The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  See how the strange revolutions of the Heavens,

  Open the eyes of instruction.

  See how the reality of the world,

  Has been revealed.

  O Azad, learn this lesson:

  For all their wisdom and vision,

  The Christian rulers have been erased,

  Without leaving a trace in this world.42

  Up in the cantonments to the north of the city, the morning of 11 May had started badly. At 8 a.m., when Robert Tytler returned to his bungalow after the morning parade, he had immediately complained to his wife, now seven months pregnant, ‘Harrie, my men behaved infamously today.’43

  He told how, when the commanding officer had read out the sentence passed on their colleagues in Meerut, Tytler’s men had ‘hissed and shuffled their feet, showing by their actions their sympathy with the sentenced sepoys’. Tytler told his wife he would drill them to their hearts’ content if they misbehaved again. ‘Little did he dream’, commented Harriet in her memoirs, ‘that before evening came he would not have one man to drill.’

  Although it was only an hour after sunrise, and the khas screens in the Tytlers’ bungalow were fixed on the outer doors and watered, it was already fiery hot. The couple had had their baths and were just settling down to the first – melon – course of their breakfast; the tailors were out on the veranda, sewing away. Suddenly ‘the door flew open and the tailor rushed in with his hands clasped and in a most excited manner said, “Sahib, sahib, the fauj [army] has come.’” Tytler explained to his wife that ‘those fellows from Meerut have come over and I suppose are kicking up a row in the city. There is nothing to be frightened about, our men will be sent to coerce them, and all will very soon be over’.44

  Tytler was sent off with two hundred sepoys to guard the new powder magazine recently erected on the Yamuna riverbank to the north of Metcalfe House. Meanwhile Tytler’s senior officer, Colonel Ripley, took his regiment down to the Kashmiri Gate, intending to begin rounding up the miscreants. Since there was clearly no time to be lost, and the job of disarming a mob of disorganised mutineers did not sound very demanding, Ripley set off straight away, leaving a young officer named Edward Vibart to bring up the two light cannons that were kept some distance away in the artillery lines.

  Vibart was a nineteen-year-old company commander from an Indian army family; his father was a cavalry officer in Kanpur. It took twenty minutes for Vibart to get the guns prepared, after which he galloped as fast as he could from the cantonments down through the Civil Lines. ‘We were still some distance off,’ he wrote afterwards, ‘when the sound of musketry was distinctly heard; and now, as the church came into view, we could plainly see, from the smoke arising around it, that our regiment was actively engaged in the locality.’

  Pushing on with all speed we shortly met Captain Wallace coming out of the Kashmir Gate. He implored us for ‘God’s sake’ to hurry on as fast as possible, as all the officers were being shot down by cavalry troopers, and their men were making no efforts to defend them. On hearing the startling news, Major Patterson desired me to halt and load. The two guns then advanced through the gate, followed by the infantry. At this moment, the body of our unfortunate Colonel [Ripley] was carried out, literally hacked to pieces. One arm just below the shoulder was almost severed. Such a fearful sight I never beheld. The poor man was still alive, and though scarcely able to articulate, I distinctly gathered the few words he gasped out, that we had no chance against the cavalry, as our own men had turned against us …

  I now entered the Main Guard, and found everything in confusion. In front of the church, a few cavalry troopers in their Frenchgrey uniforms were seen galloping back in the direction of the palace. Lt Wilson brought a gun around to bear on them, but they were out of sight before he had time to fire. As for the men of my own regiment, not a sepoy was to be seen; they had vanished …

  At length some of us advanced beyond the inner gates, when the first thing I saw was the lifeless body of Captain Burrowes lying close by the gate of the churchyard. Other bodies were now observed scattered about the place. Five were at length found and brought in … Since then I have witnessed many terrible sights, but I shall never forget my feelings that day as I saw our poor fellows brought in, their faces distorted with all the agonies of a violent death, and hacked about in every conceivable way. Only a couple of hours previously we had been laughing and chatting together …45

