probably a disinclination to murder their officers or to face the few English soldiers there, the Sepoys seemed more inclined to leave the station and march for Delhi than to remain and attack the English. They actually started, performed the first stage, and encamped at a place called Kullianpore. The wily Azeemoolah and his master now saw that their hour had come. Arriving in the camp, they persuaded the Sepoy host to return to Cawnpore and put all the English to the sword before they left the place. Their unwillingness was overcome by the promise of unlimited pillage, and the offer by the Maharajah of a gold anklet to each Sepoy. They retraced their steps. That night the English officers were, some of them, sleeping in their own houses, imagining that they had seen the last of that Sepoy army. But early the next morning the Nana announced his intention to commence the attack at once, and there was barely time to summon the officers and families outside ere it began. Every thing of value, clothing and stores of all kinds, had to be suddenly abandoned. He who in that close and sultry night of midsummer had sought a little air and sleep on his house-top might not stay “to take any thing out of his house;” he who had been on early service in the field might not “turn back to take his clothes.” Few and happy were they who had time to snatch a single change of raiment. Some lost their lives by waiting to dress. So that, half-clad, confused, and breathless, the devoted band rushed into the breastwork, which they entered only to suffer, and left only to die.
Within this miserable inclosure, containing two barracks designed for only one hundred men each, and surrounded by a mud wall only four feet high, three feet in thickness at the base, and but twelve inches at the top—where the batteries were constructed by the simple expedient of leaving an aperture for each gun, so that the artillery-men served their pieces as in the field, with their persons entirely exposed to the fire of the enemy—within this inclosure were huddled together a thousand people, only four hundred and forty of whom were men, the rest being women and children. Here, without any thing that could be called shelter, without proper
