Nicholson's victory at Najafgarh encouraged the little army on the Ridge as much as it dismayed the enemy. The former needed encouragement. More than a thousand Englishmen were in hospital. General Wilson was anxious and depressed; urged on the one side by Lawrence to strike a blow and save India, on the other fearing to risk an assault which, if it failed, would mean annihilation or at best ignominious retirement. But Nicholson inspired officers and men with confidence. The sight of his great form stalking or riding day after day from end to end of the position, made men feel that when the long-expected siege-train arrived no time would be lost in putting all to the hazard. He went carefully over the ground, deciding with Baird Smith, the head of the Engineers, the sites for the breaching batteries, arranging the composition and disposition of the attacking columns, gaining all possible information about affairs in the city.

In Delhi, meanwhile, it was beginning to be felt that the hour of retribution was at hand. The dissensions between the rival commanders became more acute; one day the king would refuse to see Bakht Khan, holding that he had disgraced himself; the next he would shower compliments on him and assure him of his continued good favour. The army still complained of lack of pay; the princes still plundered the bankers and merchants; the whole city was in a state of terror. Day by day sepoys deserted, going away unarmed to seek their homes. Yet when a postal-runner from the Ridge fell into the rebels' hands, and, being questioned in the king's presence as to what was going on in the camp, declared that the sepoys would never prevail against the English, his outspoken opinion enraged the courtiers, and they sentenced him to death.

At last, on September 4, the siege-train arrived, a long line of heavy guns and mortars drawn by elephants, with miles of bullock-carts loaded with shot and shell and ammunition of all kinds, enough to grind Delhi to powder. During the next week all energies were strained to make ready for the assault. Nicholson and Baird Smith had settled the plan. The most vulnerable part of the wall lay between the Water gate and the Mori bastion. Upon this it was decided to concentrate the artillery fire. On the night of September 6, the first battery was begun just below the Sami-house, a half-ruined mosque six hundred yards from the city, and next day, when it was completed and began to belch its shot on the doomed walls, strong pickets took advantage of the distraction to occupy Ludlow Castle, a large country-house of European make towards the left of the position, and the Kudsia gardens opposite the Kashmir gate and overlooking the river. Each night a new battery was erected and armed, to begin each morning its fierce work. The second battery stood in front of Ludlow Castle, five hundred yards from the walls; the third, consisting of four heavy mortars, was made in the Kudsia gardens, and placed in command of the gallant Major Tombs; the fourth, a triumph of the daring and skill of Captain Taylor of the Engineers, had crept within a hundred and sixty yards of the Mori bastion. Nor were these feats of engineering done without loss. As soon as the rebels perceived what was afoot, they directed a storm of musketry on the heroic workers who toiled day and night in the hot moist air. British and natives, officers and men, soldiers of all arms—for Lancers and Carabineers lent a hand in the work—laboured incessantly with unflinching courage. As soon as one man was killed or disabled, another took his place.

By the night of the 11th, all the batteries were complete, and on the 12th more than fifty guns and mortars were pounding the walls. The din was deafening, and mingled with the roar of the guns was the crash of shattered masonry as the red walls crumbled away. At nightfall every post of vantage on the Ridge was crowded with sightseers, watching the living shell flying through the air like falling meteors. The rebels at first attempted to answer the fire, but the gunners could not hold their posts on the shot-swept ramparts. Parties of rebel horse sallied forth from time to time, as if to charge the batteries; but they were met by showers of grape-shot, or set upon by troops of Hodson's Horse, which drove them back in frantic haste to find cover. Nicholson rode from battery to battery, encouraging the men, taking counsel with Baird Smith, watching the effect of these tremendous salvos that shook the ground.

So the bombardment continued until the night of the 13th. Then the roar suddenly ceased. A thrill of expectation ran through the camp. Captain Taylor had reported that the breaches in the walls were practicable; every man knew that the moment for the great assault was at hand. And in the city men knew it too. The old king spent many hours in his private mosque praying for victory. The traders had all closed their shops, for fear of being carried off to serve at the fortifications. The officers wrangled; there was no commanding spirit like Nicholson among them. Bakht Khan was brave enough, but he was merely a fighter; he had no genius for leadership. On the night of the 12th a proclamation was carried with beat of drum through the streets, commanding all the men of the city, Hindu and Mohammedan alike, to assemble at the Kashmir gate, bringing picks and shovels; the king himself would lead them forth, and they would fall on the infidels and sweep them away. The Hindus paid no heed; but ten thousand faithful Mohammedans, inflamed with fanatic ardour, their religious feelings wrought upon by shrieking fakirs and mullahs, congregated at the gates waiting the arrival of their king. But he came not. Till midnight they remained; then hope died away, and with despairing hearts the great throng dispersed to their homes.

