On the next day the sepoy army, though so boastful and vainglorious, dared to make their first attempt to carry the entrenchment by assault. By one bold charge they must have crushed the defenders, if by sheer weight of numbers alone. They advanced, with fiendish yells and much seeming confidence. But they could not face those stern warriors who lined the shattered wall. After a short but fierce struggle they fled, leaving the plain littered with corpses.
So the safer bombardment was renewed, its fury envenomed by the conscious disparity of the besiegers when they tried to press home the attack. Each day the garrison dwindled; each day the rebels received fresh accessions of strength. Of the few guns mounted in the British position, one had lost its muzzle, another was thrown from its carriage and two were so battered by the enemy’s artillery that they could not be used. The hospital fire had destroyed all the surgical instruments and medical stores, so the wounded had to lie waiting for death, while those who still bore arms eked out existence on a daily dole of a handful of flour and a few ounces of split peas.
Yet the men of Cawnpore fought on, while their wives and sisters and daughters helped uncomplainingly, making up packets of ammunition, loading rifles for the men to fire, and even giving their stockings to the gunners to provide cases for grape-shot.
There was only one well inside the entrenchment. Knowing its paramount importance, the rebels mounted guns in such wise that a constant fire could be kept up throughout the night on that special point. Yet there never was lacking a volunteer, either man or woman, to go to that well and obtain the precious water. It remains to this day a mournful relic of the siege, with its broken gear and shattered circular wall, while the indentations made by such of the cannon-balls as failed to dislodge the masonry are plain to be seen.
The sepoys spared none. Tiny children, tottering to the well in broad daylight, were pelted with musketry. Conceivably that might be war. When beleaguered people will not yield humanity must stand aside and weep. There was a deed to come that was not war, but the black horror of abomination, worthy of the excesses of a man-eating tiger, though shorn of the tiger’s excuse that he kills in order that he may live. The well in the entrenchment was the Well of Life. There was another well in Cawnpore destined to be the Well of Death.
If proof were needed of the extraordinary condition of India during the early period of the Mutiny, it was given by an incident that occurred soon after the first assault was beaten off. In broad daylight, while the garrison were maintaining the unceasing duel of cannon and small arms, they were astounded by the spectacle of a British officer galloping across the plain. He was fired at by the sepoys, of course, but horse and man escaped untouched and the low barrier was leaped without effort. The newcomer was Lieutenant Bolton of the 7th Cavalry. Sent out from Lucknow on district duty he was suddenly deserted by his men, and he rode alone towards Cawnpore, the nearest British station. Unhappily the story of that adventurous ride is lost for ever. Poor Bolton supplied Cawnpore’s last re-enforcement.
Sir Hugh Wheeler, ably seconded in the defense by Captain Moore of the 32d, sent out emissaries, Eurasians and natives, to seek aid from Lucknow and Allahabad, the one about thirty-five, the other a hundred miles distant. Lawrence wrote “with a breaking heart” that he could spare no troops from Lucknow. The messengers never even reached Allahabad.
On June 23 the Nana’s hosts again nerved themselves for a desperate attack, and again were they flung off from that tumble-down wall. Then, all their valor fled, they fell back on a foul device. A white woman, Mrs. Henry Jacobi, who had been taken prisoner early in the month, crossed the plain holding a white flag. Wheeler and Moore and other senior officers went to meet her. She carried a letter from Nana Sahib, offering safe conduct to Allahabad for all the garrison “except those who were connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie.”