And now Seereek Dhoondoo Punth purposed in the face of all India to invest himself with the ensigns and the titles of royalty. The contest had been fought out. The prize lay ready to his grasp. But it was no light matter to fix upon the auspicious hour when the Mahratta might take possession of the kingdom that he had carved out with his blade from the very heart of the dominions held by the alien race which had despoiled his sire. The soothsayers were consulted on this momentous point: but they were forestalled in their office by Dabeedeen, the individual who acted as agent for Tantia Topee in his dealings with the boatmen; and who now, stimulated by his success in that transaction, aspired to try his hand at divination. With the audacity of an amateur he at once named five in the evening of the thirtieth June as the season when, in accordance with the will of heaven, the Maharaja should proceed to Bithoor for the purpose of assuming his kingly functions. There must have been considerable discontent among the members of the Sacred College when they learned that this volunteer augur had been rewarded with a fee of five hundred rupees, and a horse on which to attend the ceremony. The Nana set forth, accompanied by Bala Rao, and in the course of the next day took his seat as Peishwa on the paternal throne. The consecrated mark was affixed to his forehead amidst the roar of guns, and the acclamations of a crowd composed chiefly of townsmen who had repaired thither to surrender in the shape of an honorary gift such of their valuables as had not already passed by a more direct channel into the coffers of the usurper.

Some there were, however, who on this august occasion might rejoice with unfeigned rapture. The sepoys were gladdened by an announcement that a large quantity of gold had been sent to the Magazine, and would there be fashioned into decorations for the ankles of those warriors who had borne the burden and heat of the great struggle. The Ganges Canal was bestowed as a perquisite upon Azimoolah. It is difficult to conceive what would have been the indignation of the Directors who sat in Leadenhall Street during the years of the Crimean war, had they been told that the very equivocal native prince who was for ever hanging about the India House, would one day become sole proprietor of the gigantic concern which grew dearer to their hearts the more it cost and the less it yielded.

That night the city of Cawnpore was illuminated, and the following proclamations were posted in all places of general resort:

"As by the kindness of God and the good fortune of the Emperor all the Christians who were at Delhi, Poonah, Sattara, and other places, and even those five thousand European soldiers who went in disguise into the former city and were discovered, are destroyed and sent to hell by the pious and sagacious troops, who are firm to their religion; and as they have been all conquered by the present Government, and as no trace of them is left in these places, it is the duty of all the subjects and servants of the Government to rejoice at the delightful intelligence, and carry on their respective work with comfort and ease."

"As by the bounty of the glorious Almighty and the enemy-destroying fortune of the Emperor the yellow-faced and narrow-minded people have been sent to hell, and Cawnpore has been conquered, it is necessary that all the subjects and landowners should be as obedient to the present Government as they have been to the former one; that all the Government servants should promptly and cheerfully engage their whole mind in executing the orders of the Government; that it is the incumbent duty of all the peasants and landed proprietors of every district to rejoice at the thought that the Christians have been sent to hell, and both the Hindoo and Mahomedan religions have been confirmed; and that they should as usual be obedient to the authorities of the Government, and never suffer any complaint against themselves to reach to the ears of the higher authority."

There is something quaint in the notion of a paternal Government setting the national mind at ease as to the damnation of the enemy, and ordaining a public rejoicing over, "the delightful intelligence." Our authorities never went so far as to imitate the example: but Calcutta journalism did its best to supply the deficiency. "Fas est et ab hoste doceri" was the motto of that remarkable department of ephemeral literature. Among other gems which in 1857 adorned the poetry corner of the "Englishman," one stands conspicuous both for sentiment and expression:

Be it observed that Lord Canning, Sir John Peter Grant, Mr. Charles Buxton, and Sir Henry Rich are here esteemed unworthy even of the partial and secondary felicity dealt out to Teeka Singh and Mungul Pandy. A critic who takes into account the creeds held by the respective writers will of the two productions regard with less aversion the performance of the Nana. That year of sin and horror afforded what was in truth an ill commentary upon the injunction to practise the mercy which rejoiceth against judgment, and on the oft-repeated assurance that in forgiveness and forbearance, if in nothing else, the disciple may emulate his master. And we wonder, forsooth, that our missionaries labour in vain to exalt the effective power of our faith in the eyes of those very heathen who are conscious how in the day of temptation talked and acted men calling themselves after the name of Him whose last miracle was the healing of His captor, and whose last prayer was for the pardon of His murderers!

On the first of July the prisoners were removed from the Savada Hall to a small building north of the canal, situated between the black city and the Ganges. It was their final change of lodgings. To this day they occupy those premises on a lease which no man may dispute. This humble dwelling, the residence of some poor quill-driver, Hindoo or half-caste, as the case may be, had long stood amidst a group of sightly villas and edifices of social resort, unnoticed except by a casual sanitary commissioner, and distinguished only by a numeral in the map of the Ordnance Survey. It has since been known in India as the Beebeegur, or House of the Ladies; in England as the House of the Massacre. It comprised two principal rooms, each twenty feet by ten; certain windowless closets intended for the use of native domestics; and an open court some fifteen yards square. Here, during a fortnight of the Eastern summer, were penned two hundred and six persons of European extraction: for the most part women and children of gentle birth. The grown men were but five in number: the three gentlemen of Futtehgur, who are supposed to have been Mr. Thornhill, the judge, and Colonels Smith and Goldie: together with Mr. Edward Greenway, and his son Thomas.

If the various degrees of wretchedness are to be estimated by the faculty for suffering contained in the victim, then were these ladies of all women the most miserable. Few or none amongst them had been aware that in some corner of the mansion beneath whose roof their happier days were passed, there existed such foul holes as those in which they now lay panting by the score. It was much if they had cared to hazard a supposition that "the servants slept somewhere about the compound." They had neither furniture, nor bedding, nor straw; nothing but coarse and hard bamboo matting, unless they preferred a smoother couch upon the bare floor. They fed sparely on cakes of unleavened dough, and lentil-porridge dished up in earthen pans without spoon or plate. There was some talk of meat on Sundays, but it never came to anything. Once the children got a little milk. The same day the head-bearer of Colonel Williams came to pay his respects to the daughter who was the sole survivor of that officer's household. "I could not," he says, "get near the ladies on account of the sentries, but saw that food was being distributed to them. It consisted of native bread and milk. I remonstrated with a soldier who had formerly served under my master, and begged of him to supply with better food people who had lived in a very different way. He gave me eight annas" (twelvepence) "to go to the bazaar and buy some sweetmeats. I did so; and on my return Miss Georgiana and a married lady came into the verandah to meet me. Miss Georgiana repeated to me her mother's injunctions about my going to her brother. I gave them the sweetmeats, and had little time to speak to them, for, seeing me, the other ladies came out into the verandah: on which the sentries turned me out."

The matron of these female prisoners, whom it took so little to keep in order, was a woman described as tall; of a fair complexion; twenty-eight or thirty years in age, but with a few grey hairs. She went by the nickname of "the Begum," and her character was no better than could be looked for in a waiting-maid of the courtezan who then ruled the circle of the Nana. She superintended a staff of sweepers, who furnished the captives with their food. The attendance of such debased menials was in itself the most ignominious affront which Oriental malice could invent: and even these were provided exclusively for the humiliation of our countrywomen, and might do nothing for their comfort. A young Brahmin, who chanced to look over the fence of the enclosure, saw some ladies washing their own dirty linen. With the irrepressible loquacity of an Hindoo he began asking some strangers who were standing by whether there was no washerman who could undertake to do for the Mem Sahibs: an ill-timed curiosity which procured him a slap on the face and a night in the guard-room.

Seventy-five paces from the abode where our people were confined stood an hotel owned by a Mahomedan proprietor: an erection of considerable size, daubed with bright yellow paint. Allured, probably, by the gaudiness of colour, an attraction which no genuine native can resist, the Nana had selected this building as his head-quarters. A couple of guns were planted at the entrance of the compound, and a strong detachment of his retainers kept guard under the portico. Two spacious centre rooms were reserved for the Maharaja's public receptions. One of the wings was set apart for the duties of the kitchen and the altar: and, side by side with religion, cooking went merrily on through every hour of the twenty-four. In the other Dhoondoo Punth lived from day to day in a perpetual round of sensuality, amidst a choice coterie of priests, pandars, ministers, and minions. The reigning beauty of the fortnight was one Oula or Adala. She was the Thais on whose breast sunk the vanquished victor, oppressed with brandy and such love as animates a middle-aged Eastern debauchee. She is said to have counted by hundreds of thousands the rupees which were lavished on her by the affection and vanity of her Alexander: and could well afford to spare one of her suite to look after the prisoners for the fraction of time during which they were likely to need her services. Every night there was an entertainment of music, dancing, and pantomime. The hit of the evening was made by a buffoon who took off amidst shouts of laughter the stiff carriage of an English officer.

