Assault and Delhi. A.D. which he organised and despatched the detachments in suc1857 cession. It was at length found possible to dispense with the services of the Brigadier's movable column, 2,500 strong, in the Punjab, and it was sent down to Delhi and reached the cantonment on the 14th August, and imparted fresh courage to the exhausted troops. The Brigadier had preceded it by a week, and was welcomed in the camp with a feeling of homage as if he had been the very god of war. The great siege train, which occupied a line of thirteen miles, was wending its way from Ferozepore, and the revolted Neemuch brigade, always considered the flower capture of of the sepoy army, which was now in Delhi, was sent out with eighteen guns to intercept it, as it was feebly guarded by the last detachment which Sir John could spare. Brigadier Nicholson marched out to encounter this force, and obtained a complete victory. The train entered the camp on the 3rd September, and the erection of batteries within breaching distance was pushed on with vigour. For a week fifty guns and mortars poured an incessant stream of shot and shell upon the walls and bastions, and on the 13th the breaches were reported practicable. At three on the morning of the 14th the assault was delivered on four points. Brigadier Nicholson, who led the attack, drove the enemy before him, but, to the infinite regret of the whole army was mortally wounded in the arms of victory. The other columns, with one exception, were equally successful, but the resistance of the enemy was desperate, and the operations of this the first day entailed a loss in killed and wounded of sixty-six officers and 1,104 men. The troops had made a lodgment within the walls, but the sepoys continued to dispute every inch of ground, and it was six days before all the important and defensible posts within the vast circle of the city were captured. For several days an uninterrupted fire had been kept up on the well-fortified palace. On the 20th the gates were blown up and the troops rushed into it, but the king had fled to the tomb of Humayoon, a few miles to the south of the city. The next day Captain Hodson proceeded to the tomb and dragged him, together with his favourite wife, who had been one of the chief instruments in stirring up the revolt, and her son, to the palace, where they were lodged as prisoners. The following day he went in search of the two sons and the grandson of the king, and as an attempt was about to be made to rescue them shot them dead on the spot with his own hand. Several months after the king was tried by a military commission in the imperial palace and A.D. found guilty of having ordered the murder of forty-nine 1857 Christians at Delhi, of having waged war upon the English Government, and urged the people by proclamation to subvert it. Lord Canning determined to spare his life, but sentenced him to be transported to Burmah; and thus ended the royal house of Baber three hundred and thirty-two years after he had ascended the Mogul throne. The total number of killed and wounded during the siege was 3,537, a heavy return of casualties, but he reduction of the city broke the neck of the rebellion. Result of the Oude and Rohilcund were still in revolt; the capture of Gwalior contingent, 10,000 strong, was still in Delhi. open arms, and Central India was in possession of the mutineers, but so completely had the revolt been identified with the possession of the ancient capital that the capture of it satisfied the country that the star of Britain was again in the ascendant, and that the final extinction of the mutiny was only a question of time. All the machinations in the Punjab, which the protraction of the siege had fostered, were dispelled. The rebel army was deprived of its organization by the loss of its citadel, while the British Government was daily gaining strength by the arrival of the regiments brought by sea. The liberation of the force engaged in the siege of Delhi likewise proved the salvation of the neighbouring city of Agra. It was attacked by the Neemuch and other mutineers on the 6th July, but owing to the incompetence of Brigadier Polwhele, the European troops sent against them were foiled, and retreated to the fort, where for nearly three months between 5,000 and 6,000 people of all rank, ages, and colours were shut up. At the beginning of October a large body of rebels came down and threatened it, when the young Brigadier Greathead, who had been sent from Delhi to clear the Dooab of the mutineers with his flying column, received an express from the fort, and after a forced march of forty miles in twenty-eight hours, drove off the enemy, with the loss of their guns, stores, camp and 500 in killed and wounded. Sir Colin The garrison of Lucknow had been relieved by Outram and Havelock, but their force was too weak to escort the women and children to Cawnpore, still less to recover a city garrisoned by a large rebel army Campbell's with an abundance of military stores. The Resi- march to dency was again in a state of close blockade but well supplied with provisions and able to await the arrival Lucknow. A.D. of reinforcements with little risk or inconvenience. The 1857 attention of the enemy was chiefly devoted to the construction of mines, which they carried on to an extent which Sir James Outram affirmed had no parallel in modern warfare. Sir Colin Campbell, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief in succession to General Anson, hastened to Cawnpore with the reinforcements which had reached Calcutta, accompanied by Captain Peel of the "Shannon." He started on the 9th November with a body of 5,000 men and 30 guns, and on the 14th advanced against the enemy's entrenchments, but so determined was the opposition he encountered at the various strong positions they had fortified, that he was three days forcing his way to the Residency. The Secunder-baug, indeed, a large enclosure, was breached and stormed by the Highlanders, when every soul within it perished and 2,000 bodies were carried out and buried. By the masterly arrangements of Sir Colin the relieved garrison, together with the women and children, were withdrawn with such skill as not to attract the attention and the assaults of the enemy, but Havelock, worn out with