The Cawnpore battery formed the extreme east of the southern face. This was armed with three light guns, and was so completely under the enemy’s fire that, when that fire was in full blast, no man could live beneath it, and the commander of this post was changed every day. The Sikhs’ square formed the western angle of the south front, and was held by Captain Harding, with some Sikh cavalry. Gubbins’ battery formed the southern extremity of the west front; it had a mixed garrison of Sepoy pensioners, some men of the 32nd, and some native levies raised by Mr. Gubbins. The Racket-court, the Slaughterhouse, the Sheep-pen, and the Church formed the defences of the west front, and were held chiefly by men of the commissariat department. The Residency itself was held by a company of the 84th, under Captain Lowe, as a reserve, though only once during the siege was it called out. Above the Residency flew, in haughty challenge to the whole world, the flag of England. That flag provoked in a quite curious degree the wrath of the mutineers. Every gun that could be brought to bear on it pelted it with shot, and again and again the staff was carried away. But the damage was instantly repaired, and through the whole of that desperate siege, while the tumult of the fight raged on every face of the entrenchments— “Ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of England blew!” Upon this patch of soil, a little over thirty acres in extent, ringed with trenches and palisades, with loopholed house-walls and low earthworks, were gathered some 3000 human beings. Of these, more than 600 were European women and children; nearly 700 were native servants, non-combatants; another 700 were Sepoys, of somewhat dubious loyalty. The real fighting strength of the garrison consisted of 535 men of the 32nd, 50 of the 84th, 89 artillerymen, 100 British officers—mainly escapees from revolted regiments—and 153 civilians, mostly clerks, who now suddenly had to exchange the pen for the musket and bayonet. About 900 British, that is, constituted the true fighting force of Lucknow, and these 900 had to be distributed amongst seventeen “posts,” or batteries, and round the 2500 yards, or thereabouts, of constantly threatened front. This gave an average of, roughly, fifty men to each post, a number, of course, which grew less every day.