On the night of the 13th, ere the bombardment ceased, every available man in the British force, including men just risen from their sick beds in the hospital, went to his appointed station. The assault was to be made in four columns. A thousand men,—detachments from the 1st Fusiliers, the 15th Regiment, and the 2nd Panjab Infantry—under Nicholson himself, were to storm the breach in the Kashmir bastion, and escalade the walls. The second column, also a thousand strong, under Colonel Jones of the 61st, was simultaneously to storm and scale the Mori bastion. Meanwhile the Kashmir gate was to be blown up, and the third column, under Colonel Campbell of the 52nd, would sweep in through the breach. The fourth column, commanded by Major Reid, who had gallantly held Hindu Rao's house throughout the summer, was to attack the suburb of Kishenganj and enter by the Lahore gate. A fifth column, of 1,500 men, was held in reserve to give support to the first, and Colonel Hope Grant was to post himself on the Ridge, with the cavalry six hundred strong, to prevent the rebels from re-entering the city when thrust out of Kishenganj. The whole force consisted of some 7,000 men.

Ahmed had been looking forward with great eagerness to the fight. The Guides' cavalry, commanded now by Captain Sandford, formed part of Hope Grant's brigade, and they expected warm work at Kishenganj when Major Reid had driven the rebels into the open. But on the evening of the 13th Ahmed was summoned to Nicholson's tent, and learnt, with mingled pride and disappointment, that he was to accompany the first column. When the troops entered the city they would require a guide through its network of streets and lanes, and Hodson had recommended Ahmed for the duty. He was proud at being selected to serve Nicholson, but at the same time disappointed that he was not to go side by side with Sherdil into the fight. Sherdil himself was envious.

"In very truth thou art favoured above all men," he said. "I myself would fain serve the great Nikalsain."

"But thou dost not know Delhi, Sherdil-ji," replied Ahmed.

"True, but by often asking one can find the way. Wah! I will nevertheless fight as befits one of my name, and I promise thee that when the day is done the Purbiyas shall lie around me like grass from the scythe."

Dawn was just breaking on that sultry September 14, when the bugle sounded the advance. The Rifles led the way in skirmishing order; the first column, with Nicholson ahead, marched on steadily until they reached the edge of the jungle. Then the Engineers and the storming party, with their ladders, rose from cover, and sprang forward to the breach near the Kashmir bastion. A storm of musket-shots assailed them as they gained the crest of the glacis; scores of men fell; but the survivors let down their ladders, the British officers ran down them into the ditch, the men close behind, and with a great cheer they rushed up the scarp and into the breach. The sight of their gleaming bayonets was too much for the sepoys. They fled, and Nicholson led his men into Delhi.

Meanwhile, at the Mori bastion, Colonel Jones had been met by a tremendous fusillade that mowed down three-fourths of his ladder-men, and a great number of his storming party. But while his men were still struggling with the ladder, twenty-five of the 8th Foot slid into the ditch, and scrambled up into the breach at a point where attack had not been expected. The rebels were taken aback; Jones seized the moment of hesitation, and in a few minutes the rest of his column were upon the ramparts. They swept on towards the Kabul gate, driving the enemy before them, and a wild whoop rose from the panting men as they saw their flag planted on the summit of the gate.

The progress of the third column had been marked by an act of heroism. The Kashmir gate must be blown open before they could enter. Home, a subaltern of the Engineers, with two British sergeants and a dozen natives, ran forward to the gate under a heavy fire, carrying twenty-five pound powder-bags. A step or two behind came Lieutenant Salkeld with a firing party and a bugler. They ran across the ditch by the planks of the drawbridge, and came unscathed to the foot of the great double gates, the rebels seeming to be scared into inaction by the very audacity of the feat. They laid the bags against the gate; then a terrible fire was again directed upon them. A sergeant fell dead; Home dropped unhurt into the ditch; Salkeld, holding the portfire, was shot through arm and leg, and fell back helpless. He handed the portfire to Corporal Burgess, who was shot dead before he could light the fuse. Carmichael took the portfire and had just lighted the fuse, when he received a mortal wound. Smith, fearing that Carmichael had failed, sprang forward, match-box in hand; but the portfire exploded just as he reached the gate, and he plunged into the ditch to escape the greater explosion. Next moment the gate was shattered to fragments. Now was the bugler's turn. Three times he sounded the advance, but amid the din all around it was not heard. The explosion itself, however, gave the signal, and Colonel Campbell led his men forward at the double, and dashed into the city but a few minutes after the first and second columns had entered it.

