talent. When the attack by the duke of Cambridge's division, composed of the guards and Highlanders at the Alma, was ordered on the Russian entrenchments on the extreme right of their position, the fusilier guards, as is well known, were received by so tremendous a fire that they were obliged to recoil after sustaining a very heavy loss. Seeing this, and feeling that he could not renew the attack without re-forming his men, the duke suggested to Sir Colin to halt his men in order that the attack of the two brigades might be simultaneous. But Sir Colin, who was in the very front of his men among the tirailleurs warmly engaged with those of the enemy, still moved on. He saw his advantage, which in a few minutes would be lost, and which, from his position, could not be known to his royal highness. The Russian guns were levelled a shade too high; their balls were going through the feather bonnets, for the most part above the heads of the men. He pressed on, therefore, without an instant's delay, himself leading on his favourite charger, which was shot dead during the rush. Before the Russians had time to lower their guns, the Highlanders, after delivering a volley, rushed in and carried the right flank of the works with very little loss. "Campbell," says Bezancourt, the official French annalist, "carried the right flank of our works at a run, and the battle was gained." Nearly at the same time the fusilier guards re-formed, and, supported by the grenadier guards, renewed the attack, and entered the entrenchments by the front. The duke of Cambridge, much to his honour, has more than once publicly admitted these facts at meetings in London.
During the terrible winter which ensued, when the troops of all arms were exposed to such unheard-of hardships. Sir Colin was stationed with his brigade on the heights of Kamora, covering the vital point of Balaklava, the sole channel of communication for the army by which all its supplies were obtained. No such evidence could be given of the estimation in which he himself and the brave troops he commanded were held in the army; for it was known that the principal efforts of the enemy would be directed against this point. He gave decisive proof how worthy his followers were to hold the post of honour, when, on the 25th October, at the head of the "thin red line" formed by the 93d Highlanders, not even formed in square, he repulsed the formidable attack of the Russian horse on the post of Balaklava. During the severe winter which followed he was indefatigable in his endeavour to mitigate the sufferings and provide for the comforts of his men; and with such success were his efforts attended, that the Highland brigade was by universal consent the best-conditioned and efficient part of the army. As such it was brought up to the front before the first assault on the Redan, on 18th June, 1855, and held in reserve to rush forward at the decisive moment, if the attack had been found to be practicable. On the final assault on 8th September, when the Malakoff was carried, he marched with his brigade from Kamara to the front, a distance of nine miles, before daylight, and was in the front trenches under a heavy fire with them the whole day, waiting the signal for advancing from the commander-in-chief. When Wyndham was driven out of the Redan, Sir Colin received orders to renew the assault, which, by his advice, was postponed till day-break on the following morning. During the night he arranged his plan of attack, which was to have been made by a general rush of the whole brigade, formed in close column on the open in front of the trenches during the dark, the light company of the 72nd, which happened to be in front, leading. Before midnight, however, the work was found abandoned, and Sir Colin was baulked of a triumph which would doubtless have been won and made the world ring from side to side.
Upon the appointment of General Codrington to succeed General Simpson as commander-in-chief, Sir Colin resigned his command and returned to England, deeming himself ill-used by the appointment of an officer so much his junior over his head. At the earnest request, however, it is said, of the highest personage in the realm, he agreed to resume active service, and return to the Crimea. The most important duty in the campaign which was preparing, was to have been intrusted to the Scottish hero; for he was to have had the command of a corps of fifteen thousand British and twenty-five thousand Turks, who were to have been landed at Theodosia, and ascending the stream which flows into the sea at that place, to have taken the formidable Russian entrenchments on Mackenzie Heights in rear. The conclusion of the war, however, which the French, exhausted in finance, had become unable to carry on, prevented the execution of this design, and Sir Colin returned to England, where he was made a G.C.B., and received with the highest distinction by his sovereign. There he received also a gratifying mark of general esteem by the presentation of a sword subscribed for by six thousand of his fellow-citizens in his native city of Glasgow.
When the Indian revolt broke out, and every post from the East brought the intelligence of fresh and seemingly overwhelming disasters in Hindostan, all eyes were turned to Sir Colin as the only man capable of staying the disasters which were accumulating round a "sinking throne and a falling empire." Yielding to the universal voice, Lord Palmerston, then prime minister, sent for him on July 11th, and asked him whether he would undertake the command, and if so, when he could set out. "Within twenty-four hours," replied the Scottish chief, then sixty-four years of age. He was as good as his word. On the following evening he set out, accompanied by his staff, for India, with no more baggage than a trooper could carry with him on his saddle; and on the 13th August following reached Calcutta, after an uncommonly quick passage. The labours which then awaited him were such as would have overwhelmed any one of inferior resolution, and less accustomed to make every difficulty yield to an energetic will. Disarmed, and with its forces disbanded or scattered by the imprudent reductions of a pacific administration, the supreme government at Calcutta was utterly unprepared for a contest. The arsenal there was empty; that at Delhi was in the hands of the enemy; arms, powder, guns, balls, all required to be manufactured, and, as fast as they could be got ready, sent off in the utmost haste for the service of the troops, now reduced to the last extremity, despite all the heroism of Havelock and his men in the north-western provinces.
The whole autumn of the year was employed by Sir Colin in the most herculean efforts to repair the deficiencies in military stores, to provide the means of transporting them, with the slender reinforcements which arrived from China, to the theatre of war in the neighbourhood of Cawnpore. At length something like an army having been formed, and the 93rd Highlanders, 1019 strong, having arrived from China, Sir Colin set out from Calcutta on the 20th of October; and after narrowly escaping having been made prisoner by a body of rebels on the road between Allahabad and Cawnpore, he reached the latter town on the 2nd of November. He was there fortunately joined by a body of admirable troops, under General Hope Grant, who had come down from Delhi after the storming of that city. By this accession of forces. Sir Colin's little army was raised to six thousand men and thirty-six guns, and with this small force he forthwith set out to effect the deliverance of Havelock, now at the last extremity in Lucknow, and besieged by sixty thousand of the best troops of Oude.
The task before him was arduous, and to all appearance hopeless, for not only was the force in his front tenfold stronger than his own, but his communications were threatened by the Gwalior contingent, fourteen thousand strong, composed of the best troops in India, disciplined by European officers, which lay at Calpee, only forty-five miles, threatening Cawnpore; the bridge of which, over the Ganges, commanded the only communication with Calcutta, and the base of operations in the south. Yet necessity commanded an immediate effort for the relief of Lucknow, for Havelock could only hold a few days longer the buildings he had so nobly defended, and it was well known, that if forced to surrender, he himself, his brave followers, and the women and children in the residency, twelve hundred in number, would all be massacred. Determined to rescue them or perish in the attempt, he marched with all the disposable troops he could command, only five thousand five hundred in number, on the 8th November, taking the route to Lucknow, which was fifty-two miles distant, leaving Wyndham with twelve hundred to make head against the Gwalior contingent, and hold the important bridge and fort of Cawnpore during his absence.
The operations which followed were conducted with the most consummate ability, and have justly raised Sir Colin to the very highest rank in military glory. Swiftly, yet cautiously advancing, he reached the neighbourhood of Lucknow on the 12th of November, and immediately began his advance to deliver the beleaguered garrison. Directing his march by a semicircular sweep round the city, he avoided the long barricaded street leading direct to the residency, in forcing his way through which, Havelock had lost nine hundred men; but he had still a des-
