CHAPTER XI

DELHI: THE LEAP ON THE CITY

On September 13 four engineer officers—Medley and Lang, Greathed and Home—undertook the perilous task of examining the breaches in the enemy’s defences. Medley and Lang were detailed to examine the Cashmere Bastion, and Lang asked to be allowed to go while it was yet daylight. Leave was granted; and, with an escort of four men of the 60th, he crept to the edge of the cover on the British front, then coolly ran up the glacis and sat down upon the top of the counterscarp, under a heavy fire, studying the ditch and the two breaches beyond, and returned unhurt, to pronounce the breach practicable! It was necessary, however, to ascertain the depth of the ditch, and Lang and Medley were sent again, after nightfall, on this business.

Medley himself may tell the story of the daring adventure:—

It was a bright, starlight night, with no moon, and the roar of the batteries, and clear, abrupt reports of the shells from the mortars, alone broke the stillness of the scene; while the flashes of the rockets, carcasses, and fireballs lighting up the air ever and anon made a really beautiful spectacle. The ghurees struck ten, and, as preconcerted, the fire of the batteries suddenly ceased. Our party was in readiness. We drew swords, felt that our revolvers were ready to hand, and, leaving the shelter of the picquet, such as it was, advanced stealthily into the enemy’s country.... With the six men who were to accompany us, Lang and I emerged into the open, and pushed straight for the breach. In five minutes we found ourselves on the edge of the ditch, the dark mass of the Cashmere Bastion immediately on the other side, and the breach distinctly discernible. Not a soul was in sight. The counterscarp was sixteen feet deep, and steep. Lang slid down first, I passed down the ladder, and, taking two men out of the six, descended after him, leaving the other four on the cope to cover our retreat.

Two minutes more and we should have been at the top of the breach. But, quiet as we had been, the enemy were on the watch, and we heard several men running from the left towards the breach. We therefore reascended, though with some difficulty, and, throwing ourselves down on the grass, waited in silence for what was to happen. A number of figures immediately appeared on the top of the breach, their forms clearly discernible against the bright sky, and not twenty yards distant. We, however, were in the deep shade, and they could not, apparently, see us. They conversed in a low tone, and presently we heard the ring of their steel ramrods as they loaded. We waited quietly, hoping that they would go away, when another attempt might be made. Meanwhile, we could see that the breach was a good one, the slope being easy of ascent, and that there were no guns on the flank. We knew by experience, too, that the ditch was easy of descent. After waiting, therefore, some minutes longer, I gave the signal. The whole of us jumped up at once and ran back towards our own ground. Directly we were discovered a volley was sent after us. The balls came whizzing about our ears, but no one was touched.

The other engineers performed their task with equal coolness and daring, and at midnight all the breaches were reported practicable, and it was resolved that the assault should be made in the morning.

Nicholson, at the head of a column of 1000 men—of whom 300 belonged to the 75th—was to carry the breach near the Cashmere Bastion. The second column, under Brigadier Jones, composed of the 8th, the 2nd Bengal Fusileers, and the 4th Sikhs—850 in all—was to assail the gap near the Water Bastion. The third column, 950 strong, under Campbell, of the 52nd, was to blow in the Cashmere Gate and fight its way into the city. The fourth column, under Major Reid, made up of the Guides’ Infantry, Ghoorkas, and men from the picquets, was to break in an entrance by the Lahore Gate. A reserve column, 1000 strong, under Brigadier Longfield, of the 8th, was to feed the attack at any point where help was required. Five thousand men were thus to fling themselves on a great city held by 50,000!

It was three o’clock in the morning, the stars still burning in the measureless depths of the Indian sky, when the columns stood in grim silence ready for the assault. The chaplain of the forces records that in not a few of the tents the service for the day was read before the men went out into the darkness to join the columns. The lesson for the day, as it happened, was Nahum iii., and the opening verse runs, “Woe to the bloody city! It is full of lies and robbery.... Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of Hosts.”

