muster. An important question was at issue whether it would be safe, with all the advantages then gained, to storm the Kaiser Bagh, or wait until the batteries had forced a breach. The intention was on that morning, March 14th, only to attack the Imambara; but the impetuosity of the troops and the feeble defence of the sepoys had not been counted on. Considering all the circumstances, and that the rebels seemed to have been overcome by panic, it was considered advisable to push on while the defenders were still disordered, and the storming forces were still enthusiastic for the advance. Franks and Napier, after weighing all the conditions of the situation, decided to advance. They asked for reinforcements, which were not long in coming up, the troops on the right advancing and occupying the Moti Mahal with very little resistance. At the same time Franks pushed his column through the court-yard of Sadat Ali's Mosque directly into the Kaiser Bagh, which is a rectangular palace about 400 yards square. The enclosure includes a series of gardens and courts, through which marble summer-houses are scattered. The whole place swarmed with sepoys, who poured a heavy musketry fire on the British, not only from the summer-houses and various parts of the palace, but from the roofs of the neighboring dwellings.
But the British having gained a footing in the garden, the cause of the rebels was hopeless. The Kaiser Bagh was captured with a great slaughter of the insurgents who defended it. One historian of the Indian mutiny says that after the massacre at Cawnpore the soldiers divided among them the tresses of a murdered girl, and swore that for every hair of her head one sepoy should die. As far as possible they kept their word. In Sir Colin Campbell's relief of Lucknow and in the siege which has just been described, no quarter was given. If any fallen sepoy ventured to ask it, "Cawnpore!" was hissed in his
