They succeeded in acquiring a fairly comfortable home in Nauvoo, and a farm a short distance outside of the city, but they were not destined to long enjoy their possessions. The enemies of the Church were not content with having killed the Prophet and Patriarch; they were determined to drive the Saints from the state of Illinois, as they had previously been driven from Missouri. The Saints, especially in the outlying settlements, were continually being harassed by the lawless mob. Farms were frequently pillaged or their crops burned. Domestic animals were driven off, and the inhabitants in some instances severely beaten and compelled to flee from their homes to save their lives. Many of their houses were also set fire to before the owners' sight. Not only were the Saints the victims of these ruthless depredations, but they were actually accused of being the perpetrators of the same, and this made the pretext by the mob for demanding that the Saints remove from the state or abandon their religion. Is it any wonder that some of the more weak and faithless of the members chose the latter alternative? An agreement was finally entered into, between the Saints on one side, and state officials and leaders of the mob on the other, that the Saints should leave the state as soon as they could sell their possessions. It soon became apparent, however, that they would have to abandon their homes instead of selling them, as their enemies, though anxious to secure them, showed little disposition to pay for them. The majority of the Saints living in Nauvoo left there to journey westward in the early part of the year 1846, leaving those whose services to work upon the Temple were required, or who lacked the necessary equipment for the journey, to follow on afterwards. When the Apostles returned later to Nauvoo to dedicate the Temple they exacted a promise from those yet remaining there, and who possessed the necessary outfits to undertake the journey, that they would not abandon any of the less fortunate Saints who might desire to accompany them, but help them out of the state. Before they were ready to depart, however, the mobocrats, in far superior numbers, surrounded and besieged the city. Charles Lambert took a prominent part in the city's defense, helping to manipulate one of the cannons, which, in the emergency, he and others had improvised from an old steamboat shaft, and which had been mounted upon a part of the running gear of a wagon.