air rights of
the old Oudh officials to employment in preference to immigrants from
our old provinces, and instructions had been issued for giving it
effect. The disbanded soldiers of the Royal Army of Oudh were promised
preference in enlistment in the local corps and the police, and
a reorganization and increase to the latter, which were almost
immediately sanctioned, gave instant opportunities for the fulfilment
of the first instalment of these promises. While last, but not least,
durbars were held, in which Sir Henry Lawrence was able to proclaim
his views and policy, by which the landholders should be reinstated in
the possessions which they held at the annexation, the basis on which
the instructions had been originally issued, which had been hitherto
practically ignored, but to which he pledged himself to give effect.

'9. To strengthen his military position, he placed Artillery with the
European Infantry; he distributed his Irregular Cavalry; he examined
the city, decided on taking possession of the Muchee Bawn and
garrisoning it as a fort; and summoned in Colonel Fisher and Captain
George Hardinge; and with them, Brigadier Handscombe and Major
Anderson, consulted and arranged for future plans against the storms
which he saw to be impending.

'10. Much of this, and his policy for remaining in Oudh, and the
conduct of the defence of Lucknow, I know from recollections of what
he occasionally let drop to me in his confidential conversations while
inspecting the Muchee Bawn. He told me that nearly the whole army
would go; that he did not think the Sikhs would go; that in every
regiment there were men that, with proper management, would remain
entirely on our side; and that, therefore, he meant to segregate from
the rest of the troops the Sikhs and selected men, and to do his
best to keep them faithful allies when the rest should go; that, if
Cawnpore should hold out, we would not be attacked; but that if it
should fall, we would be invested, and more or less closely besieged;
that no troops could come to our relief before the middle of August;
that the besieging forces would, he thought, be confined to the
sepoys, for the people of the country had always liked our European
officers, whom they had frequently had to bless for the safety of
their lives and the honour of their families; and the whole Hindu
population had a lively recollection of our friendly line of conduct
in the late quarrel with the Mussulmans regard