ish. They pretended
therefore that the English government were going to make them turn
Christians by force, and persuaded the men to revolt. They kept this
secret, and on a sudden the greater number of the native regiments rose
against their English officers, murdered many of them, as well as many
civilians, with their wives and children, and took possession of several
fortified places. The most important were Delhi and Lucknow. In one
place, Cawnpore, a chief, called Nana Sahib, got General Wheeler and all
the English in the garrison into his power, and murdered nearly the
whole of them, soldiers and civilians, women and children; the bodies of
the latter he threw into a deep well. Three persons alone out of one
thousand escaped that dreadful massacre. The accounts of these things
made the hearts of British soldiers burn within them. We had a number
of native troops from other parts of the country who remained faithful
to the British, but still the rebel regiments far outnumbered the
English troops. We found ourselves once more under the command of our
old general, Sir Colin Campbell. We marched from Calcutta to Cawnpore,
from which the wretch, Nana Sahib, had taken flight, and then on to
Lucknow, which the rebels still held in great force. We lost a great
many men by cholera, and had frequent skirmishes and one or two pitched
battles with the enemy--till early in March, 1858, we were before
Lucknow. Here we had some severe fighting. We had to storm one large
building after another, but at length the rebels were driven out, and
numbers cut to pieces. On one occasion I had to climb a tree to see
what the enemy were about on the other side of a wall; though hundreds
of bullets whistled by me I descended unhurt, but was soon afterwards
hit on the breast with a bullet which knocked me over; I was up again,
and refusing to go to the rear, assisted to capture a fort, and spiked a
gun with my bayonet. While doing this, my kilt was riddled with
bullets, though I escaped unhurt. I was not so fortunate a day or two
afterwards, when attacking a large block of palaces full of Sepoys, for
I received a shot in my neck which laid me low. I was carried out of
the fight by my comrades, and my wound was so severe that I had to be
invalided home. The fight before Lucknow was my last battle.

The English beat the Sepoys wherever they were met, and at length the
British rule was once more firmly established in India.

It