MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HENRY HAVELOCK, K.C.B.
From an engraving
CHAPTER VII
LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK
Lucknow is only forty-five miles from Cawnpore. On July 25, Havelock, at the head of his tiny but gallant force, by this time tempered in the flame of battle to the quality of mere steel, crossed the Ganges in a tempest of rain, and started to rescue the beleaguered garrison of Lucknow from the fate of Cawnpore. But it was not until September 25 that Outram and Havelock clambered through the shot-battered gun embrasure in the low wall beside the Bailey Guard at Lucknow, and brought relief to the hard-pressed garrison. And the story of those nine weeks is scribbled over with records of daring and of achievement unsurpassed in the history of war.
Havelock left 300 men under Neill to hold Cawnpore, where rough but adequate entrenchments had been thrown up. Furious rains had swollen the Ganges, and it took him four days to transport his little force across its turbid and far-extended waters. He had under his command Neill’s “blue-caps,” the 64th, the 84th, the 78th, and Brasyer’s Sikhs, a force not quite 1500 strong—of which only 1200 were British—with ten small field-pieces and a troop of sixty horsemen. And with this mere handful of men a dozen strong positions had to be carried, a great river crossed, and a huge city, swarming with enemies, pierced!
LUCKNOW 1857.
Walker & Cockerell sc.