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NICHOLSON'S NUJUFFGHUR EXPLOIT.

been left at the village under the rear-guard.

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The

next morning the General gave them the choice of halting for the day, or marching back at once; they chose the latter, and reached camp about seven o'clock in the evening, having marched above thirty-five miles and beaten a force strongly posted, three times their own number, in less than forty hours! A fitting reception awaited them in camp; the regimental bands turned out to play them in; hundreds crowded round to greet them, and to offer their ungrudging welcome and congratulations on so triumphant an exploit.'

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"For the glorious result of these operations," in the General Order which they elicited, General Wilson declared himself "indebted to the judgment and energy displayed by Brigadier-General Nicholson, the steadiness and gallantry of the troops in action, and the cheerfulness with which they bore the fatigue and hardships they were called on to undergo."

Thus ended the month of August, and with it rose the fame of the young General.

* For General Nicholson's Despatch, see Appendix N.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ASSAULT OF DELHI-THE SIEGE-TRAIN ARRIVED-THE BREACHING BATTERIES-THE ASSAULT-NICHOLSON WOUNDED-FAILURE AT KISSENGUNGE-CRITICAL POSITION OF THE ARMY THE SURRENDER OF THE KING-THE DEATH OF THE SHAHZADAS -DEATH OF NICHOLSON-DELHI OCCUPIED.

"Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery. hold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts."*

Be

IN the dead of night-before the day had yet dawned— on Thursday the 14th of September 1857, these words, uttered 2570 years before against Nineveh, were read in more than one tent on the Delhi camping-ground ; they came as a cheering omen of success to men awaiting the order to fall in for the "assault." A few hours later they were read in many a family circle, and in at least one church,† in the daily morning-service; and to many an anxious heart that knew the momentous crisis to be at hand, in which husband, or son, or brother, or friend might stand unscathed in the breach-or perhaps be left a lifeless corpse-did they sound forth their note

* Nahum, iii. 1. The first lesson for September 14th. The whole chapter is awfully descriptive of the horrors of an assault.

Simla, where daily morning prayer was always said; and during this momentous week, evening prayer also, by the Rev. F. O. Mayne, chaplain,

PREPARATIONS FOR THE ASSAULT.

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of solace, and soothe the intensity of personal anxiety with the mingled assurance of national success.

A few hours more, and the telegraph flashed up from the very walls of the bloody city, "Delhi has been assaulted." Who shall attempt to describe the feeling of exultant gratitude which filled the heart of every Englishman in the Punjab? The die was cast, Delhi taken, and the Punjab safe.

To make the doings of that day intelligible, the reader must be carried back to the point at which our history of the siege left him, and trace in their order the steps by which the breach was carried.

The siege-train had arrived. Over miles of flooded road, through a country teeming with a disaffected population, and exposed at almost any point to an attack from the rebels, with no escort but Farquhar's Beloochees and a detachment of H. M. 8th Regiment, did it drag its ponderous length along. As it drew nearer, and the risk of attack increased, a body of infantry and cavalry were sent out for its protection, and, thus escorted, it rolled into camp on the 3d of September. While it was yet on its way, the note of preparation for its arrival was heard on every side, so that once safely landed on the ridge, little would remain to be done to bring it into full play. Gabions, fascines, sand-bags, were ready in thousands, and a few hours would suffice to run out advance-batteries, and mount some of the heaviest guns within more effectual working-distance of the walls. All the reinforcements, too

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PREPARATIONS FOR THE ASSAULT.

had now arrived. The Moveable Column in full force; the remaining wing of the 61st from Ferozepore (with whom Nicholson had already proved his generalship at Nujuffghur); Meerut had spared a few more Carabineers and artillery;* Wilde's Rifles, let loose from the far Peshawur country, had come in; the Jheend Rajah had strengthened his gallant little band with a few more hundred picked men ; and, last of all, the Cashmere Contingent marched in.

Now the siege may be said to have begun in earnest. Hitherto we had done little more than defiantly hold our own-nominally besiegers, really besieged.

The north face of the city, which comprised the whole length of wall between the Lahore Gate and the river, and contained the Moree, Cashmere, and Water bastions, and the intervening curtains, was resolved on as the side for the assault. Our own position along the ridge already commanded it; the intervening ground, although (as has been already said) broken up with ruined houses and gardens, and towards the right intersected by large ravines and stone quarries, still presented the only space by which an advance could be made; while at every other point along the land-face, the suburbs of the city, covered with the crumbling palaces and mosques and houses extending for miles to the south, in a wilderness of ruins,-telling their tale of a succession of former cities, the growth and decay of nearly a thousand years, from the Indraprestha of the Tuar dynasty to the now " Old Delhi" of Feroze

* For General N. Penny had thrown new life into that station.

GENERAL WILSON'S ORDER TO THE ARMY.

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shah,-defied all advance. Then again, inside the walls, this part of the city, having been chiefly occupied by European residents, presented in its open space greater facilities for the assaulting columns, when they had once cleared the breaches, to re-form and advance, and more effectually fight their way, than in the narrow lanes and alleys with which the rest of the city was intersected. Towards this face, then, it was resolved

to push forward the batteries.*

General Wilson+ then addressed his men to brace

* The nature of the line of defence is thus described in the official report of Colonel Baird Smith, which the author has extracted from the Siege of Delhi, by the Rev. J. E. W. ROTTON, p. 267.

"These (defences) consist of a succession of bastion fronts, the connecting curtain being very long, and the outworks limited to one crownwork at the Ajmeer Gate, and Martello Towers mounting a single gun at such points as require some additional flanking-fire to that given by the bastions themselves. The bastions are small, mounting generally three guns in each face, two in each flank, and one in embrasure at the salient. They are provided with masonry parapets about twelve feet in thickness, and a relief of about sixteen feet above the plane of site. The curtain consists of a simple masonry wall or rampart sixteen feet in height, eleven feet thick at the top, and fourteen or fifteen feet at bottom. This main wall carries a parapet loophole for musketry, eight feet in height and three feet in thickness. The whole of the land-front is covered by a berm of a variable width, ranging from sixteen to thirty feet, and having a scarp-wall eight feet high; exterior to this is a dry ditch of about twenty-five feet in height, and from sixteen to twenty feet in depth. The counterscarp is simply an earthen slope, easy to descend. The glacis is a very short one, extending only fifty or sixty yards from the counterscarp; using general terms, it covers from the besiegers' view from one-half to one-third of the height of the walls of the place."

On the 7th of September, General Wilson's address to the troops at Delhi on the expected assault ran as follows:

"The force assembled before Delhi has had much hardship and fatigue to undergo since its arrival in this camp, all of which has been most cheerfully borne by officers and men. The time is now drawing near when the Major-General commanding the force trusts that their labours will be over, and they will be rewarded by the capture of the

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