in which they were served, and aided by a rocket battery, it would have been visionary to expect that they could, within any limited time, silence the fire of seventy pieces behind well-constructed batteries of earth, plank, and fascines, or dislodge troops covered either by redoubts or epaulements, or within a treble line of trenches.” As already mentioned, but a short time had been allowed for the preparation of ammunition for the heavy guns; to this and to the great distance at which they were posted from the enemy’s works, is to be attributed their inability to silence the Sikh fire. But the practice both of guns and rockets was considered highly effective. It had been proposed by the commanding officers of artillery, to place the guns in battery nearer the enemy’s intrenchments; and had this been done, some satisfactory results might have been obtained.[103] But the Commander-in-Chief was unwilling to hazard the delay which the formation of the necessary parapets would have occasioned. Hence, at the time when Sir Robert Dick, who was on the extreme left, was ordered to advance to the attack, the ammunition of the heavy guns had been well nigh expended. “The attack,” says the writer in the _Calcutta Review_, “was led by Brigadier Stacy with her Majesty’s 10th and 53rd regiments, and the 43rd and 59th native infantry, supported on the flanks by Captains Horsford’s and Fordyce’s batteries, and Lieutenant-Colonel Lane’s troop of horse-artillery. Beyond all comparison this was the finest attack of the campaign. The artillery galloped up and delivered their fire within 300 yards of the enemy’s batteries, and the infantry charged home with the bayonet, and carried the outworks without firing a single round.”—“a forbearance,” says the Governor-General, “much to be commended, and most worthy of constant imitation.” As it was the finest attack, so also did it meet with the most determined hand-to-hand resistance which the Khalsa soldiers had yet opposed to the British. Like lightning, the real plan of the attack seemed to flash on the minds of all the desperate men in that intrenchment; and, disregarding the distant feints of Gilbert’s and Smith’s divisions on their left and centre, they rushed to the right to repel the real danger that was upon them. In vain, Stacy’s brigade tries to withstand the mass which every moment is growing denser; in vain, Wilkinson’s brigade comes up to the support; in vain, Ashburnham’s reserve swells the furious tide of the assault. It was like the meeting of two mighty rivers, one swifter and one deeper than the other;—and as the swifter for a moment penetrates its duller neighbour’s stream, then, yielding to the overpowering waters, is rolled back and swept away; so would the conquered trenches of the Sikhs have been wrested again from the brave division of the British, had not Sir Hugh, with the intuitive quickness of a general’s eye, marked the crisis and the struggle,