How do men feel who gather at such an hour and for such a deed? Lord Roberts quotes from a brother officer’s diary a curious little picture of British soldiers preparing themselves for one of the most daring exploits in the history of war:—

We each of us looked carefully to the reloading of our pistols, filling of flasks and getting as good protection as possible for our heads, which would be exposed so much going up the ladders. I wound two puggaries or turbans round my old forage cap, with the last letter from the hills in the top, and committed myself to the care of Providence. There was not much sleep that night in our camp. I dropped off now and then, but never for long, and whenever I woke I could see that there was a light in more than one of the officers’ tents, and talking was going on in a low tone amongst the men, the snapping of a lock or the springing of a ramrod sounding far in the still air, telling of preparation for the coming strife. A little after midnight we fell in as quickly as possible, and by the light of a lantern the orders for the assault were then read to the men. Any officer or man who might be wounded was to be left where he fell; no one was to step from the ranks to help him, as there were no men to spare. If the assault were successful he would be taken away in the doolies, or litters, and carried to the rear, or wherever he could best receive medical assistance. If we failed, wounded and sound should be prepared to bear the worst. No prisoners were to be made, as we had no one to guard them, and care was to be taken that no women or children were injured. To this the men answered at once by “No fear, sir.” The officers now pledged their honour, on their swords, to abide by these orders, and the men then promised to follow their example.

At this moment, just as the regiment was about to march off, Father Bertrand came up in his vestments, and, addressing the Colonel, begged for permission to bless the regiment, saying, “We may differ, some of us, in matters of religion, but the blessing of an old man and a clergyman can do nothing but good.” The colonel at once assented, and Father Bertrand, lifting his hands to heaven, blessed the regiment in a most impressive manner, offering up at the same time a prayer for our success, and for mercy on the souls of those soon to die.

The dash on the city was to have taken place at three o’clock in the morning, but it was difficult to collect all the men from the picquets who were to take part in the assault, and day was breaking before the columns were complete. The engineers, closely examining the breaches, found that during the night the Sepoys had blocked up the gaps with sand-bags and had improvised _chevaux de frise_. The attack was accordingly held back for a few minutes while the British batteries re-opened for the purpose of smashing the new defences.

The sun was clear of the horizon when, at a signal, the batteries ceased. A sudden silence fell on the slope of the Ridge and on the enemy’s wall. A thrill ran through the waiting columns, as each man, like a hound on the leash, braced himself up for the desperate rush. Nicholson had been standing, silent and alone, in front of his column; and now with a gesture of his hand he gave the signal. A shout, sudden, and stern, and fierce, broke through the air. It came from the 60th Rifles, who with a vehement cheer ran out to the front in skirmishing order, and in a moment the four columns were in swift and orderly movement. Then the enemy’s guns from every point broke into flame!

It is impossible to compress into a few paragraphs of cold type the story of that great assault; the fire and passion of the charge, the stubborn fury of the defence, the long, mad struggle through the streets. And the fact that four desperate combats at as many separate points broke out at once makes it still more difficult to give any single connected picture of the scene.

Nicholson led column No. 1 steadily forward till it reached the edge of the jungle. Then the engineers and storming party went forward at a run. They reached the crest of the glacis, and stood there under a perfect blaze of musketry. The stormers had outrun the ladder parties! The ditch gaped sixteen feet wide below them. The breach in front was crowded with dark figures, shouting, firing, hurling stones, all in a tempest of Eastern fury. The ladders were quickly up, and were dropped into the ditch. The men leaped down, and almost with the same impulse swept up the further side—Nicholson’s tall figure leading—and men and officers, contending madly with each other who should be first, raced up the broken slope of the breach, dashed the Sepoys back in confused flight, and gained the city!

The second column was as gallantly led as the first, and met with an almost fiercer resistance. At the signal its storming party ran out from the shelter of the Customs house. The two engineer officers, Greathed and Ovenden, and twenty-nine men out of the thirty-nine who formed the ladder parties were instantly shot down; but the attack never paused for an instant. The men of the 8th, the Sikhs, and the Fusileers came on with a silent speed and fury that nothing could stop. The ditch was crossed, as with a single effort. One officer—little more than a lad—Ensign Phillips, with soldierly quickness, and with the help of a few riflemen, swung round the guns on the Water Bastion, and opened fire with them on the Sepoys themselves.

The assault of the third column, directed at the Cashmere Gate, is, perhaps, the most picturesque and well-known incident in the wild story of that morning. This column did not find a breach; one had to be made! Campbell brought up his column within sight of the Cashmere Gate, but under cover; then, at the signal, a little cluster of soldiers ran out towards the gate. Its first section consisted of Home, of the Engineers, with two sergeants and ten sappers, each man carrying a bag containing twenty-five pounds of gunpowder. Behind them ran a firing party of the 52nd, under Salkeld. The sight of that little, daring handful of men, charging straight for the gate, so amazed the Sepoys that for a few moments they stared at them without firing. Then, from the wall on either side of the gate, from above the gate itself, and from an open wicket in its broad expanse, broke a sustained and angry blaze of musketry!

