On July 1st Nana Sahib went off to his palace at Bithoor and was proclaimed peshwa.  He took his seat upon the throne, and was installed with all the ceremonies of sovereignty, while the cannon roared out a salute in his honor.  At night the whole place was illuminated, and the hours of darkness were wiled away with feasting and fireworks.  But his triumph was short-lived.  The Mahometans were plotting against him at Cawnpore.  The people were leaving the city to escape the coming storm, and were taking refuge in the villages.  English reenforcements were at last coming up from Allahabad, while the greedy sepoys were clamoring for money and gold bangles.  Accordingly Nana hastened back to Cawnpore and scattered wealth with a lavish hand; and sought to hide his fears by boastful proclamations, and to drown his anxieties in drink and debauchery.

Within a few days more the number of helpless prisoners was increased to two hundred.  There had been a mutiny at Fathigarh, higher up the river, and the fugitives had fled in boats to Cawnpore, a distance of eighty miles.  They knew nothing of what had happened, and were all taken prisoners by the rebels, and brought on shore.  The men were all butchered in the presence of Nana; the women and children, eighty in number, were sent to join the wretched sufferers in the house near Nana’s headquarters.

Meanwhile Colonel Neill, commanding the Madras Fusiliers, was pushing up from Calcutta.  He was bent on the relief of Cawnpore and Lucknow, but was delayed on the way by the mutinies at Benares and Allahabad.  In July he was joined at Allahabad by a column under General Havelock, who was destined within a few weeks to win a lasting name in history.

General Havelock was a Queen’s officer of forty years’ standing; but he had seen more service in India than perhaps any other officer in Her Majesty’s Army.  He had fought in the first Burma War, the Kabul War, the Gwalior campaign of 1843, and the Punjab campaign of 1845-1846.  He was a pale, thin, thoughtful man; small in stature, but burning with the aspirations of a Puritan hero.  Religion was the ruling principle of his life, and military glory was his master passion.  He had just returned to India after commanding a division in the Persian War.  Abstemious to a fault, he was able, in spite of his advancing years, to bear up against the heat and rain of Hindustan during the deadliest season of the year.

On July 7th General Havelock left Allahabad for Cawnpore.  The force at his disposal did not exceed two thousand men, Europeans and Sikhs.  He had heard of the massacre at Cawnpore on June 27th, and burned to avenge it.  On July 12th he defeated a large force of mutineers and Mahrattas at Fathipur.  On the 15th he inflicted two more defeats on the enemy.  Havelock was now within twenty-two miles of Cawnpore, and he halted his men to rest for the night.  But news arrived that the women and children were still alive at Cawnpore, and that Nana had taken the field with a large force to oppose his advance.  Accordingly Havelock marched fourteen miles that same night, and on the following morning, within eight miles of Cawnpore, the troops bivouacked beneath some trees.