The noise of this unhallowed revelry was plainly audible to the captives in the adjoining house; and, as they crowded round the windows to catch the breeze which sprang up at sunset, the glare of torches and the strains of barbarous melody might remind them of the period when he who was now arbiter of their existence thought himself privileged if he could induce them to honour with a half-disdainful acceptance the hospitality of Bithoor. They sometimes got a nearer view of the festivities. The Begum daily took across two ladies to the Nana's stables, where they were set down to grind corn at a hand-mill for the space of several hours. They generally contrived to bring back a pocketful of flour for the children.

Hardship, heat, wounds, and want of space and proper nourishment released many from their bondage before the season marked out by Azimoolah for a jail delivery such as the world had seldom witnessed. A native doctor, himself a prisoner, has left a list of deaths which occurred between the seventh and the fifteenth of the month. Within these eight days, of which one was incomplete, as will be seen by those who read on, there succumbed to cholera and dysentery eighteen women, seven children, and an Hindoo nurse. There is a touching little entry which deserves notice. In the column headed "Names" appear the words "eck baba" (one baby): under that marked "disease" is written "ap se" (of itself).

Dying by threes and fours of frightful maladies, the designations of which they hardly knew; trying to eat nauseous and unwonted food, and to sleep upon a bed of boards; tormented by flies, and musquitoes, and dirt, and prickly heat, and all the lesser evils that aggravate and keep for ever fresh the consciousness of a great misfortune: doing for the murderer of their dearest ones that labour which in Asia has always been the distinctive sign and badge of slavery: to such reality of woe had been reduced these beings whose idea of peril had once been derived from romances, and who had been acquainted with destitution only through tracts and the reports of charitable institutions. Alas for the delicate Mem Sahibs, and the pretty Missy Babas, for whom nothing had formerly been too dainty and well-appointed! Alas for the handy and patient soldiers' wives, who had followed their good men into the discomfort of barrack life to be rewarded thus! Alas for sturdy Bridget Widdowson, and tender Mrs. Moore, who bore on her bosom a child destined never to lisp the name of his brave father! Her perchance one of the victors, whose son or brother had fallen beneath her husband's sword, (for he was no sluggard in the onset), might see weeping like Andromache over her toil at the weary mill, and might say: "This was the wife of him who of all the English fought the best, whenever the battle waxed hot around their wall." And, so speaking, he would renew her grief at thought of the man who was no longer there to shield her from the day of bondage. But he, floating on his face past some distant city, or stranded on a bank of sand trodden by none save the vulture and the crocodile, saw not how she was misused, nor heard when she cried for succour.

The number of captives diminished so fast that the Nana began to fear lest he should soon have no hostages wherewith to provide against the consequences of a possible reverse. They were accordingly driven twice a day into the verandah, and forced to sit there until they had inhaled as much fresh air as, in the judgment of the Begum, would support an English constitution for the space of twelve hours. This substitute for the morning gallop and the evening promenade was very distasteful to our ladies, on account of the idlers who came to stare, and remark how odd a Lady Sahib looked when neither on horseback nor in her carriage. The poor creatures were overheard whispering among themselves that the British never used their prisoners thus.

It is probable that from this circumstance originated the rumour concerning European females who had been publicly maltreated in the bazaar. Two or three sentences must here be written upon those fables which it is our misfortune that we once believed, and our shame if we ever stoop to repeat. Delhi, Cawnpore, and Futtehgur were the three stations in which any considerable multitude of our countrywomen were placed under the disposal of the mutineers. With regard to the two latter places, if we except one single case of abduction, it is absolutely certain that our ladies died without mention, and we may confidently hope without apprehension, of dishonour. Those revolting stories which accompanied to Southampton the first tidings of the tumult at Delhi may all be traced to some gossip regarding the fate of Miss Jennings, the daughter of the chaplain, and her friend, Miss Clifford. It is now ascertained beyond all question that these girls were sitting in an upper room of the palace gateway, when they heard on the stairs a rush of footsteps and a clattering of scabbards, and were cut down dead as they rose from their chairs to learn the cause of this strange intrusion.

Some, who love to attribute every event to the special interposition of Providence, have insisted that nothing short of fabricated indignities, and tales of mutilation equally untrue and more easily disproved, could have kindled the explosion of wrath and pity which sent forth by myriads the youth of England again to subdue Hindostan beneath a Christian yoke. Piety, unwilling to pronounce authoritatively on such a matter, will be loth to imagine that God provoked men to utter and to credit lies for the furtherance of any purpose which could conduce to His glory. As must ever be in the order of things by Him determined, the evil seed produced evil fruit. Grapes came not of those thorns, nor figs of those thistles. The murder of a hundred families, the ruin of a thousand homesteads, were incentives capable of exalting our national enthusiasm to the requisite pitch without the aid of exaggeration or invention. Those hateful falsehoods serve but to evoke from the depths of our nature the sombre and ferocious instincts which religion and civilization can never wholly eradicate. To their account unhappy India may charge most of the innocent blood that was spilt and the bad blood that remains.

It was not long before the usurper began to experience the proverbial uneasiness of a crowned head. At no time a favourite with the Cawnpore population, he now was cordially detested by all the respectable inhabitants; who, after his downfall, testified their hatred by refusing to pronounce his name without the addition of some disparaging epithet. The majestic appellations of Maharaja and Peishwa were at once cut down to "Nana soor," "that pig of a Nana:" and this was the mildest and the most decent of all his agnomina, with the exception, perhaps, of "budmash," which answers as nearly as possible to the French "coquin." "That great budmash, the Nana," occurs in the peroration of one of Nanukchund's outbursts of Hindoo eloquence. For the present, however, the townspeople evinced their ill-will by a tacit but very effective opposition to the new rÉgime. His requisitions of money and supplies met with no response; and he could procure nothing except by open force, which he was not slow to employ. The city had, indeed, little motive to love him or the state of things which he represented. A Mahomedan author describes the aspect of a locality where the rebellion had obtained the ascendancy in these graphic words:—"Since the day of my arrival I never found the bazaar open, unless it were a few poor shops. The shopkeepers and the citizens are extremely sorry for losing their safety, and curse the mutineers from morning to evening. The people and the workmen starve, and widows cry in their huts."

The class who had most cause to pray for the return of order were the natives of Bengal Proper, then settled in the Upper Provinces for purposes of commerce. Impoverished, suspected, menaced, and outraged, they were conscious that neither life, limb, nor liberty were worth a fortnight's purchase. Many a rich Bengalee within the borders of the insurrection sat all day behind closed blinds, with a pistol in his girdle, a bag of jewels in his turban, and a horse ready saddled at the back door of his garden. And it was not without reason that these men suffered so cruelly: for they were only less loyal than the English themselves. The wealthy, industrious, and effeminate denizens of Lower Bengal had no desire to see the many-headed and irrational despotism of a PrÆtorian guard substituted for the mild and regular sway of old John Company. The conduct of the soldiery rendered them exceedingly uncomfortable and not a little indignant: and they lost no opportunity of wreaking their spite upon the turbulent mercenaries who would not allow honest folks to go about their business in peace. The sepoys who mutinied at Chittagong and Dacca, both of which stations lie within the limits of Bengal, met with such hostility from the country-people that they gave up all thoughts of moving on Calcutta, and endeavoured to make their way into Assam. Few ever reached the frontier. They literally rotted away in the jungle. Some died of starvation: some of fever and ague. The foragers were knocked on the head by the peasantry, skilled, like all Hindoo villagers, in the play of the quarter-staff. The stragglers were carried off by wild animals which swarm amidst the swamps and forests that fringe the great rivers of eastern India. At length, driven into a corner, they one morning cut the throats of the women who had hitherto accompanied their march, and dispersed into the wilderness, to re-appear not even on the gallows. They could not have fared worse amidst the moors of Yorkshire or Northumberland.

It is painful to remember how we requited the attachment and fidelity of Bengal. At a time when all good citizens, without distinction of birth and creed, should have united in one firm front against the common foe, it was the delight of many among the English residents in the capital to heap insult and accusation on their dark-skinned neighbours. Then, in the presence of that portentous danger, every condition of soul, from the height of magnanimity to incredible baseness, might be observed in striking and instructive contrast. While at one end of Northern India stout Sir John was fighting his province in the interests of the general weal; denuding himself of British soldiers, and committing his existence and reputation to the faith of Sikh allies; doing steadfastly in the hour the work of the hour; remedying the evil which was sufficient unto the day, and, like a good Christian as he was, leaving to God the things of the morrow: at the other end a clique of Englishmen, driven insane by terror and virulence, were plotting how to form themselves into a Committee of Public Safety, depose the viceroy, seize the reins of the state, and have their will upon the native population. While at Arrah a handful of heroes were defending a billiard-room against drought, and hunger, and cannon, and the militia of a warlike region, backed by three regiments of regular infantry: in Calcutta heaven and earth were being moved to eject from the Photographic Society a Bengalee member, who had given vent to some remarks reflecting upon the habits and tone of low European loafers.

