The British losses, curiously enough, were comparatively light, except amongst the officers. The 93rd had nine officers killed and wounded. The 4th Punjab infantry went into the fight with four British officers; two were killed, one was desperately wounded, and the regiment was brought out of the fight by the sole surviving officer, Lieut. Willoughby, himself only a lad. He was recommended for the V.C., but did not live to wear that much-coveted decoration, as he was slain in fight shortly afterwards. But the strongest post held by the rebels, in the track along which the British were moving towards the Residency, was the Shah Nujeef, a great and massively-built mosque, girdled with a high loopholed wall, and screened by trees and enclosures of various kinds. Campbell brought up Peel, with his Naval Brigade, to make a breach in the massive walls of the Shah Nujeef, and that gallant sailor ran his guns up within twenty yards of the loopholed walls of the great mosque, and, swinging them round, opened fire, while the gunners were shot down in quick succession as they toiled to load and discharge their pieces. “It was an action,” said Sir Colin in his despatch afterwards, “almost unexampled in war.” Peel, in a word, behaved very much as if he were laying the _Shannon_ alongside an enemy’s frigate! As the men ran up their guns to the walls of the Shah Nujeef, Forbes-Mitchell says he saw a sailor lad, just in front of him, who had his leg carried clean off by a round shot, which struck him above the knee. “He sat bolt upright on the grass, with the blood spouting from the stump of his leg like water from the hose of a fire-engine, and shouted, ‘Here goes a shilling a day, a shilling a day! Remember Cawnpore, 93rd; remember Cawnpore! Go at them, my hearties;’ and then sank down and died.” But the defence of the Shah Nujeef was stubborn, and for three hours Peel worked his guns under a double cross-fire, and still his 18-pounders failed to pierce the solid walls of the great mosque. The 93rd were brought up, and, lying down under what shelter they could secure, tried to keep down the musketry fire from the walls, and many of them were shot down by bullets or arrows from the summit of the mosque. The external masonry had flaked off, leaving a rough, irregular face, up which an active cat might possibly have scrambled; and at this a battalion of detachments—in which clusters from a dozen regiments were combined—under the command of Major Branston, was launched. The men ran forward with utmost daring, but the wall was twenty feet high; there were no scaling-ladders. It was impossible to climb the broken face of the masonry. Branston fell, shot, and his second in command, the present Lord Wolseley, kept up the attack, making desperate attempts to escalade.