English made the best preparations in their power against the more serious attack which was anticipated in the morning: they had but few intrenching-tools, but they placed along the exposed brow of the hill sacks of flour and wheat, and everything else capable of affording cover.
At daybreak the enemy recommenced their fire with greater fury: masses of their cavalry showed themselves all round the position, and the Arab infantry in the Rajah's service displayed great confidence and resolution. At ten o'clock a tumbril exploded on the lower hill, which threw the troops into some confusion; the Arabs rushed on with loud cries, and, charging up the face of the hill with an overwhelming force, succeeded in gaining possession of the British post; the Sepoys fled, abandoning the guns and the wounded, who were immediately put to the sword. The enemy then turned the guns upon the larger hill, and several men and officers fell under the first discharge – amongst others, Mr. Sotheby, the Resident's assistant, a young man of distinguished merit, while he was endeavouring to rally and restore the courage of his men. The camp-followers, and the women and children of the Sepoys, set up a wild shriek, which, with the dismay of the troops, and the vast numbers and increasing confidence of the enemy, seemed to portend the most fatal result. The day, in fact, seemed lost, and a horrible butchery inevitable, when one of those daring and impromptu exploits, which seem more the result of inspiration than of human thought or impulse, turned the fortune of the fight, and restored the supremacy of British arms.
Captain Fitzgerald, who had withdrawn the cavalry within the Residency grounds, seeing the critical state of the infantry, and the fire already extending to his station, felt that affairs could only be retrieved by one of those bold attacks which a native army can scarcely ever resist. Heading the cavalry of the brigade, consisting of three troops of the 6th Bengal regiment, and twenty-five
