The rebel stronghold lay before the victors, vast, powerful, and filled with myriads of brave and warlike men. Well might they be defiant, for what could that tiny army achieve against their great strength. For you must know that by all the rules of warfare an army attacking a strongly-fortified place should be much more numerous than the defending host, and have more powerful or quite as powerful artillery. The assailants should be able to surround the place to prevent the entrance of food or reinforcements. But the walls of Delhi measured seven miles in circumference; the army investing it could with difficulty guard its own quarters, and rebel reinforcements entered as they pleased. Though we were supposed to be engaged in an assault on Delhi, yet in reality, during that summer of 1857, we were on our defence—the defenders of the Ridge against countless rebel attacks.
At the southern extremity of the Ridge stood a large mansion, built many years ago by a Mahratta gentleman named Hindu Rao. This house, strong and well built, commanded a good view of Delhi, and all movements could be observed therefrom. No force could issue from the walls to surprise the camp or retake the Ridge without being noticed by the picket holding the position. So Hindu Rao’s house became the post of honour, and the post of honour is always the post of danger. Less than 1200 yards from the mansion the 24-pounders of the Mori bastion overlooked the Ridge, and the house presented an easy target for the shot and shell of the huge guns.
The little cannon of our soldiers were as pop-guns compared to these monsters, and not only was the advantage in size, but the sepoys possessed a dozen heavy guns for every light one of ours, besides vast stores of ammunition and material of war. The walls had been further strengthened not many years before by English engineer officers, who had made a glacis that protected all except the top ten feet of the walls from injury by shot or shell.
A glacis is a huge bank of earth sloping outwards from the walls, and not only does it shield the lower portions, but, should an enemy attempt to escalade the walls or carry the city by assault, they would first have to run up this glacis, and there they would present such a target that trained gunners could sweep the assailants away by hundreds. The engineers, who had so skilfully and carefully constructed these defences, little thought that their handiwork would merely serve to keep India in a ferment for many months. The batteries were manned by artillerymen who had learned their profession—and learned it, alas! too well—under the tuition of English officers. Within the walls were more than 20,000 trained and disciplined sepoys, men who had proved their valour on many a well-fought field, not to mention thousands on thousands of armed fanatics, warriors by birth and by tradition. All these fought under shelter, which our brave fellows lacked. But ours were British, “strong with the strength of the race to command, to obey, to endure”, save the one Gurkha battalion and the Guide Corps (now close at hand), and these were soon admitted as equals by the British soldiers.
The British army was small—very small—but the lack of powerful artillery was an even greater source of weakness. An army without artillery, matched against even an equal force well supplied with powerful guns, would have as much chance of success as a man armed with a light cane fighting another possessed of sword and revolver.
Thousands of people in England and in India, who eagerly devoured the news and anxiously awaited the fall of the capital, impatiently asked, “Why are they so long? Why don’t they take the city?” These worthy folks could not understand the difficulties; they could not realize that mere pluck and endurance avail nothing against stone walls and mighty cannon. As the weeks rolled by and Delhi was still untaken, other persons, still more ignorant, exclaimed, “Why don’t they leave Delhi if they can’t capture it, and go and help Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow?” They did not see that even if that small army appeared to be doing little, it still kept shut up in the city forty thousand armed rebels who might otherwise be spreading over the country conquering and slaying. Nor did they grasp the fact that had the English army left Delhi unconquered the warlike Punjab, and then all India, would have risen. To have left the Mogul capital would have been a confession of weakness; it would have been to say: “We are beaten, we can do nothing here”, and when once the English say that in India, their empire will collapse.
So, though Barnard’s handful was attacking Delhi contrary to all the rules of war, we must remember what Mr. Rudyard Kipling has pointed out, that had our British generals never acted against those rules the boundaries of the empire would have stayed at Brighton beach.
It will be readily understood, even by boys who have engaged in no battles save those in which snow-balls form the most dangerous missiles, that this ridge of elevated ground was of the highest importance. Had the rebels been able to retake it and plant guns thereon, the British camp would have been at their mercy, and the Punjab would have been ablaze. As the Ridge defended the British army, so Hindu Rao’s house defended the Ridge.
Let us rejoin the comrades we had left victorious after the battle of Badli-ka-Serai. The army now occupied its old parade-ground below the Ridge, and our friends, who had escaped uninjured, were awaiting further orders, when Major Reid, who had been conversing with the general, came towards them, his face aglow.
“Grand news, Dorricot!” he shouted. “The Sirmur Battalion is to defend that house,” pointing to the distant mansion of Hindu Rao.