July had not well set in before the insurgents of Cawnpore showed symptoms that marked the wilfulness and inconstancy of soldiers who have once forgotten their duty. Idleness bred discontent, and discontent speedily ripened into sedition. The honeymoon had not yet drawn to a close, and already this unnatural connexion between the Nana and the army was distasteful to the stronger of the contracting parties. Regiments which had refused to obey such men as Ewart and Delafosse were not likely to entertain any very profound reverence for an effete Hindoo rake. The Peishwa evinced an inclination to enjoy for a while the contemplation of his recent dignity in the retirement of Bithoor: but the troops had no notion of letting their paymaster out of sight, and brought him back into their midst by violence which they hardly cared to disguise beneath the semblance of respect. On the third of the month a donation was distributed among their ranks, and accepted with anything but gratitude. Few got as much as, in their own opinion, they deserved: and all less than they desired. What they had was not in a portable form. Government silver proved to be an inconvenient burden for the loins; and, if things went ill, it might procure a still more unpleasant girdle round the neck. There were disagreeable anecdotes current regarding certain gentlemen, late of the Company's service, who had been executed at Allahabad on the discovery about their persons of some new copper coins, which had never issued from the Treasury by a regular payment, and which they were suspected of having intended to put into premature circulation. There accordingly was a brisk demand for gold. Azimoolah ordered it to be proclaimed in the bazaar by beat of drum that bankers should supply the mutineers with mohurs at a minimum price of twenty-one rupees. The Cawnpore exchange, however, had so little confidence in the star of the maharaja, that these coins could not be bought for less than twenty-eight rupees, which was an advance of seventy-five per cent. on their ordinary price. The sepoys, who were not more acquainted than European privates with the laws which regulate the money-market, and knew only that they had ended by pocketing little more than half the cash that they expected, were soon talking about a fresh change of masters. The Mussulman faction gained ground rapidly and surely. Men began to recollect how cleverly the Nunhey Nawab had managed his battery without any prior experience in gunnery, and drew the conclusion that he might be equally successful if he could be bribed by an offer of sovereignty to turn his attention towards the rate of discount.

But military greediness, and Moslem ambition, and the jealousy of the nobles, and the enmity of the bourgeoisie ceased ere long to occupy the thoughts of the tyrant. These sources of uneasiness were absorbed in one great and pressing terror, when, at the first doubtful and intermittent, but more frequent ever and clearer, came surging up from the south-west the fame of the advancing vengeance. Couriers mounted on swift camels were sent down the road, and returned with the intelligence that the British were certainly approaching by forced marches, laying a telegraph as they proceeded, and hanging the inhabitants of the villages within which were found pieces of the old wire. This information naturally produced a strong effect upon men whose crimes were not such as to meet with impunity under the new scale of penalties that seemed to have been adopted by the Sahibs. The consternation was so deep and universal that the Nana had recourse to his customary palliative. On the fifth of July he issued the following proclamation:—

"It has come to our notice that some of the city people, having heard the rumours of the arrival of the European troops at Allahabad, are deserting their houses and going out into the districts. Be it therefore proclaimed in each lane and street of the city that regiments of cavalry, and infantry, and batteries have been despatched to check the Europeans either at Allahabad or Futtehpore; that the people should therefore remain in their houses without any apprehension, and engage their minds in carrying on their work."

This manifesto was probably considered too tame and brief for such a crisis. Next day there appeared a truly notable state-paper, which, to judge from internal evidence, may be attributed to the pen of the prime-minister. It is regarded as the masterpiece of that author, and may serve for a model to all Governments that undertake to enlighten the public mind by means of an official organ.

"A traveller just arrived at Cawnpore from Allahabad states that before the cartridges were distributed a Council was held for the purpose of taking away the religion and rites of the people of Hindostan. The Members of Council came to the conclusion that, as the matter was one affecting religion, seven or eight thousand Europeans would be required, and it would cost the lives of fifty thousand Hindoos, but that at this price the natives of Hindostan would become Christians. The matter was therefore represented in a despatch to Queen Victoria, who gave her consent. A second council was then held, at which the English merchants were present. It was then resolved to ask for the assistance of a body of European troops equal in number to the native army, so as to insure success when the excitement should be at the highest. When the despatch containing this application was read in England, thirty-five thousand Europeans were very rapidly embarked on ships, and started for Hindostan, and intelligence of their despatch reached Calcutta. Then the English in Calcutta issued the order for the distribution of the cartridges, the object of which was to make Hindostan Christian; as it was thought that the people would come over with the army. The cartridges were smeared with hog and cow's fat. One man who let out the secret was hung, and one imprisoned."

"Meantime, while they were occupied in carrying out their plan, the ambassadors of the Sultan of Roum" (Turkey) "in London sent word to his sovereign that thirty-five thousand Europeans had been despatched to Hindostan to make all the natives Christians. The Sultan (may Allah perpetuate his kingdom!) issued a firman to the Pacha of Egypt, the contents of which are as follows: 'You are conspiring with Queen Victoria. If you are guilty of neglect in this matter, what kind of face will you be able to show to God?'"

"When this firman of the Sultan of Roum reached the Pacha of Egypt, the Lord of Egypt assembled his army in the city of Alexandra, which is on the road to India, before the Europeans arrived. As soon as the European troops arrived the troops of the Pacha of Egypt began to fire into them with guns on all sides, and sunk all their ships, so that not even a single European escaped. The English in Calcutta, after issuing orders for biting the cartridges, and when these disturbances had reached their height, were looking for the assistance of the army from London. But the Almighty by the exercise of his power made an end of them at the very outset. When intelligence of the destruction of the army from London arrived, the Governor-General was much grieved and distressed, and beat his head.

"Done by order of his Grace the Peishwa. 1273 of the Heigra."

But the onward march of the English was not to be checked by quotations from Oordoo poets. It behoved that some weapons besides the eloquence of Azimoolah and the sign-manual of Dhoondoo Punth should be found, and found quickly. The rebel chiefs were enjoined to muster their retainers, and Teeka Singh to beat up the bazaars for sepoys. Reluctant and dispirited the truants turned out to fight for a sovereign whom they were scheming to dethrone, and for plunder which had already by some magical process melted away to half the original value. Baba Bhut undertook to provide carriage for the stores and ammunition: and accordingly impounded the conveyances of the town, particularly all vehicles formerly the property of European gentry: a measure which caused no small vexation to the mutineers who had been cutting a dash in the buggies that had belonged to our subalterns. The merchants received extensive indents for tents and water-proof great-coats: a most essential article of equipment during the first weeks of the rainy season. The Ordnance Office reported itself to be short of percussion caps; and the whole staff of the department was at once set to work at converting detonating muskets into matchlocks. These preparations were completed by the ninth of July, on which day Brigadier Jwala Pershad left the station in the direction of Allahabad at the head of detachments from three regiments of cavalry and seven of infantry, together with a strong body of feudal militia: in all some thirty-five hundred sabres, bayonets, and lances. The column was accompanied by twelve guns of various pattern and calibre, which the result of the earliest action enabled General Havelock to describe with minute accuracy.

They did well to hurry: for the avenger was abroad. Late in May there landed at Calcutta a wing of the First Madras Fusileers, under the command of Major Renaud and Lieutenant-Colonel Neill: who, after securing an order which enabled them to draw upon the Patna Treasury, proceeded straight to the Terminus situated on the bank of the Hooghly facing the capital, with the intention of performing the first stretch of their journey by rail. A train was on the point of starting; and the stationmaster, jealous, it may be, to obtain his new line a reputation for punctuality, refused to delay until the rear-guard could be embarked in the cars. Hereupon Neill, an Indian veteran, who during a long absence from home had lost what little reverence he ever possessed for the authority of Bradshaw, clapped the official under arrest in his own waiting-room, and gave the guards and stokers to understand that he had constituted himself traffic-manager for the time being. Travelling in this high-handed style he reached Benares when least expected either by the English residents, who were waiting to have their throats cut, or by the native force, which was looking out for an excuse to mutiny, and which now found a pretext in the arrival of Neill. After a rough and tumble fight he bundled the insurgents out of the place; quieted the fears of the European population; and at once began his arrangements for penetrating to Allahabad, where a feeble garrison, closely invested by an enormous rebel host, was defending a mile and a half of wall with scanty prospect of deliverance.

On the evening of the ninth June he sent on in bullock-carts a hundred and seventeen of his people; despatched thirty-six others in a small steamer; and packed himself, with two officers and forty-four men, into such stage-carriages as had shafts and axles. Posting in the East is never a very expeditious method of locomotion; and at this conjuncture every stable along the Grand Trunk Road had been plundered more or less thoroughly. But the agents of the Dawk Company knew their man: and it may safely be asserted that the grooms were less sleepy than usual, and the drivers less sulky; that the horses jibbed not quite so pertinaciously, and the wheels came off at somewhat wider intervals. No promise of treble gratuities from an embryo member of Parliament, hurrying up country in search of statistics, ever so surely cut short a stoppage or an altercation, as did the rattle of the panels of the foremost van, which betokened that Neill Sahib was awake, and in another moment would be thrusting out his head to ask what the matter was. When the animals broke down, strings of peasants were harnessed to the traces: and by the afternoon of the second day the relieving army, numbering a short four dozen of exhausted men, had found their way into the beleagured place. On the following morning the struggle began in earnest, and continued for a full week. Successive instalments of Fusileers swarmed in by road and river: while the enemy had soon consumed most of their courage and all their ball-cartridge, and were reduced to load with morsels of telegraph wire: a device whereby, over and above the effect of their fire, they got rid of an article the possession of which came under the chapter of capital offences in the Criminal Code as revised by Colonel Neill. That officer by the nineteenth June had re-conquered the city of Allahabad, and cleared the district of insurgents. He now found leisure to make some inquiries into the past, which resulted in a series of executions: not more than the crisis warranted, (for, though an austere man, he was no savage,) but quite numerous enough, in the expressive dialect of the day, to "establish a great funk."

