But we hasten to look upon a darker picture—to find our Indian empire on the verge of ruin, convulsed as in the agonies of dissolution; its native military, whom we had trusted and boasted, become traitors; their smothered vengeance, cherished through years of duplicity, bursting forth to deluge our vast dominion, and almost wrest it from us by a cruel rebellion; all that once gloried in the very name of British doomed by an unpitying and relentless revenge to utter destruction, consigned to be the subjects of a gigantic perfidy. The mine had exploded, and awful were the horrors of the tragedy it revealed! Helplessness consumed by the devouring sword; beauty wasted by demons of lust and passion; hopeless bravery sacrificed to satisfy a bloody appetite—whilst with fiendish shouts the villains gloated over the murders in which their hands were embrued and which stained their souls, and rejoiced in the atrocities they had committed. Never was the British soldier placed in circumstances so trying, and never did he display such heroism—a heroism which, equal to the emergency, was alone able to deliver him from the foul conspiracy of 150,000 armed and trained rebels, who encircled him and thirsted vehemently for his blood. Delhi, the great central tower of rebellious strength, was the scene of months of hard fighting and sore privation; but over all these British valour triumphing, was rewarded in the reduction of that important stronghold, and the utter discomfiture of its daring defenders. But Lucknow reversed the picture. There we find the British besieged by a countless host of the enemy; there we regard a handful of brave men resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible, rather than yield to the ruthless rebels who in multitudes encompassed the Residency. To save the brave garrison from the terrible fate which threatened them, and release the crowd of starving and emaciated women and children who, claiming the protection of the soldier, had found shelter there—to save and relieve these, a little army might have been seen advancing by rapid marches, encountering the greatest dangers, and eagerly pressing onwards to avenge their slaughtered friends. Stirred to marvellous achievements by the appalling traces of massacre perpetrated on the helpless and innocent, and which were too apparent all around—roused to heroic action, nerved to meet death or conquer in the awful and unequal struggle, the little army of Brigadier-General Havelock pressed vigorously forward to help and to avenge. It comprised of _European Troops_: The third company of the eighth battalion of Royal Artillery, (76 men); the First Madras Fusiliers, (376 men); the Sixty-fourth Regiment of Foot, (435 men); the Seventy-eighth Highlanders, (284 men); the Eighty-fourth Regiment of foot, (190 men); Bengal Artillery, (22 men); Volunteer Cavalry, (20 men). _Native Troops_: Ferozepore Regiment, (448 men); the Thirteenth Irregular, and the Third Oude Irregular