men, but swelled later on, as the mutineers poured in from all quarters, to three times that force. Never during the long months which the struggle lasted did we attempt to do more than to hold our own. The city was open to the enemy at all sides, save where we held our footing; large forces marched in and out of the town; provisions and stores poured into it; and we can scarcely be said to have fired a shot at it until our batteries opened to effect a breach, a few days before the final assault.
The troops with which Sir H. Barnard arrived before Delhi consisted of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, six companies of the Sixtieth Rifles, the First Bengal Fusiliers, six companies of the Second Fusiliers—both composed of white troops—the Sirmoor Battalion of Goorkhas, the Sixth Dragoon Guards (the Carbineers), two squadrons of the Ninth Lancers, and a troop or two of newly raised irregular horse. The artillery consisted of some thirty pieces, mostly light field guns.
Upon the day following the occupation of the Ridge, a welcome accession of strength was received by the arrival of the Guides, a picked corps, consisting of three troops of cavalry and six companies of infantry. This little force had marched five hundred and eighty miles in twenty-two days, a rate of twenty-six miles a day without a break—a feat probably altogether without example, especially when it is considered that it took place in India, and in the hottest time of the year.
The Ridge, which occupies so important a place in the history of the siege of Delhi, is a sharp-backed hill, some half a mile long, rising abruptly from the plain. From the top a splendid view of Delhi and of the country, scattered with mosques and tombs—the remains of older Delhi—can be obtained. The cantonments lay at the