To run steadily on in the teeth of such a fire was a feat of amazing courage. But, Home leading, the little cluster of heroes never faltered. The bridge in front of the gate had been almost completely destroyed, a single beam being stretched across the ditch; and, in single file, each man carrying his bag of powder, Home’s party—by this time reduced to nearly one-half of its number—crossed, flung down the bags of powder at the foot of the gate, and then leaped into the ditch for cover, leaving the firing party behind to make the explosion.

Salkeld came up at a run, carrying the port-fire in his hand, his men, with bent heads, racing beside him. Salkeld fell, shot through the leg and arm; but, like the runner in Greek games, he handed the port-fire as he fell to Corporal Burgess, who in turn, as he bent over the powder, was shot dead. Lord Roberts says that in falling he yet ignited the powder. Malleson, on the other hand, says that Sergeant Carmichael snatched the port-fire from the dying hand of Burgess, lit the fuse, and then, in his turn, fell mortally wounded. On this another brave fellow named Smith, thinking Carmichael had failed, ran forward to seize the port-fire, but saw the fuse burning, and leaped into the ditch, just in time to escape the explosion.

In a moment there was a blast as of thunder, and—not the gate unfortunately, but merely the little wicket in it, had vanished! The bugler from the ditch sounded the advance; but such was the tumult of battle now raging that the storming parties of the 52nd, waiting eagerly to make their rush, heard neither the explosion nor the bugle-call. Campbell, their colonel, however, had seen the flame of the explosion, and gave the word. The storming party and the supports, all intermixed, ran forward at the double, they crossed, man after man, the single beam remaining of the bridge, and crept through the wicket. They found within the gate an overturned cannon, and some blackened Sepoy corpses. The main body followed, and from the two breaches and the Cashmere Gate the three columns met, breathless, confused, but triumphant, in the open space between the Cashmere Gate and the church.

The fourth column alone of the assaulting parties practically failed. A battle is always rich in blunders; and the guns, which were to have accompanied the column, somehow failed to arrive, and Reid, its commander, pushed on without them. He had to face an unbroken wall 18 feet high, lined with guns and marksmen. Reid himself fell, wounded and insensible, and there was some confusion as to who should take his place as leader. It was expected that the Lahore Gate would have been opened from within by the advance of the first column, but, before the Lahore Gate was reached from within the city by the British, the fourth column found itself unable to sustain the murderous fire from the walls, and fell back into cover.

The Sepoys, in their exultation, actually ventured upon a sally, and Hope Grant had to bring up the scanty cavalry of the camp to check the advance of the enemy.

The cavalry could not charge, for this would bring them under the fire of the walls; they would not withdraw, for this would uncover the camp. They could only sit grimly in their saddles, and hold back the enemy by the menace of their presence, while men and horses went down unceasingly under the sleet of fire which broke over them. “For more than two hours,” says Hodson, “we had to sit on our horses, under the heaviest fire, without the chance of doing anything. My young regiment behaved admirably, as did all hands. The slaughter was great. Lamb’s troop lost twenty-seven men out of forty-eight, and nineteen horses, and the whole cavalry suffered in the same proportion.”

Hope Grant tells how he praised the 9th Lancers for their cool steadiness, and the men answered from the ranks that they were ready to stand as long as he chose. “Hodson,” says one officer who was present, “sat like a man carved in stone, apparently as unconcerned as the sentries at the Horse Guards, and only by his eyes and his ready hand, whenever occasion offered, could you have told that he was in deadly peril, and the balls flying among us as thick as hail!”

Delhi in shape roughly resembles an egg, and, in the assault we have described, the British had cracked, so to speak, the small end. Inside the Cashmere Gate was a comparatively clear space, a church, a Hindoo temple, and a mosque being scattered along its southern boundary. These owed their existence to the somewhat mixed piety of James Skinner, a gallant soldier, who played a brilliant part in Clive’s wars. His mother was a Hindoo lady, his wife was a Mohammedan; and, being severely wounded in some engagement, Skinner vowed, if he recovered, he would build three places of worship—a church, a temple, and a mosque! And the three buildings which stand opposite the Cashmere Gate are the fruits of that very composite act of piety. The three assaulting columns, in broken order and sadly reduced in numbers, but in resolute fighting mood, were re-formed in the open space in front of these buildings.