Meanwhile the heat was such as no words can adequately describe. The Europeans died of sunstroke at an average rate of two a day. Our troops had outstripped their Commissariat, and could get neither bread, nor coffee, nor drugs, nor fans, nor screens of moistened grass: appliances which, known to an English housekeeper as "luxuries" and "comforts," in the estimation of those who have spent an Indian June in the tented field, merit quite another denomination. Unfortunately, though the larder and the medicine-chest were empty, the cellars of Allahabad were only too well furnished. They were pillaged by some Sikhs, who, without applying for a license, at once opened a lively trade: selling beer, brandy, madeira, and champagne at a uniform charge of sixpence the bottle. Cholera soon broke out among our poor fellows, living as they did on wine and spirits without even a halfpenny-worth of bread in a temperature of a hundred and thirty-five degrees. In the course of seventy-two hours forty deaths occurred in the ranks of the Madras regiment. The Colonel bought up and destroyed the whole stock of liquor; ransacked the neighbourhood in quest of wholesome provisions; removed his patients to the most healthy quarters which he could command; and was repaid by seeing the mysterious disease vanish as suddenly as it had appeared, after carrying off one out of every nine among his soldiers.

As when a slender rill, ominous to an experienced eye, trickles through the crack in an embankment behind which is gathered, not long there to stay, an immense weight of water: so came along the valley of Ganges this little band, the forerunner of a mighty multitude of warriors. Every morning brought into Allahabad a fresh batch of Englishmen, jaded, indeed, and suffering cruelly from the climate, but eager to be led forward to rescue or revenge. Continental authors who descant glibly on the stolidity and insensibility of the British private might have learned a useful lesson could they have overheard the talk of those pale and sickly lads. By the last day of June Neill judged himself strong enough to detach towards Cawnpore two guns and eight hundred men, half of whom were Europeans. The column was placed under the orders of Major Renaud, who pushed up the road; fighting as occasion offered; tranquillizing the country by the very simple expedient of hanging everybody who showed signs of insubordination; and using all endeavours to procure information concerning the fate of the Cawnpore garrison. On the fourth July he was met by a report of the capitulation and the massacre. Corroborated, and contradicted, and qualified, and again confidently affirmed, rumour insensibly matured into undoubted fact: but to this day no man ventures to name the precise hour when he himself became assured that the worst was true.

With July arrived Brigadier-General Havelock, who, after having employed a week in collecting his resources, moved northwards from Allahabad with six cannon and a thousand English soldiers. That was not a joyous expedition. The hearts of all were occupied with forebodings of evil which they dared not shape into words: and the face of creation seemed to reflect the universal gloom. As in that fantastic canvas of old DÜrer, whereon the knight is journeying towards an unknown goal in unhallowed company, so to the fancy of those who were not incapable of vivid emotion even inanimate and irrational nature partook that shade of the future that was on every soul. They waded in a sea of slush, knee-deep now, and now breast high, while the flood of tropical rain beat down from overhead. As far to right and left as eye could pierce extended one vast morass: and the desolate scene was enlivened by no human sound. Nothing was heard save the melancholy croaking of the cicalas, mingled with an under hum of countless insects. The air was heavy with the offensive odour of neem-trees. There were no indications that the column was traversing an inhabited country, except the bodies which hung by twos and threes from branch and signpost, and the gaunt swine who by the roadside were holding their loathsome carnival. After three days of steady toil through the mud and the water Havelock was made aware that the enemy were ahead, and that Renaud was advancing unsupported into the teeth of an overwhelming force. Then our troops hastened forward, and made one march of five leagues and another of eight beneath a blazing sun; (for at this point the weather cleared, and they lost the protection of the clouds;) until they caught up the Major and his detachment, and finally halted in a state of entire prostration five miles from the town of Futtehpore, where Jwala Pershad was encamped with all his chivalry.

It was early morning. Our weary people were enjoying their "little breakfast" of tea, that pleasantest of Indian meals, when the rebel vanguard came pouring down the causeway. Havelock, who wished earnestly to give his harassed soldiers rest, resolved to wait until this ebullition should expend itself. But the affair grew serious; and he had soon no choice but to accept the challenge and draw up his army. In front were the guns, protected by a hundred skirmishers armed with that Enfield rifle which, then a rarity, is now a familiar object to every other household in Great Britain. The Fusileers and the Seventy-eighth Highlanders struggled through the swamps on the right. The Sixty-fourth Regiment went forward in the centre; and the Eighty-fourth on the left, supported by a battalion of Punjabees. The cavalry moved along some firm ground which lay on the extreme flank.

Never was there such a battle. "I might say," writes the General, "that in ten minutes the action was decided, for in that short space of time the spirit of the enemy was utterly subdued. The rifle fire, reaching them at an unexpected distance, filled them with dismay; and, when Captain Maude was enabled to push his guns to point-blank range, his surprisingly accurate fire demolished their little remaining confidence. In a moment three guns were abandoned to us on the chaussÉe, and the force advanced steadily, driving the enemy before it on every point. Their 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. Their fire scarcely reached us. Ours, for four hours, allowed them no repose."

In fact it was a mere rout: a memorable triumph of outraged civilization. The Second Cavalry made a flourish which for a while checked our onset: but the troopers of that redoubted corps soon had had enough of English lead, and felt no appetite for a taste of English steel. Accustomed to deal with feebler adversaries, they were spoilt for fighting with grown men. By noon nothing was to be seen of the mutineers within six miles of Futtehpore save their dead, their accoutrements, and their whole park of artillery. Flying in irretrievable disorder they spread everywhere that the Sahibs had come back in strange guise; some draped like women, to remind them what manner of wrong they were sworn to requite; others, conspicuous by tall blue caps, who hit their mark without being seen to fire. Our list of killed and wounded contained not one British name: though a dozen or so of Sowars, Jemmadars, and Russeldars made it as incomprehensible to a home reader as an Indian bulletin should ever be. But the bloodless day was not costless: for twelve of our privates were slain outright by the sun. Our irregular horsemen, who recognised some comrades in the hostile ranks, had flatly refused to charge, and were consequently dismounted and disarmed: a precaution that diminished our cavalry to a score of volunteers.

When the Nana learned how his soldiers had conducted themselves he flew into a violent passion, which could be relieved only by vicarious letting of blood. After attending at the execution of eight ill-fated couriers, who had been intercepted from time to time with English despatches in and about their persons, he felt sufficiently composed to face the emergency. Determined to reserve his own sacred self for the supreme venture, he sent into the field a Patroclus in the person of Bala Rao, whose stake in the cause was indeed no light one. Every available mutineer was equipped and marched down the road, and the captured pieces were replaced from the magazine. On the morrow the Peishwa's brother followed his reinforcements, and took up a position round a hamlet named Aoung, twenty-two miles south of Cawnpore. He found the rebel mind in high perturbation. The gossip of the camp-fires ran mainly on the disagreeable sensations produced by strangulation; and the disquisitions of certain among the sepoys who had witnessed that operation were so circumstantial and picturesque that many who had come best off in the partition of the spoil doffed the remains of their uniforms, and stole away with their riches to the seclusion of their native villages. The behaviour of those who remained proved that the army had rather gained than lost in efficiency by the withdrawal of such as had nothing to acquire and something to enjoy.

Their valour was soon to be tested. At nine in the morning of the fifteenth up came the English; Maude and his battery leading the way; with the Fusileers and the sharpshooters of the Sixty-fourth close at his heels. Shrapnel shells and conical bullets quickly cleared away everything from our front, and strewed the highway with corpses, weapons, and abandoned tents and waggons. The Second Cavalry caught sight of our baggage, which had been left beneath a grove in the care of a slender guard, and fancied that they discerned an occasion for distinguishing themselves after their own fashion. But they were lamentably disappointed. The regiment had to bustle back with empty pockets and not a few empty saddles, and thenceforward was contented to rest on the renown of previous exploits.

Bala Rao withdrew his troops behind a stream which crossed the road a league in rear of the contested village. The water was too deep to be forded. The bridge was strongly fortified, and defended by two twenty-four pounders. Our force proceeded to the attack after a slight tiffin, and a short siesta for all whose nerves were firm enough to allow them a snatch of sleep between two of the rounds in a fight for such a prize. Maude raked the hostile cannon, which stood in a salient bend of the river: while the Fusileers advanced in skirmishing order, enraged at the fall of gallant Major Renaud, whose thigh had been broken early in the day. After plying their rifles with deadly effect, they suddenly closed up, and flung themselves headlong on the bridge. Bala Rao, to whom cannot be charged the cowardice which a popular maxim associates with cruelty, had purposed to maintain his post to the last: but on this occasion he had not to do with a front-rank of seated ladies and children, and a rear-rank of gentlemen whose hands were strapped behind their backs. With set teeth, and flashing eyes, and firelocks tightly clenched, pelted by grape and musketry, our people converged at a run upon the narrow passage. When they came near enough to afford the enemy an opportunity of observing on their countenances that expression which the Sahibs always wear when they do not mean to turn back, the rebel array broke and fled. The fugitives took with them their general, who carried off in his shoulder a lump of Government lead, to which he was most heartily welcome; but did not find time for the removal of their artillery. There passed into our hands four guns; which cannot be said to have been dearly purchased at six casualties a-piece.

