After the severe lesson they had received the rebels remained inactive for some days, very few shots even being fired from the walls.  We learnt that the late grand attack had been made by the Neemuch and part of the Gwalior and Kotah insurgents who had mutinied at those places not long before.  This accounted for the stubbornness of the assault, it being the custom, when reinforcements arrived, to send them out at once to try their mettle with the besiegers.

The fruits of General Wilson’s accession to the command of the army, and the stringent orders issued by him for the maintenance of order and discipline both in camp and on picket became more and more apparent every day.  All duties were now regulated and carried out with the utmost precision; each regiment knew its allotted place in case of a sortie, and the officers on picket had to furnish reports during their term of duty, thereby making them more attentive to the discipline and care of their men.  In the matter of uniform, also, a great and desirable change was made.  Many corps had become quite regardless of appearance, entirely discarding all pretensions to uniformity, and adopting the most nondescript dress.  One in particular, a most gallant regiment of Europeans which had served almost from the beginning of the siege, was known by the sobriquet of the “Dirty Shirts,” from their habit of fighting in their shirts with sleeves turned up, without jacket or coat, and their nether extremities clad in soiled blue dungaree trousers.

The army in general wore a cotton dress, dyed with khaki rang, or dust colour, which at a distance could with difficulty be seen, and was far preferable to white or to the scarlet of the British uniform.  The enemy, on the contrary, appeared entirely in white, having soon discarded the dress of their former masters; and it was a pretty sight to see them turning out of the gates on the occasion of a sortie, their arms glittering, pennons flying, and their whole appearance presenting a gay contrast to the dull, dingy dress of their foes.

August 5.—­On August 5 an attempt was made by our Engineers to blow up the bridge of boats across the Jumna, and some of us went to the top of the Flagstaff Tower to see the result.

Two rafts filled with barrels of powder and with a slow match in each were sent down the river, starting from a point nearly a mile up the stream.  We saw them descending, carried down slowly by the flood, one blowing up half a mile from the bridge.  The other continued its course, and was descried by some mutineers on the opposite bank, who sent off men to the raft on massaks (inflated sheep-skins).  It was a perilous deed for the men, but without any delay they made their way to the raft, put out the fuse, and towed the engine of destruction to shore.  A most ignominious failure, and the attempt was never repeated, the bridge remaining intact to the last.