and two wounded,
eighteen men of the Sixty-Fourth killed and twenty-five wounded, with
equally heavy proportions killed and wounded from the companies of the
Thirty-Fourth and Eighty-Second. Brigadier Wilson first had his horse
shot, and was then himself killed, while urging the men to maintain the
honour of the regiment. The command then devolved on Major Stirling,
one of the Sixty-Fourth, who was cut down in the act of spiking one of
the enemy's guns, and Captain M'Crea of the same regiment was also cut
down just as he had spiked his fourth gun. This charge, and these
individual acts of bravery, retarded the advance of the enemy till some
sort of order had been re-established inside the fort. The Sixty-Fourth
were then driven back, and obliged to leave their dead.
This then was the state of matters when we reached Cawnpore from
Lucknow. The whole of our spare baggage was captured: the city of
Cawnpore and the whole of the river-side up to the house where the Nana
had slaughtered the women and children were in the hands of the enemy;
but they had not yet injured the bridge of boats, nor crossed the canal,
and the road to Allahabad still remained open.
We marched through the fort, and took up ground near where the jute mill
of Messrs. Beer Brothers and Co. and Joe Lee's hotel now stand. We
crossed the bridge without any loss except one officer, who was slightly
wounded by being struck on the shin by a spent bullet from a charge of
grape. He was a long slender youth of about sixteen or seventeen years
of age, whom the men had named "Jack Straw." He was knocked down just as
we cleared the bridge of boats, among the blood of some camp-followers
who had been killed by the bursting of a shell just in front of us.
Sergeant Paton, of my company, picked him up, and put him into an empty
_dooly_ which was passing.
During the day a piquet of one sergeant, one corporal, and about twenty
men, under command of Lieutenant Stirling, who was afterwards killed on
the 5th of December, was sent out to bring in the body of Brigadier
Wilson, and a man named Doran, of the Sixty-Fourth, who had gone up to
Lucknow in the Volunteer Cavalry, and had there done good service and
returned with our force, volunteered to go out with them to identify the
brigadier's body, because there were many more killed near the same
place, and their corpses having been stripped, they could not be
identified by their uniform, and it would have been impossible
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