a wall.
These walls, built so long ago, had never been designed to stop
artillery, but to deter men. Stokes knew he could lay his guns so that
they would hammer both walls at once, and that when the ancient
stonework crumbled, the rubble would spill forward down the slope to
make natural ramps up which the attackers could climb.
The masonry seemed to have stayed largely unrepaired since it had been
built. Stokes could tell that, for the dark stones were covered with
grey lichen and thick with weeds growing from the gaps between the
blocks. The walls looked formidable, for they were high and well
provided with massive bastions that would let the defenders provide
flanking fire, but Stokes knew that the dressed stone of the two walls’
outer faces merely disguised a thick heart of piled rubble, and once
the facing masonry was shattered the rubble would spill out. A few
shots would then suffice to break the inner faces. Two days’ work, he
reckoned. Two days of hard gunnery should bring the walls tumbling
down.
Stokes had not made his reconnaissance alone, but had been accompanied
by Lieutenant Colonel William Kenny of the East India Company who would
lead the assault on the breaches. Kenny, a lantern jawed and taciturn
man, had lain beside Stokes.
“Well?” he had finally asked after Stokes had spent a silent five
minutes examining the walls.
“Two days’ work, sir,” Stokes said. If the Mahrattas had taken the
trouble to build a glacis it would have been two weeks’ work, but such
was their confidence that they had not bothered to protect the base of
the outer wall.
Kenny grunted.
“If it’s that easy, then give me two holes in the inner wall.”
“Not the outer?” Stokes asked.
“One will serve me there,” Kenny said, putting an eye to his own
telescope.
“A good wide gap in the nearer wall, Stokes, but not too near the main
gate.”
“We shall avoid that,” the Major said. The main gate lay to the left
so that the approach to the fortress was faced by high walls and
bastions rather than by a gate vulnerable to artillery fire. However,
this gate was massively defended by bastions and towers, which
suggested it would be thick with defenders.
“Straight up the middle,” Kenny said, wriggling back from his
viewpoint.
“Give me a breach to the right of that main bastion, and two on either
side of it through the inner wall, and we’ll do the rest.”
It would be easy enough to break down the walls, but Stokes still
feared for Kenny’s men. Their approach was limited by the existence of
the great reservoir that lay on the right of the isthmus. The water
level was low, and scummed green, but the tank still constricted the
assault route so that Kenny’s men would be squeezed between the water
and the sheer drop to the left. That slender space, scarce more than
fifty feet at its narrowest, would be furious with gunfire, much of it
coming from the fire steps above and around the main gate that flanked
the approach.
Stokes had already determined that his enfilading batteries should
spare some shot for that gate in an attempt to unseat its cannon and
unsettle its defenders.
Now, under the midday sun, the Major wandered among the sappers filling
the gab ions He tested each one, making certain that the sepoys i,
were ramming the earth hard into the wicker baskets, for a loosely
filled gabion was no use. The finished gab ions were being stacked on
ox carts, while other carts piled with powder and shot waited nearby.
All was being done properly, and the Major stared out across the
plateau where the newly arrived troops were making their camp. The |
closest tents, ragged and makeshift, belonged to a troop of Mahratta j
horsemen who had allied themselves with the British. Stokes, watching
i the robed guards who sat close to the tents, decided it would be best
if he locked his valuables away and made sure his servant kept an eye
on the trunk. The rest of the Mahratta horsemen had trotted
northwards, going to seek springs or wells, for it was dry up here on