the gratification of a diabolical appetite indicated the ferocity with which any endeavour to check its exercise and appropriate its fruits must naturally be resisted. Supported, even in 1849, by about 250 forts or strongholds, mounted with near 500 pieces of cannon, the landholders of Oude were not likely to submit with good-humour to a territorial settlement which openly professed only to deal with the actual occupants of the soil, and 'conveniently consider at a future period (that was the phrase) "the claims, if tenable claims exist,' of the talookdars or feudatory chiefs, who held under the Mahomedan sovereigns an analogous position to that of the barons of England under the early Norman kings. Nor were the peasantry likely to appreciate the transference of authority to juster and milder hands so keenly as to compensate for all the animosity it excited. Guile and fraud were the instruments with which they had been in the habit of encountering oppression and brutality, and no doubt with considerable success; torture and death were on the die, but they took the chances; for on the other side were long immunity from taxation, and, in bad seasons, the accepted plea of inability to pay. The Hindoo cultivator is as little provident as the Irish peasant or the Sheffield artisan; when prosperous, he gives dowers to his children and fees to his Brahmin, and has, therefore, nothing in worse times to meet the inexorable uniformity of the British fiscal system. While under the lash of the Rajpoot tyrant, he fled for refuge and sympathy to British power whenever it was near; but, when the new dominion came, it was none the more welcome, and it was the 'raj' of the Feringhee besides. No wonder then that Sir Henry Lawrence, to whom these were the patent conditions of his government in Oude, should have thought no precaution superfluous and no danger improbable.

The total abandonment of the position, and a retreat upon the line of communication between Calcutta and the North-West Province, must have frequently come before him as a terrible possibility. Nor was he a man who would have shrunk from any temporary consequences to his own reputation if it had seemed to him right so to act. But the evacuation to have been effective must have been complete-not a non-combatant, not a gun must have been left behind, and these must have been conducted through all the discouragements and difficulties of a retreat which would not have been the relinquishment of a town but the surrender of a country. If we can imagine the whole of the Lucknow garrison transported to Cawnpore before the 3rd of May, we have a vision of Wheeler relieved, of those hideous chapters of the book of Fate unwritten, of those agonies and those treacheries unenacted; but against this we have to set the picture

of

of the whole of the province of Oude triumphant with unresisted rebellion, and of all the storms, which spent their rage in vain for four months against the garrison of Lucknow, gathered and bursting with tenfold energy on every other ill-defended repository of British power, and offering a front and mass of insurrectionary force which would have precipitated events that afterwards were spread over a considerable lapse of time and have concentrated in the earlier periods of the revolt those dangers which, though delayed and dispersed, we have only at last overcome at so terrible a cost of blood and treasure.

The strength too of the position which he held, and had good hope to hold till relief might arrive even from England, must have occupied no unimportant place in Sir Henry's calculations. About three quarters of a mile from the Residency stood the Muchee Bhawn, a castellated edifice apparently of considerable strength, commanding the iron and stone bridges over the Gomtee, and regarded by the people with much respect from having been the castle of the ancient Sheiks, who held it in defiance of the Viceroys of the Great Mogul. Its capture by the Viceroy Asoph ood Dowlah had been the cause of the change of the seat of Government from Fyzabad to what was then the village of Lucknow. It had been purchased by Sir H. Lawrence, and more labour and care were perhaps spent upon it than the old walls really deserved. At this crisis, however, the position was most useful in overawing the town, and its possession was in itself, from historical associations, a pledge of power. But it is not quite clear why so many stores were accumulated there instead of in the Residency, which in case of extremity must necessarily have become the centre of defence, and which Sir Henry was in fact at the same time gradually transforming into a most formidable fortress. The clear soldierly account of Lieutenant Innes has been transferred to other narratives and enables the reader to understand by what process of skill and toil a number of detached houses standing in gardens, public edifices, outhouses, and casual buildings were, as it were, netted together and welded by ditches, parapets, stockades, and batteries, into one consentaneous whole of resistance. Certain hostile positions were indeed left undestroyed, from which the enemy were afterwards enabled to inflict great damage on the defenders, but it may be well presumed that this was one of the many fatal consequences of the uncalculated disaster of the 30th of June. There must indeed have been an ulterior intention of a far larger system of defences than the limited command of time and labour enabled the British forces to execute, and which would have comprehended in one plan both the Residency and the Muchee Bhawn

Bhawn in safe and free communication with each other. As it turned out, it was most unfortunate that the whole scheme of the defence should not have been confined to the Residency, leaving the occupation of the Muchee Bhawn as a feint to deceive and distract our opponents.

The month of June was spent in painful expectation; through the greater part of it the labourers worked on readily and cheerfully, but the general aspect of the town was surly and suspicious. The native police were suspected of taking part in crimes of violence, seditious placards were openly exhibited, dolls dressed like British children were carried about the streets and their heads struck off. Every day brought the rumour, and many, the certainty, of some fresh calamity. From the 5th the treason of the Nana and the soldiery at Cawnpore, and the dreadful position of Sir H. Wheeler were known; then came his prayers for the succour which they had not to grant; then the miserable story of his surrender. From the massacre of Seetapore some thirty fugitive officers and ladies were rescued by a body of volunteer cavalry. Mrs. Dorin was brought in later, after incredible sufferings, only to fall one of the victims of the siege; and Mr. Birch escaped from the same slaughter to be shot in September by mistake through one of our own loopholes. Mr. Graham, one of the officers saved from Secrora, went mad and killed himself the day after his wife's confinement. Of a party sent out to reconnoitre the state of the country all were destroyed except Lieutenant Boulton, who, pursued by seven of his own soldiers, and wounded in the wrist, preserved his life by a tremendous leap over a broad ditch, and turning the enemy's camp, reached Cawnpore-he also only to perish amid the horrors of that Aceldama.

