But although there was a temporary cessation, Sir Henry Barnard, in his official dispatches, shewed that he was much embarrassed by this condition of affairs. His forces were few; those of the enemy were very large; and the attacks were rendered more harassing by the uncertainty of the point on which they would be made, and the impossibility of judging whether they were about to be made on more points than one. The onslaughts could only be successfully repulsed by the untiring and unflinching gallantry of a small body of men. The enemy, instead of being beleaguered within Delhi, were free to emerge from the city and attack the besiegers’ position. The British did not complain: it was not their wont; but they suffered greatly from this harassing kind of warfare. Reinforcements were slowly coming in; in the last week of June the Europeans numbered about three thousand; and they were well satisfied with the native corps who fought by their side—the Guides, the Goorkhas, and the Sikhs—all of whom joined very heartily in opposing the rebel sepoys. The siege-material at this time consisted of five batteries, mounting about fifteen guns and mortars, placed on various points of the ridge; the bombardment of the city by these guns was not very effective, for the distance averaged nearly a mile, and the guns were not of large calibre.

The interval from the 23d to the 30th of June passed much in the same way as the two preceding weeks; the British siege-guns wrought very little mischief to the city; while the enemy occasionally sallied forth to attack either the camp or the works on the ridge. It was often asserted, and facts seemed to corroborate the statement, that when mutinous regiments from other places appeared before Delhi, they were not afforded reception and shelter until they had earned it by making an attack on the British position; and thus it happened that the besiegers were opposed by a constantly increasing number of the enemy. The defenders of the garrison fitted up a large battery on the left of the Cashmere Gate, one at the gate itself, one at the Moree Gate, one at the Ajmeer Gate, and one directly opposite Hindoo Rao’s house; against these five batteries, for a long time, the British had only three; so that the besieged were stronger than the besiegers in every way. The gunners, too, within Delhi, were fully equal to those of the siege-army in accuracy of aim; their balls and shells fell near Hindoo Rao’s house so thickly as to render that post a very perilous one to hold. One shell entered the gateway, and killed eight or nine officers and men who were seeking shelter from the mid-day heat.

The General and his Staff at the Mosque Picket before Delhi.

It was pretty well ascertained, before June was half over, that Delhi was not to be taken by a coup de main; and when Sir John Lawrence became aware of that fact, he sent reinforcements down from the Punjaub as rapidly as they could be collected. Every sepoy regiment that was either disbanded or disarmed lessened his own danger, for he trusted well in his Sikhs, Punjaubees, and Guides; and on that account he was able to send Europeans and artillery. The reserve and depôt companies of the regiments already serving before Delhi were sent down from the hills to join their companions. A wing of H.M. 61st foot, a portion of the 8th, artillery from Jullundur, and artillerymen from Lahore, followed the Guides and Sikhs, and gradually increased the besieging force. Then came Punjaub rifles and Punjaub light horse; and there were still a few Hindustani cavalry and horse-artillery in whom their officers placed such unabated confidence that they were permitted to take part in the siege-operations, on the ground that there were Europeans enough to overawe them if they became unruly. These reinforcements of course came in by degrees: we mention them all in one paragraph, but many weeks elapsed before they could reach the Delhi camp. Fortunately, supplies were plentiful; the country between Delhi and the Sutlej was kept pretty free from the enemy; and the villagers were glad to find good customers for the commodities they had to sell. It hence arose that, during the later days of June, the British were well able to render nugatory all sallies made by the enemy; they had food and beverages in good store; and they were free from pestilential diseases. On the other hand, they suffered intensely from the heat; and were much dissatisfied at the small progress made towards the conquest of the city. Some expressed their dissatisfaction by adverse criticisms on the general’s tactics; while others admitted that a storming of Delhi would not be prudent without further reinforcements. As to the heat, the troops wrote of it in all their letters, spoke of it in all their narrations. One officer, who had seventy-two hours of outpost-duty on a plain without the slightest shelter, described his sensation in the daytime as if ‘a hot iron had been going into his head.’ On a certain day, when some additional troops arrived at camp after a twenty-two miles’ march, they had scarcely lain down to rest when they were ordered out to repel an attack by the enemy: they went, and gallantly did the work cut out for them; but some of them ‘were so exhausted that they sank down on the road, even under fire, and went off to sleep.’

