to Sir Hugh Massey Wheeler,* Major-General, Commanding the Cawnpore Division.
25. After the suppression of the mutiny of the 7th Oudh Irregular Infantry, Sir Henry Lawrence was invested with full military powers, and the rank of Brigadier-General was conferred upon him. From the 20th May he assumed command of all the British troops in Oudh. Telegraphic communication was not, up to this time, interrupted, and messages were constantly passing and repassing between Sir Henry and the authorities in the N.-W.Provinces. The accounts received from Agra were unfavorable; the natives in the district were reported to have thrown off all Civil authority. The horrible outrages committed by the inhabitants of some of the largest cities upon defenceless women and children, were not, however, shared in by the masses of the citizens, but were the work of budmashes, or loose characters, who abound in all large native towns. These revel in a time of riot or disorder; and it was not surprising that, as soon as Civil power was at an end, we should have suffered so severely at their hands.
26. There were others who strove to stem the torrent of sedition and violence in trying to preserve order among the populace. They were men of influence and character, whose efforts in this direction were not actuated by ava- rice or ambition. But beyond their own family circle and dependents, their counsels and warnings were unheeded-in fact despised-and rapine and murder took place in the day in the streets of Lucknow. The rabble seized on opu-lent men and kept them under restraint until such time as they were ransomed by their friends.
27. The strong Brigade of native troops, consisting of the 1st, 53rd and 56th Bengal Native Infantry, with the 2nd Light Cavalry, at Cawnpore, also were reported to be disaffected. Subsequently, on 3rd June, these four regiments mutinied; and shortly afterwards, on the 9th June, General Wheeler's urgent application to Sir Henry for aid was received. But as the provisional council acting temporarily for Sir Henry Lawrence, whose health had just then given way, held that they could not spare a man from the Machhi Bhawan, or the Residency, it was mournfully but unanimously decided that aid could not be rendered.
- Sir Hugh Wheeler was, with others, treacherously massacred at Cawnpore on the 27th June, 1857, but 210 women and children of his party were reserved for future destruction. On the 15th July,the date of the defeat of the insurgents by Sir H. Havelock's small army, the Nana Saheb resolved to wreak his vengeance on the helpless women and children in his power, and they were then ruthlessly butchered by his order.
