospital, about 600 yards to the east of our position, and they held it for nine days, when, in consequence of its being set on fire, they were compelled to evacuate. They applied for admission to enter the entrenchments, but were told that we had not food sufficient to allow of an increase to our number. Major Hillersden gave them a few rupees each, together with a certificate of their fidelity."

The first impulse of the mutineers was to march on Delhi. There, they rightly judged, the struggle would be fought out. They had laden elephants with treasure, and carts with ammunition and plunder. They had marched forward on the road, when Nana Sahib beset them with offers of service, and incitements to destroy their white masters. For some time they resisted; but the temptations proved to be too seductive, and they enlisted, as it were, under the flag of one who dreamed of restoring the Mahratta empire. So the whole force turned back towards Cawnpore, and sat down before the entrenchment. To please his new followers, Nana Sahib hoisted two standards--the Moslem and the Hindoo flag. To gratify his troops, he directed the sack of the European houses, and even those of wealthy natives in Cawnpore. He took possession of the store of shot and shell; he mounted heavy guns. To give a colour of fairness to his conduct, he notified to Sir Hugh Wheeler by letter that he intended to attack him, and he followed up the threat by opening fire on the 8th of June.

The little garrison of Cawnpore, thus beleaguered, held out for twenty days, and even then yielded honourably to famine, not arms. Their sufferings during this time can neither be imagined nor described. The entrenchment was about 250 yards square. The mud wall had been made by digging a trench and throwing the earth outwards. Thus, about five feet cover was obtained; but where the spaces were left for the guns there was no cover at all. From the eastern side a little redan was made and armed, and at three other points there were small batteries. As muskets and ammunition abounded, five or six loaded muskets, with bayonets fixed, were placed near each man in the trenches, so as to ensure a rapid fire. In the centre of the entrenchment was a well. Near it were two buildings, each having only a single storey, and one only a stone roof. They were intended to accommodate a company of a hundred men. Within them were stowed more than three hundred women and children, and the sick. The heat was so fierce that it was often impossible to hold a musket barrel, and once or twice muskets exploded from heat alone. Think, then, what these women and children must have suffered, crowded together in those barracks. As soon as the place was beleaguered, men drew water at the risk of their lives, and from the beginning of the siege not a drop could be spared for purposes of cleanliness. With scanty clothing, meagre diet of flour and split peas; with water, often bought for its weight in silver from the men who drew it, and measured out in drops; with cannon thundering day and night, with shot and shell tearing through the buildings, with the sickness of hope deferred upon them, who can imagine the agonies of those weary hours? The men, all save one officer, went forth to fight, but the women could only watch and wait, and listen to the piteous cries of children, whose throats were parched, whose lips were baked with thirst. For the men there was the chance of a death-struggle, or death from shot or shell. Nothing but patience and longsuffering for the women. Some went mad; some sought death; but others behaved as angels may, with a courage, a fortitude, a forgetfulness of self, men may imitate but not excel.

This little enclosure was defended solely by the courage of the garrison. The Sepoys had seen how white men fight, how they dare danger in every shape, almost in sport, above all, how in battle they stand by each other with never-failing confidence. The prestige of the British soldier never stood him in better stead than in this Indian mutiny. Driven to bay here with such slender defences as we have described, it is a fact that the surrounding multitudes never once charged home. In a very few days the original force of mutineers was tripled. There came up men of the 6th from Allahabad, and men of various regiments from Oude, and hordes of scoundrels from all the country side, until there were 10,000 armed men raging round the little force. They had three mortars and ten guns firing night and day, in addition to the musketry of the Sepoys. The entrenchments were entirely commanded from two buildings, and all around there was plenty of cover; yet with all these numbers and advantages the cowards did not venture on a hand-to-hand fight. On the west of the fort was a series of unfinished barracks. They were connected with the entrenchment by a sort of covered way, made of carts; two or three of these were held by small detachments of fifteen or twenty men, one composed of railway engineers and platelayers. With nothing but musketry and this cover, these gallant fellows kept the enemy at bay, and inflicted on them great losses. On one occasion a host of Sepoys charged up with the seeming intention of getting in. The garrison of seventeen men killed eighteen assailants at pistol-shot range, and drove them away. On another, Captain Moore, the soul of the defence, resolved to try a new trick; he and Lieutenant Delafosse, suddenly leaped out, calling in a loud voice, "Number one to the front!" The skulking scoundrels, thinking a company was about to charge, rose from their cover like a flock of sparrows, and gave the defenders an opportunity of pouring in a deadly volley.

All this time the thermometer ranged from 128° to 138°. Tortured by this dreadful heat, grimed with dirt, devoured by myriads of flies, suffering agonies from thirst, enduring the severest pangs of hunger, exposed to death in every shape, our beleaguered countrymen and countrywomen still bore up against fate, with grim and steadfast determination. The Sepoys took every advantage; not a little child could stray out from the scanty shelter of shattered walls or holes in the trenches without drawing upon itself the fire of a hundred muskets. If any one went to the well, he was a mark for big guns and bullets; and at night the sound of the creaking wheels revealing the fact that men were drawing the water, called forth a hail of shot. Yet men went out and endured this fate by day and night, to draw water for the women and the wounded. "My friend, John M'Killop, of the Civil Service," writes Captain Thomson, "greatly distinguished himself here; he became, self-constituted, Captain of the Well. He jocosely said that he was no fighting man, but would make himself useful where he could, and accordingly he took this post; drawing for the supply of the women and the children as often as he could. It was less than a week after he had undertaken this self-denying service, when his numerous escapes were followed by a grape-shot wound in the groin, and speedy death. Disinterested even in death, his last words were an earnest entreaty that somebody would go and draw water for a lady to whom he had promised it."

Besides this well there was another near one of the unfinished barracks. "We drew no water there; it was our cemetery." Stealthily at night, the bodies of the dead were carried out, and thrown into this well; and in three weeks it was choked up with the remains of 250 persons! On the 13th of June a great misfortune befell the garrison. One of the buildings in the entrenchments was used as a hospital. It had a thatched roof. On the evening of the 13th a shell or "carcase" set this on fire, and the whole building was soon in a blaze. By the light of the flames the Sepoys poured in a heavy fire on the women and children running out, and on the men bearing off the wounded, some of whom perished there, while all the medicines and surgical instruments were destroyed! This moment of trial the enemy selected for an attack, hoping to find the garrison unprepared. They were deceived. Every man was on the alert. The mutineers were allowed to come close up, and then the guns opened with grape, and the infantry firing muskets, ready loaded, as fast as they could pick them up, drove off the yelling assailants, with great slaughter. At another time they approached, rolling before them bales of cotton, but these were speedily set on fire with shells, after which grape-shot soon thinned the ranks of the flying crew. These attacks were repeated in different ways, but always with the same result.

But a few details abridged from Captain Thomson's narrative of what he called the superficial horrors of the siege, will better enable the reader to conceive the agonies of those three weeks, than pages of general description. A group of soldiers' wives were sitting in the trenches. A shell fell among them, and killed and wounded seven. "Mrs. White, a private's wife, was walking with her husband, under cover, as they thought, of the wall, her twin children one in each arm, when a single bullet passed through her husband, killing him. It passed also through both her arms, breaking them, and close beside the breathless husband and father fell the widow and her babes; one of the latter being also severely wounded. I saw her afterwards in the main-guard, lying upon her back, with the two children, twins, laid one at each breast, while the mother's bosom refused not what her arms had no power to administer." An ayah, nursing a baby, lost both legs from a cannon shot, while the infant was uninjured. Mrs. Evans was killed by falling bricks brought down by a round shot. Mr. Hillersden, the collector, was talking to his wife, when he was cut in two by a round shot. Two days afterwards a mass of falling bricks killed his wife. Here are two other terrible pictures. In the unburnt, but not unbroken barrack, "Lieutenant G. R. Wheeler, son and aide-de-camp of the general, was sitting upon a sofa, fainting from a wound he had received in the trenches; his sister was fanning him, when a round shot entered the doorway, and left him a headless trunk. One sister at his feet, and father, mother, and another sister, in different parts of the same room, were witnesses of the appalling spectacle. Mr. Herberden, of the railway service, was handing one of the ladies some water, when a charge of grape entered the barrack, and a shot passed through both his hips, leaving an awful wound. He lay for a whole week upon his face, and was carried upon a mattress down to the boats, where he died. The fortitude he had shown in active service did not forsake him during his extraordinary sufferings, for not a murmur escaped his lips."

