reduced that Mr. Rees tells us graphically how glad he was to run off with a bone from a friend's plate, and, at the time of the last relief, a fortnight would have exhausted all the provisions of any kind that were remaining. The straits of famine were not traversed, but they were long in sight. Never in military history did a body of men set out on an enterprise with a deeper enthusiasm of patriotic humanity than General Havelock and his followers to the relief of Lucknow. On the 13th of July Havelock had written: One of the prayers often repeated throughout my life since my school-days has been answered, and I have lived to command in a successful action;' and going back in his mind to his fellows in those distant years -Norris* must have rejoiced, and so must dear old Julius Hare, if he had survived to see the day.' How modest an estimate of his own worth in the tried and adventurous soldier of forty-two years' standing! how beautiful the memory of the friendship that had stretched over half a century! That battle of Futtehpore opened the way to the occupation of Cawnpore, and the fate of the helpless prisoners of the Nana seemed to prognosticate the doom of Lucknow. No disparity of force, no disadvantages of the season, no improbability of success, could hold back those chivalrous spirits. Battle after battle was won; the cholera and the sun-stroke slew many survivors of the combat; General Neill denuded his own position at Cawnpore to reinforce his friend. With a prescient mind did Havelock write to his wife on the 9th of August: 'as one whom you may see no more, for the chances of war are heavy in this crisis. Thank God for my hope in the Saviour: we shall meet in Heaven.' After every effort he had not advanced ten miles on the road to Lucknow, and he must fall back on Cawnpore. The letters of Major Crump, which appeared in the English journals, detail with exactness the desperate struggles and able manœuvres of those days; and now that their writer has bravely fallen in the very hour of the rescue, it is only just to record the earnestness which almost reproves the caution of Havelock's retreat, and desires to have gone on, at all odds, and against every obstacle. But, in truth, the return of the force to Cawnpore saved that place from the troops of the Nana, which *Sir William Norris, late Chief Justice in Ceylon and Singapore, the author of an affecting poem, On the Meeting of Three Schoofellows and Friends, after a Separation of Forty Years,' written in 1850, when he and Julius Hare 'welcome back Dear Havelock from the wars, to rest awhile In philosophic ease, and reckon o'er, As in the meditative moods of old, The perils past in distant barbarous lands.' were were gathering about it; and its advance to Lucknow, even if successful, would not have effectually aided the besieged. Except as an instalment of future reinforcements, the addition of a thousand men without provisions, and with no very large guns, would have been an incumbrance and a difficulty to the garrison. Havelock was now enabled to drive off the traitor's cavalry and to destroy his stronghold of Bithoor; yet when, even after a month's delay, he again marched into Oude, it was with a force which he himself felt hardly adequate to the attempt. 'I will do my best,' he writes, but the operation is most delicate, and there is too great a probability of the Residency falling into the hands of the foe before we can relieve it. The wretches will put every one to the sword, and the poor girl Mary (his niece) and her husband are shut up in the place.' The Alumbagh, a strongly-fortified outpost of the besiegers, separated from the town by a canal, was reached and won without any great loss, and became the base of his operations. The bridge over the canal was commanded by a powerful battery, and protected by a large force, which, for some cause not yet explained, it was resolved to encounter and subdue, rather than use the pontoons which they had brought with them and which might have enabled them to cross at some undefended part and perhaps gain the advantages of a surprise. As it was, after all the loss incurred by the capture of the bridge and its forts, they were compelled to leave the direct road, and to consume many valuable hours in reaching the Kaiser Bagh, which might now be regarded as the citadel of the rebels of Lucknow. Nothing but the most undaunted courage would have carried this column of men through the overwhelming numbers and furious slaughter. General Outram, who had ceded to Havelock the chief command, was wounded early in the day, but never got down from his horse. Every wall was loop-holed; and, besides the hosts of Sepoys, a new kind of enemy appeared as reconnoiterers of the march. The King of Oude had in his service a number of women, whom it amused him to arm and discipline, as a kind of guard. When our soldiers first came into contact with these Amazons, they declined to fire at them; but they soon found this courtesy was abused, and thus all who now showed themselves were shot down. The resistance at the Kaiser Bagh was so desperate that it was a question whether it was possible to traverse even the small space that lay between it and the Residency with the diminished and exhausted force; and when it was decided that it would be a still greater peril to leave the night to the enemy, success was only won by a fearful sacrifice of valuable livesamong them that of General Neill, who had actually reached the entrenchments, 2 M 2 entrenchments, but, hearing that some guns were in jeopardy, leaped forward again, was struck, and fell. A sortie was then made from the garrison, some intervening buildings were occupied, and in the last twilight of that 25th of September, Lucknow was relieved. There were many of these deliverers who had anticipated a very different reception than they found. One of them has described his expectation, by no means extravagant, that the enemy would have shrunk before the overpowering valour of our troops, and that the rescued would have come forth to meet them with radiant faces of joy and gratitude, with waving handkerchiefs, and shouts of ecstasy. He contrasts with this picture that of his real arrival, when, all but overcome with fatigue, rushing forward amid a shower of balls, he was seized by a rough and heavy hand, dragged through a door in a blank wall, and told he is in the Residency.' At another part we hear of three Highlanders struggling into a room where some ladies were sitting mute with anxiety, and, as they fell down exhausted, crying, 'God bless you!' The rough soldiers seized the children and kissed them, with tears and exclamations of 'This is better than Cawnpore.' It is but too true that several faithful Sepoys were bayoneted at their guns in the Bailey-Guard Battery