The third column, under Colonel Campbell, cleared the buildings on its left front, and then pushed forward on its perilous way straight through the centre of the city towards the Jumma Musjid, a huge mosque that lifted its great roof high above the streets and gardens of the city more than two miles distant. The first and second columns, now practically forming one, swung to the right, and, following the curve of the “egg” to which we compared Delhi, proceeded to clear what was called the Rampart Road, a narrow lane running immediately within the wall round the whole city. It was intended to push along this lane till the Lahore Gate was reached and seized. The Lahore Gate is the principal entrance into the city, the main street—the Chandin Chouk, the Silver Bazaar—runs from it to the King’s Palace, bisecting the “egg” which forms the city. If this gate were carried, Delhi was practically in the British possession.

The column, led by Jones, pushed eagerly on. The Moree Gate and the Cabul Gate were seized, the guns on the ramparts were captured, and the leading files of the advance came in sight of the Lahore Gate. A lane, a little more than two hundred and fifty yards long, led to it; but that narrow, crooked path was “a valley of death” more cruel and bloody than that down which Cardigan’s Light Cavalry rode in the famous charge at Balaclava. The city wall itself formed the boundary of the lane on the right; the left was formed by a mass of houses, with flat roofs and parapets, crowded with riflemen. The lane was scarcely ten yards wide at its broadest part; in places it was narrowed to three feet by the projecting buttresses of the wall.

About a hundred and fifty yards up the lane was planted a brass gun, sheltered by a bullet-proof screen. At the further extremity of the lane, where the ground rose, was a second gun, placed so as to cover the first, and itself covered by a bullet-proof screen. Then, like a massive wall, crossing the head of the lane, rose the great Burn Bastion, heavily armed, and capable of holding a thousand men. A force of some 8000 men, too, had just poured into the city through the Lahore and Ajmeer Gates, returning from the sally they had made on Reid’s column; and these swarmed round the side and head of the lane to hold it against the British.

Never, perhaps, did soldiers undertake a more desperate feat than that of fighting a way through this “gate of hell,” held by Sepoys, it will be noted, full of triumph, owing to their repulse of the attack of the fourth column under Reid already described. But never was a desperate deed more gallantly attempted.

The attacking party was formed of the 1st Bengal Fusileers; and, their officers leading, the men ran with a dash at the lane. They were scourged with fire from the roofs to the left; the guns in their front swept the lane with grape. But the men never faltered. They took the first gun with a rush, and raced on for the second. But the lane narrowed, and the “jam” checked the speed of the men. The fire of the enemy, concentrated on a front so narrow, was murderous. Stones and round shot thrown by hand from the roofs and parapets of the houses were added to musketry bullets and grape, and the stormers fell back, panting and bleeding, but still full of the wrath of battle, and leaving the body of many a slain comrade scattered along the lane.

Two or three men refused to turn back, and actually reached the screen through which the further gun was fired. One of these was Lieutenant Butler, of the 1st Bengal Fusileers. As he came at the run through the white smoke he struck the screen heavily with his body; at that moment two Sepoys on the inner side thrust through the screen with their bayonets. The shining deadly points of steel passed on either side of Butler’s body, and he was pinned between them as between the suddenly appearing prongs of a fork! Butler, twisting his head, saw through a loophole the faces of the two Sepoys who held the bayonets, and who were still vehemently pushing, under the belief that they held their enemy impaled. With his revolver he coolly shot them both, and then fell back, pelted with bullets, but, somehow, unhurt, to his comrades, who were reforming for a second charge at the head of the lane.

