Company, all pointed in the same direction. Mr. Vernon Smith, though not counselling resignation, showed himself a better prophet than the rest by drawing a discouraging picture of the inconveniences likely to arise from Lord Ellenborough's hasty and dictatorial mood — a prophecy of the soundness of which Lord Canning was soon to experience disagreeable proof.
The course of events in India, however, left the Governor-General but scanty leisure to weigh the chances of attacks from home. The Mutiny was far from being dead. Lucknow, since the relief of its garrison in the November of the preceding year, had remained in the hands of the insurgents. The Commander-in-Chief was in favour of the next movement being directed against the rebels to the north-westward, in Rohilkhand, leaving the reduction of Lucknow — a very serious enterprise — to be accomplished later in the year. Lord Canning, however, decided that the capture of the Oudh capital ought to be forthwith undertaken. There were good reasons for the decision. The fall of Lucknow would have a great moral effect. It had filled the public eye. For many months all India had beheld the unprecedented spectacle of an English garrison barely able to hold its own behind the Residency entrenchments. Ever since the relief in November it had defied us. Friend and foe were now watching its fate. Outram, who had remained on guard at the Alambágh, an outpost a few miles south, had been frequently and fiercely assailed. It was now for the