Enough of these horrors. It is a relief to turn from them to the recorded acts of daring, of which let this one suffice. As Sir Hugh Wheeler was too old to take an active share in a defence, which he, nevertheless, helped to sustain by his unconquerable spirit, Captain Moore, of the 32nd, was the real leader of the garrison. A genuine soldier, he conceived the idea of making a sortie by night, and spiking the Sepoy cannon. He was at the time suffering from a wound; yet, one night, he led out fifty men, spiked three guns near the church, killed several gunners, and spiked two 24-pounders at the mess-house, with the loss of one killed and four wounded. This illustrates the active valour of this garrison. It availed little, for fresh pieces were brought up the next day.

Aware that aid was approaching, though slowly, Nana Sahib now had recourse to a devilish expedient in order to get the garrison in his hands. He had in his power a Mrs. Greenway, one of a family who had paid to the Nana £30,000 as a ransom, yet who were all slain. This poor woman, half naked, and carrying an infant, he sent with a message to the entrenchment. It was addressed "To the subjects of her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria," and it ran as follows:--"All those who are in no way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie, and are willing to lay down their arms, shall receive a safe passage to Allahabad." At first Sir Hugh Wheeler was utterly opposed to any dealing with Nana Sahib, but he finally agreed to treat. Accordingly a negotiation was begun, and rapidly concluded, Nana Sahib signing a treaty of capitulation to the effect that the garrison should march out under arms, with sixty rounds of ammunition per man, and should be sent, with the women and children, in boats to Allahabad. No precautions were neglected by Sir Hugh or Captain Moore. Their sole error was in placing any trust in Nana Sahib.

On the 27th the woe-begone and tattered procession set out for the ghaut, or landing-place. The women and children went on elephants and in palanquins, the men, except the sick and wounded, walked. When they found the boats--but they were all aground on sandbanks--every one, men, women, and children, had to wade knee-deep to embark. Suddenly, at the signal to start, the native boatmen, firing the thatched roofs of the boats, leaped into the water, and rushed to the shore. Then, first a dropping fire of carbines, succeeded by volleys of musketry, and round shot from four 9-pounders, opened on the fugitives. The banks were lined, the neighbouring houses were filled with assassins. Soon the boats were in flames, the water was full of women and children on whom the shot was poured. Only two boats got off and one was instantly sunk by a round shot. The other, crowded with survivors, some of whom had swum to her side, began to float down the stream, when guns opened on her from the Oude side. Her rudder was shot away, the oars were gone, but the current bore her on, now stranding her on a shoal, now drifting her off, aided by the use of a spar or two of wood. All day long this boat was chased and one by one her occupants became fewer. Some fell overboard, some sank wounded to the bottom of the boat. At night she stranded and the Sepoys fired lighted arrows at her to set her on fire. The next morning they were beset again; a boat full of armed Sepoys came down and grounded near, when the British at once charged through the water and slew their pursuers. A hurricane of rain and wind followed, and once more the boat with its starving and bleeding freight was afloat; but it soon stuck again in shoal water. Here Captain Thomson, Lieutenant Delafosse, Sergeant Grady, and eleven privates landed by order to drive away the Sepoys while the boat was eased off. The boat and its occupants they never saw again. They quickly drove back the enemy, but could not find the boat on their return, and so they were forced to retreat along the banks; pursued, they took refuge in a small temple and held it against a host, until the enemy lighted brands at the door and began to throw bags of gunpowder on them. The little band charged at once and made for the river; seven out of fourteen reached it alive and plunged in; the number was soon reduced to four. These swam on and on, six miles down stream, and, exhausting pursuit, went ashore. Here they found a protector in one whose name should be preserved--Diribijah Singh, of Moorar Mhow, in Oude. He saved their lives. At this time Thomson's clothing consisted of a flannel shirt; Delafosse wore a cloth round his waist; Murphy and Sullivan were naked. Every one except Delafosse was wounded. These were the sole survivors of the massacre at the ghaut. About 130 of the women and children were taken out of the water and carried prisoners into Cawnpore. We shall hear of them again.

During this period mutiny had been making great progress elsewhere. Bombay had been saved by the energy of Lord Elphinstone and the prompt appearance of the 37th from Mauritius, just as Madras had been quieted by the landing of a regiment from Ceylon. But in Central India not a station remained. The Europeans had been driven away from Indore, the residence of Holkar. At Mhow, near by, some officers were killed, but the others, with the women and children, took shelter in the fort. The Maharajah remained true and they were saved. At Gwalior the contingent had mutinied, killing some officers, but the women and children got away to Agra; and Scindia, acting on the advice of his minister, Dinkur Rao, the ablest native in India, so managed the contingent that they did not move until months afterwards. Mr. Colvin, at Agra, in the North-West, after paltering with mutiny, had been forced to disarm two regiments there on the 31st of May, and to prepare and occupy the fort; for the Khotah contingent mutinied, and there were no regular soldiers on whom dependence could be placed but the 3rd Europeans, a battery of artillery, thirty or forty volunteer horse, and the armed civilians. Such was the state of the country from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda, from the sand deserts of Bikaneer to the frontiers of Behar. Here and there, as at Saugor, Agra, Lucknow, there were little knots of beleaguered Britons, and all around them a raging sea of anarchy.

The reader will remember that the 8th of June was a day of disaster in the history of the Oude mutinies, and that from this day Lucknow alone remained in the hands of the British; and even this was held by a precarious tenure. Sir Henry Lawrence, seeing himself alone, and observing no signs of prompt support from any quarter, soon began to fortify the Residency. At first he contemplated the occupation of a larger position. He garrisoned and fortified the Muchee Bhowun, a strong fort commanding the iron bridge; and his military police held several parts of the town. At a later period he found how necessary it was that he should contract his lines, bring all his troops in from the cantonments, and make himself as strong as he could around the Residency. Before he came to that conclusion the work of preparation and provisioning went on with ardour under a burning sun. A large gateway, from the top of which the Residency enclosure was commanded, was blown down. Many lacs of rupees were buried, to save the trouble of guarding them. Upwards of 200 pieces of ordnance, many of large calibre, were found, and with great labour brought in. Neighbouring houses were cleared away or unroofed. Large bodies of coolies were kept at work upon the defences, which now began to assume shape and order and connection. The racket court was full of forage; the church was crammed with grain; the fuel, stacked in vast piles, formed a rampart in front of the Residency. Every day the volunteer cavalry were drilled, and the civilians, merchants, clerks, were organised, and posts were assigned them. The heat was almost insupportable. Cholera, small-pox, fever, broke out. Evil news came in day after day. Finally, the troops were withdrawn from the cantonments and placed in the Residency and Muchee Bhowun. All this time the courts had sat and business went on, malefactors, traitors, mutineers, were tried and executed, and order was maintained. Patrols went out on the road to Cawnpore and Fyzabad. The news of the massacres of the Futtehghur fugitives, and of the Cawnpore garrison, and of officers on all sides, came in; and Colonel Neill reported his arrival at Allahabad, and promised to move up as soon as he could. A price was set upon Nana Sahib--£10,000 was offered for him, dead or alive.

For three weeks the Oude mutineers had been gathering at Nawabgunge, on the Fyzabad road, about twenty-five miles from Lucknow. Sir Henry Lawrence thought it would be desirable to attack them when he heard they were marching on the city. Keeping his intention secret, he collected a force consisting of four European and six Oude guns, and one 8-inch howitzer, the whole under Major Simons; thirty-six European and eighty Sikh horse; 300 of the 32nd Foot, and 220 Sepoys, the faithful few who had not mutinied. With these he marched, and his advance guard fell in with the enemy near Chinhut. They were in great strength, a complete army, having in the field cavalry, infantry, and artillery. The mutineers began the fray by a heavy fire of cannon, and then extending their wings, bore down on both flanks of the British. The volunteer cavalry charged boldly, but the Sikhs fled. The Oude gunners abandoned their pieces. The mutineers pressing on, turned our flank completely, and repulsed the 32nd in an attempt to drive them out of a village. The combat was now lost, and Sir Henry ordered a retreat. All fell back in confusion, leaving the howitzer behind. A body of horsemen tried to cut them off, but the volunteer cavalry, careless of odds, charged and routed them. Agonised with thirst, for the water-carriers had deserted, our little force fell back, turning and firing as often as they could, covered by the gallant volunteer horse, and so reached the iron bridge, and filed over into the city. They had lost 200 men killed and wounded (112 Europeans being among the slain), and four guns were missing. The pursuit was only checked by the fire of an 18-pounder from the redan, which commanded the iron bridge. The mutineers had brought into the field 5,000 infantry, 800 horse, and 160 gunners. As a sequel to this unhappy adventure, it may be stated that the military police and the companies of Oude regiments in the city at once mutinied. The troops from Chinhut crossed the river lower down, and invested the Residency. It was then found that the detachments in the Muchee Bhowun would be required to defend the Residency. But the enemy were in force between the two. No messenger could pass. In this crisis, at great risk, for the enemy kept up a heavy fire, four officers rigged a telegraph on the roof of the Residency, and thus sent orders that the Muchee Bhowun should be evacuated and blown up. That night the feat was achieved. The garrison had just reached the Residency, and were filing in, when a tremendous explosion shook the earth--240 barrels of powder and 594,000 rounds of ammunition had destroyed the Muchee Bhowun.

