Windham had not followed the instructions given him by the Commander-in-Chief before the latter crossed into Oude. He had loyally forwarded to Sir Colin the reinforcements as they arrived, until the communications were cut off between him and his Chief. Left then to his own resources both moral and material, and aware that a rebel force of trained soldiers, fourteen thousand strong with some forty guns, was daily drawing nearer and nearer, he abandoned the defensive prescribed to him, and on the 24th of November he pushed some six miles out into the country with his mixed force of detachments, numbering all told less than fourteen hundred men with eight guns. Accepting his challenge, Tantia Topee, the rebel general, and the only real soldier the mutiny produced, threw forward his advanced guard into a strong position lining the dry bed of a nullah. That position Windham on the morning of the 26th carried at the first rush; but he found it necessary to withdraw in face of the main body of the rebels, and he fell back nearer to his base. At noon next day, skilfully withholding his infantry, the rebel general opened a heavy cannonade on Windham's front and flanks. For five hours the British troops held their ground staunchly against overwhelming odds, but at length they were forced to retreat. This movement through narrow streets and broken ground was attended by considerable disorder, and the camp-equipage had to be abandoned. Reluctant to withdraw into the entrenchment, Windham during the night between the 27th and 28th still held with his right the broken and wooded ground between the city and the river, while his left stretched into the plain beyond the canal. The fighting, renewed on the morning of the 28th, proved disastrous to the attenuated forces of the defence. Walpole on the left held his ground and even took the offensive, and Carthew gallantly maintained his position on the right until it became quite untenable. But the retirement of the latter gave possession to the enemy of the Church and Assembly Rooms containing the stores and baggage of the Commander-in-Chief's army, which Windham had omitted to remove within the cover of the entrenchment. Gradually the hostile batteries closed in around Windham's last defensive position near the bridge head, and directed their fire also on the bridge itself. A sally was made which for a time gave promise of a retrieval, but it was ultimately repulsed with heavy loss and great discouragement. By nightfall the garrison had been obliged to take shelter in the entrenchment; and when Sir Colin rode into the work it had become the mark for the cannon-balls and even the musketry-fire of the victorious rebels.