  In the eerie silence, Vibart waited ‘in this state of disquietening suspense’. Occasionally stragglers reached this last British outpost in the walled city: these included three of Ripley’s officers, who had escaped and hidden down a side street, and the beautiful Annie Forrest, her mother and her two younger sisters – the youngest ‘a sweet girl of nine’ – all of whom had been sheltered by servants while a mob looted their house. They described seeing the last defence of the Delhi Bank by their friends, the Beresfords: ‘on their premises being rushed by the insurgents … these poor people, accompanied by a few clerks, had descended to the upper balcony of the house, where after a desperate resistance, they were all eventually overpowered. Not one of the party escaped’, though Mrs Beresford had skewered no fewer than three of the sawars with her husband’s pig-sticking spear before she was killed herself.

  It was hardly surprising, therefore, according to Vibart, that ‘all those ladies who had taken refuge with us remained in the utmost state of alarm’, especially when the sepoys with them started muttering that now the time ‘had arrived to take their revenge on people who had tried to subvert their caste and religion …’

  ‘Our position here’, concluded Vibart, ‘can easily be imagined to have been of an exceedingly precarious nature.’46

  By lunchtime, virtually all the British people within the city who had not reached Vibart’s shaky bridgehead at the Kashmiri Gate had been killed. One of the few still alive was the British merchant James Morley.

  Morley lived with his family, and that of his business partner William Clark, in the Bazaar Kashmir Katra in Daryaganj. As their area of the city was one of the first to rise up, the family had hidden in the back of their house while the servants went and kept watch at the gate in case of trouble. But the mob drifted off to loot elsewhere and for a full three hours nothing further happened. As no news had reached the family, Morley eventually decided to go out and investigate whether escape was now an option. ‘I took a thick stick in my hand and walked into the street,’ he wrote later.

  It was altogether empty. I continued to walk down it without meeting anyone … There was only one old man sitting in a shop door. I stood for some time, but at some distance I could see what seemed to be a crowd of men. It was very far off, and I could only just hear the noise and shouting. As I thought they might come up to our house, I stood watching them for some time. At length I heard a great noise behind, and looking around, I saw a large crowd rushing into my gateway. They had also seen me and some men came rushing down the street towards me. I immediately ran down the street to my left. I knew that there was a small lane that led to [the rear of] my house.

  I was running along when two men ran out of another lane, and calling out ‘mar feringee ko,’ [kill the foreigner] they rushed at me. One man had a sword in his hand and the other a lathee. I stopped suddenly, and turning quickly round, I gave the man with the sword a blow over the head which brought him to the ground. The other man aimed a blow at my head, but I had stooped forward, and the lathee only grazed my shoulder. I swung my stick round and it caught him just below the knee, which made him sit down howling with pain.47

  Morley saw a mob collecting behind him so ran on, eventually hiding in a shed used for storing carts. Groups of men passed up and down the street looking for him; from his hiding place he could hear various passers-by discussing in which direction they thought he had run off. For four hours he hid, then crept out, determined to try to discover the fate of his wife and family.

  At length I came to the wall of the garden below our hou
se and I entered through a small wicket … everything was as still as death. All around were lying broken chairs, tumblers, plates, books, & c. that had been thrown out from the house. There were some bundles of clothes lying burning … At length I heard a noise, as if someone was crying near the cow house. I went there and found it was our old dhobi [washerman] an old man who had been in my father’s service for nearly twenty years. I called out his name and when he saw me he burst out louder saying ‘Oh! Sahib! They have killed them all – they have killed them all.’

  I felt as if I had been stunned for some time. I then got up and I said, ‘come into the house with me’ … Everywhere things were lying about that had been most wantonly destroyed. Tables had been split in pieces with hatchets, cupboards had been emptied out and everything strewn on the floor. Jams and jellies were lying in heaps, and there was an overpowering smell from the brandy and wine that had run out from the broken bottles.