The next day, July 2nd, Sir Henry Lawrence was mortally wounded by a piece of shell, and died on the 4th. Shot and shell raining on the Residency, confusion all around, were the accompaniments of his last hours. He was not only an able man, but a good man, with a heart abounding in charity for all. Few men have left a brighter track on the dark stream of Indian history. Schools and asylums are as much his monuments as deeds of statecraft, and it may be that the Lawrence Asylum for European children, up in the hills of the North-West, will bear his name vividly to a posterity which will have only a faint idea of the early administration of the Punjab.

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XIV. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

Havelock to the Front--His Advance from Allahabad--Battle of Futtehpore--Battle of Aong--Battle of Cawnpore--Nana Sahib's Position--It is turned by Havelock--The Enemy resist obstinately--The final Charge--Cawnpore reoccupied--Nana Sahib's Vengeance--Havelock pushes on for Lucknow--Battle of Onao--First Battle of Busserutgunge--The second Battle--The third--Havelock recrosses the Ganges--Battle of Bithoor--End of Havelock's first Campaign--Lord Canning and Jung Bahadoor--Mutiny at Dinapore--Its Effects--Before Delhi--Attempt to surprise a Convoy--Death of Barnard--The British Lines attacked--The Assault renewed--The Remainder of July--Wilson's Discipline--John Lawrence's Perplexities--Disarmament at Rawul Pindee and Jhelum--Mutiny at Sealkote--It is avenged by Nicholson--Cooper shoots Sepoys in Batches--The Drama at Peshawur--Reinforcements for Delhi--Nicholson arrives--Battle of Nujuffghar--The Crisis in the Siege.

We have seen the rebels assailed at Delhi, and subjected to a siege; we have seen them become the besiegers of the British at Lucknow, and triumphant by horrible treachery at Cawnpore. We left Colonel Neill at Allahabad preparing the way for Havelock; and it is now time to describe the marvellous career of that general from Allahabad to Cawnpore. Havelock, as we have said heretofore, reached Calcutta on the 17th of June, and on the 20th he was appointed to command a movable column which was to be collected at Allahabad. Five days afterwards he quitted Calcutta, and on the 28th of June, one day after the bloody business at Cawnpore, he arrived at Benares. On the 30th he reached Allahabad. That very day, with the sanction of Sir Patrick Grant, Commander-in-Chief at Calcutta, the first detachment prepared by Neill marched for Cawnpore. It consisted of 400 Europeans, 420 natives, chiefly Sikhs, and two guns, the whole under Major Renaud. Havelock, soon after he arrived, sent 100 men in a steamer up the Ganges, to cover the right flank, but was himself obliged to wait, not only for carriage, but for troops, until the 7th of July before he could start. On the 3rd he learned the state of the Cawnpore garrison, and found that his duty, instead of saving them, would be first to recover Cawnpore and then essay to relieve Lucknow. On the 7th of July he set out to join Renaud, taking with him about 1,000 bayonets, furnished by the 78th Highlanders, the 64th, the 84th, the Madras Fusiliers and Braysher's Sikhs, the bulk of whom were with Renaud. Havelock had also eighteen volunteer horsemen and six guns. Such was the force which, on the afternoon of the 7th of July, 1857, moved out of Allahabad to perform one of the most striking campaigns in the history of India.

Major Renaud had pushed onwards about seventy miles towards Cawnpore, and had halted, according to orders. For Havelock, by dint of a judicious use of money, had secured excellent information of the enemy's proceedings; and knowing that Nana Sahib was advancing on Renaud, intent on snapping him up, Havelock pushed on by forced marches, and joining him on the night of the 11th, both hastened forward to Belinda, a few miles from Futtehpore. Lo! the rebels were there. It was now Havelock's chance. He resolved to force an action, although he had only 1,800 men and eight guns to match against their 3,500 men and twelve guns.

The Sepoy mutineers were in position across the road. They occupied ground broken by swamps, groves, and hillocks, as a front line, with the enclosures of Futtehpore to fall back upon. The Trunk Road ran through the position, and formed the best line of advance. Havelock put his guns in the centre, and covered them with 100 riflemen. He disposed of his other troops in columns preceded by skirmishers, and he put his handful of horse on the flanks. In this order he advanced. Some of the troops had Enfield rifles, and with these, deftly used, he struck the rebels at ranges which filled them with amazement. In ten minutes, says Havelock, the action was decided, so distressed were they at the fire of the rifle and Maude's artillery. The enemy at once abandoned three guns. "As we moved forward," writes the general, "the enemy's guns continued to fall into our hands, and then, in succession, they were driven from the garden enclosures, from a strong barricade on the road, from the town wall, into and through, out of, and beyond the town." Here they tried to stand; the 2nd Cavalry charged, and our irregulars fled leaving the volunteers alone; but the Rifles got into action, and the guns came up, and the rebels bolted altogether, leaving in our hands eleven guns. We actually did not lose a single man at the hands of the enemy, but twelve died of sunstroke. They had been afoot fourteen hours, had fought without food, and now sank exhausted.

Resting on the 13th, Havelock took three of the captured guns and added them to his train, and sent 100 Sikhs to guard his communications. At daybreak on the 15th Havelock's force found itself again in front of the enemy. He had entrenched the Great Road in front of the village of Aong, and garnished his line with two guns. This was a strong outpost covering the main position of the rebels behind the stone bridge over the Pandoo Nuddy, a stream, now swollen by the rains. It was necessary to pass Aong, and push on as fast as possible to the bridge. General Havelock divided his little army into two parts. One part he placed under the orders of Colonel Tytler. This was destined to assail the enemy. With the other the general himself guarded his train and baggage from the enemy's horse. Tytler moved up, the Volunteer Cavalry, under the gallant Barrow, leading the way. The enemy's guns opened, and the Sepoys, intending to attack while the troops were forming, advanced with a confident air from their position to a village. Thereupon Major Renaud, with his Madras Fusiliers, pounced upon them like lightning and drove them back; but in the combat he received a mortal wound. Then Tytler closed with the enemy, expelled him from gardens and buildings and put him to flight, but could not reach his guns. Havelock, for his share, had beaten off repeated onsets of cavalry, and these now retired to rejoin their comrades. Halting his men, Havelock anxiously awaited reports respecting the doings of the enemy on the Pandoo Nuddy. The news came. The enemy were engaged in strengthening their position on this river by mining the bridge. The moment was critical, if they were permitted to succeed in this work, the march of the army would be arrested for several days. On the other hand, the troops had been on foot since midnight and had not fed. But Havelock did not hesitate. Two hours' march under a burning sun brought his band to the bank of the river. The Sepoys were arrayed beyond the bridge; they were at work under one of the arches; and they had two 24-pounders, so planted that their fire swept the Great Road. The plan of attack was soon decided on. Eight guns were drawn up in positions which enabled them to concentrate their fire on the bridge. There was a bend in the river at this point, and the Madras Fusiliers, armed with the Enfield rifle, at once took advantage of this, by pushing up in open order above and below the bridge, and from the banks of the river pouring in a hail of bullets on the rebel artillerymen. This shook the steadiness of the enemy, the fire of our guns increased his alarm; and when the mine in the bridge was seen to explode, yet failed to injure the structure, the artillerymen lost heart. As the fire slackened, Major Stephenson gathered up his Fusiliers, and dashing at the bridge carried it with a rush and seized the guns. Thereupon the mutineers took to their heels and made off for Cawnpore.

