Windham sent on the reinforcements for a time, loyally, but as the Gwalior contingent—which had now been joined by Nana Sahib and all his forces—began to press more menacingly upon him, he strengthened himself by holding the troops as they came up; until, at the moment when the fight commenced, he had a force of some 1700 men. On November 19, the Gwalior contingent and their allies were distributed in a semicircle round Cawnpore—the nearest body being fifteen miles distant, the main body some twenty-five miles off. Windham, always disposed to attack rather than wait to be attacked, first formed a plan for leaping on these hostile forces in detail. He could move from the interior of the circle; they were scattered round a segment of its circumference. Windham left 300 men to hold the bridge-head, and, with the main body of his force, took a position outside the town, in readiness for his dash. Two divisions of the enemy were about fifteen miles to the north, on either side of a canal running parallel to the Ganges. Windham proposed to place 1200 men in boats on the canal at nightfall, quietly steal up through the darkness, and in the morning leap on the enemy on either bank in turn and destroy them, then fall swiftly back on his base. It was a pretty plan, but Tantia Topee had his military ideas too. He thrust forward the Gwalior contingent along the road from the west, and on November 25 their leading division crossed the Pando River only three miles from Windham’s camp outside Cawnpore. Windham promptly swung round to his left, marched fiercely out—1200 men with eight guns against 20,000 with twenty-five guns—and fell impetuously on the head of the enemy’s nearest column. He crumpled it up with the energy of his stroke, and drove it, a confused mass, in retreat, leaving three guns in Windham’s hands. But from a ridge of high ground Windham was able to see the real strength of the enemy. He had crushed its leading division of 3000 men, but behind them was the main body of 17,000 men with twenty guns moving steadily forward. Windham’s killed and wounded already amounted to nearly 100 men, and he had no choice but to fall back. His scanty little battery of six light guns, with undrilled gunners, could not endure the fire of the heavy artillery opposed to them. Windham, with characteristic tenacity, would not abandon the city and fall back on his entrenchments. He took a position on open ground outside the town, across what was called the Calpee road—the road, that is, running to the north—and waited the development of the enemy’s plans. In the town were enormous stores—the supplies for Campbell’s force, with Windham’s own baggage. He ought, no doubt, to have sent all these back to the entrenchments, and he admitted afterwards that he had blundered in not doing so; and the blunder cost the British force dearly.