Guns from every battery opened on the foe moving forward to the attack, and from 7 to 10 a.m.the fight was carried on.
Repeated attempts were made to scale the south-eastern wall, and many times the enemy got up as far as the abattis, but were repulsed, heaps of dead marking the spots where these attempts had been most persistent.[3] Soon after 10 a.m.there was a slight lull in the fighting, leading us to believe that the Afghans were recoiling before the breechloaders.
An hour later, however, the assault grew hot as ever, and finding we could not drive the enemy back by any fire which could be brought against them from the defences, I resolved to attack them in flank.
Accordingly, I directed Major Craster, with four Field Artillery guns, and Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, with the 5th Punjab Cavalry, to move out over the hollow in the Bimaru range and open fire on a body of the enemy collected in and around the village of Kurja Kila.

This fire had the desired effect; the Afghans wavered and broke.
From that moment the attacking force appeared to lose heart, the assault was no longer prosecuted with the same vigour, and by 1 p.m.
it had ceased altogether, and the enemy were in full flight.
This was the Cavalry's opportunity.

I ordered Massy to follow in pursuit with every available man, and before nightfall all the open ground in the neighbourhood of Sherpur was cleared of the enemy.
Simultaneously with the movement of the Cavalry, a party was despatched to destroy some villages near the southern wall which had caused us much trouble, and whence it was necessary the enemy should be driven, to facilitate the entrance of Brigadier-General Charles Gough the next day, for that officer had arrived with his brigade within about six miles of Sherpur, where I could see his tents, and gathered from the fact of his pitching them that he meant to halt there for the night.

The villages were found to be occupied by _ghazis_, who refused to surrender, preferring to remain and perish in the buildings, which were then blown up.

Two gallant Engineer officers (Captain Dundas, V.C., and Lieutenant C.Nugent) were most unfortunately killed in carrying out this duty.
The relief I felt when I had gathered my force inside the walls of Sherpur on the evening of the 14th December was small compared to that which I experienced on the morning of the 24th, when I realized that not only had the assault been abandoned, but that the great tribal combination had dissolved, and that not a man of the many thousands who had been opposed to us the previous day remained in any of the villages, or on the surrounding hills.