If America can learn one
lesson from England, it is the folly of conquest, where conquest
involves the government of an alien race.
Our first visit was to the ruins of the Residency, where for six
long months Sir Henry Lawrence and his devoted band were shut up
and surrounded by fifty thousand armed rebels. The grounds, which
I should say are about thirty acres in extent, were fortunately
encompassed by an earthen rampart six feet in height. You need not
be told of the heroic resistance of the two regiments of British
soldiers and one of natives, nor of the famous rescue. Hour after
hour, day after day, week after week, and month after month, the
three hundred women and children, shut in a cellar under ground,
watched and prayed for the sound of Have-lock's bugles, but it
came not. Hope, wearied out at last, had almost given place to
despair. Through the day the attacks of the infuriated mob could
be seen and repelled, but who was to answer that when darkness
fell the wall was not to be pierced at some weak point of the
extended line? One officer in command of a critical point
failing--not to do his duty, there was never a fear of that--but
failing to judge correctly of what the occasion demanded, and the
struggle was over. Death was the last of the fears of these poor
women night after night as the days rolled slowly away.
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