rockets, stones, etc. Finding further advance impossible, Jai Singh was contented with the capture of the three bastions made that day and ordered his men to dig trenches exactly where they had reached and to hold the White Tower, without attempting to push on to the Black Tower.
In the course of the next two days the wooden structure was completed and two small pieces of cannon were mounted on it. The enemy, unable to reply to this fire from a superior height, evacuated the Black Tower and another bastion near it and took refuge in a stockade adjoining the wall of the tower. But they could not show their heads. The stockade was untenable, and they retired to the trenches behind it. (Ben. MS. 187b— 189a.) Thus five towers and one stockade of the lower fort fell into the hands of the Mughals.
Purandar now seemed doomed. And, as if to complete its destruction, the Emperor had at Jai Singh's request despatched a train of very heavy artillery which were now on the way to the fort. The garrison had originally numbered only 2,000*[1] against at least ten times that number of Mughals, and they had suffered heavy casualties during two months of incessant fighting. Early in the siege they had lost their gallant commandant Murar Baji
Prabhu.
- ↑ * Sabhasad, 42 — 43, gives this number, which is evidently an underestimate. Alamgir-namah, 903, says that the fort had 4,000 combatants left in it at capitulation.
