Northern India, the Doab front.
General Lake pointed his pipe at the smoke-shrouded Aligarh fortress in the distance and turned proudly to Sir Fokner. "Now Scindia has to worry that the Mysore army will launch an attack from Indore, forcing him to redeploy the soldiers here southward. And those moves will severely sap his army's morale.
"Look at how smoothly our army is advancing. This would have been utterly unimaginable half a month ago."
Just a week earlier, news had arrived from central India that Mysore's twenty thousand elite troops had abandoned their cannon and Logistics and Baggage, then encircled Pune at breakneck speed.
Although Holkar's cavalry immediately cut off the corps' supplies, their feeble Infantry was powerless to stop the Mysoreans' suicidal, frenzied assaults.
The day before yesterday, Tipu Sultan's eldest son, Fateh, personally led a death squad into Pune and secured ample logistical supplies from the city. In Lake's judgment, Tipu's main force should arrive in Pune very soon. By then, Holkar would have only a tiny patch of territory left in the far north.
Though Scindia had clashed with Holkar, he most likely did not wish to see the latter destroyed, since they both belonged to the Marat Alliance. And even if Scindia truly chose not to send reinforcements, he would still have to strengthen his own southern defenses. Otherwise, once Holkar surrendered, Mysore's great army would immediately flood into Gwalior.
Mysore had not collapsed even under the siege of the powerful English Army. No force in India dared underestimate them.
Lake therefore decisively ordered the entire army to assault the Aligarh fortress.
The battle unfolded exactly as he had expected. In just one day, his vanguard of more than four thousand men smashed through every line of defense around Aligarh. At that moment, his twelve-pound heavy