The defeat of the rebels would have been complete, but for the escape of the Bithoor troops constituting the enemy's left in the ground between the city and the river. After the capture of the Gwalior Contingent's camp there had been assigned to General Mansfield, Sir Colin's Chief-of-Staff, the task of cutting off the retreat of the rebel left along the Bithoor road. Mansfield advanced, with the Rifles in skirmishing order followed by the Ninety-Third and covered by an artillery fire, to a position near the Subadar's Tank, where he halted short of the road which was the enemy's line of retreat. This passive attitude not only permitted the escape of the enemy, but emboldened them to venture an artillery-attack on Mansfield's stationary troops; and the rebels were allowed to carry off their guns without hindrance and to make good their retreat on Bithoor. Mansfield's inaction would have more seriously detracted from the completeness of the British victory, but for the success of the enterprise which Sir Colin committed to Hope Grant on the 8th. That gallant soldier hurried in pursuit of the Bithoor fugitives with some two thousand five hundred men and eleven guns. On the early morning of the 9th he overtook them at Serai Ghaut twenty-five miles above Cawnpore. Promptly opening fire on them, he drove them across the river and captured fifteen guns. Of the forty guns with which the rebels had advanced on Cawnpore, they had now lost all but one. Sir Colin had disposed of some twenty-five thousand enemies, including the formidable Gwalior Contingent, at the cost of only ninety-nine casualties among the troops he had led to a success so signal.
He was free at last to appreciate the virtue of the old proverb, "All's well that ends well." But he had run great risks and had narrowly escaped disaster. Nobly stimulated by an exigence in the urgency of which he put faith, he had set aside ordinary military considerations and concentrated every energy on the relief of a garrison which he had been led to believe was in extremity. As a matter of fact, there was no such imminency as had been represented to him. It must be said that both the chiefs who successively conducted the defence of Lucknow were unduly impatient of beleaguerment. Havelock sacrificed half his scanty force in successive attempts to reach Lucknow, urged to try and to try again by Inglis' needless nervousness on the subject of rations. Outram's sole edible contributions to the resources of the original garrison were the bullocks which had hauled his guns and ammunition waggons; yet no approach to starvation threatened either the original garrison or the so-called "relieving force." As a matter of fact there was no resort to horse-flesh; and there never should have been any occasion for reduced rations of farinaceous food, of which, indeed, Sir Colin carried away one hundred and sixty thousand lbs. The commissariat had simply miscalculated; and there was really no need that Sir Colin should have strained every nerve for the immediate relief of Lucknow, involving as it did the postponement of military undertakings of more imminent importance. This fact impressed itself on the Commander-in-Chief; and the realisation that he had been influenced by representations which circumstances did not warrant gave occasion to a coolness on his part towards Sir James Outram.