Page:The Sikhs (Gordon).djvu/260

218 they identified themselves with our cause and fought as lions of their race.

Towards the close of the year Lucknow, which had become the great stronghold and focus of rebellion, was finally relieved by a force under Lord Clyde, including in it troops sent down from Delhi after its fall. On that occasion, in the magnificent rush on the Secundra Bagh, a strong position held by the enemy in great force, the Khalsa war-cry was heard mingled with the Highland pibroch summoning to the onset, when stern Scots and Sikhs, intent on coming to close quarters with the foe, raced together to be the first in at the breach, a mere hole in the wall, than which, in the words of Sir Colin Campbell, who witnessed the assault, "there never was a bolder feat of arms." Until the close of the long campaign in 1859 the Sikhs were everywhere engaged alongside their British comrades in crushing out the rebellion.

As to the part the Punjab played in the great crisis of 1857, when the rebels