Baird broke the brief silence that followed Gent’s words. ‘They can’t surely garrison both walls,’ the Scotsman insisted.
‘The Tippoo has no shortage of men,’ Wellesley pointed out. ‘Thirty or forty thousand, we hear. More than enough to defend both walls, I should think.’
Baird ignored the young Colonel, while Harris, uncomfortably aware of the bad feeling between his two deputies, stared fixedly at his map of the city in the hope that some new inspiration would strike. Colonel Gent sat beside Harris. The engineer unfolded a pair of wire-framed spectacles and
hooked them over his ears as he peered down at the map.
Harris sighed. ‘I still think it has to be the west,’ he said, ‘despite this new wall.’
‘The north?’ Wellesley asked.
‘According to our farmer fellow,’ Gent answered, ‘the new inner wall goes all the way round the north.’ He picked up a pencil and sketched the line of the new inner wall on the map to show that wherever the river flowed close to the city there was now a double rampart. ‘And the west is infinitely preferable to the north,’ Gent added. “The South Cauvery’s shallow, while the main river can still be treacherous at this time of year. If our fellows have to wade through the Cauvery, let them do it here.’ He tapped the city’s western approach. ‘Of course,’ he added optimistically, ‘maybe that fellow was right, and maybe that inner wall ain’t finished.’
Harris wished to God that McCandless was still with the army. That subtle Scotsman would have despatched a dozen disguised sepoys and discovered within hours the exact state of the new inner wall, but McCandless was lost and so, Harris suspected, were the two men sent to rescue him.
‘We could cross the Arrakerry Ford,’ Baird suggested, ‘then blast our way in from the east like Cornwallis did.’
Harris lifted the hem of his wig and scratched at his old scalp wound. ‘We discussed all this before,’ he said wearily. He offered Baird a wan smile to take the sting from his mild reproof, then explained his reasons for not assaulting from the east. ‘First we have to force the crossing, and the enemy has the river banks entrenched. Then we must get through the new wall around their encampment’ – he touched the map, showing where the Tippoo had constructed a stout mud wall, well served with guns, that surrounded the encampment which lay outside the city’s southern and eastern walls – ‘and after that we have to lay siege to the city proper, and we know that both the east and south ramparts already have inner walls. And to breach those walls every round shot
and pound of powder will have to be carried across the river.’
‘And one good rainfall will make the ford impassable,’ Gent put in gloomily, ‘not to mention bringing those damned crocodiles back.’ He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t want to be carrying three tons of supplies a day across a half-flooded river full of hungry teeth.’
‘So wherever we attack,’ Wellesley asked, ‘we have to pierce two walls?’
‘That’s what the man said,’ Baird growled.
‘This new inner wall,’ Wellesley asked Gent, ignoring Baird, ‘what do we know of it?’
‘Mud,’ Gent said, ‘red mud bricks. Just like Devon mud.’
‘Mud will crumble,’ Wellesley pointed out.
‘If it’s dry, it will,’ Gent agreed, ‘but the core of the wall won’t be dry. Thoroughly good stuff, mud. Soaks up the cannon fire. I’ve seen twenty-four-pounder shots bounce off mud like currants off a suet pudding. Give me a good stone wall to break down any day. Break its crust and the guns turn the rubble core into a staircase. But not mud.’ Gent stared at the map, picking his teeth with the sharpened nib of a quill. ‘Not mud,’ he added in a gloomy undertone.
‘But it will yield?’ Harris asked anxiously.
‘Oh, it’ll yield, sir, it’ll yield, I can warrant you that, but how much time do we have to persuade it to yield?’ The engineer peered over his spectacles at the bewigged General. “The monsoon ain’t so far off, and once the rains begin we might as well go home for all the good we’ll ever do. You want a path through both walls? It’ll take two weeks more, and even then the inner breach will be perilously narrow. Perilously narrow! Can’t enfilade it, you see, and the breach in the outer wall will serve as a glacis to protect the base of the inner wall. Straight on fire, sir, and all aimed a deal higher than any respectable gunner would want. We can make you a breach of sorts, but it’ll be narrow and high, and