The fourth column had meanwhile suffered a disastrous check. The guns which were to accompany it were late in arriving, and when they did come, the gunners were only sufficient to work one out of the four. Major Reid was waiting until others could be found, when he heard the explosion at the Kashmir gate and learnt that a portion of his native troops were already engaged at the Idgah. It was time to be up and doing, so he set off to the attack of Kishenganj, leaving his guns behind. But a musket-ball struck him on the head, and he fell insensible into the ditch. There was some disorder among the men, and a doubt as to who was now in command of the column; and when Reid settled that, on returning to consciousness, by ordering Captain Lawrence to take the command, the fire of artillery and musketry from the unbreached walls of Kishenganj was so heavy as to necessitate the withdrawal of the column to their starting-place at Hindu Rao's house. Hope Grant's cavalry, drawn up to guard their flank when they pressed forward to the city, as had been the intention, were forced to sit their horses for two long hours without a chance of doing anything, under a hurricane of lead and iron from the Burn bastion. Only a third of them were British, but the troopers of the Guides and Hodson's Horse behaved as steadily under this critical ordeal as the British Lancers. In the excitement of action men may face lightheartedly dangers to which they are oblivious: it needs more heroism to sit like sentries at the Horse Guards while balls are flying thick around. By and by they were helped to hold their ground by Captain Bourchier's battery of horse artillery. And not till they learnt that the three storming columns had entered the city, and established themselves there, did they fall back to their bivouac around Ludlow Castle.

In the city the ramparts were in British hands, from the Kashmir gate to the Kabul gate, and Colonel Campbell had pushed on across the Chandni Chauk, and as far as the great mosque, which had been fortified. From it and the surrounding houses a deadly fire was poured upon the British, and Campbell, finding that the support he had expected from the other columns was not forthcoming, fell back upon the Begam Bagh, a vast walled garden, where he bivouacked.

Meanwhile, Nicholson had pressed on along the foot of the walls towards the Kabul gate, where British colours now flew. The plan had been to clear the ramparts as far westward as the Lahore gate, and Nicholson expected that Major Reid's column would by this time have entered the city there. Nothing daunted by Reid's failure, Nicholson determined to push forward without this support.

Between the Kabul and the Lahore gates was the Burn bastion, the strongest part of the defences, whence a galling fire was being kept up both on the cavalry drawn up outside and on the infantry in the narrow streets within. A narrow lane, three hundred yards long, and varying from ten feet to three in width, ran between the Kabul gate and the bastion, lined with mud huts on one side and on the other by the ramparts. The rebels, taking heart at the one success they had achieved in the repulse of the fourth column and the havoc wrought by the Burn bastion, had come crowding back into the lane, the further end of which they defended with two brass guns posted behind a bullet-proof screen.

Nicholson knew that his task would not be finished until the bastion was taken. The enemy would exult if it remained even for a day in their hands. So he called on the 1st Fusiliers to charge along the lane, ordering the 75th to rush along the ramparts and carry the position above. The men, tired as they were, gallantly responded. On they went, reached the first gun, overwhelmed the gunners, then dashed on with a cheer to the second. But ere they reached it a storm of shot—musket-balls, grape, canister, round shot, even stones flung by hand—burst upon them. They recoiled. Again they formed up, again charged up the lane, again captured the first gun, which Captain Greville spiked. Once more they dashed forward to the second gun and the bullet-proof screen. Men fell fast, blocking the narrow lane. Major Jacob, of the 1st Fusiliers, and six other officers were struck down, and Captain Greville was withdrawing the men from what he deemed an impossible task.

But at this moment the great voice of Nicholson himself was heard calling on the men to make one more charge and follow him. He rushed to the front, and turned his back for a moment to the enemy, so that his men might see his face and take courage. A shot from the bastion struck him in the back; he reeled and fell. A sergeant caught him, and laid him in one of the recesses below the ramparts. He was taken back to the Kabul gate, and by and by was placed in a dooli and entrusted to native bearers to carry to the field hospital below the Ridge.

Lieutenant Frederick Roberts, an engineer on General Wilson's staff, had been sent into the city to discover the truth of reports carried to him—that Nicholson had fallen, and Hope Grant and Tombs were both dead. As he rode through the Kashmir gate, Lieutenant Roberts saw a dooli by the roadside with a wounded man in it, but no bearers. The lieutenant dismounted to see what he could do. He found that the wounded man was John Nicholson, deserted by the bearers, lying in helpless agony alone. The bearers had run off to plunder. Four men were found to supply their places; a sergeant of the 61st Foot was put in charge of the party, and the dying soldier was carried to Captain Daly's tent on the Ridge.