determination as long as a shadow of hope of victory remained--they looked
forward to the joy of releasing from captivity the hapless women and
children who were known to have been confined in the house called the
Subada Khotee, since the massacre of their husbands and friends on the
river.

Just after daybreak there was a dull, deep report, and a cloud of gray
smoke rose over the city. Nana Sahib had ordered the great magazine to be
blown up, and had fled for his life to Bithoor. Well might he be hopeless.
He had himself commanded at the battle of the preceding day, and had seen
eleven thousand of his countrymen, strongly posted, defeated by a thousand
Englishmen. What chance, then, could there be of final success? As for
himself, his life was a thousandfold forfeit; and even yet his enemies did
not know the measure of his atrocities. It was only when the head of the
British column arrived at the Subada Khotee that the awful truth became
known. The troops halted, surprised that no welcome greeted them. They
entered the courtyard; all was hushed and quiet, but fragments of dresses,
children's shoes, and other remembrances of British occupation, lay
scattered about. Awed and silent, the leading officers entered the house,
and, after a glance round, recoiled with faces white with horror. The
floor was deep in blood; the walls were sprinkled thickly with it.
Fragments of clothes, tresses of long hair, children's shoes with the feet
still in them--a thousand terrible and touching mementos of the butchery
which had taken place there met the eye. Horror-struck and sickened, the
officers returned into the courtyard, to find that another discovery had
been made, namely, that the great well near the house was choked to the
brim with the bodies of women and children. Not one had escaped.

On the afternoon of the 15th, when the defeat at Futtehpore was known, the
Nana had given orders for a general massacre of his helpless prisoners.