On that same night, July 15th, the crowning atrocity was committed at Cawnpore.  The rebels, who had been defeated by Havelock, returned to Nana with the tidings of their disaster.  In revenge Nana ordered the slaughter of the two hundred women and children.  The poor victims were literally hacked to death, or almost to death, with swords, bayonets, knives, and axus.  Next morning the bleeding remains of dead and dying were dragged to a neighboring well and thrown in.

At two o’clock in the afternoon after the massacre the force under Havelock was again upon the march for Cawnpore.  The heat was fearful; many of the troops were struck down by the sun, and the cries for water were continuous.  But for two miles the column toiled on, and then came in sight of the enemy.  Havelock had only one thousand Europeans and three hundred Sikhs; he had no cavalry, and his artillery was inferior.  The enemy numbered five thousand men, armed and trained by British officers, strongly intrenched, with two batteries of guns of heavy calibre.  Havelock’s artillery failed to silence the batteries, and he ordered the Europeans to charge with the bayonet.  On they went in the face of a shower of grape, but the bayonet charge was as irresistible at Cawnpore as at Assaye.  The enemy fought for a while like men in a death struggle.  Nana Sahib was with them, but nothing is known of his exploits.  At last they fled, and there was no cavalry to pursue them.

As yet nothing was known of the butchery of the women and children.  Havelock halted for the night, and next morning marched his force into the station at Cawnpore.  The men beheld the scene of the massacre, and saw the bleeding remains in the well.  But the murderers had vanished, no one knew whither.  Havelock advanced to Bithoor, and destroyed the palace of the Mahratta.  Subsequently he was joined by General Neill, with reinforcements from Allahabad; and on July 20th he set on for the relief of Lucknow, leaving Cawnpore in charge of General Neill.

The defence of Lucknow against fifty-two thousand rebels was, next to the siege of Delhi, the greatest event in the mutiny.  The whole Province of Oudh was in a blaze of insurrection.  The talukdars were exasperated at the hard measure dealt out to them before the appointment of Sir Henry Lawrence as Chief Commissioner.  Disbanded sepoys, returning to their homes in Oudh, swelled the tide of disaffection.  Bandits that had been suppressed under British administration returned to their old work of robbery and brigandage.  All classes took advantage of the anarchy to murder the money-lenders.  Meanwhile the country was bristling with the fortresses of the talukdars; and the cultivators, deprived of the protection of the English, naturally flocked for refuge to the strongholds of their old masters.