The relief of Lucknow.
Havelock had to wait some time at Cawnpore for reinforcements before he could march on Lucknow, where the garrison, some 1000 strong, had maintained themselves for eighty-seven days behind the walls of the hastily fortified Residency. The much-tried defenders were cheered by the arrival of Havelock, who with 3000 men forced his way into the Residency after a day's street fighting. But 60,000 rebels, the whole fighting population of the province of Oude, still hung round the place, and Havelock could not drive them away. The final relief of Lucknow was only accomplished by Lord Clyde, the Colin Campbell of the Crimean war, who had arrived in India with the first reinforcements from home. On November 9 he swept away the rebels, and liberated the garrison, but Havelock died the very day after he and his troops were delivered.
Lord Clyde defeats the Mahrattas and the Oude rebels.
Lord Clyde drew back to Cawnpore with the rescued garrison, leaving Lucknow to be reoccupied by the rebels. He was forced to turn because the Mahratta army of Scindiah had just revolted and joined the Oude insurgents. Clyde beat them on December 6, just outside Cawnpore, and drove them back on to Central India.
Lucknow stormed.—Battles of Bareilly and Gwalior.
The final stage of the war was reached in March, 1858, when Clyde marched for the second time against Lucknow, stormed the city, and drove the remnants of the rebel army of Oude to Bareilly, where they were crushed in the last general engagement but one of the war (May 7). Meanwhile Sir Hugh Rose had collected an army from the Bombay presidency and overrun Scindiah's dominions and Bundelkund, where the rebellion of the Mahrattas had been headed by the Ranee of Jhansi and Tantia Topee, a clever leader of irregular troops. On June 16 he beat them in front of Gwalior, the Ranee was slain, and her army dispersed. But Tantia Topee took to the jungles, and was not finally caught and hung till the spring of the succeeding year.
Thus ended the great mutiny of 1857-58, a ferocious struggle in which the treachery and cruelty of the sepoys were amply punished by the ruthless severity of their victors, who gave no quarter, blew prominent traitors from the cannon's mouth, and hung meaner prisoners by the hundred.
Abolition of the East India Company.
The English nation were convinced that something must be done to reform the administration of India, and the East India Company was abolished by Act of Parliament in 1858, the whole administration, civil and military, of the peninsula being now taken over by the Queen's government. To mark that no blame was thrown on the Governor-General, Lord Canning, whose conduct all through the war had been most cool and courageous, he was made the first viceroy of the new empire.
India under the rule of the Crown.