July arrived. Brigadier Chamberlain had recently joined the camp, and reinforcements were coming in; but on the other hand the rebels were increasing their strength more rapidly than the British. The enemy began the month by an attack which tried the prowess of the Guides and Punjaubees, in a manner that brought great praise to those corps. In the afternoon of the 1st, Major Reid, who was established with the head-quarters of the Sirmoor battalion at Hindoo Rao’s house, observed the mutineers turning out in great force from the Ajmeer and Turcoman Gates, and assembling on the open plain outside. Then, looking round on his rear right, he saw a large force, which was supposed to have come out of Delhi on the previous day; comprising thirteen guns and mortars, besides cavalry and infantry. The two forces joined about a mile from the Eedghah Serai. At sunset 5000 or 6000 infantry advanced, passed through the Pahareepore and Kissengunje suburbs, and approached towards the British lines, taking cover of the buildings as they passed. The extreme right of the line was attacked at the Pagoda picket, which was held only by 150 Punjaubees and Guides, under Captain Travers. Major Reid sent him a message to reserve his fire till the enemy approached near, in order to husband his resources; while 150 British were being collected to send to his aid. Throughout the whole night did this little band of 300 men resist a large force of infantry and artillery, never yielding an inch, but defending the few works which had been constructed in that quarter. At daybreak, the enemy renewed the attacks with further troops; but Reid brought a few more of his gallant fellows to repel them. Evening, night, morning, noon, all passed in this way; and it was not until the contest had continued twenty-two hours that the enemy finally retired into the city. There may have been sufficient military reasons why larger reinforcements were not sent to Major Reid from the camp behind the ridge; but let the reasons have been what they may, the handful of troops fought in the ratio of hundreds against thousands, and never for an instant flinched during this hard day’s work. Major Reid had the command of all the pickets and defence-works from Hindoo Rao’s house to the Subzee Mundee. During the first twenty-eight days of the siege, his positions were attacked no fewer than twenty-four times; yet his singular medley of troops—Rifles, Guides, Sikhs, Punjaubees, Goorkhas, &c.—fought as if for one common cause, without reference to differences of religion or of nation. The officers, in these and similar encounters, often passed through an ordeal which renders their survival almost inconceivable. An artillery officer, in command of two horse-artillery guns, on one occasion was surprised by 120 of the enemy’s cavalry; he had no support, and could not apply his artillery because his guns were limbered up. He fired four barrels of his revolver and killed two men; and then knocked a third off his horse by throwing his empty pistol at him. Two horsemen thereupon charged full tilt, and rolled him and his horse over. He got up, and seeing a man on foot coming at him to cut him down, rushed at him, got inside his sword, and hit him full in the face with his fist. At that moment he was cut down from behind; and was only saved from slaughter by a brother-officer, who rode up, shot one sowar and sabred another, and then carried him off, bleeding but safe.

