At length the slow siege-train, drawn by a hundred elephants, after so long, literally, sticking in the mud, came up on September 3rd. On the Ridge all was ready for it. Works sprang up like mushrooms, and in a few days forty heavy guns began playing upon the northern face of the city. Batteries were pushed forward to almost within musket-shot; then, day by day, the massive walls and bastions were seen crashing into ruins at several points. Formidable as they were in older warfare, they did not resist modern artillery so well as less pretentious earthworks might have done.
By the 13th two breaches seemed practicable. That night four young engineer officers, with a few riflemen, stole up through the jungle to the Cashmere Bastion, passing behind the enemy's skirmishers. They dropped into the ditch unseen, and had almost mounted the broken wall when discovered by its sentries, whose random shots whizzed about them as they ran back to report that a way was open for the stormers.
PLAN OF DELHI
Page 144.
The assault was at once ordered for three o'clock of that morning, September 14. Under cover of darkness, the troops eagerly advanced in four columns, the first, led by Nicholson, against the breach near the Cashmere Bastion; the second directed upon another breach at the Water Bastion; the third to storm the Cashmere Gate, after it had been blown up; while the fourth, far to the right, should attack the Lahore Gate, through the Kissengunge suburb.
A reserve followed the first three columns, ready to follow up their success; and the 60th Rifles, scattered through wooded ground in front, were to keep down the fire of the enemy from the walls. The cavalry and horse artillery, under Sir Hope Grant, held themselves ready for repulsing any sortie to which our ill-guarded camp would now lie exposed.
The whole army numbered under nine thousand men, rather more than a third of them English soldiers. There was a contingent of native allies from Cashmere, who did not give much assistance when it came to fighting. Our Punjaubee auxiliaries, however, proved more serviceable, burning for the humiliation and spoil of this Moslem Sanctuary, against which the Sikhs bore an old religious grudge.
Unfortunately there came about some delay, and daylight had broken before the three left columns were ready to advance from Ludlow Castle, under a tremendous artillery fire from both sides. The advantage of a surprise was thus lost. Suddenly our guns fell silent, a bugle rang out, and forth dashed the stormers upon the walls manned to receive them with fire and steel. Nicholson's column found that something had been done to repair the breach; and so thick was the hail of bullets to which they stood exposed in the open, that for several minutes they could not even gain the ditch, man after man being struck down in placing the ladders. But, once across that difficulty, they scrambled up the breach, where the raging and cursing rebels hurled its fragments down upon them, but, for all their shouts of defiance, did not await a struggle hand to hand. They fled before the onset, and our men poured in through the undefended gap.
The same success, and the same losses, attended the second column, making good its entry at the Water Bastion. A way for the third had been opened by a resounding deed of heroism, which struck popular imagination as the chief feature of this daring assault. The Cashmere Gate, that from first to last plays such a part in the story of Delhi, must be blown up to give the assailants passage into the bastion from which it faces sideways. Lieutenants Home and Salkeld, of the Engineers, with three sergeants and a bugler, formed the forlorn hope that dashed up to the gate, each loaded with 25 lbs. of powder in a bag. The enemy were so amazed at this audacity that for a moment they offered no opposition as the gallant fellows sped across the shattered drawbridge, and began to lay their bags against the heavy wood-work of the inner gate. But then from the wicket and from the top of the gateway they found themselves fired at point-blank, resolutely completing their task. Home, after his bag was placed, had the luck to jump into the ditch unhurt. Salkeld was shot in two places, but handed the portfire to a sergeant, who fell dead. The next man lighted the fuse at the cost of a mortal wound; and the third sergeant did not save himself till he saw the train well alight. A bugle-note calling forward the stormers was drowned in the roar of a terrific explosion, as the 52nd, held in leash for this signal, eagerly sprang on to pour through the smoking ruins. Thus all three columns, about the same time, had lodged themselves within the defences.
While the third column pushed forward into the heart of the city, and the supporting parties moved up to occupy the points taken, the rest of the assailants turned to their right by a road which ran at the back of the ramparts, clearing them as they went, and mastering the Mori and Cabul Gates from behind; then tried to make their way towards the Lahore Gate where they hoped to join hands with the fourth column. But this, repulsed by a slaughterous fire and its leader wounded, had alone failed in the errand assigned to it. Here, too, the routed Sepoys rallied within their walls, and brought guns to bear down a narrow lane in which the progress of Nicholson's column was fatally arrested. The young General himself, the foremost hero of that day, fell shot through the body while cheering on his men, and with his life-blood ebbed for a time the tide of victory that had swept him on hitherto without a check. He was carried away to die in the camp, yet not till he knew Delhi to be fully won. His force had to fall back to the Cabul Gate, and for the meanwhile stand upon the defensive.