  Every minute detail is distinctly imprinted upon my mind, for with that cowardly shrinking from a knowledge of the worst which is common to us all, I lingered in the outer room and kept looking around it. At length I nerved myself and stepped into the next room. Just before, pinned to the wall was poor Clark’s little son with his head hanging down, and a black stream of blood trickling down the wall in a large black pool which lay near his feet. And this cruel death must have been inflicted before his mother’s eyes. I closed my eyes and shuddered, but opened them again upon an even more dreadful sight. Clark and his wife lay side by side. But I will not, I could not, describe the scene. I have said she was far advanced in pregnancy.

  I heard an exclamation and going into the bedroom near the hall, I saw the old dhobi wringing his hands and crying. I rushed to the door but I could not enter. I could not face that spectacle. I could not bear to think that I might see my poor wife as I had just seen poor Mrs Clark. I just sat down, and placed my hands on my knees.48

  Muin ud-Din Husain Khan was the thanadar or head police officer, at Paharganj police station, a little to the south-west of the walled city.

  Muin ud-Din was from a minor branch of the noble Loharu family, who had risen to eminence in Delhi after supporting the British against the Marathas at the beginning of the nineteenth century; his cousins included both Ghalib and Nawab Zia ud-Din Khan, who had gone to warn the Wagentriebers of impending trouble on the previous night.

  Strongly linked to the British cause, and an old family friend of both Sir Thomas and Theo Metcalfe, he had been alarmed by the reports of the puris and chapattis passing through the villages surrounding Delhi, and the tales of British houses having gone up in flames in cantonments around northern India. Yet despite going to see Theo, and warning him that similar signals had heralded the collapse of Maratha power half a century earlier, he found that his efforts had been in vain: ‘The officers of the government seemed to attach no importance to the matter,’ he wrote later, ‘and [they] paid no heed to what we regarded as significant warnings of the spirit of disaffection which was spreading far and wide over the country.’49

  In the early morning of Monday the 11th, Muin ud-Din had been engaged in a criminal case at the Kutcherry courts with the chief magistrate, John Ross Hutchinson. He had been present when the Darogah of the Yamuna Bridge had run in to warn Hutchinson of the imminent arrival of the troops from Meerut, and had been sent by Hutchinson to alert the city kotwal of the danger. While there he had heard a messenger from the Rajghat Gate announcing the arrival of the sepoys within the city. Realising the danger, he had galloped to Hutchinson to report the news, before heading back to his own police station through the Ajmeri Gate. He was still busy arming and preparing his own constabulary when a lone, dishevelled European rode up wearing only ‘his shirt and underdraws’. It was Theo Metcalfe.50

  Theo did not know how long he had been unconscious, but in the chaos no one had noticed him lying prostrate in the ditch; moreover, his horse was still grazing not far away. He had leaped on to the saddle and with an unsheathed sword in his hand had galloped out of the Ajmeri Gate, one of the last Christians to make his escape.51

  Muin ud-Din rushed Theo inside the police thana before he could be seen, and quickly dressed him in his own Hindustani clothes. He then sent out horsemen to see whether the road to the cantonments was open. They returned only a few minutes later, visibly frightened, reporting that the road was already completely occupied by a mob who were busy looting all they could.

  Muin ud-Din and Theo therefore set off by small side lanes through the outer suburbs, hoping to avoid the worst of the trouble. But they had not got far before they realised that there was simply going to be no safe way of getting through, and it was agreed that it would be best for Theo to take shelter. Muin ud-Din chose the house of a local landowner called Bhura Khan Mewati, and advised Theo to keep himself out of sight until the worst of the trouble had passed and the soldiers from the cantonments had brought the situation under control.

  Muin ud-Din left Theo there and returned to his police post, where he too shed his uniform and changed into Hindustani clothes. He then rode into the city, through the unguarded city gates, checked on the safety of his terrified family, and then headed off towards the Fort, determined to report for duty to the Emperor in the absence of any British authorities.

