Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/279

Rh cavalry, and eleven guns. Brigadier Polwhele, after providing for the defences of the fort, could take into the field against them 568 English infantry, a battery with sixty-nine Englishmen, including officers, and fifty-four native drivers, fifty-five mounted militia, and fifty English volunteers, mostly officers, making a total of 742 Englishmen, besides the officers of the European regiment and the staff. It was a force sufficient, if well handled, to drive the rebel force to Jericho.

Believing that he could so handle it, Polwhele marched from the fort at one o'clock, and proceeded to Sháhganj. There he halted till his reconnoitring parties should come in. These arrived at half-past two with the information that the rebels were still halted at Sassiah. Towards that village Polwhele then moved. When within half-a-mile from it the enemy's left battery opened fire.

There is only one true method of fighting Asiatics. That mode is to move straight on. To play the game of an artillery duello with them, when they have nearly double the number of guns and the advantage of position, is simply madness. The experience of a hundred years would have been reversed if Polwhele, pushing on against the village of Sassiah, had failed to drive the rebels from it. But he did nothing of the sort. Far from profiting from the teachings of history, he tried a plan in which he was bound to be beaten. He halted his infantry, and made them lie down, whilst he engaged in an artillery duello with his six guns against the enemy's eleven. His men were in the open, the rebels were protected by the village of Sassiah. The logical consequences followed. Although the British guns were directed by two of the most gallant and skilled officers the splendid Bengal Artillery ever produced, Captain D'Oyley commanding half the battery on the right, Captain Pearson the other half on the