And Cawnpore was not the only scene of murder and outrage. The army before Delhi was cut off from Calcutta and the Gangetic provinces, and news did not come every day. But with the tale of the vilest tragedy of all came also the bad tidings from Allahabad, where the poor ensigns were foully murdered, from Benares and Jhansi, from Fyzabad, Shahjehanpur, and Dinapur. Right along the Ganges the provinces and towns seethed with mutiny and murder, regiment after regiment having risen against the alien; and Oudh, the kingdom from which the Native Bengal Army was chiefly recruited, was ablaze from one end to another, the people joining hands with the rebels in their hatred of the foreigners who had dethroned their wicked king. There was one patch of blue in the lowering sky. Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, was holding out bravely. There the best and greatest and most loved man in India was holding the rebel troops at bay with his handful of Englishmen and a number of loyal sepoys, who thereby won everlasting honour. This was Sir Henry Lawrence, the elder brother of John Lawrence. He it was who had pacified the Punjabis, and first taught the stout Sikhs and Pathans and Jats that Englishmen ruled for the benefit of the natives. He it was who gathered round him and trained that band of noble men who ruled the Punjab in such manner that Englishmen came to be respected and honoured and even loved by those who had hated the Feringhis most, a few years before. Men like his brother John, John Nicholson, Herbert Edwardes, and others who became famous as great soldiers and the best administrators the world has ever known--they were all proud to call themselves the disciples of Henry Lawrence. Henry Lawrence governed the Punjab as supreme ruler--as king, in fact, though not in name, when the Punjab was the most turbulent and unruly kingdom in Asia, and he had made it the best-governed. When he was called away his brother John had worthily filled his shoes, and but for the devotion and genius and goodness of heart of these two brothers, England might have lost India. When the mutiny broke out, Henry Lawrence was Resident of Oudh. Had he been there a few years longer, the men of Oudh would not have entertained that hatred of the British which now filled their hearts, but his beneficent rule had hardly had time to make itself felt. He alone--though he sympathized with and loved the natives of India more than any other Englishman--had foreseen the possibility of the rising, and he had taken steps to meet it in Lucknow. Owing to his foresight and generalship the Residency had been fortified and provisioned, and when the rising took place all the Europeans were within the fort, and the mutineers raged furiously but in vain.