  As he rode through the closed shops of the Chauri Bazaar, he reflected how ‘the suddenness of the inroad of a handful of men created such panic … Ignorance of the strength of the mutineers, and exaggerated reports of their numbers [had] quite paralyzed’ the city elite and prevented them taking any measures to resist or even limit the anarchy. In less than two hours, the great and prosperous city had been turned into a war zone:

  The principal executive officers of the government were dead. Every man thought [only] of his own safety and that of his family and property … On every side the scum of the population was hurrying to and fro, laden with the plunder of European houses. Arriving at the central police station, I found it plundered even to the doors, which had been carried off.52

  Inside, Muin ud-Din found two policemen cowering in the ruins. They told him how two sawars had ridden up and called out, ‘Are you all here for your religion or against it?’ When the kotwal had replied, ‘We are all for our religion,’ the convicts had been let loose by the sawars. Shortly after this, ‘two men mounted on camels and dressed in green with red turbans rode by at a trot, calling out, “Hear, ye people, the drum of religion has sounded.” Whence they had come or whither they went, my informant knew not, but the excited and terrified crowds in the streets believed they were heavenly messengers’. Then the convicts returned from the blacksmith’s, and having had their fetters struck off, proceeded to storm the police station and ransack its contents.53

  The Red Fort, when he reached it, was no less chaotic. ‘The place was untenanted and deserted,’ wrote Muin ud-Din. Walking through the empty courts, he reached the tasbih khana, and persuaded the two remaining eunuchs on duty to let him see Zafar. ‘I begged the king to stop this [plunder] and arrange a restoration of order. The king replied: “I am helpless; all my attendants have lost their heads or fled. I remain here alone. I have no force to obey my orders: what can I do?”’54

  Muin ud-Din asked Zafar whether he had any orders, and the Emperor sent him off accompanied by two of his chobdars (mace bearers) to Daryaganj to try to rescue any Christians he could find, promising to shelter them in the Palace. ‘I and the chobdars loudly proclaimed the orders of the king [that the killing should cease],’ wrote Muin ud-Din,

  and our interference was so far effectual, that the lives of some dozen persons were spared. They were sent to the palace and confined in the chhota khasa apartments, and orders were given to feed them. Until late afternoon I laboured, going from bungalow to bungalow, hoping to find someone still living whom I might rescue. A few Christians only were found alive and taken to the palace.”55

  By four o’clock Muin ud-Din had found nineteen more survivors, and sent them over to the Emp
eror. But as the day progressed, and as an increasing number of ragged sepoys rode and walked into the Fort from Meerut, the chaos and tension in the Palace grew worse. When Zahir Dehlavi arrived shortly after Muin ud-Din – at about 11 a.m. – he found that on Zafar’s orders Hakim Ahsanullah Khan was supervising one of the Palace tailors, who was cutting out burial shrouds for Fraser, Douglas and the Jennings family; other courtiers were gathering, ready to obey Zafar’s orders that the entire Fort should participate in the funeral rites of the murdered men. At that moment, a group of cavalry sawars galloped menacingly and unbidden into the private courtyards of the King – the area beyond the Red Curtain (or Lal Pardah):

  Hakeem Ahsanullah Khan saw them and said that we should all say the Fatiha [prayers for the dead] as the moment of our death has arrived. We all started reciting, as the mounted men neared the Hall of Private Audience, the Diwan e-Khas. They got down from their horses, tethered them and walked straight inside without taking off their boots. Altogether they must have been thirty men, and they were wearing long kurtas, loose paijamas and turbans. Some had carbines, others had pistols. When they saw the long white shrouds spread out, they turned to Hakeem Ahsanullah Khan and asked him, ‘What is this?’ The Hakeem replied, ‘This is a consequence of what you have done, and the murders you and your admirers have perpetrated.’ To this the soldiers spat, ‘You are little better than infidel Christians.’* Saying this, they ripped up all shrouds which were being prepared, tearing them to pieces.

  One of the sawars then put the pistol in the belly of the royal Eunuch [and chamberlain] Mahbub Ali Khan, and told him to get them supplies. Mahbub Ali Khan said ‘how can I provide you with supplies when we do not have any?’ Hakeem Ahsanullah Khan backed him up, saying, ‘Our Majesty has admitted himself that he does not have any money: he is living almost like a beggar. Where should we get the supplies? We get enough grain for a month for the horses in the royal stable. Go ahead and take that, but how long will that last? It will be sufficient for you for one day.’