"According to telegraphic despatches received previous to the outbreak,
a thousand Europeans were to have been here on the fourteenth instant.
This force may be on its way up. Any assistance you can send might
co-operate with it. Nine-pounder ammunition, chiefly cartridges, is
required. Should the above force arrive, we can, in return, insure
the safety of Lucknow. Being simply a military man, General Wheeler
has no power to offer bribes in land and money to the insurgents, nor
any means whatever of communicating with them. You can ascertain the
best means of crossing the river. Nujuffgurh Ghaut is suggested. It
is earnestly requested that whatever is done may be effected without
a moment's delay. We have lost about a third of our original number.
The enemy are strongest in artillery. They appear not to have more
than four hundred or five hundred infantry. They move their guns with
difficulty, by means of unbroken bullocks. The infantry are great
cowards, and easily repulsed.
"By order,
"G. V. VIBART, Major."
In the following letter there is one sad touch: the widower writing
over his elbow "on the floor," "in the midst of the greatest dirt,
noise, and confusion."
"I was agreeably surprised to receive your most welcome letter of the
twenty-first, the messenger of which managed cleverly to find his way
here; but that surprise was exceeded by the astonishment felt by us
all, at the total want of knowledge you seem to be in regarding our
position and prospects; while we have been, since the sixth of the
month, equally in the dark respecting the doings of the world around
us. Your loss at Lucknow is frightful, in common with that of us all;
for, since the date referred to, every one here has been reduced to
ruin. On that date they commenced their attack, and fearfully have
they continued now for eighteen days and nights; while the condition
of misery experienced by all is utterly beyond description in this
place. Death and mutilation, in all their forms of horror, have been
daily before us. The numerical amount of casualties has been frightful,
caused both by sickness and the implements of war, the latter having
been fully employed against our devoted garrison by the villainous
insurgents, who have, unluckily, been enabled to furnish themselves
therewith from the repository which contained them. We await the
arrival of succour with the most anxious expectation, after all our
endurance and sufferings; for that, Sir Henry Lawrence has been applied
to by Sir Hugh, and we hope earnestly it will be afforded, and that
immediately, to avert further evil. If he will answer that appeal
with 'deux cents soldats Britanniques,' we shall be doubtless at once
enabled to improve our position in a vital manner: and we deserve
that the appeal should be so answered forthwith. You will be grieved
to learn that among our casualties from sickness my poor dear wife
and infant have been numbered. The former sank on the twelfth, and
the latter on the nineteenth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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