This one battle honour, "Lucknow," covers four distinct military operations--the memorable defence of the Residency under Sir Henry Lawrence; the first relief, or rather reinforcement, of the beleaguered garrison by Sir Henry Havelock; the final relief and withdrawal of the women and children by Sir Colin Campbell; and, lastly, the siege and capture of the city in March, 1858. With the medal granted for the Indian Mutiny clasps were issued for the Relief, the Defence, and one simply superscribed "Lucknow," which covered the final operations only. Wearers of the medal are enabled to show the distinctive part they played in the grand struggle in and around Lucknow, but survivors are now few and far between. In a very few short years there will be no wearers of the Mutiny Medal left. Whilst the men by their clasps showed the share they took in the operations, the regiments bear no distinctive mark showing the part they played. The Somerset Light Infantry and the 12th Khelat-i-Ghilzai Regiment are authorized to bear a mural crown as a distinctive honour for their defence of Jelalabad and Khelat-i-Ghilzai; the 16th Lucknow Regiment wears a battlemented gateway, to connect it with the memorable defence of the Residency; the 45th Sikhs bear the words "Defence of Arrah"; and the regiments which formed the garrison, under Sir George White, were granted the honour "Defence of Ladysmith," to differentiate them from their comrades who, under Sir Redvers Buller, effected their relief. It is true that the 32nd were made light infantry as a recognition of their conduct at Lucknow, but so little is this fact remembered that in the month of January, 1910, a leading service paper gravely asserted that the Cornwalls were given their bugles in the year 1832! _Sic transit gloria mundi._ _Defence of Lucknow._ Lucknow, the capital of the newly-annexed kingdom of Oude, was in 1857 a city of some 150,000 inhabitants, known to be fanatically hostile to our rule. Only the year before the Mutiny the King had been deposed, and with good cause. Misgovernment and tyranny were rampant throughout his kingdom, and we were performing a mere act of justice towards his people in removing him from power. We have not yet learnt the lesson that a nation prefers bad government under its own rulers to the best form of government under an alien administration. The unpopularity of the annexation was felt beyond the confines of Oude. A very large proportion of the sepoys of the Bengal army were recruited from this very country, and their sympathies were naturally with their fallen King.