time to be lost. If the spirit of mutiny were to spread, the condition of things in the Punjaub would be desperate; but what did the condition of things in the Punjaub involve? The possible loss of a province? Something far greater than that. It meant the possibility of a momentary collapse of all British authority in India. For if any one will take the trouble to cast a glance at a map of India, he will see that the Punjaub is so placed as to become a basis of operations for the precise military movements which every experienced eye then saw to be necessary for the saving of our Indian Empire. The candle would have been burning at both ends, so far as regards the North-west Provinces, if the Punjaub had gone with Delhi and Lucknow. While the Punjaub held firm it was like a barrier raised at one side of the rebellious movement, not merely preventing it from going any farther in that direction, but keeping it pent up until the moment came when the blow from the other di

rection could fall upon it. The first thing to be done to strike effectively at the rebellion was to make an attack on Delhi; and the possession of the Punjaub was of inestimable advantage to the authorities for that purpose. It will be seen, then, that the moment was critical for those to whose hands the administration of the great new province had been intrusted. There was no actual reason to assume that the Sepoys in Meean Meer intended to join the rebellion. There would be a certain danger of converting them into rebels if any rash movement were to be made for the purpose of guarding against treachery on their part. Either way was a serious responsibility, a momentous risk. The authorities soon made up their minds. Any risk would be better than that of leaving it in the power of the native troops to join the rebellion. A ball and supper were to be given at Lahore that night. To avoid creating any alarm, it was ar ranged that the entertainments should take place. During the dancing and feasting Mr. Montgomery held a council of the leading officials of Lahore, civil and military, and it was resolved at once to disarm the native troops. A parade was ordered for daybreak at Meean Meer; and on the paradeground an order was given for a military movement which brought the heads of four columns of the native troops in front of twelve guns charged with grape, the artillerymen

with their port-fires lighted, and the soldiers of one of the Queen's regiments standing behind with loaded muskets. A command was given to the Sepoys to pile arms. They had immediate death before them if they disobeyed. They stood literally at the cannon's mouth. They piled their arms, which were borne away at once in carts by European soldiers, and all chances of a rebellious movement were over in that province, and the Punjaub was saved. Something of the same kind was done at Mooltan, in the Lower Punjaub, later on; and the province, thus assured to English civil and military authority, became a basis for some of the most important operations by which the mutiny was crushed, and the sceptre of India restored to the Queen.

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Within little more than a fortnight from the occupation of Delhi by the rebels, the British forces under General Anson, the Commander-in-Chief, were advancing on that city. The commander did not live to conduct any of the operations. He died of cholera almost at the beginning of the march. He had lived long enough to come in for much sharp censure. The temper of the time, both in England and in India, expected men to work by witchcraft rather than wit, and Anson was furiously denounced by some of the principal English journals because he did not recapture Delhi without having even to march an army to the neighborhood of the city. He was described as a holiday soldier who had never seen service either in peace or in war." His appointment was denounced as "a shameless job," and a tribute altogether to "the claims of family and personal acquaintance." We cannot venture now to criticise the mode of General Anson's appointment; and he had not time to show whether he was any better than a holiday soldier. But it would appear that Lord Canning had no poor opinion of his capacity, and was particularly impressed by his coolness and command of temper. He died, however, at the very outset of his march; and we only refer now to the severe attacks which were made upon him to illustrate the temper of the nation, and the manner in which it delighted to hear itself addressed. We are always rebuking other nations for their impatience and fretfulness under difficulties. It is a lesson of no slight importance for us to be reminded that when the hour of strain and pressure

comes, we are found to be in most ways very like our neighbors.

