This Weeks's Great Day

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 19 November 1927, Page 9

This Weeks's Great Day

Memorable Events hi the £ histOM ofthc Empire*

By

Charles Conway

NOV. 10th.—THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW

(Copyrighted.)

Seventy years ago, on the 17th. Nov. 1857, the survivors of the memorable siege of Lucknow were saved from annihilation by the arrival of a relief force under the command of Sir Colin Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde. When the great mutiny of the native troops of India broke out early in May 1857, Sir Henry Lawrence, the famous soldier and statesman, was stationed in Lucknow, where he succeeded in maintaining order within the city and keeping the rebellious sepoys at bay outside its walls for seven weeks. On the 29th June, a large number of his native troops deserted and joined the rebels, and Lawrence was compelled to take shelter in the Residency with a force of 700 British and 1000 native soldiers and also about 1300 non-com-batants, mostly women and children. The so-called Residency, which consisted not only of the Residency itself, but a large number of other buildings around it, covered an area of sixty acres, and from a military standpoint the position was absolutely indefensible. Lawrence was killed on the 2nd of July, but the ingenious system of trenches and stockades, with which he had surrounded the place, enabled the little garrison to keep the foe at bay until the arrival of relief.

The fight raged day and night without cessation, the enemy maintaining a constant fire of heavy guns and muskets into the Residency, in some cases from a distance of only sixty yards, and the history of the world’s great sieges contains no more brilliant episode than the wonderful defence of Luck-

now against overwhelming odds. On the 26th September a .mail relief force under the command of Sir Henry Havelock arrived on the acene, and fought it. way through the vast army of trained mutinous soldier, and the tremendous horde of undisciplined rabble which surrounded the Residency. The combined strength of the relief force and the sadly-depleted garrison was insufficient to cut a way out through the besieging army and carry with them the women and children and wounded men, 1500 in nnmber, io Havelock, whose arrival had saved the gallant defenders from otherwise inevitable massacre, could do nothing but re-inforce the garrison and await farther relief.

Day by day the attacks of the rebels increased in violence, and when Colin Campbell reached Lucknow on the 17th November, he was just in time to save the garrison from starvation, as the stock of food was almost exhausted. Campbell decided to withdraw the garrison and non-combatants from the Residency and to hold the city by a strong force operating outside its walls. The Residency, which had been so valiantly held for a period of five months, was evacuated during the night of the 22nd November, but the success of the operation was marred by the death of Havelock, who died on the 24th November, from an attack of dysentry, which had been brought on by his arduous march to Lucknow and the anxieties of keeping the flag flying above th- Residency until relief arrived.