Many and anxious, by this time, had been the discussions relative to the abandonment of the cantonment, and the concentration of the British troops in the Balla Hissar. The measure had been recommended by the engineer, Sturt, and others, very soon after the first outbreak of the insurrection. The Envoy had favoured it at an earlier as he did at a later, period of the siege; but he seems at this time to have been more than usually alive to the difficulties of the movement. The General had scarcely any opinion at all on the subject. But the Brigadier was resolutely opposed to it. His arguments were not very overwhelming—but they were overwhelmingly advanced; and he seems for some time to have borne down the better reason of all who supported the measure. No one in the whole force was more profoundly impressed with a conviction of the disadvantages of the cantonment as a military position than Brigadier Shelton himself. He has left on record, in emphatic language, his opinions upon this point; but he could see in the extreme insecurity of the cantonment an argument only for a discreditable retreat. He could not see that if the extent of the cantonment-works were such as to render their defence difficult, and external operations on a large scale impossible, there was in this circumstance abundant reason for the removal of the force to a position cursed with none of these annihilating evils. In the Balla Hissar the troops would have been free from molestation. They would not, as in cantonments, have been harassed and dispirited by the necessity of manning works exposed at every point to the attacks of the enemy. They could have sallied out from such a position in large bodies—have attacked the city and the neighbouring forts—have obtained supplies from the surrounding country—and held their own till the coming spring. But against all this it was alleged that the removal of the force from the cantonment to the Balla Hissar would be a hazardous operation—that it could not be accomplished without great loss, including, in all probability, the entire sacrifice of the sick and wounded. That the movement would not have been free from danger is true. What movement could be free from danger, at such a time?—what warlike operations ever are free from danger? But that it would have necessarily involved the total sacrifice of the sick and wounded, is only to be assumed upon the hypothesis, that the curse which had so long brooded over us would still have worked for our own undoing, and that, therefore, no precautions would have been taken to protect them.[163]