Returning to Bithoor the Nana was proclaimed Peishwa amid the booming of cannon and the plaudits of his retainers. He passed a week in drunken revels and debauchery, and when, in ignorance of its fate, a small company of European fugitives from Fategarh sought refuge at Cawnpore, he amused himself by having all the men but three killed in his presence. These three and the women and children who accompanied them, were sent to a small house known as the Bibigarh, in which the whole of the captives, now numbering two hundred and eleven, were imprisoned. Many died, and they were happiest. The survivors were subjected to every indignity, given the coarsest food, and forced to grind corn for their conqueror, who, early in July, took up his abode in a large building at Cawnpore overlooking the house in which the unhappy people were penned. But the period of their earthly sufferings was drawing to a close. An avenging army was moving swiftly up the Grand Trunk Road from Allahabad. The Nana's nephew and two of his lieutenants, leading a large force against the British, were badly defeated. On the 15th of July came the alarming tidings that the Feringhis were only a day's march from the city. The Furies must have chosen that date. The Nana, the man who thought himself fit to be a king, decided that Havelock would turn back if there were no more English left in Cawnpore! So as a preliminary to the greater tragedy, five men who had escaped death thus far--no one knows whence two of them came--were brought forth and slaughtered at the feet of the renowned Peishwa. Then a squad of sepoys were told to "shoot all the women and children in the Bibigarh through the windows of the house." Poor wretches--they were afraid to refuse, yet their gorge rose at the deed, and they fired at the ceiling! Such weakness was annoying to the puissant Brahmin. He selected two Mohammedan butchers, an Afghan, and two out-caste Hindus, to do his bidding. Armed with long knives these five fiends entered the shambles. Alas, how can the scene that followed be described! Yet, not even then was the sacrifice complete. Some who were wounded but not killed, a few children who crept under the garments of their dead mothers, lived until the morning. Not all the native soldiers were so lost to human sympathies that they did not shudder at the groans and muffled cries that came all night from the house of sorrow. Some of them have left records of sights and sounds too horrible to translate from their Eastern tongue. But the rumble of distant guns told the destroyer that his short-lived hour of triumph was nearly sped. In a paroxysm of rage and fear, he gave the final order, and the Well of Cawnpore thereby attained its ghastly immortality. By his command all that piteous company of women and children, the living and the dead together, were thrown into a deep well that stood in the garden of Bibigarh--the House of the Woman.