Campbell’s strategy was simple, yet skilful. Alison, indeed, says, somewhat absurdly, that it will “bear comparison with any of the masterpieces of Napoleon or Wellington.” Kaye, too, says that the plan of this battle “establishes the right of Sir Colin Campbell to be regarded as a great commander.” Whether these somewhat high-flown eulogiums are justifiable may perhaps be doubted; but Campbell’s plan certainly succeeded. Campbell, in brief, fixed the attention of the enemy on their left wing—the one he did not mean to attack—by opening on it on the morning of the 6th with the roar of artillery. He paralysed the centre with a feigned infantry assault, under Greathed. Then by a swift and unexpected attack he shattered the enemy’s right wing, at once smiting it in front and turning its flank. The drifting clouds of battle-smoke helped him to concentrate, unobserved, on his left, a strong force consisting of Hope, with the Sikhs, the 53rd, the 42nd, the 93rd, and Inglis with the 23rd, the 32nd, and 82nd. The iron hail of Campbell’s guns smote the town cruelly, while the rattle of Greathed’s musketry formed a sort of sharp treble to the hoarse diapason of the artillery. Presently, through the white drifting smoke of the guns, came the Rifles, under Walpole, firing on the edge of the town, to Greathed’s left. Campbell was still keeping back his real stroke, and this clatter of artillery and musketry, and the clouds of drifting battle-smoke, held the senses of the enemy. Suddenly, from behind a cluster of buildings on the British left, line after line of infantry moved quickly out. It was Hope’s and Inglis’s brigades, which, in parallel columns of companies, left in front, now—to quote the language of an eye-witness—“shot out and streamed on, wave after wave of glittering bayonets, till they stretched far across into the plain, while the cavalry and horse artillery, trotting rapidly out, pushed on beyond them, raising clouds of dust, and covering their advance.” Campbell’s plan was now developed, and the enemy opened all their guns with the utmost fury on the steady lines of the two brigades. At a given signal, the British columns swung round, formed front to the enemy’s position, and, in perfect order, as Alison puts it, “swept on with a proud, majestic movement” against a cluster of high brick mounds which covered the bridge across the canal—both bridge and mounds being held in great force by the enemy. “Grouped in masses behind the mounds, the rebels fired sharply, while their guns, worked with great precision and energy, sent a storm of shot and shell upon the plain, over which, like a drifting storm, came the stout skirmishers of the Sikhs and the 53rd, covering their front with the flashes of a bickering musketry, behind whom rolled in a long and serried line the 93rd and 42nd, sombre with their gloomy plumes and dark tartans, followed, some hundred yards in rear, by the thin ranks of Inglis’s brigade.”