of sipahees. They reached the open
spot, in the centre of which the minister lay, about a quarter of an
hour after he fell. He found the street, in which the attack took
place, crowded with people up to the place where the two sentries,
Fuzl Allee and Hyder Khan, stood at each end of the open space, in
the centre of which the minister lay, with the daggers of the two
other assassins pressing upon his breast. On reaching one end of the
open space, the Resident directed Captain Bird to advance to the spot
where the minister lay. The assassin who guarded that end at first
threatened to shoot him, but no sooner recognized him than he let him
pass on unattended. He asked the two men, who knelt over the
minister, what they meant by this assault. They told him, that good
men were no longer employed in the King's service, and that they
were, in consequence, without the means of subsistence; and had been
compelled to resort to this mode of obtaining them; that they
required fifty thousand rupees from the minister, with a written
assurance from the British Resident, that they should be escorted in
safety across the Ganges into the British territory with this sum.

The Resident peremptorily refused to enter into any written agreement
with them, and told them, through the Assistant, that if they
presumed to put the minister to death, or to offer him any further
violence, they should be all four immediately shot down and cut to
pieces; but, if they did him no further harm, their lives should, be
spared; and, to prevent their being killed as soon as they quitted
their hold, that he would take them all with him to the Residency,
and neither imprison them himself, nor have them made over as
prisoners to the Oude Government; but that he declined being a party
to any arrangement that the minister might wish to make of paying
money for his life.

They continued resolutely to threaten instant death to the minister
should any one but the Resident or his Assistant presume to enter the
open space in which he lay. Many thousands of reckless and desperate
characters filled the street, ready to commence a tumult, for the
plunder of the city, the moment that the minister or the assassins
should be killed, while the relations and dependents of the minister,
with loud cries, offered lacs of rupees to the assassins if they
spared his life, so as to encourage them to hold out. They at last
collected and brought to the spot, on three or four elepha