Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/412

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376
General Jones and the Maulaví.

who had eight guns, followed him to that place, invested it and from the 3d to the morning of the 11th of May kept up against it an all but incessant cannonade.

Information of the position of Hale reached Sir Colin on the 7th. He at once despatched John Jones, with the 60th Rifles, the 79th, a wing of the 82d, the 22d Panjáb Infantry, two squadrons of the Carabineers, the Multání horse, and guns in proportion, to dispose, if he could, of the most persistent of all the rebels. Jones started on the 8th, reached the vicinity of Sháhjahánpur the 11th, drove the rebel outposts before him, and effected a junction with Hale. But the Maulaví was too strong in cavalry to permit of his being attacked with any chance of success. Jones halted, then, until he should receive from Sir Colin troops of the arm of which he stood in need. The Maulaví, meanwhile, occupied the open plain, whither rebels who had been elsewhere baffled flocked to him from all sides. Matters continued so till the morning of the 15th, when the Maulaví, whose following had greatly increased, attacked Jones. The fight lasted all day without his having been able to make the smallest impression on the serried ranks of the British. Sir Colin, meanwhile, deeming the campaign at an end, had distributed his forces. He was himself on his way to Fathgarh, with a small body of troops, when he received Jones's message. Sending then for the remainder of the 9th Lancers, he turned his course towards Sháhjahánpur, and effected a junction there with Jones on the 18th.

Even then he was too weak in cavalry to force the rebels to a decisive battle. A skirmish, however, brought on a partial action near the village of Panhat. It resulted in the repulse of the rebels, and in nothing more. But the Maulaví, realising that he could make no impression on the British infantry, fell back into Oudh, to await there