Explore "Across India" by Oliver Optic on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I suppose you recall the events of the Mutiny well enough to understand the situation here in 1857," said Lord Tremlyn the next morning when the company had gathered in the parlor of the hotel. "But there was no massacre here, as in Cawnpore, to impress the facts upon your memory, though many brave men lost their lives in the defence of the place. There were only seven hundred and fifty troops in the town; but Sir Henry Lawrence had done the best he could to fortify the Residency, ill adapted as it was for defensive works.
"An attempt was made to check the advance of the rebels eight miles from the city; but it was a failure, with the small available force, and two days later the enemy attacked the British at the Residency. Three times the brave defenders beat back the assaults of the assailants. These events on the spot you have visited occurred between the last of May and the first of July. It was not till the twenty-second of September that Havelock and Outram arrived, and captured the Alum-Bagh, which we shall visit this morning. It was a terrible summer that the beleaguered people and their brave handful of soldiers passed; and Tennyson has commemorated Lucknow in his immortal verse.