Page:Clyde and Strathnairn.djvu/66

56 Commissionership of Oudh, had left Calcutta on the 16th of August for the upper provinces, in company with Colonel Robert Napier (afterwards Field Marshal Lord Napier) of the Bengal Engineers, as Chief Divisional Staff Officer. Brigadier Havelock was fruitlessly endeavouring, as we have already seen, to push his way to Lucknow, while Brigadier Neill was holding the country in his rear. 'We received intelligence last night,' Sir Colin wrote on the 17th of August, 'of the decision arrived at by Havelock after his affair with the enemy on the 5th instant at Baserátganj. It is most distressing to think of the position in which our poor friends are placed at Lucknow, but with the very small force under Havelock's command, and in the presence of such numbers of troops as he had opposed to him, and the whole population of Oudh arrayed in arms for the defence of their villages, he must have lost his little detachment in attempting to force his way through such numbers and difficulties as he had to encounter and surmount before he could reach the walls of Lucknow.'

In the meantime the new Commander-in-Chief gave earnest attention to the measures which he proposed to adopt for stamping out the revolt. These measures comprised, briefly speaking, three separate movements, so as to combine the advance of two columns from the Madras and Bombay Presidencies respectively, in co-operation with the great central movement which he resolved to lead in person in the direction of Oudh and