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22 when its leader died of cholera (May 27th). It was not until the 1st of June that General Barnard, who had succeeded temporarily to the chief command, advanced in earnest against the now jubilant rebels. Meanwhile, a small body of troops under Brigadier Archdale Wilson marched out from Meerut, after a disastrous delay; and the combined force, amounting to about 3000 Europeans and one battalion of Gúrkhas, fought its way onwards till it reached the outskirts of the city on the 8th of June, 1857.

We may now refer to the three great points — Delhi, Cawnpur, and Lucknow, round which the Mutiny was, so to speak, centred during the earlier period of the revolt; namely, from May 1857, till the arrival in India of Sir Colin Campbell in August of that year.

The modern city of Delhi was founded by the Emperor Sháh Jehán in 1631. Situated on the right bank of a branch of the Jumna river it was, as it still is, surrounded by a high wall some seven miles in extent, strengthened by bastions and by a capacious dry ditch. The British force held the elevated ground known as the Ridge, which extends two miles along the northern and western faces of the city — a position taken up some centuries before by Timúr Sháh and his Tartar hordes when advancing to attack old Delhi. At intervals along the Ridge stood the Flagstaff Tower, the Observatory, a large mansion called Hindu Ráo's house, and other defensible buildings. The space between the city and the Ridge was thickly planted, for the most part with trees and shrubs; in the midst