The hard fighting was now over; the failure to defend even one of the fortresses upon which for months they had bestowed so much care, completely disheartened the mutineers remaining in the city. Numbers effected their escape; others hid themselves, after having got rid of their arms and uniforms; some parties took refuge in houses, and defended themselves desperately to the end. The work was practically accomplished on the 21st, and Lucknow, which had so long been the headquarters of the insurrection, was in British hands, and that with a far smaller loss than could have been expected from the task of capturing a city possessing so many places of strength, and held by some 20,000 desperate men fighting with ropes round their necks. [=The Booty of the Soldiers=] [=The East India Company Abolished=] [=Victoria is Made Empress of India=] The city taken, the troops were permitted to plunder and murder to their hearts' content. In every house were dead or dying, and the corpses of Sepoys lay piled up several feet in height. The booty which the soldiers carried off in the way of jewels and treasures of every kind was enormous. The widowed queen of Oude set out for England, to proclaim the innocence of her son "in the dark countries of the West," and to preserve to her house the shadow of an independent monarchy. She never saw her sunny India again, however; on the return journey she died of a broken heart. Though the rebellion gradually lost force and cohesion after this period, the vengeance continued for a year longer. But the chief rebel, Nana Sahib, and the two heroic women, the Begum of Oude and the Ranee of Jansee, escaped to Nepaul. In the course of the year 1858, peace and order again returned to the Anglo-Indian Empire, and the government was able to consider means of reconciliation. By a proclamation of the queen all rebels who were not directly implicated in the murder of British subjects, and would return to their duty and allegiance by January, 1859, were to obtain a complete amnesty. This proclamation also announced that the queen, with the consent of Parliament, had determined to abolish the East India Company, to take the government into her own hands, and to rule India by means of a special secretary of state and council. The Indian Empire, both within and without, had assumed such gigantic proportions that it could no longer be properly ruled by a mercantile company, and came properly under the control of the crown. In 1876 Queen Victoria assumed, by act of Parliament, the title of Empress of India. The most recent important event, in the acquisition of territory in this part of the world, was the invasion of Burmah in 1885, and its capture after a short and decisive campaign. The Indian Empire of Victoria has now grown enormous in extent, its borders extending to the Himalayas on the north, where they are in contact with the boundaries of the great imperial dominion which Russia has acquired in Asia.