Campbell began his operations on the morning of March 3. Forbes-Mitchell, who stood in the ranks of the 93rd, looked out with a soldier’s eye over the domed mosques and sky-piercing minarets of the doomed city, sharp-cut against the morning sky. “I don’t think,” he writes, “I ever saw a prettier scene.” Forbes-Mitchell was not an artist, only a hard-fighting private in the 93rd; but Russell of the _Times_, who was familiar with all the great cities of the world, was just as deeply impressed as Forbes-Mitchell with the aspect that Lucknow wore that fateful morning, when the red tide of war was about to fill and flood its streets. This is how Russell describes the scene: “A vision of palaces, minarets, domes, azure and golden, cupolas, colonnades, long façades of fair perspective, in pillar and column, terraced roofs—all rising up amid a calm, still ocean of the brightest verdure. Look for miles and miles away, and still the ocean spreads, and the towers of the fairy city gleam in its midst. Spires of gold glitter in the sun. Turrets and gilded spheres shine like constellations. There is nothing mean or squalid to be seen. Here is a city more vast than Paris, as it seems, and more brilliant, lying before us.” But there was the grim face of war hidden beneath the mask of smiling beauty which Lucknow presented that March morning. The soldiers, as they stood in their ranks, could see, line beyond line, the frowning Sepoy defences; while, in the foreground, Peel, with his blue-jackets, was getting his heavy 16-pounders into position for the fierce duel about to begin. Colin Campbell’s movement on his left, however, was but a feint, designed to mislead the enemy’s generals. On the night of the 4th the construction of two bridges across the Goomtee was begun. On the morning of the 5th one of them was completed, and the British infantry crossed, and threw up earthworks to defend the bridge-head. By midnight on the 5th both bridges were complete, with their approaches, and by four o’clock the troops were crossing. Hope Grant, in command of the cavalry, covered their front, and drove back the enemy’s horse. The Queen’s Bays, a young regiment that had never yet been engaged, were in the advance. They got out of hand in their ardour, and rode recklessly on a body of Sepoy horse, smashed them with their charge, followed them over-eagerly into broken ground, and under heavy gun-fire. They came back broken from that wild charge, their major, Percy Smith, was killed, and the Bays themselves suffered badly.