When the Mutiny first broke out General Anson was Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in India. It was said that he was a mere amateur soldier, and that in Simla he had accordingly found a congenial Capua. Family interest had sent him at one bound from the Turf some years before to the command of one of the Presidency armies. When the Commandership-in-Chief of the Indian Armies fell vacant, family interest had again secured the post for him. Had he been a man of capacity and energy the Mutiny would have been stamped out when it was feebly sporadic. After it became what Canning called “epidemic,” the task of repression was harder. Whether Anson would have risen to the level of his responsibilities the world will never know now, because he died in a fortnight after he began to grapple with the crisis.[342] His slender force was then taken in hand by Sir H. Barnard, who pressed on to the South, and who reached Alipore on the 5th of June, where he effected a junction with Sir Archdale Wilson, who had marched from Meerut. On the 8th Barnard drove the rebels from their entrenchments at Budlee Serái, four miles north of Delhi, where he repeated Raglan’s experiment in the Crimea--that of besieging a fortress, whose garrison was really besieging him. On the 5th of July Barnard died, to be succeeded by Reed, who in turn was succeeded by Wilson on the 17th of July. All four were sluggish generals, and it was well that John Lawrence, at Lahore, acted on them like a goad. Englishmen will not readily forget his famous telegram to Anson in May when he heard that the General was about to entrench himself at Umballa--“Clubs are trumps--not spades?” A vain controversy has arisen as to who can claim credit for the capture of Delhi; whether it was due to Wilson’s slow but cautious tactics, or to the engineering skill of Taylor, or the demoniac energy of Nicholson, or the dashing enterprise of Chamberlain, who brought succours from the Punjab. The man who really took the rebel stronghold was not a soldier but a civilian, for it was John Lawrence, at Lahore, and not any of the generals before Delhi, who was the bulwark of the war.[343] When the Mutiny broke out the Punjab was--by the prompt action of Lawrence’s subordinates who disarmed sulking troops, and stamped out the germs of mutiny whenever and wherever they were visible--saved and secured. [Illustration: LORD LAWRENCE.]