It was a march of twenty miles. The sun rose and scorched the silent and panting ranks of the British with its pitiless heat. The Highlanders suffered most; they were wholly unprepared for a summer campaign, and were actually wearing the heavy woollen doublets intended for winter use; but their stubborn Northern blood sustained them. Every now and again, indeed, some poor fellow in the ranks dropped as though shot through the head, literally killed with the heat. Nana Sahib himself held the approach to Cawnpore, with 7000 troops and a powerful artillery, and his position was found to be of great strength. Havelock studied it a few minutes with keen and soldierly glance, and formed his plans. He had the genius which can use rules, but which also, on occasion, can dispense with rules. He violated all the accepted canons of war in his attack upon the Nana’s position. He amused the enemy’s front with the fire of a company of the Fusileers, and the manœuvres of Barrow’s twenty volunteer sabres, while with his whole force he himself swept round to the right to turn the Nana’s flank. Havelock, that is, risked his baggage and his communications, to strike a daring blow for victory. As Havelock’s men pressed grimly forward, screened by a small grove, they heard the bands of the Sepoy regiments playing “Auld lang syne” and “Cheer, boys, cheer,” and the sound made the men clutch their muskets with a little touch of added fury. The Sepoys discovered Havelock’s strategy rather late, and swung their guns round to meet it. Their fire smote the flank of Havelock’s column cruelly, but the British never paused nor faltered. When Havelock judged his turning movement was sufficiently advanced, he wheeled the column into line. His light guns were insufficient to beat down the fire of the heavy pieces worked by the rebels, and he launched his Highlanders at the battery. They moved dourly forward under a heavy fire, till within eighty yards of the guns. Then the bayonets came down to the charge, and with heads bent low and kilts flying in the wind, the Highlanders went in with a run. The charge was in perfect silence, not a shot nor a shout being heard; but it was so furious that mound and guns were carried in an instant, and the village itself swept through. As Forbes describes it, “Mad with the ardour of battle, every drop of Highland blood afire in every vein, the Ross-shire men crashed right through the village, and cleared it before they dropped out of the double.” They had crushed the enemy’s left, taken its guns, and sent a great mass of Sepoys whirling to the rear.