Wounded as he was, Bala Rao brought to Cawnpore the tidings of his own defeat. He went straight to the quarters of his brother, which were soon crowded with the leading rebels, who came to hear what had happened, and to impart their apprehensions and suggestions. The deliberations of this improvised council were at first confused and desultory. Some were for retiring to Bithoor; some for uniting their forces with the mutineers of Futtehgur. At length, by a slender majority of voices, it was decided to make one more stand south of Cawnpore.

When this resolution had been adopted, Teeka Singh asked whether the Nana had made up his mind as to what should be done with the prisoners; and hinted that, in case things went ill, it might be awkward for some then present should the Sahibs find such a mass of evidence ready to their hands; nay more, that the chances of a reverse would be considerably lessened if the captives were once put out of the way. The British were approaching solely for the purpose of releasing their compatriots, and would not risk another battle for the satisfaction of burying them. They would be only too glad of an excuse to avoid meeting the Peishwa in the field. Dhoondoo Punth was not hard to convince on such a point. Whenever bloodshed was in question, he showed himself the least impracticable of men. In the present instance he would never have required prompting, but for the importunity of the royal widows, his step-mothers by adoption, who had sent him word that they would throw themselves and their children from the upper windows of the palace if he again murdered any of their sex. As a pledge that this was no vain parade of philanthropy they had abstained from food and drink for many hours together. In order to anticipate their remonstrances, directions were given to set about the work forthwith. In fact, for every reason, 'twas well that it should be done quickly. The assembly broke up; but all who could spare the time stayed for at least the commencement of such a representation as none could hope to behold twice in a lifetime.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, or between that and five, some of the Nana's people went across to the house of bondage, and bade the Englishmen who were there to come forth. Forth they came;—the three persons from Futtehgur, and the merchant and his son;—accompanied by the biggest of the children, a youth of fourteen, who, poor boy, was glad perhaps to take this opportunity of classing himself with his elders. Some ladies pressed out to watch the course which the party took, but were pushed back by the sentries. The gentlemen inquired whither they were going, and were answered that the Peishwa had sent for them on some concern of his own. But all around was a deep throng of spectators, the foremost rows seated on the ground, so that those behind might see: while an outer circle occupied, as it were, reserved places on the wall of the enclosure. There, beneath a spreading lime-tree, lounged Dhoondoo Punth, the gold lace of his turban glittering in the sunshine. There were Jwala Pershad; and Tantia Topee; and Azimoolah, the ladies' man; and Bala Rao, the twinges of whose shoulder-blade heightened his avidity for the coming show. When this concourse was noticed by our countrymen, their lips moved as if in prayer. At the gate which led into the road they were stopped by a squad of sepoys, and shot dead. Their bodies were thrown on to the grass which bordered the highway, and became the sport of the rabble; who, doubtless, pointed to them in turn, and said: "That Sahib is the Governor of Bengal; and this is the Governor of Madras; and this is the Governor of Bombay." Such was the joke which during that twelvemonth went the round of Northern India.

About half-an-hour after this the woman called "the Begum" informed the captives that the Peishwa had determined to have them killed. One of the ladies went up to the native officer who commanded the guard, and told him that she learned they were all to die. To this he replied that, if such were the case, he must have heard something about it; so that she had no cause to be afraid: and a soldier said to the Begum: "Your orders will not be obeyed. Who are you that you should give orders?" Upon this the woman fired up, and hurried off to lay the affair before the Nana. During her absence the sepoys discussed the matter, and resolved that they would never lift their weapons against the prisoners. One of them afterwards confessed to a friend that his own motive for so deciding was anxiety to stand well with the Sahibs, if ever they got back to Cawnpore. The Begum presently returned with five men, each carrying a sabre. Two were Hindoo peasants: the one thirty-five years of age, fair and tall, with long mustachios, but flat-faced and wall-eyed: the other considerably his senior, short, and of a sallow complexion. Two were butchers by calling: portly strapping fellows, both well on in life. The larger of the two was disfigured by the traces of the small-pox. They were Mahommedans, of course; as no Hindoo could adopt a trade which obliged him to spill the blood of a cow.

These four were dressed in dirty white clothes. The fifth, likewise a Mussulman, wore the red uniform of the Maharaja's body-guard, and is reported to have been the sweetheart of the Begum. He was called Survur Khan, and passed for a native of some distant province. A bystander remarked that he had hair on his hands.

The sepoys were bidden to fall on. Half-a-dozen among them advanced, and discharged their muskets through the windows at the ceiling of the apartments. Thereupon the five men entered. It was the short gloaming of Hindostan:—the hour when ladies take their evening drive. She who had accosted the officer was standing in the doorway. With her were the native doctor, and two Hindoo menials. That much of the business might be seen from the verandah, but all else was concealed amidst the interior gloom. Shrieks and scuffling acquainted those without that the journeymen were earning their hire. Survur Khan soon emerged with his sword broken off at the hilt. He procured another from the Nana's house, and a few minutes after appeared again on the same errand. The third blade was of better temper; or perhaps the thick of the work was already over. By the time darkness had closed in, the men came forth and locked up the house for the night. Then the screams ceased: but the groans lasted till morning.

The sun rose as usual. When he had been up nearly three hours the five repaired to the scene of their labours over-night. They were attended by a few sweepers, who proceeded to transfer the contents of the house to a dry well situated behind some trees which grew hard by. "The bodies," says one who was present throughout, "were dragged out, most of them by the hair of the head. Those who had clothes worth taking were stripped. Some of the women were alive. I cannot say how many: but three could speak. They prayed for the sake of God that an end might be put to their sufferings. I remarked one very stout woman, an half-caste, who was severely wounded in both arms, who entreated to be killed. She and two or three others were placed against the bank of the cut by which bullocks go down in drawing water. The dead were first thrown in. Yes: there was a great crowd looking on: they were standing along the walls of the compound. They were principally city people and villagers. Yes: there were also sepoys. Three boys were alive. They were fair children. The eldest, I think, must have been six or seven, and the youngest five years. They were running round the well (where else could they go to?) and there was none to save them. No; none said a word, or tried to save them."

At length the smallest of them made an infantile attempt to get away. The little thing had been frightened past bearing by the murder of one of the surviving ladies. He thus attracted the observation of a native, who flung him and his companions down the well. One deponent is of opinion that the man first took the trouble to kill the children. Others think not. The corpses of the gentlemen must have been committed to the same receptacle: for a townsman who looked over the brink fancied that there was "a Sahib uppermost." This is the history of what took place at Cawnpore, between four in the afternoon of one day and nine in the morning of another, almost under the shadow of the church-tower, and within call of the Theatre, the Assembly Rooms, and the Masonic Lodge. Long before noon on the sixteenth July there remained no living European within the circuit of the station.

But there were plenty at no great distance: for, about the turn of day, our force, after travelling five leagues, rested for a space in a hamlet buried amidst a forest of mango groves. A mile to northward lay the sepoy host, entrenched across the spot where the byway to Cawnpore branches from the Grand Trunk Road. Seven guns commanded the approaches, and behind a succession of fortified villages were gathered five thousand fighting men, prepared to strike a last blow for their necks and their booty. Havelock resolved to turn the flank of the Nana: for he was aware that, if an opponent assails a native army otherwise than as it intended to be assailed when it took up its position, the general for a certainty loses his head, and the soldiers their heart. The word was given, and our column defiled at a steady pace round the left of the hostile line. The Fusileers led, with two field-pieces in their rear. Then came the Highlanders, and the bulk of the artillery; followed by the Sixty-fourth, the Eighty-fourth, and the Sikh battalion. For some time the mutineers seemed to be unconscious of what was going on: deceived by clumps of fruit-trees, that screened our movement; and distracted by the sharp look-out which they were keeping straight ahead. But soon an evident sensation was created along their whole array. Their batteries began discharging shot and shell with greater liberality than accuracy; while a body of cavaliers pushed forward in the direction of our march, and made a demonstration that did not lead to much. As soon as the enemy's flank was completely exposed to the English attack, our troops halted, faced, and advanced in the order wherein they found themselves, covered by two companies of the Fusileers extended as skirmishers. Colonel Hamilton bade the pipes strike up, and led the Seventy-eighth against a cluster of houses defended by three guns. His horse was shot between his legs: but the kilts never stopped until they were masters of all inside the village. Three more pieces were captured by Major Stirling and the Sixty-fourth regiment. The rebel infantry were everywhere in full retreat: for the last half-hour nothing had been seen of the cavalry: and the battle appeared to be won.

