Having put down the rising at Benares, Neill pushed on over the eighty miles that separated him from Allahabad, the largest arsenal in India except Delhi. For five days the sepoys had been killing and plundering the British. On hearing of Neill's approach, two thousand of them encamped near the fort in order to hold it, but an attack of the Fusiliers soon dispersed them, and the commander ordered a large number to be executed in order to strike terror into the rest.
Bad as was the state of things at Allahabad, where the railway had been destroyed and the garrison was weak, it was still worse in Cawnpore, a hundred and twenty miles higher up the Ganges. Here sir Hugh Wheeler was in command, and having spent his whole life among the sepoys it was long before he would believe in the tales of their treason. Even when at length his faith was partly shaken by the deeds done under his eyes, he still did not take all the precautions that were needful. His little fort, which was to be the last refuge of the sick and wounded, women and children, in case of attack, was a couple of barracks one brick thick, which had hitherto been used as a hospital, and in this he gave orders that provisions for a twenty-five days' siege should be stored. This was the place for which he intended to abandon the powder magazine, where he could have held the enemy at bay for months.
With inconceivable carelessness nobody saw that the orders for provisioning the fort were properly carried out, or the works of defence capable of resisting an attack. By May 22, however, even sir Hugh Wheeler was convinced that there was danger abroad, and he directed that the women and children, whose numbers were now swelled by fugitives from Lucknow and the surrounding towns, should be placed in it. Altogether the refugees amounted to about five hundred, and the force of men to defend them was about equal.
The expected siege did not begin till June 6, when the plain which surrounds Cawnpore was black with sepoys, led by the treacherous Nana. For three weeks the prisoners inside the fort underwent the most frightful sufferings of every kind, and had it not been for the women the garrison would have tried to cut their way through to the river. As it was they felt they must stay—till the end.
So the soldiers fought on, and the women helped as best they might, giving their stockings as bags for grape-shot, and tearing up their clothes to bind up wounds, till they had scarcely a rag to cover them. One, the gallant wife of a private of the 32nd, Bridget Widdowson, stood, sword in hand, over a number of prisoners tied together by a rope. Not one of their movements passed unnoticed by her; her gun was instantly levelled at the hand which was trying to untie the rope, and not a man of them escaped while in her charge. By-and-by she was relieved by a soldier, and in his care many of them got away.
Not one of their movements passed unnoticed by her.