136 * OUDE 



the pride of the Court, as in direct violation of former 

 treaties with the East India Company, and as outraging 

 the prejudices of the natives. In this one act she foresaw 

 the discontent and the dislike it gave all classes to our 

 rule ; and to it she attributed all the evils that have since 



5 



arisen. 



She was j^ossessed of every comfort, and lived in com- 

 parative ease and affluence. Her house, being at the 

 extremity of the intrenchments, and nearest the city, was 

 made a barrack or fort, and therefore was made the 

 principal point of attack by the bloodthirsty Sepoys, who, 

 both by their acts and gesticulations, threatened annihila- 

 tion to the little garrison and all within it. 



It was in a critical hour of this eventful siege, when the 

 mines of the rebels were making fearful progress towards 

 mv sister's residence, when ball after ball had riddled its 

 Avails and destroyed its contents, even to the very hang- 

 ings worked by her fingers, that the husband of her most 

 intimate friend, seeing the straits to which the garrison 

 was reduced, nobly volunteered an undertaking, that for 

 sagacity, spirit and daring, has eclipsed anything known 

 in Indian or European warfare. 



The relief of the ija^rrison of Lucknow, and the savin o- 

 of its inmates, male and female, from indiscriminate 

 slauo'hter, must be attributed to the self-devotion of one 

 man,^ who in the night sought the camp of Sir Colin 

 Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde, a distance of twenty 

 miles ; and, after facing perils the most imminent, either in 

 deceiving the pickets and passing through the lines of the 

 rebels, or by secreting himself in what appeared impass- 



' T. Kavanagb, Esq. 



