He was standing outside his tent, a cup and saucer in one hand, staring
up through the wisps of mist to where the rising sun threw a brilliant
light on Gawilghur’s soaring cliffs. A servant stood behind with
Wellesley’s coat, hat and sword, a second servant held his horse, while
a third waited to take the cup and saucer.
“How’s Harness?” the General asked Campbell.
“I believe he now sleeps most of the time, sir,” Campbell replied.
Colonel Harness had been relieved of the command of his brigade.
He had been found ranting in the camp, demanding that his Highlanders
form fours and follow him southwards to fight against dragons, papists
and Whigs.
“Sleeps?” the General asked.
“What are the doctors doing? Pouring rum down his gullet?”
“I believe it is tincture of opium, sir, but most likely flavoured with
rum.”
“Poor Harness,” Wellesley grunted, then sipped his tea. From high
above him there came the sound of a pair of twelve-pounder guns that
had been hauled to the summit of the conical hill that reared just
south of the fortress. Wellesley knew those guns were doing no good,
but he had stubbornly insisted that they fire at the fortress gate that
looked out across the vast plain. The gunners had warned the General
that the weapons would be ineffective, that they would be firing too
far and too high above them, but Wellesley had wanted the fortress to
know that an assault might come from the south as well as across the
rocky isthmus to the north, and so he had ordered the sappers to drag
the two weapons up through the entangling jungle and to make a battery
on the hill top. The guns, firing at their maximum elevation, were
just able to throw their missiles to Gawilghur’s southern entrance, but
by the time the round shot reached the gate it was spent of all force
and simply bounced back down the steep slope. But that was not the
point. The point was to keep some of the garrison looking southwards,
so that not every man could be thrown against the assault on the
breaches.
That assault would not start for five hours yet, for before Lieutenant
Colonel Kenny led his men against the breaches, Wellesley wanted his
other attackers to be in place. Those were two columns of redcoats
that were even now climbing the two steep roads that twisted up the
great cliffs. Colonel Wallace, with his own 74th and a battalion of
sepoys, would approach the Southern Gate, while the 78th and another
native battalion would climb the road which led to the ravine between
the forts. Both columns could expect to come under heavy artillery
fire, and neither could hope to break into the fortress, but their job
was only to distract the defenders while Kenny’s men made for the
breaches.
Wellesley drained the tea, made a wry face at its bitter taste and held
out the cup and saucer for the servant.
“Time to go, Campbell.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wellesley had thought about riding to the plateau and entering the
fortress behind Kenny, but he guessed his presence would merely
distract men who had enough problems to face without worrying about
their commander’s approval. Instead he would ride the steep southern
road and join Wallace and the 74th. All those men could hope for was
that the other attackers got inside the Inner Fort and opened the
Southern Gate, or else they would have to march ignominiously back down
the hill to their encampment. It was all or nothing, Wellesley
thought. Victory or disgrace.
He mounted, waited for his aides to assemble, then touched his horse’s
flank with his spurs. God help us now, he prayed, God help us now.
Lieutenant Colonel Kenny examined the breaches through a telescope that
he had propped on a rock close to one of the breaching batteries.
The guns were firing, but he ignored the vast noise as he gazed at the
stone ramps which his men must climb.
“They’re steep, man,” he grumbled, ‘damned steep.”
“The walls are built on a slope,” Major Stokes pointed out, ‘so the
breaches are steep of necessity.”
“Damned hard to climb though,” Kenny said.