Then Havelock struck, and struck swiftly and hard. Maude’s battery was sent forward. He took his pieces at a run to within 200 yards of the enemy’s front, wheeled round, and opened fire. The British infantry, covered by a spray of skirmishers armed with Enfield rifles, swept steadily forward. The rebel general, conspicuous on a gorgeously adorned elephant, was busy directing the movements of his force; and Maude tells the story of how Stuart Beatson, who stood near his guns, asked him to “knock over that chap on the elephant.” “I dismounted,” says Maude, “and laid the gun myself, a 9-pounder, at ‘line of metal’ (700 yards) range, and my first shot went in under the beast’s tail, and came out at his chest, rolling it over and giving its rider a bad fall.” Its rider, as it happened, was Tantia Topee, the Nana’s general; and had that 9-pound ball struck him, instead of his elephant, it might have saved the lives of the women and children in Cawnpore. Meanwhile, the 64th and the Highlanders in one resolute charge had swept over the rebel guns. Renaud, with his Fusileers, had crumpled up their flank, and the Nana’s troops, a torrent of fugitives, were in full flight to Futtehpore. The battle was practically won in ten minutes, all the rebel guns being captured—so fierce and swift was the British advance. The rebel Sepoys knew the fighting quality of the sahibs; but now they found a quite new fierceness in it. Havelock’s soldiers were on fire to avenge a thousand murders. And, flying fast, as Trevelyan puts it, the Nana’s troops “told everywhere that the sahibs had come back in strange guise; some draped like women to remind them what manner of wrong they were sworn to requite; others, conspicuous by tall blue caps, who hit their mark without being seen to fire—the native description of the Enfield rifle with which the Madras Fusileers were armed.” The fight at Futtehpore is memorable as being the first occasion on which British troops and the rebel Sepoys met in open battle. The Nana had shortly before issued a proclamation announcing that the British had “all been destroyed and sent to hell by the pious and sagacious troops who were firm to their religion”; and, as “no trace of them was left, it became the duty of all the subjects of the Government to rejoice at the delightful intelligence.” But Futtehpore showed that “all the yellow-faced and narrow-minded people” had not been “sent to hell.” They had reappeared, indeed, with uncomfortable energy, and a disagreeable determination to despatch every Sepoy they could capture somewhere in that direction!