by a berme of variable width, ranging from sixteen to thirty feet, and having a scarp wall eight feet high. Exterior to this was a dry ditch, of about twenty-five feet in width, and from sixteen to twenty 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 walls of the place.'
Such being the defences, the plan of assault traced out may be thus stated.
It was necessary that the attack should be directed against the northern face — the face represented by the Morí, Kashmír, and Water bastions, and the curtain wall connecting them. Fortunately the carelessness of the rebels allowed the besiegers to concentrate on the curtain wall a fire sufficient to crush that of the defence, and thus to effect breaches through which the infantry could be launched. The plan of the Chief Engineer, then, was to crush the fire of the Morí bastion. That fire silenced, the advance on the British left, which was covered by the river, would be secure, and there the assault would be delivered. The evening of the 7th was fixed for the commencement of the tracing of the assailing batteries.
That day Wilson issued a stirring order to the troops, telling them that the hour was at hand when, as he trusted, they would be rewarded for their past exertions by the capture of the city. That evening the engineers began their work. For No. 1 battery a site had been selected below the Ridge, in the open plain, within 700 yards of the Morí bastion. This battery was divided into two sections, the right one to be commanded by Major Brind, a real hero of the siege, intended to silence the Morí bastion; the left one by Major Kaye, designed
