Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/232

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204
The Residency.

These houses were contained in a space called, from the chief house within it, the Residency, 2150 feet long from north-west to south-east, and 1200 broad from east to west. The defences, as they were gradually constituted, beginning from the Baillie guard at the eastermost point, and continuing northward, were (1) Alexander's battery, (2) the water-gate battery, (3) the Redan battery, (4) a palisade. From that point southward there followed (1) Innes's garrison, (2) the bhúsá guard, (3) Gubbins's garrison and Gubbins's battery, (4) the Sikh square. Thence eastward (1) the Kánhpur battery, (2) Thomas's battery, (3) Anderson's garrison, (4) the post-office garrison, (5) the judicial garrison, (6) Sago's guard, (7) the financial garrison. The defences were not, I have said, complete when the blockade began. They were, at the best, very rough, run up under great difficulties, and never in their finished state deserving the character of regular fortifications. It was only gradually that the several houses and their occupants came to be distinguished by the names I have appended to each.

From the day when Lawrence concentrated his troops within the enclosure the fire of the rebels upon it had been continuous. The mutinous sipáhís, the old aristocracy, the dispossessed landowners, the discontented middlemen in the districts, all contributed their quota to the memorable leaguer. In the cause to the triumph of which they devoted their energies they displayed a persistence, a perseverance, and a resolution which gave evidence of the strength of their convictions. Night and day, from the tops of the houses in close vicinity to the intrenchment, from every point where cover was available, they poured in an unremitting fire of round-shot, of musketry, of matchlock balls. From the howitzers they had filched from the British they sent shells hissing into the Resi-