Under this new clause Mr. Ross Lowis Mangles, of the Bengal Civil Service, Assistant-Magistrate at Patna; Mr. William Fraser McDonell, Magistrate of the Saran District; and Mr. Thomas Henry Kavanagh, Assistant-Commissioner in Oudh, were gazetted, for distinguished services rendered at Arrah and Lucknow. The defence of Arrah, a town in the Shahabad District of Bengal, about thirty-six miles from Patna, was one of the most thrilling incidents of the Indian Mutiny. Here for a whole week a dozen Englishmen and a small body of Sikhs, shut up in a two-storeyed house, successfully kept off over two thousand sepoys until a relief force came to their rescue. One young lieutenant of the Southern Mahratta Irregular Horse, with a few sowars at his back, might storm a seemingly impregnable fort strongly garrisoned by mutineers, and kill or capture every man of them, but reverse the positions and a very different story was told. The history of the Great Mutiny contains many instances of a mere handful of Englishmen holding their own against tremendous odds, as was done at Arrah. When news came of the outbreak at Arrah and the predicament of the white residents there, a relief expedition was hastily organised at Dinapur under the command of Captain Dunbar. It was destined to fail in its mission, but it was a gallant and notable attempt. The force comprised four hundred men, drawn from the 10th and 37th Regiments, with a sprinkling of volunteers. Among the latter were Messrs. Ross Mangles and McDonell, whose intimate knowledge of the district made them invaluable as guides. All went well with the expedition in its journey up the Ganges and, on landing, it marched several miles without serious molestation. But when within a few miles of Arrah it was obliged to pass through a thick piece of jungle in which the sepoys had laid an ambuscade. Darkness had fallen as the soldiers pushed their way through the maze of trees and dense undergrowth, and the murderous fire that suddenly broke out threw them into confusion. All through the night the unequal fight went on, but the loss on the British side was so heavy that when morning dawned the surviving officers saw it would be impossible, or at least unwise, to continue the advance. Captain Dunbar, unfortunately, had been among the first to fall. Very reluctantly, therefore, the order to retreat was given, and the little force, still firing on its foes, slowly fell back. Other sepoys had arrived on the scene in the meantime, and the exhausted soldiers now found themselves compelled to run the gauntlet between two lines of fire. In these conditions something like a panic at last set in; the ranks broke up in disorder.