Our fire had already ceased. The officers were congratulating each other on their easy victory: the privates were lighting their cheroots, and speculating on the probability of an extra allowance of rum: when of a sudden a twenty-four pounder, planted on the Cawnpore Road, opened with fatal precision upon our exhausted ranks. Two large masses of horsemen rode forward over the plain. The foot rallied, and came down with drums beating and colours flying: and the presence of a numerous staff, in gallant attire, announced that the Peishwa himself was there, bent on daring something great in defence of his tottering throne. Meanwhile our artillery cattle, tired out by continual labour over vile roads and under a burning sun, could no longer drag the cannon into action. The volunteers did whatever might be done by a dozen and a half planters mounted on untrained hunters. The insurgents grew insolent: our soldiers were falling fast: and the British general perceived that the crisis was not yet over. He despatched his son to the spot where the men of the Sixty-fourth were lying down under such cover as they could get, with an order to rise and charge.

They leapt to their feet, rejoicing to fling aside their inaction: and young Havelock placed himself at their head, and steered his horse straight for the muzzle of the gun: mindful, perhaps, how, four and forty years before, a light-haired strippling of his name and blood showed our allies on the banks of the Bidassoa that an English steed could clear a French breastwork.[5] But our people were not Spaniards: and more than one indignant veteran asked in grumbling tones whether the corps might not be trusted to the guidance of its own officers. Nor did their major need that any one should show him the way, when once he had dismounted, and thrown to a groom the bridle of his fidgety little charger, a shapely bay Arab, on whose back, four months later, he was shot dead amidst his shattered regiment in a glorious but ineffectual attempt to retrieve a disastrous day.

And then the mutineers realized the change that a few weeks had wrought in the nature of the task which they had selected and cut out for themselves. The affair was no longer with mixed groups of invalids and civilians, without strategy or discipline, resisting desperately wherever they might chance to be brought to bay. Now from left to right extended the unbroken line of white faces, and red cloth, and sparkling steel. In front of all, the field officer stepped briskly out, doing his best to keep ahead of his people. There marched the captains, duly posted on the flank of their companies; and the subalterns, gesticulating with their swords; and the sober, bearded serjeants, each behind his respective section. Embattled in their national order, and burning with more than their national lust of combat, on they came, the unconquerable British Infantry. The grape was flying thick and true. Files rolled over. Men stumbled, and recovered themselves, and went on for a while, and then turned and hobbled to the rear. But the Sixty-fourth was not to be denied. Closer and closer drew the measured tramp of feet: and the heart of the foe died within him, and his fire grew hasty and ill-directed. As the last volley cut the air overhead, our soldiers raised a mighty shout, and rushed forward, each at his own pace. And then every rebel thought only of himself. Those nearest the place were first to make away: but throughout the host there were none who still aspired to stay within push of the English bayonets. Such as had any stomach left for fighting were sickened by a dose of shrapnel and canister from four light guns, which Maude had driven up within point-blank range. Squadron after squadron, battalion upon battalion, these humbled Brahmins dropped their weapons, stripped off their packs, and spurred, and ran, and limped, and scrambled, back to the city that was to have been the chief and central abode of sepoy domination.

Nanukchund was hanging about the vicinity all the while the conflict was in progress. "On the fifteenth," he writes, "I perceived some sepoys and troopers running away in great confusion, and exclaiming that they would have an easy victory, as the British were few, and would soon be despatched. I was then sitting in an orchard, when I observed a shopkeeper running up. He came and seated himself under a tree near me, and told me that he was hastening to pack up his wife and children, as the Europeans would arrive shortly, and would spare nobody. I thought to myself, this must be true, and the gentlemen must be very savage. I returned to the city, and saw several villagers with their dresses changed coming along the banks of the Ganges, and I joined them. The terror in the hearts of all was so great that they asked each other no questions."

On the morrow, the day of the final struggle, Nanukchund says: "I was in the streets soon after noon-time. People who have seen the fighting declare that the rebels are running back, and that the mutineers are trying to escape from the battle. Intelligence of this sort was brought from time to time till it got dusk. The bad people are all crestfallen, and advising each other to quit the town. I saw Kalka, a barber by caste, who took service as a trooper under the Nana, running in for his life, and trying to get something to eat from the bazaar. A little while after it was proclaimed by beat of drum, that the inhabitants must not get alarmed, as there were only one hundred Europeans remaining: and that whoever brought in the head of an Englishman should receive a hundred rupees. But news came that the Sahibs were close upon the cantonments, and the man who was beating the drum abandoned it and fled."

At nightfall Dhoondoo Punth entered Cawnpore upon a chestnut horse drenched in perspiration, and with bleeding flanks. A fresh access of terror soon dismissed him again on his way towards Bithoor, sore and weary, his head swimming and his chest heaving. He was not in condition for such a gallop, the first earnest of that hardship and degradation which was thenceforward to be his portion. Far otherwise had he been wont to return to his palace after a visit of state in the English quarter, lolling, vinaigrette in hand, beneath the breath of fans, amidst the cushions of a luxurious carriage, surrounded by a moving hedge of outriders and running footmen. Once again in the home of his fathers he slept as the wicked sleep, whose sin has found them out; and, when the morrow's sun had set, he departed in craven trepidation, and was never after seen among the haunts of peaceful men. But he was true to himself, even in the crash of his falling dynasty: for, as he stepped on board the barge that was to transport him to the confines of Oude, he bethought him of the young mother who was recovering from the pains of childbirth in the recesses of the female apartments. For the first time he had practised economy in his enjoyments, and was now well repaid: for his savings had borne high interest. There were two English lives to take where a fortnight ago there had been but one. And then, having filled to overflowing the measure of his guilt, he passed away like a thief in the night, and left his wealth to the spoiler, and his halls to the owl and the snake.

Some months subsequently two of our spies, who had been commissioned to obtain information about Miss Wheeler, passed six days in the train of the fugitive Nana in the depths of an Oude wilderness. In the vicinity of his encampment they overtook a sepoy, with whom they got into conversation. He asked why they had come into the desert. They represented themselves as desirous of taking service with one of the Peishwa's eunuchs, and reminded the soldiers that they were old acquaintances of his own. He seems to have been a good-natured fellow: for he told them that it was a dangerous neighbourhood for strangers, but promised, since they had ventured that far, to introduce them as his fellow-villagers. They found from twelve to fifteen thousand people collected in the jungles. Everything betokened distress, disorder, and discontent. Food was scarce and dear. The Maharaja had appropriated the single pair of tents; so that his followers were fain to bivouack under the foliage, starving on rice bought at twelvepence a pound; wringing out their tattered garments, wet with the eternal rain; and sighing for the curry-pots and tight roofs of the Cawnpore cantonments. It is interesting to learn that the most poverty-stricken and dejected of all the mutineers were the troopers of the Second Cavalry. The horses had been reduced to less than a hundred, and the artillery to a couple of field-pieces. The Nana, attended by a servant with an umbrella, went daily to bathe in a river which flowed at the foot of the hill whereon his pavilion stood. A crowd regularly assembled to pay their respects as he passed. The two men especially noticed certain officers of his household: the treasurer and paymaster; the driver of his bullock-carriage; his chief baker, and chief gardener; his shampooer, his sweeper, his boatman, and his wrestlers, both Hindoo and Mahomedan. Bala was there, with the scar of an English bullet on his shoulder, which he has probably by this time carried to an obscure grave. The royal brothers were said to be very anxious to get back to ease and civilization. Their wives were disposed upon an adjoining range of heights, in company with the widows of Bajee Rao, who deserved better than to be transported about against their will in the suite of that unromantic Pretender. The ladies of the court travelled in six palanquins, and the gentlemen on as many elephants.

Yet a few weeks, and Dhoondoo Punth, stripped of even these relics of his former affluence and grandeur, escaped across the Nepaulese marches to a life of suspense, and toil, and privation amidst the Himalayan solitudes. The end of that man we know not, and may never know. Perchance, as they hover over some wild ravine or wind-swept peak, the eagles wonder at the great ruby which sparkles amidst the rags of a vagrant who perished amidst the snows of a past December. Perchance another generation will hear, not without a qualm of involuntary awe and pity, that the world-noted malefactor is at last to expiate misdeeds already classical. He may have eluded human justice. His hemp may be still to sow. But his place in history is fixed irreversibly and for ever. The most undaunted lover of paradox would hardly undertake to wash white that ensanguined fame.

