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.

The attacks from the enemy continued much as before, but resistance to them became complicated by a new difficulty. There were two regiments of Bengal irregular cavalry among the troops in the siege-army, and there were a few ‘Poorbeahs’ or Hindustanis in the Punjaub regiments. These men were carefully watched from the first; and it became by degrees apparent that they were a danger instead of an aid to the British. Early in the month a Brahmin subadar in a Punjaubee regiment was detected inciting his companions-in-arms to murder their officers, and go over to Delhi, saying it was God’s will the Feringhee ‘raj’ should cease. One of the Punjaubees immediately revealed this plot to the officers, and the incendiary was put to death that same evening. The other Poorbeahs in the regiment were at once paid up, and discharged from the camp—doubtless swelling the number of insurgents who entered Delhi. Again, on the 9th, a party of the enemy’s cavalry, while attempting an attack on the camp, was joined by some of the 9th irregulars belonging to the siege-army, and with them tried to tempt the men of the native horse-artillery. They were beaten back; and the afternoon of the same day, the 9th of July, was marked by one of the many struggles in the Subzee Mundee, all of which ended by the enemy being driven into Delhi. If the rebel infantry had fought as well as the artillery, it might have gone hard with the besiegers, for the sallies were generally made in very great force. The rebels counted much on the value of the Subzee Mundee; as a suburb, it had been rendered a mass of ruins by repeated conflicts, and these ruins precisely suited the sepoy mode of fighting. The sepoys found shelter in narrow streets and old houses, and behind garden-walls, besides being protected by heavy guns from the city. In this kind of skirmishing they were not far inferior to their opponents; but in the open field, and especially under a charge with the bayonet, they were invariably beaten, let the disparity of numbers be what it might. All the officers, in their letters, spoke of the terrible efficacy of the British bayonet; the sepoys became paralysed with terror when this mode of attack was resorted to. On one occasion they were constructing a defensive post at the Eedghah; the British attacked it and drove in the entrance; there was no exit on the other side, and the defenders were all bayoneted in the prison-house which they had thus unwittingly constructed for themselves.

On the morning of the 14th, the mutineers poured out in great numbers, and attacked the batteries at Hindoo Rao’s house, and the picket in the Subzee Mundee. The troops stationed at those places remained on the defensive till three o’clock in the afternoon, struggling against a force consisting of many regiments of insurgent infantry, a large body of cavalry, and several field-pieces. It was indeed a most determined attack, supported, moreover, by a fire of heavy artillery from the walls. Why it was that so many hours elapsed before succour was sent forth, is not very clear; but the troops who had to bear the brunt of this onslaught comprised only detachments of the 60th and 75th foot, with the Goorkhas of the Sirmoor battalion and the infantry of the Guides. A column was formed, however, at the house above named, under Brigadier Showers, consisting of the 1st Punjaub infantry, the 1st Europeans, and six horse-artillery guns. Then commenced a double contest; Showers attacking the enemy at the picket-house, and Major Reid at Hindoo Rao’s house. After a fierce struggle the enemy were driven back into the city, and narrowly escaped losing some of their guns. It was a day’s work that could not be accomplished without a serious loss. None of the officers, it is true, were killed in the field; but the list of wounded was very large, comprising Brigadier Chamberlain (at that time adjutant-general of the army), and Lieutenants Roberts, Thompson, Walker, Geneste, Carnegie, Rivers, Faithful, Daniell, Ross, Tulloch, Chester, Shebbeare, Hawes, Debrett, and Pollock. Tho wounding of so many subalterns shews how actively different companies of troops must have been engaged. Altogether, the operations of this day brought down 15 men killed and 193 officers and men wounded.

The heat was by this time somewhat alleviated by rains, which, however, brought sickness and other discomforts with them. Men fell ill after remaining many hours in damp clothes; and it was found that the fierce heat was, after all, not so detrimental to health. Many young officers, it is true, lately arrived from England, and not yet acclimatised, were smitten down by sun-stroke, and a few died of apoplexy; but it is nevertheless true that the army was surprisingly healthy during the hot weather. One of the Carabiniers, writing in the rainy season, said: ‘The last three days have been exceedingly wet; notwithstanding which we are constantly in the saddle; no sooner has one alarm subsided than we are turned out to meet the mutineers in another quarter.’ An officer of Sappers, employed in blowing up a bridge, said: ‘We started about two P.M., and returned about twelve at night drenched through and thoroughly miserable, it having rained the whole time.’

