talks, assured us that it was only
green tobacco which had been cooked in the soup.

The desertion of our camp-followers was significant. An army in India is
followed by another army whose general or commander-in-chief is the
bazaar _kotwal_.[9] These people carry all their household goods and
families with them, their only houses being their little tents. The
elder men, at the time of which I write, could all talk of the victories
of Lords Lake and Combermere, and the Caubul war of 1840-42, and the
younger hands could tell us of the victories of Lords Gough and Hardinge
in the Punjab. The younger generations took up the handicrafts of their
fathers, as barbers, cobblers, cooks, shoeblacks, and so forth, a motley
hive bred in camps but unwarlike, always in the rear of the army. Most
of these camp-followers were low-caste Hindoos, very few of them were
Mahommedans, except the _bheesties_. I may remark that the _bheesties_
and the _dooly_-bearers (the latter were under the hospital guard) were
the only camp-followers who did not desert us when we crossed into
Oude.[10] The natives fully believed that our column was doomed to
extermination; there is no doubt that they knew of the powerful force
collecting in our rear, consisting of the Gwalior Contingent, which had
never yet been beaten and was supposed to be invincible; also of the
Central India mutineers who were gathering for a fresh attack on
Cawnpore under the leadership of Nana Sahib, Kooer Sing, Tantia Topee,
and other commanders. But we learned all this afterwards, when this army
retook Cawnpore in our rear, which story I will relate in its proper
place. For the present, we must resume our advance into Oude.

Every hour's march brought us three miles nearer Lucknow, and before we
made our first halt, we could distinctly hear the guns of the enemy
bombarding the Residency. Foot-sore and tired as they were, the report
of each salvo made the men step out with a firmer tread and a more
determined resolve to overcome all difficulties, and to carry relief to
the beleaguered garrison and the helpless women and children. I may
mention that the cowardly treachery of the enemy, and their barbarous
murders of women and children, had converted the war of the Mutiny into
a _guerre a la mort_,--a war of the most cruel and exterminating form,
in which no quarter was given on either side. Up to the final relief of
Lucknow and the second capture of Cawnpore, and the total rout of t