"In the month of July, a year and a half ago," so deposes a native tradesman, eighteen months after the massacre, "I was in my house at Ooghoo, when ten or eleven persons, who had fled from Cawnpore, came to my shop, and asked for betel-leaf to chew. I showed them new betel-leaf; when two of them, both Hindoos, told me to fetch good old betel-leaf, or they would take my head off. I accordingly went to another seller of betel-leaf, and bought the kind they asked for, and told them the price of the same, namely ten pice. The two men said they would only give me two. I replied that the betel-leaf was worth ten pice, and that they ought at the least to give me eight pice: on which they said that they would kill me and all my family. I stated I was a poor man, and had got the betel-leaf from another person. They then said that they had shown no pity to the ladies and children whom they had just murdered, and who clung to their feet, and that they would have no pity upon me. They frightened me greatly, showing me a naked sword, covered with blood, and said that they would cut off my head with the same. I wept," says this weak-minded young man, "and my mother, hearing me cry, came out, and begged of them not to hurt me, and that she would let them have more betel-leaf. After this they drew water from a well close to my house, near a temple, and, conversing among themselves, I heard their companions ask the two men how many ladies they had killed. They replied that they had murdered twenty-one ladies and children, and had received a reward of twenty-one rupees; and added that at first the Nana ordered the sepoys to massacre the ladies; but they refused; and that they two, with three others, carried out the Nana's orders."

Another resident of Ooghoo thus tells his story: "The truth is that, shortly after the Nana fled, I was sitting under a tamarind tree, where all the men of the village assemble to talk, and was conversing with a few others about the massacre of the Europeans at Cawnpore. We were saying that the Nana ought not to have murdered the women and children: when Souracun, Brahmin, of Ooghoo, who is thirty-five years old, and has a defect in his eye, stated that the officials sent him to kill the ladies; that he struck one with his sword, which bent, and he then felt pity, and did not again strike. He showed us the bent sword." On this occasion Souracun seems to have sunk the twenty-one rupees: which, however, must have lasted him a good while if he made all his purchases at the same rate as he bought betel-leaf. "All the village heard that he was one of the murderers: but, since the British rule has been re-established, no one speaks of it for fear he would be hung, and his death be laid on their head."

There is good reason to believe that Souracun and his fellow met with their deserts. Mr. Batten, now in high office at Agra, was the first representative of settled government in the district of Cawnpore after the troubles began to subside. He had the honour of removing the gibbet from the ladies' well, and so tempered ferocity with common sense that those who once railed at him as squeamish have at length come to approve his conduct in spite of themselves. But he did not bear the sword in vain. There were brought before him two Hindoos, one advanced in years, and the other much his junior. These men were found guilty of having compassed the death of an Eurasian, and doomed to the gallows. No sooner had their sentence been pronounced than they poured forth a torrent of foul abuse, and were dragged from the dock shouting, and kicking, and cursing their judge and all his relatives on the maternal side.

Now, the Oriental, always polite, becomes doubly courteous when death is in immediate prospect. Then, more than ever, is he anxious to set the company at their ease, and to make away with any disagreeable sense of the false position in which the hangman stands towards the felon. A civilian at Lucknow was superintending an execution when the rope, which had doubtless borne more than one such strain, gave way, and the convict fell to the ground. As he rose, he turned to the Englishman, and said in the tone wherein men utter social conventionalities: "Sahib, the rope's broke." He felt that it was incumbent on him to do what he could towards relieving the general embarrassment arising from a pause in the proceedings, awkward for all parties, but especially for the commissioner, who was endowed with sensibility and genuine refinement.

Batten, than whom no man was more conversant with the native character, regarded the fury of his two prisoners as an extraordinary phenomenon, and requested an explanation from the bystanders. He was told that the pair were piqued at being condemned on so paltry a charge as the murder of a half-caste, after having taken the principal part in a strange and note-worthy exploit, at which they hinted in their cups; and that, poor as they seemed, they rode fine horses, and wore gorgeous shawls, which they were accustomed to speak of as having been presented to them by the Nana in token of his esteem and satisfaction.

Few of the Cawnpore mutineers survived to boast of their enterprise. Evil hunted these violent men to their overthrow. Those whom the halter and the bayonet spared had no reason to bless their exemption. Many whom pillage had enriched were slain for the sake of that which they had about them by banditti who confidently presumed that the law would not call in question the motives of him who exterminated a sepoy. All who returned to their villages empty-handed were greeted by their indignant families with bitter and most just reproaches. They had been excellently provided for by the bounty of God and the Company. Their pay secured them all the comforts which a Brahmin may enjoy, and left the wherewithal to help less fortunate kinsmen. Yet they flung away their advantages in wilful and selfish haste. They sinned alone and for their private ends; but alone they were not to suffer. They had changed the Sahibs into demons, and had conjured up tenfold more of these demons than had hitherto been conceived to exist. They had called down untold calamities upon the quiet peasantry of their native land. And all this misery they had wrought in pursuit of the vision of a military empire. Let them return to the desert, there to feed without interruption on the contemplation of their power and pre-eminence. Such were the taunts with which they were driven forth again into the jungles: some to die by the claws of tigers on whose lair they had intruded for refuge, or beneath the clubs of herdsmen whose cattle they had pilfered in the rage of hunger: others to wander about, drenched and famished, until amidst the branches of a tree into which they had climbed to seek safety from the hyÆnas and the ague, or on the sandy floor of a cave whither they had crept for shelter from the tempest, they found at once their death-bed and their sepulchre. The jackals alone can tell on what bush flutter the shreds of scarlet stuff which mark the spot where one of our revolted mercenaries has expiated his broken oath.

Soon after daybreak on Friday the seventeenth July, the English van was marching across the desolate plain which lay to southward of the city. Already the magical effect of the tropical rain had clothed that expanse of parched and dusty soil with luxuriant grass, in which rustled the feet of our soldiers as they pushed along, now stumbling over a hidden cannon-ball, and now kicking up the fragments of a sepoy skeleton. They traversed the deserted line of rebel posts, and halted beneath the walls of the roofless barracks, pitted with shot and blackened with flame, and beside the grave at whose mouth are scattered the bones of our people, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. Three Fridays back from that very morning the treaty of surrender was being attested by a faithless signature, and sworn to with perfidious vows: and again at a like interval of time the men of the Second Cavalry were firing their stables, and saddling their horses, and buckling on the swords that were to be fleshed in unmanly strife. So much had been done and endured within a period of six weeks and a space of six miles.

"At half past six A.M." writes Nanukchund, "the British force arrived in cantonments outside the city. Those of the citizens who were well-wishers to the Government brought them bread, butter, and milk. A great crowd of the town's people assembled to see what was going on. I also, who had not stepped out of my house for a month and a half for fear of being murdered, now came out and went to cantonments. Generals Havelock and Neill, and a number of other officers, were standing there. Fruiterers, milkmen, buttermen, bakers, and other sellers of provisions, were in attendance with their dollies. Those who were aware of what was coming had made preparations on the night previous by having provisions cooked in the bazaar. A little after eight the rebels who had mined the magazine set fire to the powder, and fled. The report of the explosion was so terrific, that the doors of city-houses fell off their hinges."

Our old friend was now in high spirits. His turn had come, and he showed himself fully equal to the occasion. "I continued," he says, "to attend on the Sahibs with a view of performing acts of loyalty. I set to work to find out what men of the city have been loyal, and which of them disloyal, and how some of the public officers came to present themselves to the Nana, while others contrived not to present themselves. I laboured night and day at great personal inconvenience to learn full particulars about these people. I questioned only honourable and upright men, and no others." He is especially disturbed at the assurance of one, Narain Rao, "who, just as I anticipated, wishes to pass himself off as a well-wisher to the Government. But there is a great crowd at this moment, and the Sahibs have no time to spare. It is also very difficult to find witnesses against him by private enquiries, and I see no chance of filing a complaint about it before any officer." It seems strange that the Sahibs could not afford time to pay off an old score that had really been incurred.

After the first outbreak of joy and welcome the inhabitants of Cawnpore began to be aware that the English were no longer the same men, if indeed they were men at all. The citizens, with their wives and children, poured forth into the country by crowds, without stopping to calculate whether they could establish their innocence. At such an assize, and in the eyes of such a jury, absence was the only defence that could avail aught. From noon till midnight, on the Lucknow and Delhi highway were to be seen immense mobs rushing eastward and westward in headlong haste. They did well both for their own security and for our honour. The heat of the climate and the conflict, the scarcity of food and the constant presence of disease, the talk which they had heard at Calcutta, the deeds that they had been allowed and even enjoined to commit during their upward progress, had depraved the conscience and destroyed the self-control of our unhappy soldiers. Reckless as men who for many weeks had never known what it was to be certain of another hour's life,—half starved, and more than half intoxicated,—they regarded carnage as a duty and rapine as a pleasure. Havelock, in a report to the Commander in Chief, thus writes: "I have ordered all the beer, wine, spirits, and every drinkable thing at Cawnpore, to be purchased by the Commissariat. It will then be guarded by a few men. If it remained at Cawnpore it would require half my force to keep it from being drunk up by the other half, and I should not have a soldier in camp. While I was winning a victory on the sixteenth some of my men were plundering the Commissariat on the line of march."

And so the general purchased all the liquor. Oh that he could have bought up the blood also! It was idle to count upon the forbearance of poor ignorant privates, when the ablest among our officers had forgotten alike the age in which he lived, and the religion that he professed. This is an extract from a letter which would that Neill had never found occasion to indite!