Another

The siege of Delhi proved long and difficult. general died; another had to give up his command, before the city was recaptured. It was justly considered by Lord Canning and by all the authorities as of the utmost importance that Delhi should be taken before the arrival of great re-enforcements from home. Meanwhile the rebellion was breaking out at new points almost everywhere in these northern and north-western regions. On May 30th the mutiny declared itself at Lucknow. Sir Henry Lawrence was governor of Oudh. He endeavored to drive the rebels from the place, but the numbers of the mutineers were overwhelming. He had under his command, too, a force partly made up of native troops, and some of these deserted him in the battle. He had to retreat and to fortify the Residency at Lucknow, and remove all the Europeans-men, women, and children—thither, and patiently stand a siege. Lawrence himself had not long to endure the siege. On July 2d he had been up with the dawn, and after a great amount of work he lay on a sofa, not, as it has been well said, to rest, but to transact business in a recumbent position. His nephew and another officer were with him. Suddenly a great crash was heard, and the room was filled with smoke and dust. One of his companions was flung to the ground. A shell had burst. When there was silence, the officer, who had been flung down, called out, "Sir Henry, are you hurt?" At first there was no answer. Then a weak voice was heard to reply in just the words that Browning has put into the mouth of the gallant French lad similarly questioned by the great Napoleon. "I am killed !" was the answer that came faintly but firmly from Sir Henry Lawrence's lips. The shell had wounded him in the thigh so fearfully as to leave surgery no chance of doing anything for his relief. On the morning of July 4th he died calmly, and in perfect submission to the will of Providence. He had made all possible arrangements for his successor, and for the work to be done. He desired that on his tomb should be engraven merely the words, "Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty." The epitaph was a simple, truthful summing up of a simple, truthful career. The man, however, was greater than the

career. Lawrence had not opportunity to show in actual result the greatness of spirit that was in him. The immense influence he exercised over all who came within his reach bears testimony to his strength and nobleness of character better than any of the mere successes which his biographer can record. He was full of sympathy. His soul was alive to the noblest and purest aspirations. "It is the due admixture of romance and reality," he was himself accustomed to say, "that best carries a man through life." No professional teacher or philosopher ever spoke a truer sentence. As one of his many admirers says of him-" What he said and wrote, he did, or rather he was." Let the bitterest enemy of England write the history of her rule in India, and set down as against her every wrong that was done in her name, from those which Burke denounced to those which the Madras Commission exposed; he will have to say that men, many men, like Henry Lawrence, lived and died devoted to the cause of that rule, and the world will take account of the admission.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CAWNPORE.

DURING the later days of Sir Henry Lawrence's life it had another trouble added to it by the appeals which were made to him from Cawnpore for a help which he could not give. The story of Cawnpore is by far the most profound and tragic in its interest of all the chapters that make up the history of the Indian Mutiny. The city of Cawnpore stands in the Doab, a peninsula between the Ganges and the Jumna, and is built on the south bank of the Ganges, there nearly a quarter of a mile broad in the dry season, and more than a mile across when swelled by the rains. By a treaty made in 1775, the East India Company engaged to maintain a force in Cawnpore for the defence of Oudh, and the revenues of an extensive district of country were appropriated to the maintenance of the troops quartered there. In 1801, for some of the various reasons impelling similar transactions in India, Lord Wellesley "closed the mortgage," as Mr. Trevelyan

puts it in his interesting and really valuable little book Cawnpore," and the territory lapsed into the possession of the Company. From that time it took rank as one of our first-class military stations. When Oudh was annexed to our dominions, there was an additional reason for maintaining a strong military force at Cawnpore. The city commanded the bridge over which passed the high-road to Lucknow, the capital of our new province. The distance from Cawnpore to Lucknow is about fifty miles as the bird flies.

At the time when the mutiny broke out in Meerut there were some three thousand native soldiers in Cawnpore, consisting of two regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and a company of artillerymen. There were about three hundred officers and soldiers of English birth. The European or Eurasian population, including women and children, numbered about one thousand. These consisted of the officials, the railway people, some merchants and shopkeepers, and their families. The native town had about sixty thousand inhabitants. The garrison was under the command of Sir Hugh Wheeler, among the oldest of an old school of Bengal officers. Sir Hugh Wheeler was some seventy-five years of age at the time when the events occurred which we have now to describe.

The revolt was looked for at Cawnpore from the moment when the news came of the rising at Meerut; and it was not long expected before it came. Sir Hugh Wheeler applied to Sir Henry Lawrence for help; Lawrence, of course, could not spare a man. Then Sir Hugh Wheeler remembered that he had a neighbor whom he believed to be friendly, despite of very recent warnings from Sir Henry Lawrence and others to the contrary. He called this neighbor to his assistance, and his invitation was promptly answered. The Nana Sahib came with two guns and some three hundred men to lend a helping hand to the English commander.

The Nana Sahib resided at Bithoor, a small town twelve miles up the river from Cawnpore. He represented a grievance. Bajee Rao, Peishwa of Poonah, was the last prince of one of the great Mahratta dynasties. The East India Company believed him guilty of treachery against them, of bad government of his dominions, and so forth; and they found