But what impressed me more than even the glorious defence was the foresight and ability of the man who made that defence possible.
Henry Lawrence was, apparently, the only European in India who, from the very first, formed an accurate estimate of the extent of the danger which threatened our rule in the early part of 1857, and who, notwithstanding his thorough appreciation of the many good qualities of Native soldiers, was not misled into a mistaken belief in the absolute loyalty of the Native army.

Fourteen years before Lawrence had predicted the Mutiny[3] and the course it would take, and when events shaped themselves as he had foreseen, he gave it as his opinion that the disaffection would be general and widespread.

But while his intimate knowledge of Native character led him to this conviction, so great was his influence with Natives--perhaps by reason of that knowledge--that he was able to delay the actual outbreak at Lucknow until his measures for the defence of the Residency were completed, and he persuaded a considerable number of sepoys, not only to continue in their allegiance, but to share with their European comrades the dangers and privations of the siege--a priceless service, for without their aid the defence could not have been made.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL SIR HENRY LAWRENCE, K.C.B.
_From a photograph taken at Lucknow._] In no part of India was there greater need for the services of a strong, enlightened, and sympathetic Ruler and Statesman.

Difficult as were the positions in which many men in authority were placed in 1857, none was more difficult than that in which Henry Lawrence found himself when he took over the Chief Commissionership of Oudh in the spring of that year.

His colleagues in the administration were at feud with each other, and by their ignorance of the proper methods of dealing with the people they had succeeded in alienating all classes.
While Lawrence was engaged in pouring oil on these troubled waters, and in earning the gratitude of the people by modifying the previous year's undue assessment, signs appeared of the disaffection, which had begun amongst the troops at Barrackpore, having spread to the cantonments in Oudh.