| Sikh Pioneers - The Sikh Pioneers at Delhi | | | Making the Siege Works
With the knowledge that the siege train was close at hand, General Wilson and his chief engineer were ready to commence the real siege from early September. This involved bringing the whole outpost line, which ran in a semi-circle from the Sammy House, on the end of the Ridge, to the Metcalfe stables, on the Jumna bank, steadily forward, in what was practically a vast wheel pivoted on the Sammy House.
The first work to be constructed was No. 1 Siege Battery, thrown up a few hundred yards in front of the Sammy House and 700 yards from the Moree Basin, by the Punjab "Sappers" (as the reports style them), under Home himself and Ensign Chalmers, the adjutant. This work was so complete by daybreak that not only had it been armed but ammunition was up and fire opened almost at once. The battery connected by a trench with the Sammy House was constructed in two portions to carry nine heavy guns. Musketry from Kissengunj was responsible for several casualties.
The business of carrying down the siege material alone was a heavy one, and the moon rose on the following nights on a jam of camels carrying fascines and gabions, of sappers filling sandbags and then the lumbering forty yoke of oxen dragging down the siege guns. The various deep nullahs, still existing, were covered ways full of troops, animals and material. The noise of the cattle moving was prodigious, but did not apparently produce any great alarm, for only once during the night did the Mutineer guns on the Moree Bastion fire a shower of grape to their front. They probably thought that what they heard was not more than a brushwood party. Before dawn working parties and animals were cleared away and work that was a record for siege construction was ready. Amply indeed had the Mazhbis justified themselves! Three more such batteries remained to be built.
The sites of them all stand to this lay marked in the Khudsia Bagh, and in front of the More Bastion, marked by miniature embrasures giving details as to armament, and the name of the sapper and gunner officer in charge of each.
The most remarkable of all was the last, No. 3 Battery, erected behind the old Mogul Customs House* which stood only 180 yards in front of the great Water Bastion, 400 yards to the left of the Kashmir Gate.
*This as stated earlier, is now marked by the plinth on which the building stood.
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