On came the Fusileers again, a cluster of officers leading, well in advance of their men. Major Jacob, who commanded the regiment, raced in that heroic group. Speke was there, the brother of the African explorer; Greville, Wemyss, and the gallant Butler once again. The first gun in the lane was captured once more, and Greville, a cool and skilful soldier, promptly spiked it. But the interval betwixt the first gun and the second, had to be crossed. It was only a hundred yards, but on every foot of it a ceaseless and fiery hail of shot was beating. The officers, as they led, went down one by one. Jacob, one of the most gallant soldiers of the whole siege, fell, mortally wounded. Jacob’s special quality as a soldier was a strangely gentle but heroic coolness. The flame of battle left him at the temperature of an icicle; its thunder did not quicken his pulse by a single beat, and his soldiers had an absolute and exultant confidence in the quick sight, the swift action, the unfaltering composure of their gallant commander. Some of his men halted to pick him up when he fell, but he called to them to leave him, and press forward. Six other officers, one after another, were struck down; the rush slackened, it paused, the men ebbed sullenly back; the second attack had failed!

Nicholson, as the officer in general command of the assaulting columns, might well have remained at the Cashmere Gate, controlling the movements of the columns; but his eager, vehement spirit carried him always to the fighting front. He first accompanied Campbell’s column on its perilous march, but then rejoined his own proper column just as it came in sight of the Lahore Gate. The officers immediately about him—men themselves of the highest daring—advised that, as the attack of the fourth column had failed, it would be wise strategy to hold strongly the portion of the city they had carried and reorganise another general assault. They had done enough for the day. Their men had lost heavily, and were exhausted. They were in ignorance of the fortunes of the other columns.

But Nicholson’s fiery spirit was impatient of half measures or of delays. He was eager, moreover, to check the dangerous elation caused amongst the Sepoys by their repulse of the fourth column. So he resolutely launched a new assault on the Lahore Gate. How gallantly the officers led in an attack which yet their judgment condemned has been told.

Nicholson watched the twice-repeated rush of the Fusileers, and the fall, one by one, of the officers who led them. When the men for a second time fell back, Nicholson himself sprang into the lane, and, waving his sword, called on his men, with the deep, vibrating voice all knew, to follow their general. But even while he spoke, his sword pointing up the lane, his face, full of the passion of battle, turned towards the broken, staggering front of his men, a Sepoy leaned from the window of a house close by, pointed his musket across a distance of little more than three yards at Nicholson’s tall and stately figure, and shot him through the body. Nicholson fell. The wound was mortal; but, raising himself up on his elbow, he still called on the men to “go on.” He rejected impatiently the eager help that was offered to him, and declared he would lie there till the lane was carried. But, as Kaye puts it, he was asking dying what he had asked living—that which was all but impossible.

Colonel Graydon tells how he stooped over the fallen Nicholson, and begged to be allowed to convey him to a place of safety; but Nicholson declared “he would allow no man to remove him, but would die there.” It was, in fact, a characteristic flash of chivalry that made Nicholson at last consent to be removed. He would allow no one to touch him, says Trotter, “except Captain Hay, of the 60th Native Infantry, with whom he was not upon friendly terms. ‘I will make up my difference with you, Hay,’ he gasped out. ‘I will let you take me back.’”

The lane was strewn with the British dead. To carry it without artillery was hopeless. There were no better soldiers on the Ridge than the 1st Bengal Fusileers—“the dear old dirty-shirts” of Lord Lake. When they, on the morning of that day, broke through the embrasures of the Cashmere battery, one of their officers has left on record the statement that “the Sepoys fled as they saw the white faces of the Fusileers looking sternly at them.” They fled, that is, not from thrust of steel and flash of musket, but before the mere menace of those threatening, war-hardened countenances! The 1st, as a matter of fact, had their muskets slung behind, to enable them to use their hands in climbing the breach, and so, when they came up the crest of the breach and through the embrasures, the men had no muskets in their hands. The threat written on their faces literally put the Sepoys to flight. Where such men as these had failed, what troops could succeed?

The column fell slowly and sullenly back to the Cabul Gate, the wounded being sent to the rear. Lord Roberts tells us that, being sent by Wilson to ascertain how affairs were going on in the city, he observed as he rode through the Cashmere Gate a doolie by the side of the road without bearers, and with evidently a wounded man inside. He says:—

I dismounted to see if I could be of any use to the occupant, when I found, to my grief and consternation, that it was John Nicholson, with death written on his face. He told me that the bearers had put the doolie down and had gone off to plunder; that he was in great pain, and wished to be taken to the hospital. He was lying on his back, no wound was visible, and but for the pallor of his face, always colourless, there was no sign of the agony he must have been enduring. On my expressing a hope that he was not seriously wounded, he said, “I am dying; there is no chance for me.” The sight of that great man lying helpless and on the point of death was almost more than I could bear. Other men had daily died around me, friends and comrades had been killed beside me, but I never felt as I felt then—to lose Nicholson seemed to me at that moment to lose everything.

