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Updated: June 2, 2025
It was not till half-past four that the enemy fired their last shot and retreated, leaving 300 killed behind them, while the British loss was 95 killed and wounded. Of the naval brigade, Lieutenant Hay, RN, was wounded in the hand, and Lieutenant Stirling, RM, severely in the leg. On the 12th of November, the naval brigade arrived before Lucknow.
There were but few trees in the plain at that time, and from the Residency the progress of the march, step by step, victory by victory, could be noted; the ascending clouds of battle-smoke marked the way to the eye, and the thunder of the guns marked it to the ear. Sir Colin Campbell had not come to Lucknow to hold it, but to save the occupants of the Residency, and bring them away.
"I must carry out my orders, Dick. Dunlop and I must go on to Agra, and then on to join our regiment. Ned will, of course, be taken back to Lucknow, and you must give up your trip, and stay and nurse him. Of course, if he gets over it, poor boy, he will be invalided home, and you can travel with him down to Calcutta. I shall send the girls home by the first opportunity.
But there were still troubles in India. Lucknow was still beleaguered by a rebel army, and insurrections still ran riot in Oudh and Rohilkhand. In the middle of August General Havelock had fallen back on Cawnpore, after the failure of his first campaign for the relief of Lucknow. Five weeks afterward Havelock made a second attempt under better auspices.
'Native troops mutinied, murdered officers, women, and children, opened jails and burned cantonments, and marched to Delhi. It is reported that there has been a general rising there and the massacre of all Europeans. Although this is not confirmed, the news is considered probable. We hear also that the native cavalry at Lucknow have mutinied.
The men were all butchered in the presence of Nana; the women and children, eighty in number, were sent to join the wretched sufferers in the house near Nana's headquarters. Meanwhile Colonel Neill, commanding the Madras Fusiliers, was pushing up from Calcutta. He was bent on the relief of Cawnpore and Lucknow, but was delayed on the way by the mutinies at Benares and Allahabad.
Never daring to expose themselves unnecessarily during the day, yet ever on the alert to repel an attack; labouring at night at the defences, with their numbers daily dwindling, and the prospect of an assault becoming more and more imminent, the work of the little garrison was terrible; and it is to the defences of Lucknow and Cawnpore, a hundred years later, that we must look to find a parallel, in English warfare, for their endurance and bravery.
All the stores and baggage were left here, with a force strong enough to hold it against all attacks; and after a day to rest his troops, General Havelock advanced on the 22d, defeated the enemy outside Lucknow, and then, as the direct route was known to be impassable, he followed the canal as far as the Kaiserbagh, and there turning off, fought his way through the streets to the Residency, where he arrived only just in time, for the enemy had driven two mines right under the defenses, and these would, had the reinforcements arrived but one day later, have been exploded, and the fate of the garrison of Cawnpore might have befallen the defenders of Lucknow.
In Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Oude, a handful of British soldiers, with the women and children who had escaped the massacre, had taken refuge in a huge and strongly built place called the Residency.
And he was one of those who, having battled their way over the Charbagh Bridge, having threaded the bullet-torn path to the Kaiser-bagh, and having forced for themselves a passage up to the embrasures by the Baileyguard Gate, melted from the stern fierceness of the fray when the siege-worn women and children in the residency of Lucknow sobbed out upon their necks blessings for the deliverance.
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