"Whenever a rebel is caught he is immediately tried, and, unless he can prove a defence, he is sentenced to be hanged at once: but the chief rebels or ringleaders I make first to clean up a certain portion of the pool of blood, still two inches deep, in the shed where the fearful murder and mutilation of the women and children took place. To touch blood is most abhorrent to the high-caste natives. They think, by doing so, they doom their souls to perdition. Let them think so. My object is to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly, barbarous deed, and to strike terror into these rebels. The first I caught was a soubahdar, or native officer, a high-caste Brahmin, who tried to resist my order to clean up the very blood he had helped to shed: but I made the provost-martial do his duty, and a few lashes soon made the miscreant accomplish his task. When done, he was taken out and immediately hanged, and, after death, buried in a ditch at the roadside."

For a parallel to such an episode we must explore far back into the depths of time. Homer relates the punishment that befell those maidservants, who in the palace of Ithaca had been unmindful of what they owed to their absent lord. First they bore forth from the hall the dead bodies of their paramours and placed them in the vestibule, staggering beneath the weight: while Ulysses urged on the work by word and gesture: and they laboured at the ungrateful task, wailing, and shedding bitter tears. And afterwards with water and sponges they washed the tables and the seats: and Telemachus and his henchmen scraped with spades the floor of the chamber. But, when they had set the house in order, the women were led out, and cooped up for a while in a corner of the well-fenced court, in a strait place, whence escape was none. And then Telemachus slung from the roof the cable of a dark-prowed ship, and made it fast to a pillar of the colonnade, stretching it high and taut, so that no foot might feel the ground. And, as when swift thrushes or doves, making for their nest, have dashed into a snare which a fowler had planted across the thicket: so these women were fastened in a row, with a halter round every neck, to die in unseemly fashion. And their feet fluttered a moment in the air: but not for long.

It is curious that an act, which the Pagan poet allows an old moss-trooper and his son to perpetrate in the flush of revenge and victory, should have been revived by a Christian warrior after the lapse of twenty-five centuries. And it must be owned that Neill surpassed his model: for apparently the primary object of Ulysses was to sweep away the traces of the butchery, and make his refectory clean and habitable: an unpleasant drudgery, which, as with the simplicity of a primitive Greek he reflected, might as well be performed by the least worthy members of his household before they were taken to execution: whereas the Englishman desired only to wound the sentiments of the doomed men, and prolong their prospect of death with a vista of eternal misery. And this, when the rallying-cry of the insurrection was the preservation of caste:—when in the wide-spread confidence that our faith did not seek to extend itself by carnal weapons lay the salvation of the British supremacy!

But there was a spectacle to be witnessed which might excuse much. Those who, straight from the contested field, wandered sobbing through the rooms of the ladies' house, saw what it were well could the outraged earth have straightway hidden. The inner apartment was ankle-deep in blood. The plaster was scored with sword-cuts: not high up, as where men have fought; but low down, and about the corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid a blow. Strips of dresses, vainly tied round the handles of the doors, signified the contrivance to which feminine despair had resorted as a means of keeping out the murderers. Broken combs were there, and the frills of children's trousers, and torn cuffs and pinafores, and little round hats, and one or two shoes with burst latchets, and one or two daguerrotype-cases with cracked glasses. An officer picked up a few curls, preserved in a bit of card-board, and marked "Ned's hair, with love:" but around were strewn locks, some near a yard in length, dissevered, not as a keepsake, by quite other scissors. All who on that day passed within the fatal doors agree positively to assert that no inscription of any sort or kind was visible on the walls. Before the month was out, the bad habit, common to low Englishmen, of scribbling where they ought not, here displaying itself in an odious form, had covered the principal buildings of Cawnpore with vulgar and disgusting forgeries, false in date, in taste, in spelling, and in fact.

There were found two slips of paper: one bearing in an unknown hand a brief but correct outline of our disasters. On the other a Miss Lindsay had kept an account of the killed and wounded in a single family. It runs thus, telling its own tale:

"Entered the barracks May 21st.
Cavalry left June 5th.
First shot fired June 6th.
Aunt Lilly died June 17th.
Uncle Willy died June 18th.
Left barracks June 27th.
George died June 27th.
Alice died July 9th.
Mamma died July 12th."

The writer, with her two surviving sisters, perished in the final massacre.

The library of the captives was small indeed: but such books as they had were to the purpose. The earliest comers discovered among the vestiges of slaughter a treatise, entitled "Preparation for Death:" and a bible, which must have travelled in Major Vibart's barge down to Nuzzufgur and back to Cawnpore, as may be gathered from the following record:

"27th June. Went to the boats.
29th. Taken out of boats.
30th. Taken to Sevadah Kothi. Fatal day."

Fatal indeed: for that was the day when "the wives sat down, each by her husband;" when "the sepoys, going in, pulled them away forcibly; but could not pull away the doctor's wife, who there remained;" when "one Sahib rolled one way, and one another, as they sat." That bible was a present from the dead to the dead: for on the fly-leaf appeared this address: "For darling Mamma, from her affectionate daughter, Isabella Blair:" the "Bella Blair," whose fate is mentioned in the letter from young Masters to his father. The list was closed by a church service, from which the cover had been stripped, and many pages at the end torn off. Unbound and incomplete, it had fulfilled its mission: for it opened of itself where, within a crumpled and crimson-sprinkled margin, might be read the concise and beautiful supplications of our Litany. It concluded, that mutilated copy, with the forty-seventh Psalm, wherein David thanks the Almighty for a victory and a saving mercy:

"O, clap your hands together, all ye people: O, sing unto God with the voice of melody. He shall subdue the people under us: and the nations under our feet. God is gone up with a merry noise, and the Lord with the sound of a trump. God rejoiceth over the heathen: God sitteth on his holy seat. God, which is very high exalted, doth defend the earth, as it were with a shield."

Such were the printed lines which, from amidst the rent tresses, and shivered toys, and the scraps of muslin dyed with the most costly of all pigments, lay staring up to high heaven in tacit but impressive irony.

It is good that the house and the well of horror have been replaced by a fair garden and a graceful shrine. But there let piety stay her hand. A truce thenceforward to that mistaken reverence which loves to express sorrow and admiration in guineas, and rupees, and the net product of fancy bazaars! Too often already have architect and sculptor disguised the place where a notable thing was done. India still contains some sacred plots untouched by the art of the decorator,—some shapeless ruins more venerable than dedicated aisle or stately mausoleum. Still, amidst the fantastic edifices of Lucknow, hard by a shattered gateway, rise or lie prostrate the pillars of a grass-grown portico. Beneath that verandah, in the July evening, preferring the risk of the hostile missiles to the confinement of a stifling cellar, was dying Henry Lawrence, the man who tried to do his duty. It was not time and the weather that made bare of plaster the brickwork of the old gate. There from summer into winter,—until of his two hundred musketeers he had buried four-score and five, and sent to hospital three-score and sixteen,—earning his Cross in ragged flannel trousers and a jersey of dubious hue, burly Jack Aitken bore up the unequal fray. An Englishman does not require any extraneous incentives to emotion when, leaning against the beams of that archway, he recalls who have thereby gone in and out, bent on what errands, and thinking what thoughts. Between those door-posts have walked Peel, and Havelock, and gentle Outram, and stout Sir Colin, heroes who no longer tread the earth. Through the same entrance passed, but not erect, the form of a tall grey soldier, stern even in death, with a bullet-wound in the centre of his forehead, whom the orderlies announced in whispers to be Neill of the Madras army. At Delhi still, before the police-court in the Street of Silver, may be seen the platform whereon, naked to the waist and besmeared with dirt and blood, were exposed to three autumn suns the corpses of the last descendants of Timour, slain and spoiled by one who knew neither pity nor scruple. Still, after an evening stroll along the ridge outside the battlements, as on his return he descends the slope rough with crag and brushwood, the visitor may come upon a mound of rubbish so beaten with shot that it is not easy to discern what of it is artificial rampart, and what is broken ground. The rocks coated with frequent films of lead, and the wreck of a small temple, testify that this is the famous post, known in military history as the "Sammy-house picket," which Briton, and Sikh, and Ghoorka, fighting shoulder to shoulder, hardly made good throughout the hundred days of the terrible siege. On the summit of the tottering dome, at a height of some twelve feet from the soil, presides a Hindoo idol with an elephant's head. There he sits, a stupid little god, with arms reposing on his knees, gazing across the valley at the minarets of the ancient capital, as though he had never seen any stranger sight than the tourist in his white dress and dust-coloured helmet, or heard any sounds more wild and maddening than the chirping of the grasshoppers, and the lowing of the belated cattle as they stray homeward to their stalls. Not urn, nor monolith, nor broken column is so fit a monument for brave men as the crumbling breastwork and the battered wall. And in like manner the dire agony of Cawnpore needs not to be figured in marble, or cut into granite, or cast of bronze. There is no fear lest we should forget the story of our people. The whole place is their tomb, and the name thereof is their epitaph. When the traveller from Allahabad, rousing himself to learn at what stage of his journey he may have arrived, is aware of a voice proclaiming through the darkness the city of melancholy fame,—then those accents, heard for the first time on the very spot itself which they designate, recall, more vividly than written or engraven eloquence, the memory of fruitless valour and unutterable woe.

[5] Napier's "History of the War in the Peninsula." Book xx. Chapter iv.