Thus Jung’s coup d’etat had taken rather a different turn from what he had intended; the die, however, was cast, and everything depended upon his coolness and decision in the trying circumstances in which he was placed.  Though he may have felt that his life was in most imminent peril, it is difficult to conceive how any man could attain to such a pitch of cool desperation as to enact the scene which closed this frightful tragedy.  There still confronted him fourteen of the nobles whose leader had been slain before their eyes, and who thirsted for vengeance; but the appearance at his side of that faithful body-guard, on whose fidelity the safety of the minister has more than once depended, precluded them from seizing the murderer of their chief.  It was but too clear to those unhappy men what was to be the last act of this tragedy.  Jung received the rifle from the hand of the man next him, and levelled it at the foremost of the little band.  Fourteen times did that fatal report ring through the hall as one by one the rifles were handed to one who would trust no eye but his own, and at each shot another noble lay stretched on the ground.  Abiman Singh alone escaped the deadly aim; he managed to reach the door, but there he was cut almost in two by the sword of Krishn Bahadoor.

Thus, in a few moments, and by his own hand, had Jung rid himself of those whom he most feared.  In that one room lay the corpses of the highest nobles of the land, shrouded by the dense smoke still hanging in the confined atmosphere, as if to hide the horrors of a tragedy that would not bear the light of day.  The massacre now went on in all parts of the building.  One hundred and fifty sirdars perished on that eventful night, and the panic was wide-spread and general.  Before day had dawned Jung Bahadoor had been appointed prime minister of Nepaul, and had placed guards over the arsenal, treasury, and palace.

In the morning the troops were all drawn up on parade; before them were placed, in a ghastly heap, the bodies of their late commanders, to which Jung pointed, as he assured the army that it would find in him all that it had ever found in them, and he consoled many of the officers in a great measure for the loss they had just sustained by granting them immediate promotion.  It seems as easy for a daring adventurer to gain the affections of an army in India as in Europe, and Jung found no difficulty in reconciling his Ghorkas to a change of commanders, and they have ever since professed the greatest devotion to his person.

The utmost caution was now necessary on the part of the new premier, who was obliged still to be on his guard, lest the partisans of those whom he had massacred should succeed in organizing a conspiracy against his life; a sirdar was put to death simply because he had a private audience with the King.  Circumstances soon showed that Jung had good reason to feel the insecurity of his position.  The two elder Princes, sons of a former Queen, had been for some time in confinement, and the Ranee now attempted to induce Jung to put them to death, in order to secure the throne for one of her own sons.  This he positively refused to do, and his refusal brought upon him the wrath of this vindictive woman, whose vengeance had already been so signally wreaked on his uncle by his own instrumentality.