On the 2d, the Bareilly mutineers—or rather Rohilcund mutineers from Bareilly, Moradabad, and Shahjehanpoor, consisting of five regiments and a battery of artillery—crossed the Jumna and marched into Delhi, with bands playing and colours flying—a sight sufficiently mortifying to the besiegers, who were powerless to prevent it; for any advance in that direction would have left the rear of their camp exposed. It afterwards became known that the Bareilly leader was appointed general within Delhi. The emergence of a large body of the enemy from the city on the night of the 3d of July, induced Sir Henry Barnard to send Major Coke to oppose them; with a force made up of portions of the Carabiniers, 9th Lancers, 61st foot, Guides, Punjaubees, horse and foot artillery. Coke started at two in the morning of the 4th. He went to Azadpore, the spot where the great road and the road from the cantonment met. He found that the enemy had planned an expedition to seize the British depôt of stores at Alipore, and to cut off a convoy expected to arrive from the Punjaub. When the major came up with them near the Rohtuk road, he at once attacked them. During many hours, his troops were confronted with numbers greatly exceeding their own; and what with the sun above and swamps below, the major’s men became thoroughly exhausted by the time they returned to camp. The rebels, it was true, were driven back; but they got safely with their guns into Delhi; and thus was one more added to the list of contests in which the besiegers suffered without effecting anything towards the real object of the siege. The enemy’s infantry on this occasion seem to have comprised the Bareilly men. An officer of the Engineers, writing concerning this day’s work, said: ‘The Bareilly rascals had the impudence to come round to our rear, and our only regret is that one of them ever got back. I was out with the force sent against them, and cannot say that I felt much pity for the red-coated villains with “18,” “28,” and “68” on their buttons.’ This officer gives expression to the bitter feeling that prevailed generally in the British camp against the ‘Pandies’[[54]] or mutinous sepoys, for their treachery, black ingratitude, and cruelty. ‘This is a war in its very worst phase, for generosity enters into no one’s mind. Mercy seems to have fled from us; and if ever there was such a thing as war to the knife, we certainly have it here. If any one owes these sepoys a grudge, I think I have some claim to one; but I must say that I cannot bring myself to put my sword through a wounded man. I cannot say that I grieve much when I see it done, as it invariably is; but grieve or not as you please—he is a clever man who can now keep back a European from driving his bayonet through a sepoy, even in the agonies of death.’ These were the motives and feelings that rendered the Indian mutiny much more terrible than an ordinary war. In allusion to sentiments at home, that the British soldiers were becoming cruel and blood-thirsty, the same officer wrote to a friend: ‘If you hear any such sentiments, by all means ship off their propounder to this country at once. Let him see one half of what we have seen, and compare our brutality with that of the rebels; then send him home again, and I think you will find him pretty quiet on the subject for the rest of his life.’

A new engineer officer, Colonel Baird Smith, arrived to supersede another whose operations had not met with approval. The colonel took into consideration, with his commander, a plan for blowing in the Moree and Cashmere Gates, and escalading the Moree and Cashmere Bastions; but the plan was abandoned on account of the weakness of the siege-army.

The 5th of July was marked by the death of Major-general Sir Henry Barnard, who had held practical command of the Delhi field-force during about five weeks, and had during that time borne much anxiety and suffering. He knew that his countrymen at Calcutta as well as in England would be continually propounding the question, ‘Why is Delhi not yet taken?’ and the varied responsibilities connected with his position necessarily gave him much disquietude. During the fierce heat of the 4th he was on horseback nearly all day, directing the operations against the Bareilly mutineers. Early on the following morning he sent for Colonel Baird Smith, and explained his views concerning the mode in which he thought the siege-operations should be carried on; immediately afterwards he sent for medical aid; and before many hours had passed, he was a corpse. Many of his friends afterwards complained that scant justice was done to the memory of Sir Henry Barnard; in the halo that was destined to surround the name of Wilson, men forgot that it was his predecessor who had borne all the burden of collecting the siege-force, of conducting it to the ridge outside Delhi, and of maintaining a continued series of conflicts almost every day for five or six weeks.

Major-general Reed, invalid as he was, immediately took the command of the force after Barnard’s death; leaving, however, the active direction mainly to Brigadier Chamberlain. It became every day more and more apparent that, notwithstanding reinforcements, the British artillery was too weak to cope with that of the enemy—whose artillerymen, taught by those whom they now opposed, had become very skilful; and whose guns were of heavier metal. The besiegers’ batteries were still nearly a mile from the walls, for any nearer position could not be taken up without terrible loss. To effect a breach with a few 18-pounders at this distance was out of the question; and although the field-guns were twenty or thirty in number, they were nearly useless for battering down defences.