While the peril was at its height, his preoccupation almost drowned apprehension. But when the climax was over, he was awe-struck on looking back on the narrowness of the escape. He recalled to mind the desperate efforts which he and his men had put forth. But he was profoundly conscious that, humanly speaking, no exertions of this nature were adequate to cope with the frightful emergency which had lasted so long as to strain his resources almost to breaking. The fatuity, which often haunts criminals, had affected the mutineers and the rebel leaders; error had dogged their steps, and their unaccountable oversights had, in his opinion, contributed to the success of the British cause. He used to say that their opportunity would, if reasonably used, have given them the mastery; but that they with their unreason threw away its advantages, and that in short had they pursued almost any other course than that which they did pursue, the British flag must have succumbed. Thus regarding with humility the efforts of which the issue had been happy, he felt truly, and strove to inspire others with, a sentiment of devout thankfulness to the God of battles and the Giver of all victory. He believed that if Delhi had not fallen, and if the tension in the Punjab had been prolonged for some more months, even for some more weeks, the toils of inextricable misfortune would have closed round his administration. The frontier tribes would, he thought, have marched upon half-protected districts, and would have been joined by other tribes in the interior of the province. One military station after another would have been abandoned by the British, so that the available forces might be concentrated at Lahore the capital; and finally there would have been a retreat, with all the European families and a train of camp-followers, from Lahore down the Indus valley towards the seaboard. Then, as he declared, no Englishman would for a whole generation have been seen in the Punjab, either as a conqueror or as a ruler. As to his share in the recapture of Delhi, the testimony may be cited of an absolutely competent witness, Lord Canning, a man of deliberate reflection, who always measured his words, and who wrote some time after the event when all facts and accounts had been collated, thus: “Of what is due to Sir John Lawrence himself no man is ignorant. Through him Delhi fell, and the Punjab, no longer a weakness, becomes a source of strength. But for him, the hold of England over Upper India would have had to be recovered at a cost of English blood and treasure which defies calculation.”