There was another battle before them. They marched the next morning, the 16th. Cawnpore was twenty-four miles away. Before them lay an arid road. The sun was more formidable than the foe. Nana Sahib, alarmed at the progress of Havelock, and enraged by the repeated defeats of the mutineers, had concentrated all his forces, about 5,000 men and eight guns, and had posted them a few miles from Cawnpore, determined there to give battle. Havelock marched his men sixteen miles, then halted for three hours, resumed his march at two o'clock, leaving his baggage under a guard in the village, and quickly came within sight of the enemy. The mutineer army had been posted with some skill. It was drawn up across two roads, one leading to the cantonments at Cawnpore, the other being the Great Trunk Road to Delhi. Each flank rested on a native village; another village strengthened the centre. All were entrenched or walled. The Ganges was distant about a mile from the left, and on the right rose the half-finished embankment for the railway. The rebel infantry were drawn up in a concave line from flank to flank. Their horse were in a body on the left, and their guns were so disposed along the line as to sweep the two roads. About 1,200 yards from the centre of the lines the roads became one, that is, the cantonment road diverged at this point from the Trunk Road. Beyond the point of junction a fringe of wood ran towards the Ganges. In taking up this position the enemy had calculated on a front attack. He had measured out distances along the roads, and his gunners stood ready to fire as soon as the British came within range.

But he had to deal with a general versed in warfare. On coming within sight of the enemy, Havelock took steps to ascertain from the country folk the nature of the country on both flanks of the rebel host, for he had resolved to turn one or the other. He found that the enemy's left was the more assailable. Thus a force marched for about a mile and a half behind the screen of trees, while the little body of Volunteer Horse showed themselves on the Trunk Road, as if they were the forerunners of a front attack.

Suddenly the enemy became aware of the object of the manœuvre, as he caught glimpses, through breaks in the wood, of a column moving behind the trees. He opened fire. Our troops, without heeding shot and shell, moved silently on, until they arrived at a point parallel to the rebel position. Then they wheeled into line. The guns came up and opened fire, and the Madras riflemen once more spread out and made play with their splendid weapons. But Havelock was not the man to trifle with an advantage of position such as he had gained by his skilful march. He ordered an advance in échelon from the right. The Madras men went first in open order; the 78th Highlanders came next, then the 64th and 84th combined, and lastly the Sikhs. There were three 24-pounders on the enemy's left, well entrenched behind a village. The 78th were launched upon them. Moving up steadily under a fire of grape, until they were within eighty yards, their colonel, Hamilton, in front, the bagpipes playing in the rear, the Highlanders suddenly rent the air with a fierce shout, and, charging in, carried the village, and captured the guns, breaking the enemy's left into two parts, hurling one in confusion on the centre, and shouldering the other to the rear. In the meantime the 64th had come abreast of the Highlanders, and the Madras Fusiliers, on the other flank, had successfully encountered and defeated the rebel cavalry. Reforming the 78th, Havelock rode to the front, and pointing to the rally of the enemy on his centre round a howitzer, cried, "Now, Highlanders, another charge like that wins the day." The charge was made, and, with the aid of the 64th, the gun was captured. The Volunteer Horse, too, making a daring charge up the road, fell upon the enemy and slew many. The whole of the British force was now united again after its rough fight. The position of the enemy and several of his guns had been won, and our troops, emerging in the rear of it, reformed. The Sepoys had again rallied, with commendable promptitude, on Suktipore, a village between the two roads. From this they had to be driven. Havelock's voice was again heard animating his soldiers to renewed exertions, and again, this time unsupported by any artillery fire from our side, did those noble foot soldiers of Britain drive the foe before them. Yet again he rallied, so stubborn was he in this combat. Nana Sahib, present on the field, was seen to be encouraging his troops. He brought them up as the sun was setting, and prepared for a last effort. He still had a 24-pounder and two pieces of smaller calibre, and with these he commanded our men, now lying down, awaiting their artillery. The sun went down. There were about 900 British soldiers, only awaiting a signal from Havelock. "The final crisis," he writes, "had arrived. My artillery cattle, wearied by the length of the march, could not bring up the guns to my assistance; and the Madras Fusiliers, the 64th, 84th, and 78th detachments, formed in line, were exposed to a heavy fire from the 24-pounder on the road. I was resolved this state of things should not last; so, calling upon my men, who were lying down in line, to leap on their feet, I directed another steady advance. It was irresistible. The enemy sent round shot into our ranks, until we were within 300 yards, and then poured in grape with such precision and determination as I have seldom witnessed. But the 64th, led by Major Stirling and by my aide-de-camp [his son, Henry Havelock] who had placed himself in their front, were not to be denied. Their rear showed the ground strewed with wounded; but on they steadily and silently came; then, with a cheer, charged and captured the unwieldy trophy of their valour. The enemy lost all heart, and after a hurried fire of musketry gave way in total rout. Four of my guns came up, and completed their discomfiture by a heavy cannonade; and as it grew dark, the roofless barracks of our artillery were dimly descried in advance, and it was evident that Cawnpore was once more in our possession."

The next morning spies brought in the dreadful news that Nana Sahib had retreated from Cawnpore after butchering all the prisoners. Havelock immediately sent forward an advanced guard to test the truth of this, and as they came up to the old cantonments, an explosion shook the earth. It was the old magazine which the troopers of the enemy's rear-guard had fired. The army now entered the place. It was a memorable day, the 17th of July, when Cawnpore was recovered, for the horrors it brought to light kindled to an intensity beyond conception the passions of the British soldiers.

For the first thing done was to visit the entrenchment, and the house in which the prisoners had been confined. At the sight thereof strong men wept, and a fierce thirst for vengeance seized them and made them terrible in battle. From subsequent inquiries, it appeared that Nana Sahib had preserved the lives of 47 of the women and children from Futtehghur, and 163 of the old Cawnpore garrison. These he kept prisoners. "The captives," writes Captain Thomson, "were fed with only one meal a day of dhâl and chupatties, and these of the meanest sort; they had to eat out of earthen pans, and the food was served by menials of the lowest caste (mehter), which in itself was the greatest indignity that Easterns could cast upon them. They had no furniture, no beds, not even straw to lie down upon, but only coarse bamboo matting of the roughest make. The house in which they were incarcerated had formerly been occupied as the dwelling of a native clerk; it comprised two principal rooms, each about twenty feet long and ten broad, and besides these, a number of dark closets rather than rooms, which had been originally intended for the use of native servants; in addition to these, a courtyard, about fifteen yards square."

After the defeat of his troops on the Pandoo Nuddy--that is, on the 15th of July--Nana Sahib ordered all the prisoners to be slain. It must have been anger and hate and a love of cruelty which prompted this dastardly act. When our troops arrived, Mr. Sherer, the newly-appointed magistrate, began an investigation, from which we learn the facts as nearly as they can be known. "When Mr. Sherer," writes Captain Thomson, "entered the house of horrors, in which the slaughter of the women had been perpetrated, the rooms were covered with human gore; articles of clothing that had belonged to women and children--collars, combs, shoes, caps, and little round hats--were found steeped in blood; the walls were spattered with blood, the mats on the floor saturated; the plaster sides of the place were scored with sword-cuts, and pieces of long hair were all about the room. No writing was upon the walls, and it is supposed that the inscriptions, which soon became numerous, were put there by the troops, to infuriate each other in the work of revenging the atrocities that had been perpetrated there. There is no doubt that the death of the unhappy victims was accomplished by the sword, and that their bodies, stripped of all clothing, were thrown into an adjacent well. A Bible was found that had belonged to Miss Blair, in which she had written; '27th June--Went to the boats. 29th.--Taken out of boats. 30th.--Taken to Sevadah Kothi; fatal day.'" Such was the scene which tore the hearts of our valiant soldiers, and the recital of which made the whole world shudder. It is related that the Highlanders, on coming to a body which had been barbarously exposed, and which was supposed to be that of Sir Hugh Wheeler's daughter, cut off the tresses, and counting the hairs, swore that for every hair a rebel should die.

The reaction which followed his great successes, combined with the critical position in which he found himself, for a moment depressed the spirit of the undaunted Havelock. Here was this fearful massacre; here was news from Lucknow of the death of Henry Lawrence; from Delhi, of the death of General Barnard; from Agra, of a defeat of the troops there; and from Bithoor, that Nana Sahib had garrisoned that stronghold with 5,000 men. But one night's brief repose restored to the general his wonted calmness. Getting news of the march of a reinforcement, under Neill from Allahabad, he, on the 12th, selected a situation for a fort, commanding the passage of the Ganges, and prepared all things for an attempt to cut his way to Lucknow. Meanwhile Nana Sahib had evacuated Bithoor, and crossed into Oude.

