"This information caused the staff at once to abandon the idea of a mine, and all our energies were now bent against the great gate.
"Though the junior regiment of the division, the 72nd, or Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders, were ordered to furnish three hundred men for a storming party, and at two o'clock on the morning of the 30th of March the grand assault was to be made, while we—the cavalry—were in our saddles, to cover, and if possible assist in the attack, when the great gate was forced.
"'My brave lads, rouse!' I heard the adjutant of the Highlanders cry in the dark; 'quit your dog's sleep—half-dozing and half-waking—and fall in. Fall in, stormers!'
"And while the warning pipes blew loud and shrill, cheerfully they formed by companies, those brave Albany Highlanders; and stately, indeed, looked their grenadiers, with their tall plumed bonnets and royal Stuart tartan; for the highland regiments during the mutiny had not time to adopt Indian clothing, and went at the Pandies in their kilts and ostrich feathers, just as their forefathers did at Madras and Assaye.
"Silently they crossed the river in the dark, where the graceful date palms and the luxuriant mango topes cast a deeper shadow than the starry night upon the water. Then, quitting their boats, they crept close to the great outer wall of Kotah; but so great was the delay in blowing up the gate, that day broke, the Highlanders were seen, and for hours we sat in our saddles helplessly, and saw the enemy pouring shot and shell upon them from the same bastion where we knew poor Tony Ernslie was chained to a gun.
"Suddenly there was a dreadful shock; the wall of the city seemed to open, as it rent and gaped, a blinding cloud of dust and stones ascended into the air, and a shower of wooden splinters, the fragments of the great gate, flew far and wide, as our mine blew the barrier up.
"A mingled shout of 'Scotland for ever!' the old Waterloo war-cry of the Black Watch and the Greys, broke from the Highlanders* again and again, as they rushed in with fixed bayonets, driving back the terrified Sepoys, storming bastion after bastion, and capturing two standards. The other regiments broke in at different points, and after much hard fighting Kotah was ours, and then we rode through the streets cutting down the fugitive rebels on right and left.
* See Scotsman of 28th of May, 1858.
"Philip Ernslie and a few of his comrades made straight for the bastion indicated in his father's note. It was deserted by all save a few dead or dying Sepoys; but a more terrible spectacle awaited the searchers.
"Stripped nude, and nailed to the wall of the bastion by the hands and feet, hung the body of Anthony Ernslie, minus nose and ears, and otherwise horribly mutilated!