toil and exposure, was attacked by diarrhoea and sunk under the disease, a Christian hero and general of the highest stamp. Disaster of General Outram was left at the Alum-baug with a sufficient force to keep open the communication with Cawnpore and to maintain our footing in Oude, and Sir General Colin Campbell hastened back to Cawnpore, the Windham. defence of which had been entrusted to General Windham, with more than 2,000 men, and was just in time to save him from a fatal calamity. The Gwalior contingent, which had finally broken into open mutiny in the middle of October, crossed the Jumna and marched down, 20,000 strong, to Cawnpore to join the Nana. General Windham moved out to meet them, without suspecting their numbers, and was at first successful, but his force was handled without any skill, and, finding himself outflanked by the enemy, he retreated in hot haste to the entrenchment, with the loss of his equipage. The sepoys obtained possession of the town, and for two days he had to sustain an unequal contest with a body of the ablest of the mutineers ten times his own number, flushed with recent success, animated by the presence of the Nana, and commanded by Tantia Topee, the only native general created by the mutiny. General Windham must have suffered the fate of General Wheeler, if he had not received timely succour by the arrival of Sir Colin, who reached the Ganges in time to A.D. save the bridge of boats, the destruction of which would 1858 have been irreparable. After having safely despatched the sick and the wounded, the women and the children to Allahabad, he marched out against the rebel force, now swelled to 25,000 men with 40 guns. Captain Peel's sailors, handling their 24-pounders like playthings, did fearful execution, and the skilful dispositions of Sir Colin, and the valour of his troops, inflicted a crushing defeat on the rebels, who were pursued for fourteen miles and loss of all their gunsthe arm in which they were strongest. The total loss on the side of the British army amounted only to 99. Campaign in We turn now to the pursuit of the rebels in Central India. While the task of extinguishing the mutiny at Delhi fell to Sir John Lawrence, and that of recovering Cawnpore and Lucknow to Lord Can- Central ning, the work of stamping out the revolt in India. Central India was undertaken by the Madras and Bombay Presidencies. A column of Madras troops was assembled at Nagpore and moved on to Jubbulpore, and a Bombay column advanced to Kotah. They constituted the Central India Field Force, and comprised about 6,000 troops, of whom 2,500 were Europeans. General Stuart, commanding one brigade, proceeded to relieve Mhow, which had been besieged since the commencement of the mutiny, and then captured Dhar, and defeated a body of 5,000 mutineers at Mundisore. Having thus cleared the southern districts of the rebels, he advanced to Indore. There Sir Hugh Rose, on the 15th December, assumed the command of the whole force, and started for Sehore, where he inflicted summary vengeance on the insurgents, and moved on to Saugor, and relieved a body of Europeans who had been cooped up for several months. On the 21st March he proceeded to Jhansi, the little principality in Bundlecund which Lord Dalhousie had annexed five years before, as stated in a former chapter. The ranee, a woman of extraordinary energy but of unmatched vindictiveness, took advantage of the mutiny to recover the independence of her principality and to Capture of satiate her revenge. The sepoys stationed there Jhansi. rose in mutiny on the 4th June and assailed the Europeans, who took refuge in the fort, but were induced to surrender upon a promise of protection made under the most solemn oaths; but the whole body, seventy-five in number, were immediately bound together, the men in one row, and their A.D. wives and children in another, and butchered under the 1858 immediate direction of the ranee. She assembled 10,000 men for the defence of the town, which was surrounded by a wall of solid masonry from six to twelve feet thick and from eighteen to thirty feet in height. After Sir Hugh had invested it for nine days, a body of 20,000 men, including that portion of the Gwalior contingent which had escaped from the sword of Sir Colin at Cawnpore, advanced under the command of Tantia Topee to the relief of the ranee. Without slackening fire on the town, Sir Hugh moved out to meet them on the 1st April with 1,200 men, of whom only 500 were British, and drove them in dismay across the Betwa, which gives its name to the engagement, with the loss of 1,500 men and all their guns. The assault on the town was renewed with redoubled vigour; every street was fiercely contested; no quarter was asked or given; and the palace was stormed and sacked. The ranee, after making her last stand in the fort, fled to Calpee, the head-quarters of the Gwalior contingent, and Capture of the rallying point of the mutineers west of the Calpee. Jumna, where they had established foundries for casting cannon, and collected military stores of every description. Sir Hugh advanced towards it, when the martial ranee who took her share in the command, riding in male attire at the head of her own body guard, came out with Tantia Topee and 20,000 men to meet him at Koonch, but they were signally defeated. The general then marched on to Golowlee within five miles of Calpee where he was again attacked by the entire force of the enemy, but was again victorious and became master of Calpee, with the vast military stores the rebels had accumulated from the plunder of various cantonments. He considered the revolt in Central India extinguished by the capture of their citadel, and resolved to break up the army, which was prostrated by insupportable heat, and issued a valedictory order to the troops, congratulating them on "having "marched more than 1,000 miles and taken more than 100 guns, on having forced their way through mountain passes and intricate jungles and over rivers, and cap"tured the strongest forts, and beat the enemy, no matter "what the odds, wherever they had met him, without a single check, and restored peace and order to the "country." 66 66 66 But there was still work for his exhausted troops. Nothing appeared more remarkable during the course of |