On the 29th Havelock marched upon Onao. Here the rebels had occupied the ground with considerable skill. A deep swamp covered their right. Onao itself protected their left. In front was a village, and a garden entrenched like a bastion. In front of the village were enclosures. Thus the general found that he could not turn the position on either hand. He was forced to assail it in front. The order was given. With ready valour the Highlanders and Fusiliers drove the enemy out of the garden. They fell back on the village; their fire was hot; the 64th had to be brought up; and, all charging together, the village was stormed and the guns captured. This enabled Havelock to interpose his force between the enemy and Onao, towards which town they were hurrying. Firmly lodged on a piece of dry ground in the midst of swamps, and assailable only on a narrow front, Havelock saw his advantage, and allowing the enemy to come near, he shot them to pieces as they crowded on the road. The Oude native artillery, which had been carefully drilled, behaved with great gallantry; many gunners served their pieces to the last, and fell beside them under the rifles of the Fusiliers and the bayonets of the British Linesmen. Havelock stood victor, and master of fifteen of the enemy's guns.

The troops, after a halt of three hours to rest and eat, once more marched. The rebels had rallied at Busserutgunge. This was a walled town. The gate facing our troops was entrenched, and mounted four guns, and was flanked by towers. The road to Lucknow, running through the place, emerged at the opposite gate, and then was carried on a causeway through one of those large pieces of water called jheels. Concentrating a fire of artillery on the gate, Havelock held the Fusiliers and Highlanders ready to storm it, while he detached the 64th to the left to turn the town and cut off the retreat of the enemy. While the guns were in action, the storming column lay down; but when the fire of the defence slackened, and the Sepoys, frightened at the flank movement, began to run, the Highlanders and Fusiliers, with stern shouts, sprang up and carried the gate at a bound. The enemy fled over the causeway--for the 64th had not come up--and the battle was won.

But Havelock was destined to disappointment. A mutiny at Dinapore had prevented the arrival of the 5th and 90th regiments. He had lost nearly a hundred men on the 29th; a third of his ammunition was expended; cholera, smiting down scores, was in his camp; he had little or no spare transport; so, with a bitter feeling, he fell back to Mungulwar. Here he received five more guns and 257 men, but was obliged to disarm his native gun Lascars. The enemy--mutineers from Oude and Saugor, in Central India--was now gathering in force at Bithoor, and Neill was apprehensive of an attack; but Havelock, determined to try again, told Neill to hold his communications, and on the 4th of August marched to Onao, and on the 5th once more to Busserutgunge. Here the enemy were again. Knowing the ground better this time, the general, while he prepared to cannonade the front of the village, sent a force round their left flank. When this force emerged, he began the cannonade. The effect was instantaneous. Smitten by a point-blank fire of shot and shell, the rebels fled. The 64th and 84th dashed into the gate, while the Highlanders and Fusiliers and four of Maude's guns caught them as they streamed out on to the causeway. But, with great courage, the enemy rallied again in a village on both flanks. These were carried in brilliant style. The Sepoys carried off their cannon, but left 250 men on the field. Havelock could not improve his victories, because he had no cavalry. This was a fatal defect, as it gave the enemy time to rally. Our loss--so swift and able had been our movements--was only two killed and twenty-three wounded.

Yet even now Havelock could not go on. As the Oude folk defended every post, he felt that he could only reach Lucknow with a force too weak to break in, much less carry off the garrison. He heard also that the Gwalior contingent was moving up to the Jumna, and he knew that Nana Sahib was not far off in Oude, and that the mutineers at Bithoor were growing every day stronger. Therefore he once more fell back to Mungulwar. The troops were indignant, but there is no doubt the general was right. His army was the only force we had between Behar and Delhi, and he was bound not to throw it away uselessly. He, therefore, drew up at Mungulwar, entrenched it, and made good his raft bridge over the Ganges, hoping in vain that reinforcements would arrive. Neill now urged him to send over aid to drive the enemy from Bithoor, who were meditating offensive operations. Havelock then resolved to abandon Oude altogether. He had begun to re-cross the river, when he learned that 5,000 men, with artillery, had occupied Busserutgunge. He saw that if he retreated under such a threat without striking a blow, he would lose much of that moral influence his daring actions had secured. So, before crossing he turned upon his foe. Two marches brought him up to the position. Again the enemy had made a skilful choice of position; and again, by skill and courage, our troops thrust him out of it, with heavy loss to him and little to them. Thus they had been thrice beaten on this one battlefield. Having struck this heavy blow, Havelock retreated at once, and on the 13th of August crossed to the right bank of the Ganges; then the bridge was broken up, and the boats brought over to the Cawnpore side. Such was the first effort to relieve Lucknow. It failed; but it is impossible not to admire the devotion and resolution of the general and his men, who--in spite of such odds as were arrayed against them--in spite of the fervid heat and its effects fever, cholera, lassitude--had eight times encountered victoriously the enemy on the field of battle.

On the 16th he went forth to his ninth action. The rebels at Bithoor were now to feel the weight of his hand. They were a "scratch pack," from five regiments, but they had a strong position, and many of them were very brave men. They were drawn up in fields of sugar-cane, with a village and an enclosure here and there, and behind a line of breastwork. Behind these was a stream crossed by a stone bridge. Instead of having this in their rear, the enemy should have had it in front. No doubt he relied on his numbers. After a march, under a cloudless August sun, the troops came up with the enemy, and speedily routed him out of his cane-brakes, but not before, in some cases, men of the 42nd Native Infantry had crossed bayonets with the Madras Fusiliers. The real work had now to be done. Covered by his breastwork, the enemy fought with great obstinacy, keeping his great guns going, and maintaining a fire of musketry equal, so thought the general, to that of the Sikhs at Ferozeshah. Our artillery could not silence the Sepoy guns. There was nothing for it but the bayonet. Our infantry got the word they loved so much, and charging in upon the enemy, lifted him clean over the bridge, captured his guns, and put him to flight. Havelock halted at Bithoor one night, and then returned to Cawnpore. Before he left he had cleared the town, and had blown up the remains of the Nana's buildings. The reason for retreating was that the defeated force might have doubled round upon Cawnpore, and sacked it in the absence of the troops. This action terminated Havelock's first campaign. He now learned, to his chagrin, that Sir James Outram had been appointed to take command of the troops destined for the relief of Lucknow. Here we must quit for a time this noble soldier, whose services were inestimable. But before we return to Delhi, we must tell by what accumulation of stupidities the reinforcements destined for Havelock were delayed on the road.

The reasons lie in the defective resolution of the Calcutta Government. At an early stage in the mutiny, Jung Bahadoor, of Nepaul, had offered his assistance, and Major Ramsay, our agent at his capital, had transmitted the offer. He proposed to send six regiments of Nepaulese to Benares or Allahabad. The Government did not like to acquiesce in this destination of the troops. Benares and Allahabad were too important to be held by any natives. The proposal was declined; but, after a lapse of some days, when our prospects grew every moment more gloomy, Jung Bahadoor's offer was accepted, but he was directed to move on and occupy Goruckpore. Here he might do good and could do little harm. In this opinion not only the Calcutta Government, but Mr. Tucker at Benares, and Havelock at Cawnpore acquiesced, and the last declared that he could not accept aid from the Nepaulese, unless their women and children and sick were left in some place as a sort of hostages, so profound was the distrust at this time of any natives. Lord Canning has been censured with regard to his treatment of the Nepaulese, but we do not think wisely. His treatment of the Sepoys at Dinapore, however, does not admit of defence or excuse.

Dinapore was a military station, ten miles west of Patna, and was the capital of the province of Behar inhabited by a turbulent population, numbering 300,000, a large proportion of whom were Mohammedans. There could be no security in the province until the Dinapore regiments were disarmed. Nothing would have been easier. In the middle of July, the 5th Foot, just landed from Mauritius, and half the 37th Foot were on their way up the Ganges. On their arrival at Dinapore these might have been landed, and, in conjunction with the 10th Foot, every native might have been disarmed in an hour. But Lord Canning left it to General Lloyd to say if the regiments should be disarmed, and General Lloyd had faith in the Sepoys. Moreover, Lord Canning refused to allow the 5th to land for an hour at Dinapore. The consequence of throwing the responsibility on Lloyd, and of refusing to detain the 5th, was very serious. General Lloyd thought it would be enough to take away from the Sepoys the percussion caps. This half-measure was executed on the 25th of July, just when Havelock was preparing to spring into Oude. The Sepoys murmured, threatened, but for the moment were quieted, and the general, thinking all over, went to lunch on board a steamer. Suddenly shots were heard. It appeared that when the Sepoys were ordered to deliver up the caps in their pouches, they fired; thereupon the 10th marched upon their lines and opened fire. The Sepoys at once decamped; some ran to the Ganges and tried to cross, but a sharp fire from a steamer sank their boats. The greater part made off, unpursued, towards Arrah. Their enterprise was not easy; they had the Sone to cross. A quick pursuit would have found them seeking boats on its right bank. No pursuit was made for three days, and in that time they had crossed the river and entered Arrah. Kour Singh, a large landowner, a man who exhibited a gun at the Great Exhibition in 1851, joined the mutineers, supplied boats, counsel, leadership. They marched on Arrah, intending to plunder the treasury, and crossing the Ganges at Buxar, enter Oude. They were frustrated by the bravery of some ten civilians and fifty Sikhs, who held the place with dauntless resolution until they were splendidly relieved by Major Vincent Eyre.

