three months' leave to go home to their friends. Many accepted the offer
and left, but a portion remained behind, and fought heroically through the
siege by the side of the whites. Thus one source of anxiety for the
garrison was removed; and safe now from treachery within, they had only to
prepare to resist force from without.

So determined was the front shown by the little body of British that
Lucknow, with its unruly population of over a quarter of a million,
remained quiet all through the month of June. It was not until the last
day of the month that the storm was to burst. On the 30th a body of
insurgent Sepoys, some seven or eight thousand strong, having approached
to Chinhut, within a few miles of the town, Sir Henry Lawrence, with two
companies of the Thirty-second, eleven guns, some of them manned by
natives, and eighty native cavalry, went out to give them battle.

The affair was disastrous; the native cavalry bolted, the native gunners
fled, and after a loss of sixty men, three officers, and six guns, the
British troops with difficulty fought their way back to the Residency. The
rebels entered the town in triumph, and the city at once rose, the
respectable inhabitants were killed, the bazaar looted, and then, assured
of success, the enemy prepared to overwhelm the little British garrison.

Immediately upon the return of the defeated column, it became evident that
the weakened force could not hold the two positions. Accordingly the
Mutchee Bawn was evacuated, its great magazine, containing two hundred and
forty barrels of powder and six hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, was
blown up, and the British force was reunited in the Residency.

In order that the position of affairs in this, perhaps the most remarkable
siege that ever took place, should be understood, it is as well to give a