Nicholson’s fall, it is striking to note, impressed every one in that tiny and heroic army at Delhi exactly as it impressed Roberts. He lingered through all the days of slow, stubborn, resolute fighting, which won Delhi; but day by day the news about Nicholson’s fluctuating life was almost more important than the tidings that this position or that had been carried. Nicholson was a man with Clive’s genius for battle and mastery over men, while in the qualities of chivalry and honour he deserved to be classed with Outram or Havelock. He was only thirty-seven when he died; what fame he might have won, had he lived, no man can tell. He was certainly one of the greatest soldiers the English-speaking race has produced.

Many monuments have been erected to Nicholson; one over his actual grave, another—with an unfortunately elaborate inscription—in the parish church at Lisburn. But the fittest and most impressive monument is a plain obelisk erected on the crest of the Margalla Pass, the scene, in 1848, of one of his most daring exploits. There in the wild border pass stands the great stone pillar, and round it still gathers many a native tradition of the daring and might of the great sahib. Sir Donald Macnab says that when the worshippers of “Nikkul-Seyn” in Hazara heard of his death, “they came together to lament, and one of them stood forth and said there was no gain from living in a world that no longer held Nikalsain. So he cut his throat deliberately and died.” The others, however, reflected that this was not the way to serve their great guru; they must learn to worship “Nikalsain’s God”; and the entire sect actually accepted Christianity on the evidence of Nicholson’s personality!

Campbell’s column, meanwhile, had fought its way across two-thirds of the city, and come in sight of the massive arched gateway of the Jumma Musjid. But the engineers that accompanied the column had fallen; Campbell had no artillery to batter down the great gate of the mosque, and no bags of powder with which to blow it up. He was, however, a stubborn Scottish veteran, and he clung to his position in front of the mosque till he learnt of the failure to carry the Lahore Gate. Then, judging with soldierly coolness that it would be impossible to hold unsupported the enormously advanced position he had won, he fell back in leisurely fashion till he came into touch with the reserve column at the Cashmere Gate.

The British columns had been fighting for over six hours, and had lost 66 officers and 1104 men, or very nearly every fourth man in the assaulting force. Amongst the fallen, too, were many of the most daring spirits in the whole force, the men who were the natural leaders in every desperate enterprise. Less than 4000 of the brave men who followed Nicholson and Jones and Campbell across the breaches or through the Cashmere Gate that morning remained unwounded, and there were 40,000 Sepoys yet in Delhi! Of the great “egg,” too, which formed the city, the British held only the tiny northern extremity.

Under these conditions Wilson’s nerve once more failed him. He doubted whether he ought to persist in the assault. Was it not safer to fall back on the Ridge? Repeatedly, in fact, through the days of stubborn fighting which followed, Wilson meditated the fatal policy of retreat. He was worn-out in mind and body. His nerve had failed at Meerut when the Mutiny first broke out; it threatened to fail again here at Delhi, in the very crisis of the assault. To walk a few steps exhausted him. And it was fortunate for the honour of England and the fate of India that Wilson had round him at that crisis men of sterner fibre than his own. Some one told Nicholson, as he lay on his death-bed, of Wilson’s hesitations. “Thank God,” whispered Nicholson. “I have strength yet to shoot him if necessary!”

Wilberforce, in his “Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny,” gives a somewhat absurd, and not too credible, account of the incident which, according to him, kept Wilson’s nerve steady at that crisis. The 52nd, after so many hours of fighting, had fallen back on the reserve at the Cashmere Gate, and Wilberforce, who belonged to that regiment, was occupied with a brother officer in compounding a “long” glass of brandy and soda to quench his thirst. His companion poured in so generous an allowance of brandy that he was afraid to drink it. He says:—

Not liking to waste it, we looked round us, and saw a group of officers on the steps of the church, apparently engaged in an animated conversation. Among them was an old man, who looked as if a good “peg” (the common term for a brandy and soda) would do him good. Drawing, therefore, nearer the group, in order to offer the “peg” to the old officer, we heard our colonel say, “All I can say is that I won’t retire, but will hold the walls with my regiment.” I then offered our “peg” to the old officer, whom we afterwards knew to be General Wilson. He accepted it, drank it off, and a few minutes after we heard him say, “You are quite right—to retire would be to court disaster; we will stay where we are!”