The effects of the Dinapore mutiny were felt all over Behar. The 12th Irregulars mutinied, cutting off the heads of Major and Mrs. Holmes; two companies of Sepoys at Hazareebagh broke out and burnt the station; magistrates and Europeans fled in all directions, and weeks elapsed, and a large display of force had to be made, before order was restored. Moreover, Kour Singh and the broken mutineers went to Nagode and raised the 50th Native Infantry; and several other regiments and parts of regiments took fire and exploded. These were the causes that arrested the march of reinforcements to Havelock, and frustrated his splendid efforts to reach Lucknow.

To return to Delhi, the reader will remember that at the beginning of July reinforcements from the Punjab had raised the British army before that place to 6,600 men. At the same time, however, five native regiments and a battery of artillery arrived on the left bank of the Jumna opposite Delhi from Rohilcund. This added upwards of 4,000 fresh men to the rebel army. With them came Mohamed Bukt Khan from Bareilly, formerly a subahdar of artillery, now a general of brigade, and, soon after his arrival, Commander-in-Chief of the Sepoy army. When they came up, the swollen river had broken the bridge of boats, which was not re-established for two days. Our forces were so few that we were compelled to look on while the enemy performed this operation at leisure. In the beginning of July the new arrivals so raised the spirits of the mutineers that they engaged in several desperate actions. Their first operation was daring, and a dangerous one for us. The road to the Punjab, so vital to our safety, was entirely guarded by native troops, perfectly trustworthy, but in weak detachments, placed here and there to keep the road clear of marauders. It was along this road that our sick and wounded were sent to Umballa, and that our convoys of treasure and ammunition passed to the camp. The Sepoys, of course, knew this, and were moderately well informed of the goings and comings of convoys. They had heard that a quantity of treasure was coming down, and that a number of sick were going up; they resolved to capture the first and to murder the second. So on the 3rd about 6,000 men of all arms, with several guns, moved out of the Lahore Gate, and went round our right. They were not unseen. All night they marched, making for Alipore, one march in the rear of our camp. Here they drove off the Sikh guard, but found neither sick nor treasure; the former had passed on the 2nd, the latter, delayed on the road, had not come up. The Sepoys, instead of pushing for Kurnaul, as they might have done, countermarched on Delhi. Major Coke, with 1,100 men and 12 guns, had been sent out to intercept them. Hodson and his horse had been on the look-out, and gave Coke ample information. But although our troops got within cannon-shot, and engaged the enemy, they did little except capture an ammunition waggon and a store cart, and recover the plunder of Alipore. In order to check these attacks on our line of communications, it was resolved to blow up all the bridges over the canal except one, and also to destroy part of an aqueduct, one of the mighty works of the former Mohammedan rulers of Delhi. These enterprises were effected during the next week, and thus greater safety was secured for the rear, and the country folk were able to bring provisions into our markets without danger from the Sepoys.

On the day after the attack on Alipore General Barnard sickened of cholera, and by night he was dead. Himself a distinguished soldier, and the son of a more distinguished soldier, Sir Andrew Barnard, he had found himself in a situation unsuited to his abilities; for having served in the Crimea as chief of the staff, he had only arrived in India a few months before the mutiny broke out. He was greatly respected and beloved in camp, but it must be owned he was hardly fit for the work in hand. He was succeeded by a seniority general of no mark, who in turn fell ill, and going off on sick leave, left Brigadier Archdale Wilson in command of the troops before Delhi.

On the 9th of July the newly-arrived Sepoys again sought to distinguish themselves by an assault upon our lines. Among the troops from Bareilly which had just entered Delhi were the troopers of the 8th Irregulars. A wing of the 9th was in our camp, and many men in it had friends in the mutinous 8th. The incidents of the day showed that these two regiments were in communication. "About ten o'clock in the morning," writes Captain Norman, "the insurgents appeared to be increasing in numbers in the suburbs on our right, when suddenly a body of cavalry emerged from cover on the extreme right of our right flank, and charged into camp.... The troop of Carabineers, all very young, most of them untrained soldiers, and only thirty-two in number of all ranks, turned and broke, save the officer and two or three men, who nobly stood. Lieutenant Hills, commanding the guns, seeing the cavalry come on unopposed, alone charged the head of the horsemen, to give his guns time to unlimber, and cut down one or two of the sowars, while the main body of horsemen riding over and past the guns, followed up the Carabineers, and a confused mass of horsemen came streaming in at the right of the camp. Major Tombs, whose tent was on the right, had heard the first alarm, and, calling for his horse to be brought after him, walked towards the picket just as the cavalry came on. He was just in time to see his gallant subaltern down on the ground, with one of the enemy's sowars ready to kill him. From a distance of thirty yards he fired with his revolver, and dropped Hills's opponent. Hills got up and engaged a man on foot, who was cut down by Tombs, after Hills had received a severe sabre-cut on the head. Meanwhile great confusion had been caused by the inroad of the sowars, most of whom made for the guns of the native troop of horse artillery, which was on the right of the camp, calling on the men to join them. The native horse artillerymen, however, behaved admirably, and called to Major Olpherts' European troop, which was then unlimbered close by, to fire through them at the mutineers. The latter, however, managed to secure and carry off some horses, and several followers were cut down in camp. Captain Fagan, of the artillery, rushing out of his tent, got together a few men, and followed up some of the sowars, who were then endeavouring to get away, and killed fifteen of them. More were killed by some men of the 1st Brigade, and all were driven out of the camp, some escaping by a bridge over the canal-cut in our rear. It is estimated that not more than 100 sowars were engaged in this enterprise, and about thirty-five were killed, including a native officer. All this time the cannonade from the city, and from many field-guns outside, raged fast and furious, and a heavy fire of musketry was kept up upon our batteries, and on the Subzee Mundi pickets from the enclosures and gardens of the suburbs. A column was therefore formed to dislodge them, consisting of Major Scott's horse battery, the available men of the 8th and 61st Foot and 4th Sikh Infantry--in all about 700 infantry, and six guns, reinforced en route by the headquarters and two companies of the 60th Rifles, under Lieutenant-Colonel J. Jones; the infantry brigade being commanded by Brigadier W. Jones, C.B., and Brigadier-General Chamberlain directing the whole. As this column swept up through the Subzee Mundi, Major Reid was instructed to move down and co-operate with such infantry as could be spared from the main picket. The insurgents were cleared out of the gardens without difficulty, though the denseness of the vegetation rendered the mere operation of passing through them a work of time. At some of the serais, however, a very obstinate resistance was made, and the insurgents were not dislodged without considerable loss. Eventually everything was effected that was desired, our success being greatly aided by the admirable and steady practice of Major Scott's battery under a heavy fire, eleven men being put hors de combat out of its small complement. By sunset the engagement was over, and the troops returned to camp, drenched through with rain, which, for several hours, had fallen at intervals with great violence. Our loss this day was one officer and 40 men killed, 8 officers and 163 men wounded, 11 men missing."

Not content with the result of the 9th, the mutineers, on the 14th, renewed the attack. They moved, as usual, out of the Lahore Gate, and made for the Subzee Mundi. The position on this side, however, had been strengthened greatly since the inroad of the troopers on the 9th, and the Sepoys were easily repelled. The fight became one of artillery and musketry, each party availing itself of good cover. At length we had to put an end to it in the usual way. Brigadier Chamberlain formed a column, and led them against the enemy--literally so; for our troops, not liking the look of a wall lined with Sepoys, stopped short, instead of charging at it. Thereupon Chamberlain, spurring his horse, leaped clean over the wall into the midst of the enemy, daring his own men to follow. They did, but Chamberlain got hit in the shoulder. Once on the move, our infantry kept the Sepoys going, and drove them from garden to garden and house to house up to the walls of Delhi. For this they paid heavily; for when they began to retire, the Sepoys took heart, and, issuing out, opened with musketry and grape. Luckily, Hodson, who had seen the column go in, followed with a few of his horse, and arrived at the moment of peril. Aided by some officers and the boldest spirits among the European and Guide Infantry, he stopped the enemy's cavalry, and then retired fighting, until two guns came up, and soon "drove the last living rebel into his pandemonium," as they called Delhi in those days. But we lost 15 killed, and had 150 wounded.

