Campbell’s column, meanwhile, had fought its way across two-thirds of the city, and come in sight of the massive arched gateway of the Jumma Musjid. But the engineers that accompanied the column had fallen; Campbell had no artillery to batter down the great gate of the mosque, and no bags of powder with which to blow it up. He was, however, a stubborn Scottish veteran, and he clung to his position in front of the mosque till he learnt of the failure to carry the Lahore Gate. Then, judging with soldierly coolness that it would be impossible to hold unsupported the enormously advanced position he had won, he fell back in leisurely fashion till he came into touch with the reserve column at the Cashmere Gate.
The British columns had been fighting for over six hours, and had lost 66 officers and 1104 men, or very nearly every fourth man in the assaulting force. Amongst the fallen, too, were many of the most daring spirits in the whole force, the men who were the natural leaders in every desperate enterprise. Less than 4000 of the brave men who followed Nicholson and Jones and Campbell across the breaches or through the Cashmere Gate that morning remained unwounded, and there were 40,000 Sepoys yet in Delhi! Of the great “egg,” too, which formed the city, the British held only the tiny northern extremity.
Under these conditions Wilson’s nerve once more failed him. He doubted whether he ought to persist in the assault. Was it not safer to fall back on the Ridge? Repeatedly, in fact, through the days of stubborn fighting which followed, Wilson meditated the fatal policy of retreat. He was worn-out in mind and body. His nerve had failed at Meerut when the Mutiny first broke out; it threatened to fail again here at Delhi, in the very crisis of the assault. To walk a few steps exhausted him. And it was fortunate for the honour of England and the fate of India that Wilson had round him at that crisis men of sterner fibre than his own. Some one told Nicholson, as he lay on his death-bed, of Wilson’s hesitations. “Thank God,” whispered Nicholson. “I have strength yet to shoot him if necessary!”
Wilberforce, in his “Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny,” gives a somewhat absurd, and not too credible, account of the incident which, according to him, kept Wilson’s nerve steady at that crisis. The 52nd, after so many hours of fighting, had fallen back on the reserve at the Cashmere Gate, and Wilberforce, who belonged to that regiment, was occupied with a brother officer in compounding a “long” glass of brandy and soda to quench his thirst. His companion poured in so generous an allowance of brandy that he was afraid to drink it. He says:—