regiment native infantry,
under Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver; a wing of 54th native
infantry; five six-pounder field guns, with a detachment of the
Shah's artillery, under Lieutenant Warburton; the Envoy's
body-guard; a troop of Skinner's horse, and another of local
horse, under Lieutenant Walker; three companies of the Shah's
sappers, under Captain Walsh; and about twenty men of the
Company's sappers, attached to Captain Paton,
assistant-quartermaster-general.

"Widely spread and formidable as this insurrection proved to be
afterwards, it was at first a mere insignificant ebullition of
discontent on the part of a few desperate and restless men,
which military energy and promptitude ought to have crushed in
the bud. Its commencement was an attack by certainly not 300
men on the dwellings of Sir Alexander Burnes and Captain
Johnson, paymaster to the Shah's force; and so little did Sir
Alexander himself apprehend serious consequences, that he not
only refused, on its first breaking out, to comply with the
earnest entreaties of the wuzeer to accompany him to the Bala
Hissar, but actually forbade his guard to fire on the
assailants, attempting to check what he supposed to be a mere
riot, by haranguing the attacking party from the gallery of his
house. The result was fatal to himself; for in spite of the
devoted gallantry of the sepoys, who composed his guard, and
that of the paymaster's office and treasury on the opposite
side of the street, who yielded their trust only with their
latest breath, the latter were plundered, and his two
companions, Lieutenant William Broadfoot of the Bengal European
regiment, and his brother, Lieutenant Burnes of the Bombay
army, were massacred, in common with every man, woman, and
child found on the premises, by these bloodthirsty miscreants.
Lieutenant Broadfoot killed five or six men with his own hand,
before he was shot down.

"The King, who was in the Bala Hissar, being somewhat startled
by the increasing number of the rioters, although not at the
time aware, so far as we can judge, of the assassination of Sir
A. Burnes, dispatched one of his sons with a number of his
immediate Affghan retainers, and that corps of Hindoostanees
commonly called Campbell's regiment, with two guns, to restore
order: