After
a difficult and terrible siege, the place was carried by storm on
September 20th, 1857--an achievement that cost many noble lives, and
chief among them that of the gallant Nicholson, a soldier whose mind
and character seem to have made on all who knew him an impression as
of supernatural grandeur.
Five days later General Havelock and his little band of heroes--some
one thousand Englishmen who had marched with him from Allahabad,
recaptured by Neill for England, and on to ghastly Cawnpore--arrived
at Lucknow, and relieved the slender British force which since May
had been holding the Residency against the fierce and ever-renewed
assaults of the thousands of rebels who poured themselves upon it. He
came in time to save many a brave life that should yet do good
service; but the noblest Englishman of them all, the gentle,
dauntless, chivalrous Sir Henry Lawrence, Governor of Oude, had died
from wounds inflicted by a rebel shell many weeks before, and lay
buried in the stronghold for whose safe keeping he had continued to
provide in the hour and article of death. His spirit, however, seemed
yet to actuate the survivors.
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