A glacis is a huge bank of earth sloping outwards from the walls, and not only does it shield the lower portions, but, should an enemy attempt to escalade the walls or carry the city by assault, they would first have to run up this glacis, and there they would present such a target that trained gunners could sweep the assailants away by hundreds. The engineers, who had so skilfully and carefully constructed these defences, little thought that their handiwork would merely serve to keep India in a ferment for many months. The batteries were manned by artillerymen who had learned their profession--and learned it, alas! too well--under the tuition of English officers. Within the walls were more than 20,000 trained and disciplined sepoys, men who had proved their valour on many a well-fought field, not to mention thousands on thousands of armed fanatics, warriors by birth and by tradition. All these fought under shelter, which our brave fellows lacked. But ours were British, "strong with the strength of the race to command, to obey, to endure", save the one Gurkha battalion and the Guide Corps (now close at hand), and these were soon admitted as equals by the British soldiers. The British army was small--very small--but the lack of powerful artillery was an even greater source of weakness. An army without artillery, matched against even an equal force well supplied with powerful guns, would have as much chance of success as a man armed with a light cane fighting another possessed of sword and revolver. Thousands of people in England and in India, who eagerly devoured the news and anxiously awaited the fall of the capital, impatiently asked, "Why are they so long? Why don't they take the city?" These worthy folks could not understand the difficulties; they could not realize that mere pluck and endurance avail nothing against stone walls and mighty cannon. As the weeks rolled by and Delhi was still untaken, other persons, still more ignorant, exclaimed, "Why don't they leave Delhi if they can't capture it, and go and help Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow?" They did not see that even if that small army appeared to be doing little, it still kept shut up in the city forty thousand armed rebels who might otherwise be spreading over the country conquering and slaying. Nor did they grasp the fact that had the English army left Delhi unconquered the warlike Punjab, and then all India, would have risen. To have left the Mogul capital would have been a confession of weakness; it would have been to say: "We are beaten, we can do nothing here", and when once the English say that in India, their empire will collapse. So, though Barnard's handful was attacking Delhi contrary to all the rules of war, we must remember what Mr. Rudyard Kipling has pointed out, that had our British generals never acted against those rules the boundaries of the empire would have stayed at Brighton beach.