The state of affairs in the middle of July was peculiar. It seemed to the nation at home that the army of Delhi ought to be strong enough to retake the city, especially when a goodly proportion of the number were Europeans. Yet that this was not the case, was the opinion both of Reed and of Wilson; although many daring spirits in the army longed to breach the walls and take the place by storm. Twelve hundred wounded and sick men had to be tended; all the others were kept fully employed in repelling the sallies of the enemy. Major-general Reed, who ought never to have assumed the command at all—so broken-down was he in health—gave in altogether on the 17th, after the wounding of Chamberlain; he named Brigadier Wilson, who had brought forward the Meerut brigade, as his successor. The new commander immediately wrote to Sir John Lawrence a letter (in French, as if distrusting spies), in which he candidly announced that it would be dangerous and disastrous to attempt a storm of the city; that the enemy were in great force, well armed, strong in position, and constantly reinforced by accessions of insurgent regiments; that they daily attacked the British, who could do little more than repel the attacks; that his army was gradually diminishing by these daily losses; that it would be impossible to take Delhi without at least one more European regiment and two more Sikh regiments from the Punjaub; and that if those additions did not speedily reach him, he would be obliged to raise the siege, retreat to Kurnaul, and leave the country all around Delhi to be ravaged by the mutineers. This letter shewed the gravity with which Brigadier Wilson regarded the state of matters at that critical time. Lawrence fully recognised the importance of the issue, for he redoubled his exertions to send 900 European Fusiliers and 1600 Punjaubees to the camp.

General Reed’s resignation was twofold. He resigned the provisional command-in-chief of the Bengal army as soon as he was officially informed of the assumption of that office by Sir Patrick Grant; and he resigned the command of the Delhi field-force to Brigadier Wilson, because his health was too far broken to permit him to take part in active duties. It was the virtual ending of his part in the wars of the mutiny; he went to the hills, in search of that health which he could never have recovered in the plains.

Among the many contests in the second half of the month was one near Ludlow Castle, a name given to the residence of Mr Fraser, the commissioner of Delhi, one of those foully murdered on the 11th of May. This house was within half a mile of the Cashmere Gate, near the river; the enemy were found to be occupying it; but their works were attacked and destroyed by a force under Brigadier Showers; while Sir T. Metcalfe’s house, further northward, was taken and strengthened as a defensive post by the British.

Mr Colvin, writing from Agra to Havelock on the 22d of July, giving an account of such proceedings at Delhi as had come to his knowledge, made the following observations on the character which the struggle had assumed: ‘The spirit by which both Hindoos and Mohammedans act together at Delhi is very remarkable. You would well understand a gathering of Mohammedan fanatical feeling at that place; but what is locally, I find, known by the name of “Pandyism,” is just as strong. Pandies are, among the Hindoos, all Brahmins. What absurd, distorted suspicions of our intentions (which have been so perfectly innocent towards them) may have been first worked upon, it is scarcely possible to say; but the thing has now got beyond this, and it is a struggle for mastery, not a question of mistrust or discontent. Mohammedans seem to be actively misleading Hindoos for their own purposes. Sir Patrick Grant will not know the Bengal army again. The Goorkhas, Sikhs, and Punjaubee Mohammedans have remained quite faithful, and done their duty nobly at Delhi; the bad spirit is wholly with the Poorbeahs.’ Mr Greathed, Colvin’s commissioner with the siege-army, made every attempt to ascertain, by means of spies and deserters, what were the alleged and what the real motives for the stubborn resistance of the mutineers to British rule. He wrote on this subject: ‘The result of all questionings of sepoys who have fallen into our hands, regarding the cause of the mutiny, is the same. They invariably cite the “cartouche” (cartridge) as the origin; no other cause of complaint has been alluded to. His majesty of Delhi has composed a couplet, to the effect that the English, who boast of having vanquished rods of iron, have been overthrown in Hindostan by a single cartridge. A consciousness of power had grown up in the army, which could only be exercised by mutiny. The cry of the cartridges brought the latent spirit of revolt into action.’ Mr Muir of Agra, commenting on these remarks, said: ‘I fully believe this to be the case with the main body of the sepoys. There were ringleaders, no doubt, who had selfish views, and possibly held correspondence with the Delhi family, &c.; but they made use of the cartridge as their argument to gain over the mass of the army to the belief that their caste was threatened.’

It will be unnecessary to trace day by day the struggles outside Delhi. They continued as before; but the frequency was somewhat lessened, and the danger also, for the defence-works on the ridge had been much strengthened. Every bridge over the canal was blown up, except that on the main road to Kurnaul and Umballa; and thus the enemy could not easily attack the camp in the rear. It was not yet really a siege, for the British poured very few shot or shell into the city or against the walls. It was not an investment; for the British could not send a single regiment to the southwest, south, or east of the city. It was little more than a process of waiting till further reinforcements could arrive.