The ship foundering in port, after having successfully traversed the perils of a tempestuous voyage, has always been the most pathetic of images, but what can we say of such examples as these, of brave men and tender women enduring a succession of phy sical and moral tortures, to reach at last a consummation of cruel death for themselves and the objects of their closest affections? What of the tragedy of Sir Mountstuart Jackson and his companions escaping from Seetapore with every hardship, protected for a time by a friendly Rajah, then dragged to Lucknow and imprisoned in a palace in the very sight of their besieged countrymen, and after months of suspense murdered, as it were, in revenge for the success of British arms? Lieutenant Burnes might have escaped alone if he would have abandoned an orphan girl entrusted to his care, but whose life all his devotion did not avail to save, although the ladies of the party were

rescued

rescued by Maun Singh, and are now believed to be secure from further violence.

The Europeans were now fully aware that they must very soon meet face to face the revolted force daily recruited by fresh mutinies; one day it was expected in the direction of Cawnpore, another in that of Fyzabad. At last, on the 29th, Captain Forbes, who had been sent out to reconnoitre with the Sikh cavalry, reported that the enemy were at Chinhut, only nine miles from Lucknow all the troops were withdrawn from the cantonments in the evening, and at three the next morning orders were given for the whole available force, under 600 men, to go out to meet them. We know the disastrous issue of that event, but little of the circumstances that induced Sir H. Lawrence to run the risk of it. Mr. Rees mentions a report widely circulated, and generally believed, that Brigadier Inglis strongly opposed the movement at the council which decided it, but that his opinion was overruled. We once heard a distinguished commander, who knew the two brothers well, remark, that Henry Lawrence was an admirable man, but John was the soldier'-John being a civilian-and it is possible that the higher prudence of Sir John might have anticipated the very great hazard of meeting an enemy of whose numbers he was uncertain, with a force on whose fidelity he could not rely. As it was, the British were both outnumbered and betrayed. At the first shot the whole of the police-force went over and commenced firing against them; the native gunners cut the traces of the Artillery horses, and escaped; the Sikh cavalry were panic-struck and fled. The enemy's horse was commanded by some European in undress uniform and handled with great ability. We are glad that Mr. Rees has, in his later editions, confined his conjectures to the probability of this renegade being a Russian, and omitted the suggestion that the rebel artillery was directed by English officers, whose infamy, even if they are dead, should not be pronounced without the clearest evidence. Among the greatest of the material losses of the day was an 8-inch howitzer which had been found in the town a few days before and in which the garrison trusted as a great arm of defence, little foreseeing that from it would be fired the fatal shell which was destined to cut short the life of that noble old man, whose presence hitherto had been ever looked upon as a Providence, and whose reproach after the calamity of this day was confined to his own compassionate heart, which burst forth at the close of it amid the carnage of his retreating troops in the exclamation, My God! and I brought them to this.'

6

The same singular inability to take advantage of any temporary

success,

success, which the rebels have exhibited on other occasions during this war, limited the consequences of this disaster. Although the tremendous fire which was then opened on the Residency all but succeeded in preventing the signal being given to abandon and destroy the fort of Muchee Bhawn, its evacuation was effected without the loss of a single life, and with the preservation of its guns and treasure. The arrangements for posting and stationing this additional force were the last Sir Henry Lawrence personally superintended. He was wounded that evening, and died on the 4th of July. In the confusion incident to the first days of an unexpected siege this misfortune was easily concealed; the stern necessity of the hour spared no man to pay military honours to the illustrious dead: he was buried, with a hurried prayer, in the company of the humble comrades who fell about the same time; and so unwilling were the besieged to realise their loss, that, for days after, it was rumoured that he was recovering. The announcement of this catastrophe at home opened the eyes of the English people to the danger of Lucknow, and awoke that interest in its fortunes which has never ceased to this moment, when the British and Indian Governments have combined to show the only respect that was possible to the name of Sir Henry Lawrence by continuing his title to his son and family. The portrait prefixed to Mr. Rees's volume is a welcome addition to the gallery of the military worthies of England.

The personal adventures we have already mentioned will be but a small instalment of those which will interest, not perhaps the public which, in these active times, must forget in order to live on, but numerous circles of friends, each of which will have its hero and its history. There can be no monopoly of merit or of fame in a conflict in which there was no scope for large or continuous military operations, and in which the presiding genius of the defence, Captain Fulton, could only employ himself in repairing the damage of the hour, and in so directing his means of resistance as to weaken the enemy's position of aggression. The affair of Chinhut had rapidly closed the circuit of defence, and rendered its extension impossible, although some houses were left undestroyed which actually commanded the garrison, and from which incessant missiles of death were directed. It was attempted, and in some cases successfully, to undermine and blow up these accidental fortresses; while, on the part of the enemy, mines were skilfully driven under the walls and stockades, and more than once exploded within the barriers, compelling the besieged to make a rampart of their own bodies till the material protection could be repaired. skill of Captain Fulton in detecting these covert attacks had something