their choice, were virtual prisoners, while an armed rabble filled the great hall, in the middle of which the Begam's favourite sat enthroned, the Begam herself looking on from behind the curtains of her palanquin.
After a vain attempt to dissuade her from a hopeless enterprise, the Resident with his small party contrived to escape from the scene of tumult. Outside the palace they found the troops who had been sped thither in answer to Low's summons. After some vain parleying with the insurgents, Low called upon the Queen to surrender herself and Múnna Ján within a quarter of an hour. The time of grace — it was then early morning — passed by, and still the Begam made no sign. Our guns opened with grapeshot, which blew in the palace-gate. The insurgents fled before the advancing Sepoys, leaving some forty dead behind them. The Begam and her nominee were sent off as prisoners to Chunár, and by 10 a.m. of the 8th, the new king. Muhammad Alí, who by strange good luck had remained unhurt in some quiet corner, was installed on the masnad and crowned by the Resident's own hands.
An hour before the outbreak which, but for the cool courage of three Englishmen and the timely arrival of the troops, might have ripened into a general massacre, the new king had signed an agreement drawn up by Low, that he would consent to 'any new treaty for the better government of the country that the British Government might think