During the remainder of July there were two more actions. The Jhansi regiments entered Delhi on the 16th; our spies in the city warned the general of an impending attack; and on the 18th the fresh regiments began what they boasted should be a four days' fight. There was nothing in the combat to distinguish it from so many of its predecessors. The alarm sounded, our troops turned out; the Sepoys, swarming among the ruins about the Subzee Mundi, retired as soon as they were assailed, and our men followed them as far as prudence dictated, and then drew off. The Sepoys did not keep their promise. One day's fighting seemed to have satisfied them. On the 23rd they sallied from the Cashmere Gate, and tried to establish a battery near the house called Ludlow Castle; but they were sharply assailed by a force under Brigadier Showers, and driven into the city. Unfortunately, in trying to take their guns, the troops got too near the walls, and suffered accordingly. No other fighting of moment occurred for the rest of the month; but in the meantime there had been hot work in the Punjab.

General Wilson, looking for troops from the Punjab, had changed materially the system of warfare before Delhi. He resolved to make more secure the position on the ridge, and connected the isolated batteries with a continuous line of breast-works. He determined to confine himself as much as possible to a system of resistance, and not give the enemy the opportunities he appeared to covet of luring our columns under the fire of the walls. He established a system of reliefs, so that part of the force got some rest while the bulk was on duty. The result was that the discipline of the troops, which had been growing somewhat slack, was rendered more rigorous, and a higher tone was imparted to the whole body. Rest and food, at stated times, soon improved the health of the army. The great point was to stand fast until the remaining troops which could be spared from the Punjab should arrive. We have now to tell what detained them.

To all suggestions that the siege of Delhi should be abandoned, Sir John Lawrence had offered instant and peremptory resistance. He would rather have restored the Peshawur valley to the Afghans than have abandoned Delhi. As a measure of despair he had even contemplated and discussed the surrender of the valley. His wisest counsellors were vehemently opposed to the latter move; they would have preferred the raising of the siege. Happily neither measure was forced upon him. He was burdened with a vast responsibility, for by severing the electric wires the Sepoys had made him Governor-General of the Punjab and the North-West above Agra. Aided by men like Montgomery, and Edwardes, and Nicholson--supported by such unflinching lieutenants as Frederick Cooper, Reynell Taylor, Spankie, Barnes, and Forsyth--he was able to quell his own mutineers, and pour down on Delhi those reinforcements which enabled Wilson to take it by storm.

That brilliant invention, the movable column, had not been idle during the month of July. There were five regiments of infantry and two of cavalry still in arms. Six of these regiments were in stations where there was not a single European soldier. The problem was how to get their arms. It was resolved first to deal with the 58th Native Infantry at Rawul Pindee and the 14th at Jhelum. He had little difficulty with the 58th. At first they seemed inclined to resist, but soon yielded. The two companies of the 14th, however, fled. They were pursued by mounted Punjabees, and those that escaped were brought in by the villagers. At Jhelum there was a battle. Sir John had sent 260 of the 24th Foot, three guns, and 150 police, all under Colonel Ellice, to disarm the 14th. These were followed by 700 Mooltanees, partly mounted, and the two bodies joined on the 6th. On the 7th Ellice sent part of the Mooltanee horse to guard the river, and with the rest marched towards the station. The 14th had been called under arms, and as soon as they saw the Europeans moving towards them, they began to load. Then there was a dropping fire. Presently the Sepoys broke, the Mooltanees charged, and did some execution, but the mutineers got into their quarters, and defied the horse. The Mooltanee foot came up. These were beaten off. The guns arrived, and opened. The Sepoys, well sheltered, would not budge. Colonel Ellice then arrived with the 24th Foot, and forming a small column, carried the lines with the bayonet. Ellice being wounded at the head of his men, Gerard took command. The Sepoys fled into a fortified village and stoutly resisted every onset. When night fell the troops were obliged to retire, leaving behind a howitzer, which was taken by the enemy. In the night the mutineers retreated, but did not escape. Out of 500 men only fifty were not "accounted for." No fewer than 150 fell in action, 180 were captured by the police, and 120, who reached Cashmere, were surrendered. But we suffered a loss of 44 killed, and 109 wounded, of whom one-half were Europeans.

Nor was this the worst loss. There were two native regiments at Sealkote--a few score miles distant east of the Chenab. They had long been suspected. They might have been disarmed in May, when there were European troops in the station. Brigadier Brind, the commandant, a brave old officer, remonstrated against the withdrawal of the 52nd Foot and Bourchier's European battery to form the movable column. He did not like to be left with only Hindostanee troops. "He was requested," says Mr. Montgomery, "to remove the cause of alarm by disarming them. He did not see his way to do this, and the column marched on." Sir John Lawrence had directed the ladies of the station and the soldiers' wives and children to be sent to Lahore. The latter were marched to Lahore under escort; several of the former remained. Brigadier Brind kept up a show of confidence in the 46th Native Infantry and the wing of the 9th Cavalry in the station; but he knew they were mutinous in spirit. The wonder was they had not gone before. Perhaps they waited for a signal from Delhi, and there is some evidence that the signal reached the station simultaneously with the news of the fight at Jhelum on the 7th. Be that as it may, on the 9th all the native troops mutinied. The officers, roused from sleep, mounted and rode among the men, but found remonstrance useless. They all made for an old fort, which Tej Singh, a Sikh chief, had placed at their disposal. But only some escaped.

Nor was this all. The movable column was at Amritsir. Here were the 59th Native Infantry. They had shown no symptoms of disaffection; but on the 8th General Nicholson heard of the fight at Jhelum. He saw at once the peril of the moment, and the duty. On the 9th he disarmed the 59th. It was only done just in time. On the evening of that day in came a messenger from Lahore, telling of the mutiny at Sealkote, and directing Nicholson to march on Gordaspore and intercept the Sealkote men. Nicholson did not hesitate. Disarming and dismounting the men of the 9th Cavalry, who were at Amritsir, he set out on the night of the 10th for Gordaspore, and by daylight he had made twenty-six miles. On the 12th, certain information came that the mutineers had crossed the Ravee at Trimmoo Ghaut, a ferry on the river. Nicholson moved out at once, and by noon sighted the rebel vedettes, men of the 9th Cavalry. The whole had not got over, and some were still crossing. Covering his front with mounted Punjabee levies, mere recruits for Hodson's Horse, Nicholson moved up his guns and infantry. The Sepoys were behind a strip of deep water, passable only by a bridge. In their rear was the Ravee, growing wider and deeper every hour, for the snows were melting in the hills, and swelling all the streams. As Bourchier's guns went over the bridge, down came the men of the 9th at the charge; the levies fled; the Sepoy skirmishers ran up and opened a steady fire. But the ugly symptoms soon vanished. The Sepoys had no guns. They were not soldiers who could stand against the 52nd. In twenty minutes grapeshot, shrapnel, and rifle-balls silenced the fire of the rebel line. In half-an-hour the mutineers were in retreat, leaving three or four hundred killed and wounded on the field. Nicholson had no dragoons, or there the business would have ended. He caused his few Sikhs to pursue, and these captured all the baggage and stores which the enemy had brought to the left bank. In the river there was an island. To cross that night was impossible. In the night the river rose and caught the rebels in a trap. On the 11th they had been able to ford the stream; on the 13th it had risen several feet. The dawn found the enemy prisoners, with the swift flood of the Ravee rolling around them, and a relentless foe preparing the means of destroying them. Three days passed before boats could be procured. On the 16th all was ready. Covered by the fire of seven guns on the other bank, and headed by Nicholson, the 52nd swept on in line, and in a few minutes the mutineers went in a crowd to the rear. A few resolute men died around the gun; others were overtaken in fight and slain; a mob ran to the end of the island, and those who escaped the bayonet, and swam over the river, were captured by the villagers. Not more than a hundred got away into Cashmere, and these we compelled the Maharajah to surrender. Thus did John Nicholson break in pieces this horde of mutineers, and save the Punjab between the Jhelum and the Sutlej. On the 22nd the column was again at Amritsir. Three days afterwards it was again on the march, en route for Delhi, in earnest this time, for now the Punjab had been made secure by the disarming of nearly every Hindostanee regiment, and the raising of new levies among the Punjabees.