by the infuriated soldiers of the 78th, who confounded them with other natives; none of them offered any resistance, and one, whose name should never be forgotten, waved his hand, and, with the words, It is all for the good cause; welcome, friend!' expired. In a certain sense the relieving force was now itself besieged, but the addition was invaluable in the revived spirit of the garrison, and the confirmed fidelity of the Sepoys. It is doubtful whether otherwise the latter could have much longer resisted the prayers and threats of their countrymen. Several had already deserted, as well as some half-castes and native Christians, who had families in the city at the mercy of the rebels. The material advantages also were considerable from the increased amount of available labour and the relief from harassing and continual military duty. There was now sufficient force not only to man effectively the present posts, but to take in more ground and occupy several positions from which the enemy had been able to inflict great damage upon us. In some of the houses thus taken possession of, were found chests of tea and spices, and, what was still more valuable, some of the ground was planted with gouian (sweet-potato) and sugarcane. It was amusing to see how every other kind of pillage was abandoned till these delicacies were exhausted. The wounded, who had been saved from such horrors as befell our poor fellows roasted alive or tortured to death death at the Mootee Mehal by the heathen that delight in cruelty,' and who, at least, might now die tended by friendly hands, occupied much interest and attention; none more than Mr. Thornhill, the husband of General Havelock's Mary' -a man of a family distinguished in the Indian service for their high ability and in the insurrection by their courage and misfortunes. As the deliverers approached, he had hastened forward to meet his victorious relative, and on saying, 'Uncle, can I do anything for you?' was answered, 'I have just heard Henry is wounded; can you bring him in?' Thornhill soon found his wounded cousin, and, procuring a dooley, had him carried into the entrenchments; but, at the gate, his own arm was shattered by a ball, and, while he was holding it up with the other hand, he was struck again. Captain Henry Havelock recovered to be, too soon, the inheritor of his father's name and honours, but within three weeks Mr. Thornhill shared the fate of all who had to submit to amputation in that pestilential atmosphere. The offensive operations which General Havelock now found necessary for the purpose of taking in new ground and of preparing for the advance of Sir Colin Campbell, cost many other valuable lives and gravely impaired his own health. His spare and hardy frame had been severely tried during the last four months; his very habits of endurance were telling upon him without his knowledge: though in no sense an old man, he could not undergo the continual exposure and disregard of personal comfort as he used to do, and perhaps the long-delayed prize of military command now brought with it more anxiety than it would have done had he received it in the due order of professional service. Passing his life in a country in which so much of the success of administration has been due to the courageous system of combining responsibility with the energy of youth, even so pious and noble a mind as his must have revolted at the strange exception of his own position, at the impotence and folly that had wasted in subordinate employment the abundance of his military knowledge and the power of his mind and character. It is a poor excuse to say that opportunities were wanting; they ought to have been found for him. His thorough acquaintance with the art of war was generally known, his zeal in his profession had been tested by years of experience and the most varied trials, his character and judgment were unimpeached—and yet this man was allowed to become a veteran before he was entrusted with independent authority. Only in the very crisis of the fate of India, only when the union of the highest spirit with the greatest caution was demanded, only when the most that can be was re quired quired of a commander-was Havelock for the first time weighted with responsibility; and, if that responsibility helped to bear him down, they who might have earlier inured him to the task and diminished his sense of its burden are not without a share in the calamity of his loss. On the 5th November Sir Colin Campbell left Cawnpore, and his force, which was comparatively large, was soon assembled at the Alumbagh. Thence, by a circuitous route, he forced his way to the Residency. The merits of this great act of strategy will be duly weighed in military history. Every step had been anticipated, every contingency provided for. Although, from the larger circuit, the troops advanced in many parts without continuously running the gauntlet in the way that Havelock's force had to suffer, yet the separate assaults on the Dilkoosha Palace, the Martinière College, and the Secunderbagh, were enterprises of the boldest daring and the most consummate skill. The resistance was everywhere worthy of a better cause. Fresh from the shambles of Cawnpore, the British troops were maddened with the revenge of men who had seen English-women dying staked down in the public thoroughfares and had drawn out the one living child from the accursed well. The words scratched on the wall of the chamber, of which Major Crump has left us so awful a representation, were the war-cries of our soldiers and the response to every prayer for quarter.* Other fortified edifices-the Shah Nadjuff, the Mess-house, and the Observatory -were taken at the point of the bayonet, under the well-directed fire of Sir W. Peel's guns; and, on the afternoon of the 17th, in the midst of the tumult, between the old entrenchments and the freshly-captured palaces, Sir Colin Campbell had the delight to meet Outram and Havelock. The communication between the Residency and the Dilkoosha Palace, extending through the whole line of strongholds, either occupied or destroyed, was from this time carefully kept up, and the ladies, the wounded, and the sick were removed to a comparatively healthy locality, though not without difficulty. Near the Secunderbagh they had to bend down and run as fast as they could, while volleys of grape were passing over their heads. Among the invalids was General Havelock, now showing dangerous symptoms of dysentery; and there on the 25th of November he died. He had said to the young English volunteer, Lord Seymour, 'Tell them in England that here we fight in earnest.' His last letter was written on the 19th; it mentions The three prints of the localities of the massacre are sold, we believe, for the benefit of Major Crump's widow. that |