| Sikh Pioneers - The Sikh Pioneers at Delhi | | |
The city was then surrounded by a high crenellated wall as now, and bastions, and in 1804 Colonel Ochterlony, the Resident, and Colonel Burns, the Commandant of the troops, were fiercely assailed therein by Holkar, who had now declared a belated war on the British. Rescued by the forced marches of the returning Lake the enceinte was strengthened by British engineers, a short glacis being added, certain bastions enlarged and properly embrasured, while between the latter detached martello towers with removable bridges were added, all of which still remain. The walls of the place citadel were washed by the Jumna* which curled round the city walls and bastion as far as the Water Bastion and the old Mogul Customs House.+
On the north side of the city runs the last stony spur of the Aravallis, which helps mark off Delhi as the lowest spot on the Jumna where the watered road north of that range could cross the river. This range is practically a tangent to the circle of the city, nearly touching the circumference in front of the Mori Gate, where a gap in the Ridge admits the old Mogul and now the Grand Trunk Road. The Ridge++ then trends away from the circumference, being perhaps 1,200 yards distant at its nearest point, and touches the Jumna, three miles away.
On the far side of the Ridge lay the military cantonment, with lines for three battalions and one Indian battery, all present therein in May, 1857, except a company of the 38th Native Infantry on duty as an "Officer's guard" in the Kashmir Gate, and finding a guard for the Calcutta Gate and arsenal. The latter lay within the walls to the south-east of the Water Bastion; all save the powder, moved to a magazine on the south edge of the Ridge by Sir Charles Napier, a few years before. Within the arsenal was a small expense magazine containing but fifty barrels of powder. On the Ridge were 3,000.
The scenes of the first arrival of the Light Cavalry beggar description, and cannot be given here. The town rabble almost immediately rose with the King's troops in the citadel. The 54th sent down to quell what was thought to be a riot, refused to act, and allowed the Light Cavalry to massacre their officers. It is a long and pitiful story, ending up by the British officers at dusk finding none of the men would stay with them, and moving off to Umballa with all the Europeans and Eurasians who could get up to the Flagstaff tower on the Ridge.
*Which has now receded. +Of which the plinth, facing the Water Bastion, only now remains. ++This portion of the Aravalli spur is known to history as "The Ridge".
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