But there were still days of peril between the Sutlej and the Indus, and over the Indus; and before carrying the reader with us to Delhi, to witness the final strife there, it will be as well to note in passing the tragic incidents at Lahore and Peshawur.

The disarmed Hindostanees at Meean Meer, near Lahore, writhed under the degradation which it had been so necessary to inflict upon them. Frequent reports reached the brigadier that one or more of the regiments intended to break out and run away, but day after day passed, and there were no signs, and only the usual precautions were taken. At length, however, the 26th Native Infantry tried the experiment, and their fate proved an example to discourage the other regiments. On the 30th of July, at mid-day, they broke out. They fled up the left bank of the Ravee. Fortunately, the deputy-commissioner at Amritsir was Mr. Frederick Cooper. As soon as he heard of the flight of the 26th, he got together some Punjabee horse and foot, and after a severe march, struck the trail of the mutineers. He found them in sorry plight. They had swum the river or floated over on pieces of wood, and were lodged on an island about a mile from the shore. By stratagem he got them all from the island, and had them secured with cords. Then they were escorted to the police-station at Ujnalla, six miles distant, and before they arrived the Sikh infantry came up. There were 282 prisoners. Sending his Hindostanee troopers back to Amritsir, Mr. Cooper prepared to execute the whole. On the 1st of August they were led out in batches of ten; their names were taken down; they were marched to the place of execution. Two hundred and thirty-seven were so executed, and forty-five were found dead in the gaol. All the bodies were thrown into a dry well by men of the lowest caste, and Cooper wrote, "there is a well at Cawnpore, but there is also a well at Ujnalla." To read of this execution in cold blood makes one shudder; but those who have studied the state of the Punjab at that moment will agree with Mr. Montgomery, that the punishment so sternly inflicted by Mr. Cooper was "just and necessary." Sir John Lawrence congratulated him on his success, though privately acknowledging that his despatch was "nauseous." Mr. Montgomery wrote at the time--"All honour to you for what you have done; and right well you did it;" and in 1859 solemnly reviewed and justified the execution. Lord Canning approved.

The drama at Peshawur was equally serious and bloody. In the middle of August there came a holy man, who sat himself down at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, hoisted the green flag, and preached what Colonel Edwardes calls a "crescentade." "The most evident restlessness," writes Colonel Edwardes, in his report, "pervaded the disarmed regiments; arms were said to be finding their way into the lines in spite of all precautions, and symptoms of an organised rise began to appear; General Cotton, as usual, took the initiative. On the morning of the 28th of August he caused the lines of every native regiment to be simultaneously searched, the Sepoys being moved out into tents for that purpose; swords, hatchets, muskets, pistols, bayonets, powder, ball, and caps, were found stowed away in roofs, and floors, and bedding, and even drains; and, exasperated by the discovery of their plans, and by the taunts of the newly-raised Afridi regiments, who were carrying out the search, the 51st Native Infantry rushed upon the piled arms of the 18th Punjab Infantry, and sent messengers to all the other Hindostanee regiments, to tell them of the rise. For a few minutes a desperate struggle ensued; the 51st Native Infantry had been one of the finest corps in the service, and they took the new Irregulars altogether by surprise. They got possession of several stand of arms, and used them well. Captain Bartlett and the other officers were overpowered by numbers, and driven into a tank. But soon the Afridi soldiers seized their arms, and then began that memorable fusilade which commenced on the parade ground at Peshawur and ended at Jumrood. General Cotton's military arrangements in the cantonment were perfect for meeting such emergencies--troops, horse and foot, were rapidly under arms and in pursuit of the mutineers. Every civil officer turned out with his posse comitatus of levies or police, and in a quarter of an hour the whole country was covered with the chase." By these means the regiment was in thirty-six hours "accounted for." It was 871 strong. The example sufficed. The disarmed regiments were paralysed by the sudden retribution. Peshawur was stronger than ever.

At the beginning of August it had been resolved to make a supreme effort to dispose of Delhi. Nicholson's column, growing stronger at every step, had already started from Amritsir. A first-class siege train was prepared in the arsenals of Philour and Ferozepore. It consisted of four 10-inch mortars, six 24-pounders, eight 18-pounders, and four 8-inch howitzers, with ample supplies of ammunition. Thus there were en route for Delhi a powerful column and a splendid siege train. General Wilson's plan meanwhile was to act on the defensive. He therefore confined himself to repelling attacks on our position, and to protecting his communications with Kurnaul. Twice or thrice the enemy tried to bridge the waterways covering the flank of the Great Road, and so get to Alipore, and clutch at convoys. But they failed. Three or four times during the month of August they assailed the ridge, but their failures were costly to them. On the 7th one of their magazines blew up, and it is said that 500 men perished in the explosion. On the 8th they again tried to plant a battery at the house called Ludlow Castle, opposite our left front. General Wilson resolved to have it. At four in the morning of the 12th Brigadier Showers led a strong column of infantry down from the ridge, and so well did he manage that he surprised the enemy, overpowered him, killed several hundred, and captured and brought off four guns. On the 13th of August Nicholson's column marched into camp. It consisted of the 52nd Foot, half the 61st Foot, the 2nd Punjab Infantry, and Bourchier's battery. There were on the way the 4th Punjab Infantry, half the 1st Belooch Battalion from Scinde, three companies of the 8th Foot, and several score recruits. Beside these, the general had to wait for the siege train. Sir John Lawrence could do no more. These were the last batches of troops he could spare. They mustered about 4,200 men, of whom 1,300 were Europeans.

In the meantime, alarmed by news of the coming siege-train, the mutineers sent out 6,000 men and 16 guns, under Bukt Khan, of Rohilcund, to capture the train. Hearing this, Nicholson girded himself up for a stroke at them. They moved out on the 24th; he started on the 25th, with 1,600 infantry, 500 horses, and 16 guns. The enemy had marched to Nujuffghur by the Rhotuck road. The Sepoy position consisted of a serai in their left centre, where they had four guns; a village in rear on each flank; a third village, and the town of Nujuffghur. In their rear ran a canal, crossed by a single bridge, over which they had come from Delhi. Nicholson determined to carry the serai, thus breaking the left centre of the line; then swinging round his right, to sweep the enemy's line of guns, and, if possible, cut him off from the bridge. This plan was energetically carried out. Detaching the 1st Punjab Infantry, under Lieutenant Lumsden, to drive the enemy out of Nujuffghur, and Blunt to watch the left, Nicholson arrayed the 1st Bengal Fusiliers, the 61st Foot, and the 2nd Punjabees against the serai. There was a crash of musketry, down came the bayonets, and with a fierce cheer on dashed the line. The Sepoys fought well, and some crossed bayonets with our men; yet they could not stand against the impetuous onset, and the serai and guns were won. Changing his front, Nicholson now turned the line of the remaining guns of the enemy, and advanced. The Sepoys, although strongly posted, seeing the bridge in danger, made for it at full speed, and crowded over, pursued by the fire of our artillery. They succeeded in getting away with three guns, leaving thirteen in our possession, captured on the field. We also took their camp and baggage, horses and camels and seventeen full waggons of ammunition. In the meantime Lumsden had cleared the rebels out of Nujuffghur, and was moving up to join the main body, when he was ordered to drive a band of Sepoys out of a village into which they had thrown themselves when cut off from the bridge. Having no retreat, these men fought desperately. The 61st were sent up, but these, too, suffered heavily before the village was taken. Halting near the bridge, the sappers blew it up--an important service--and the troops, who had been afoot all day, slept on the ground without food. By such an exploit did Nicholson signalise his arrival before Delhi.

The fate of Delhi was drawing nigh. The old king, after he learned the truth--a long time kept from him--about the battle of Nujuffghur, suffered alike from impotent anger and impotent despair. He felt that we must win; and he felt rightly. The last reinforcements came up in the first week of September, and with them the siege train. There was now no time to lose. Cholera and ague were rife in our camp. Not only the malaria from the swamps, but the fetid odours from dead cattle were more fatal than the shot of the enemy. Out of 11,000 men, more than a fourth were sick. Everything--the feverish state of the Punjab, the unhealthiness of the camp--made it imperative on General Wilson to take Delhi. He had powerful assistants. Baird Smith was there to direct the engineering operations; Nicholson to impel and guide; Hodson and Chamberlain and Norman to apply the spur, if it were needed. At the back of all, the commanding voice of Sir John Lawrence could be heard from the Punjab. Delhi must be taken out of hand. Thus the month of August closed, and September began the fourth of the mutiny and the third of the siege. The crowning act is a little story by itself, and must have a separate chapter.

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