to say, that he could hold the gate no longer without troops:  but before he could get a reply, the insurgents brought up an elephant to force in the gate with his head.  The first failed in the attempt, and drew back with a frightful roar.  A second, urged on by a furious driver, broke in the gate, one-half fell with a crash to the ground, and the elephant plunged in after it.  Captain Paton was standing with his back against this half, and must have been killed; but Mukun, one of his chuprassies, seeing the gate giving way, caught him by the arm and dragged him behind the other half.  The other three chuprassies ran off in a fright and hid themselves.  Two of them were Surubdawun Sing and Juggurnath, two brothers, who will be mentioned elsewhere in this diary.*

[* See Juggurnath chuprassie in Chapter V., Vol.  II.]

The furious and confused mass rushed in through the half-opened gate, and beat Captain Paton to the ground with their bludgeons, the hilts of their swords, and the butt-ends of their muskets.  Mukun, chuprassie, his only remaining attendant, was beaten down at the same time and severely bruised, but he soon got up, covered with blood, made his way out through the crowd, and ran to meet the five companies of the 35th Regiment, then not far distant, under Colonel Monteath.  As soon as he heard from Mukun the state in which he had left his master, he sent on a party of thirty sipahees under Captain Cowley, with orders to make all possible haste to the rescue.  They arrived in time to save his life from the fury of the assailants, but found him insensible from his wounds.

In a few minutes every court-yard within the palace walls was filled with the armed and disorderly mass.  The Resident, Captain Shakespear, and their few attendants, tried to stop them by every impediment they could throw in their way, but in vain.  The assailants rushed past or over them, brandishing their swords and firelocks, with loud shoutings and flaming torches, and soon filled all the apartments of the palace, save those occupied by the ladies and their female attendants, and the dead body of the late King.  The Resident and his Assistant, and the Meer Moonshee, were soon separated from the new sovereign and his small party, who lay for some time concealed in the small room in which he had been left to repose, while they were confined to the northern verandah overlooking the river, and the long room leading into it.  The armed and furious throng filled all the other rooms of the palace, the court-yard, eighty yards long, leading to the baraduree (or summer-house) and all the four great halls of that building, in one of which the throne stood.