No fresh intelligence has been received from Muneepore during the
week, and the attacking force from the Burmese side has not yet left Tammu, whither Lieutenant Grant with his men has retreated from Thobal in safety. It was not expected that Muneepore would be occupied until about the 24th, when the Regent and his principal officers would be tried by a Special Commission, and if found guilty of the massacre, hung. There is, unhappily, little doubt of their guilt, a clear and consistent report having been forwarded by Captain Boileau, who with the survivors escaped. It appears that the Residency was shelled from the Palace, and that Mr. Quinton, believing the position untenable, at 8 o'clock p.m. on March 24th proposed a conference to settle terms of surrender. The Muneeporees assented to this, but, as Mr. Quinton ought to have expected, they took advantage of the conference to arrest the Europeans. Mr. Quinton and two officers were, by order of the Regent, murdered with billhooks, and their bodies then cut up and thrown to the dogs, while the Prime Minister beheaded and afterwards mutilated the remainder. Finding that Mr. Quinton did not return, Captain Boileau ordered the evacuation of the Residency, and after a march of one hundred and twenty miles, during which the Europeans suffered greatly, fell in with a party commanded by Captain Cowley, who shared with them their last rations. The force in the Residency might have held out, but the Goorkha ammunition gave out, and the men, who were armed with Sniders, found in the Residency only Martini-Henry cartridges. This means, of course, that the troops from Assam were armed with the old weapons, while the Residency guard had been supplied with the new,—an illustration of the hundred inconveniences arising from any gradual change in the weapons of a great Army.