“On such little matters,” Wilberforce gravely reflects, “great events often depend!” The course of British history in India, in a word, was decisively affected by that accidental glass of brandy and soda he offered to General Wilson! It tightened his shaken nerves to the key of resolution! Wilberforce’s book belongs rather to the realm of fiction than of grave history, and his history-making glass of brandy and soda may be dismissed as a flight of fancy. It was the cool judgment and the unfaltering daring of men like Baird Smith and Neville Chamberlain, and other gallant spirits immediately around Wilson, which saved him from the tragedy of a retreat. When Wilson asked Baird Smith whether it was possible to hold the ground they had won, the curt, decisive answer of that fine soldier was, “We _must_ hold it!” And that white flame of heroic purpose burnt just as intensely in the whole circle of Wilson’s advisers.

The British troops held their position undisturbed on the night of the 14th. The 15th was spent in restoring order and preparing for a new assault. There is a curious conflict of testimony as to whether or not the troops had got out of hand owing to mere drunkenness. It is certain that enormous stores of beer, spirits, and wine were found in that portion of the city held by the British. Lord Roberts says, “I did not see a single drunken man throughout the day of assault, and I visited every position held by our troops within the walls of the city.” This bit of evidence seems final. Yet it would be easy to quote a dozen witnesses to prove that there was drunkenness to a perilous extent amongst the troops, and it is certain that Wilson found it expedient to give orders for the destruction of the whole of the vast stores of beer and spirits which had fallen into his hands.

A new plan of attack was devised by the engineers. Batteries were armed with guns captured from the enemy, and a destructive fire maintained on the chief positions yet held in the city. The attacks, too, were now directed, not along the narrow streets and winding lanes of the city, but through the houses themselves. Thus wall after wall was broken through, house after house captured, the Sepoys holding them were bayoneted, and so a stern and bloody path was driven to the Lahore Gate.

On the 16th the famous magazine which Willoughby had blown up, when Delhi fell into the hands of the rebels early in May, was captured, and it was found that Willoughby’s heroic act had been only partially successful. The magazine, that is, was less than half destroyed, and the British found in it no fewer than 171 guns, mostly of large calibre, with enormous stores of ammunition. The Sepoys read their doom in the constant flight of shells from the British batteries in the city. They read it, in almost plainer characters, in the stubborn daring with which a path was being blasted through the mass of crowded houses towards the Lahore Gate. And from the southern extremity of the city there commenced a great human leakage, a perpetual dribble of deserting Sepoys and flying budmashes.

Lord Roberts served personally with the force driving its resolute way across houses, courtyards, and lanes, towards the Lahore Gate, and he tells, graphically, the story of its exploits. On September 19, the men had broken their way through to the rear of the Burn Bastion. Only the width of the lane separated them from the bastion itself. The little party, 100 strong—only one-half of them British—gathered round the door that opened on the lane, the engineer officer burst it open, and Gordon, of the 75th Foot, leading, the handful of gallant men dashed across the lane, leaped upon the ramp, raced up it, and jumped into the bastion. They bayoneted or shot its guards, and captured the bastion without losing a man!

The next day, with great daring, Roberts and Lang of the Engineers, following a native guide, crept through the tangle of courtyards and lanes, till they reached the upper room of a house within fifty yards of the Lahore Gate. “From the window of this room,” says Roberts, “we could see beneath us the Sepoys lounging about, engaged in cleaning their muskets and other occupations; while some, in a lazy sort of fashion, were acting as sentries over the gateway and two guns, one of which pointed in the direction of the Sabzi Mandi, the other down the lane behind the ramparts, leading to the Burn Bastion and Cabul Gate. I could see from the number on their caps that these Sepoys belonged to the 5th Native Infantry.” The troops were brought up silently by the same route, and leaped suddenly on the gate, capturing it, and slaying or putting to terrified flight the Sepoys whom Lang and Roberts had watched in such a mood of careless and opium-fed unconcern only a few minutes before.

The party that captured the Lahore Gate then moved up the great street running from it through the Silver Bazaar—its shops all closed—till they reached the Delhi Bank, which they carried. Another column forced its way into the Jumma Musjid, blowing in its gates without loss.