At the close of July, Brigadier Wilson forwarded to the government a very exact account of the state of his army, shewing what were his resources for maintaining the siege on the one hand, and repelling attacks by the enemy on the other. We present the chief particulars in a foot-note, in an altered and more condensed form.^[55] It appears that out of this army of something more than 8000 men, above 1100 were rendered non-effective by sickness or wounds; that of the whole number of effectives, just about one-half were Europeans, belonging either to the Queen’s or to the Company’s army; and that no European corps, except perhaps the Lancers, comprised more than a fractional percentage of a full regiment. A return sent in about the middle of the month had comprised 300 men of the 4th and 17th Bengal irregular cavalry; but the omission of this element at the end of the month shewed that those dangerous companions had been got rid of. The corps of Guides and Goorkhas had in a fortnight diminished from an aggregate number of 923 to 571—so rapidly had those gallant men been brought down by balls, bullets, and cholera. Ranked among the artillery and engineers were many hundred syces and bildars, natives who merely aided in certain labouring operations; and among the Sappers and Miners the Punjaubees were only just learning their trade.

The casualty list of officers was a very serious one. From the time when Brigadier Wilson encountered the enemy at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur at the end of May, till he made up his report at the end of July, the officers who were killed or wounded were 101 in number. Anson, Barnard, Reed, Chamberlain, Halifax, Graves—nearly all the general officers except Wilson and Showers, were either dead or in some way disabled; and these frequent changes in command doubtless affected the organisation and movements of the army.

Brigadier Wilson made every attempt, while doing the best he could with his own forces, to ascertain the number and components of those possessed by the enemy. Military commanders always aim at the acquisition of such knowledge, effected by a species of espionage which, however opposed to general feeling at other times, is deemed quite fair in war. From the 11th of May, when the troubles began in Delhi, to the end of July, there arrived in the city mutinous regiments from Meerut, Hansi, Muttra, Lucknow, Nuseerabad, Jullundur, Ferozpore, Bareilly, Jhansi, Gwalior, Neemuch, Allygurh, Agra, Rohtuk, Jhuggur, and Allahabad. The list given in a note^[56] is taken from the official dispatch, which was itself a record of information obtained from various native sources; but after making allowance for the fact that portions only of many of the regiments had entered Delhi, and that the numbers had been considerably lessened by the thirty or more encounters which had taken place outside the walls, the military authorities brought down the supposed number to a much lower limit than had before been named—namely, 4000 disciplined cavalry, and 12,000 infantry, besides 3000 undisciplined levies. The rebels retained the formidable defensive artillery which they found in Delhi, and brought thirty field-guns also with them; but these guns were lessened in number one-half by successive seizures made by the British.

The condition and proceedings of the rebels within the city could, of course, be known only imperfectly. The old king was looked up to by all as the centre of authority, but it is probable that his real power was small. Where regiments had arrived from so many different quarters, we may suppose that the apportionment of military command was no easy matter; and indeed there was, throughout, little evidence that the rebel force had one head, one leader whose plans were obeyed by all. The Lahore Chronicle some time afterwards printed a narrative by a native, of a residence in Delhi from the 13th to the 30th of July. Such narratives can seldom be relied on; but so far as it went, this revelation spoke of great discord among the leaders; great discontent among the troops because their pay was in arrear; great perplexity on the part of the old king because he had not funds enough to pay so large an army; and great plundering of the citizens by the rude soldiery, who deemed themselves masters of the situation. ‘When the sepoys,’ said this native, ‘find out a rich house in the city, they accuse the owner after the following manner, in order to plunder his property. They take a loaf of bread and a bottle of grog with them, and make a noise at the door and break it in pieces, get into the house, take possession of the cash and valuables, and beat the poor householder, saying: “Where is the Englishman you have been keeping in your house?” When he denies having done so, they just shew him the bread and the bottle, and say: “How is it that we happened to find these in your house? We are quite sure there was an Englishman accommodated here, whom you quietly sent elsewhere before our arrival.” Soon after, the talk is over, and the poor man is disgracefully put into custody, where there is no inquiry made to prove whether he is innocent or guilty; he cannot get his release unless he bribes the general.’ The known attributes of oriental cunning give a strong probability to this curious story.

Here, for the present, we take leave of the siege of Delhi, and of the stage at which it had arrived by the end of July. Much has to be narrated, in reference to other places, other generals, other operations, before the final capture of the imperial city will call for description.