With muskets loaded and bayonets fixed they rushed first through a narrow covered passage; then up a steep flight of steps, and then into the throne-room, firing upon the affrighted crowd as they advanced, and following them up with the bayonet as they rushed out over the two flights of steps on the north side, and through the courtyard which separates the baraduree from the palace.  Other parties of sipahees ascended at the same time over ladders collected at the suggestion of Doctor Stevenson, and placed on the southern front of the baraduree; and the halls were soon cleared of the insurgents, who left from forty to fifty men killed and wounded on the floors of the four halls.* In this assault Mostufa Khan, Kundaharee, was killed.  Moonna Jan was found concealed in a small recess under the throne, and the Begum in a small adjoining room, to which she had been carried as soon as the guns opened.  They were taken into custody, and sent to the Residency, with Imam Buksh, a bihishtee, or water-carrier, a notorious villain, who had been her chief instigator in all this affair, and appointed Commander-in-Chief to the young King.  Many who had been wounded got out of the halls, and some even reached their homes, but the killed and wounded are supposed to have amounted altogether to about one hundred and twenty.  The Begum and the boy were accommodated in the Residency, and their Commander-in-Chief was made over to the King’s Courts for trial.  He is still in prison at Lucknow.  No one was killed on our side, but three or four of our sipahees were wounded in the assault.

[* As they entered the hall at the end opposite the throne, they saw their own figures reflected in the large mirror, which stands behind the throne; and, taking them to be their enemy preparing to charge, they poured their first volley into the mirror, by which many lives were saved at the expense of the glass.]

The Delhi princess, the chief consort of the deceased King, a modest, beautiful, and amiable young woman, who had been forced to join the Begum, in order to give some countenance to the daring enterprise, was, as soon as the guns opened, carried by her two female attendants in her litter to a small side-room, facing the palace at the east end of the throne-room.  One of these females had her arm shattered by grape shot, but the other tied some clothes together, and let the princess and her wounded attendant down from a height of about twenty-four feet into a court-yard, whence they were conveyed to her palace by some of her attendants, and all three escaped.  The sipahees occupied both of the flights of steps in the northern face of the baraduree.  She was afraid, to trust herself to them, and saw no other way of escape than that described.