The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  Theo Metcalfe, it emerged later, was one of the leaders of the lynch mobs.

  For many in the Field Force, the reports of the atrocities performed by the mutinous sepoys – already fanned by hearsay to include non-existent mass rapes – just went to confirm their own existing prejudices. For Robert Dunlop, a Scottish civilian who had volunteered to join an irregular cavalry unit known as the Khaki Risalah, the slaughter of innocent women and children in Delhi and Meerut proved to his own satisfaction what he had already long believed about

  the weak and childish but cruel and treacherous native character … It is a patent fact that the proud contempt which the Anglo-Saxon bears to the Asiatic has proved, to a great extent, the salvation of our Indian Empire. Nearly all men come to this country fully prepared to accord equal rights and privileges to its dusky inhabitants; but … experience leads to a common conviction of their debasement.43

  One woman on the march who stood out against such nakedly racist attitudes was Harriet Tytler. After escaping from Delhi, she and her husband had made their way to Ambala, where Robert, unemployed after the disintegration of his regiment, the 38th Native Infantry, managed to get a new appointment in charge of the Field Force’s military treasure chest. Marching now slowly back along the road down which they had fled so desperately three weeks earlier, the Tytlers were horrified by the wanton brutality of the British troops they marched alongside. The same day on which the child’s foot was brought into the camp, the now heavily pregnant Harriet saw

  a poor little man, a Mohammedan baker, in clean white clothes dangling from the branch of an acacia tree. From what we could gather, this poor man had been late for several days with his bread for the men’s breakfast, so Tommie Atkins* threatened to hang him if it happened again and so they did. I can’t understand how such a cruel deed was allowed, for they in their turn should have been hanged, but I suppose a single soldier could not have been spared, even in the cause of justice. Probably most of those who committed this deed were themselves called to account to a Higher Power during their siege to answer for their sins.44

  A little later Robert Tytler managed to save a camp follower from a similar fate:

  Just outside my husband’s tent, we heard a piteous cry from a poor old man of ‘Duha’ i Sahib Kee, Duha’ i Sahib Kee’ (‘Mercy sirs, Mercy sirs’) and saw some of the soldiers dragging him away, evidently to hang him. I sent my husband flying after them, telling them to save the poor old man. As soon as he got up to them he said, ‘Boys what are you going to do with that poor old man?’

  ‘Why hang him, sir, of course. He is a Pandee (a rebel).* We saw him dancing before his bullocks.’

  Captain Tytler replied, ‘Nonsense boys, he is no Pandee, only a bullock cart driver.’

  Oh no, we know he is a Pandee sir,’ ejaculated all the men.

  My husband replied again, ‘I see you boys only want a little fun. Let the poor chap go and run after that dog and hang him instead.’

  I see sir, that you don’t want us to hang him.’

  ‘No indeed I don’t.’

  So they let him go and ran after a dog, and strung him up there and then.45

  On Trinity Sunday, 7 June, General Wilson finally led his forces into General Barnard’s newly pitched camp at Alipore, 8 miles north of Delhi. Here Theo was introduced to his new boss, Hervey Greathed, formerly the Commissioner of Meerut, who was the most senior British civilian officer with the Field Force: ‘[Metcalfe] says he is well enough to work,’ wrote Greathed, ‘and his knowledge of Delhi will prove very useful to me.’ The two worked well together: I like Metcalfe very much,’ wrote Greathed a little later. ‘He is a most cheery, merry fellow, – nothing puts him out.’46

  Here too Theo received word of his sister GG and her husband Edward Campbell: the latter had managed to escape unscathed when his troops broke out into mutiny at Sialkot, and he had since made his way to Simla, where he was reunited with the pregnant GG in Constantia, the house where they had been married in 1852. But almost immediately Edward had been ordered to march down to join Theo in the Delhi Field Force: ‘We are watching anxiously the progress of the army towards Delhi,’ he wrote to his mother soon after his arrival in Simla. ‘Much depends on the way it is handled … We are now all in God’s hands.’47

  Also in the Field Force’s Alipore camp was William Hodson and his spymaster Rajab Ali, busy co-ordinating the reports now flowing in from their spies in Delhi. Hodson was deeply depressed at the slowness of the Field Force to engage with the sepoys: ‘All Rohilcund is in Mutiny,’ he wrote to his wife. ‘In fact the district of Agra is the only one in the North West Provinces now under our control. What a terrible lesson on the evils of delay. It will be long yet, I fear, ere this business is over.’ He added: ‘Yet personally I have no reason to complain.’48

  When the Field Force marched out of camp at 1 a.m. on the morning of 8 June, Hodson was in the lead, scouting ahead, and it was he who shortly afterwards brought news of the newly fortified rebel front line that had been erected just ahead of the British forces around the old Mughal caravanserai of Badli ki Serai.

  Mirza Mughal had not wasted the time between the defeat at Hindan Bridge and the arrival of the Delhi Field Force at Alipore.

  Teams of workmen had been pressed into service repairing the neglected walls of Delhi, while batteries of artillery had been erected at Salimgarh, on several of the bastions on the city walls, and also outside the city along the Ridge, the rocky spine of the Aravalli Hills to the north-east of the cantonments. The orders from Mirza Mughal’s secretariat to the kotwal are full of urgency: ‘Collect as many labourers as can be gathered for finishing the batteries. This is of the utmost urgency. Do not delay. I will not accept any excuses or laziness on the part of you or your staff.’49 Other orders ask for camels, bullock carts, panniers to carry dirt, axes, shovels, water carriers and for yet more coolies to help in constructing entrenchments.50

  Most impressive of all was a strong defensive position Mirza Mughal had caused to be established at an old caravanserai on the Grand Trunk Road, blocking access to Delhi from the north. It was an ideal place for a stand. With marshland on either side, a line of artillery had been entrenched between the serai and a small hillock to the west, straddling both sides of the road and providing a small but bristling Mughal Maginot Line: any force coming from the direction of Alipore would have no option but to charge down a narrow causeway straight into the face of the massed Mughal guns.

  A large infantry force commanded by Mirza Khizr Sultan, and assisted by the chief eunuch, Mahbub Ali Khan, was sent up at 6 p.m. on the 7th, and placed between and behind the batteries to await the imminent British assault, which was expected on the morning of the 8th. Before they went, Mahbub Ali Khan ‘distributed tasty bread and nuqul [small, hard sweets, made of jaggery, cashews, almonds and sesame seeds] among the soldiers. The subahdars of the sepoys kissed the feet of the King, and so left for battle’.51 Alerted by the sound of a bugle blowing, Zahir Dehlavi looked out from the walls of the Red Fort, and watched the troops and ammunition train leaving the city, wondering what the morning would bring.52

  A few hours later, Mirza Mughal sent his father a note, assuring him that he need not be anxious. ‘Lord and World-refuge, peace!’ he wrote.

  May Your Majesty’s mind be secure from any fear of our enemies: your servant has been for the last two days, together with his troops, present at the trenches. Wherever the trench-diggers are, there he is. Rest assured our enemies will come no closer – I have brought all the troops to the front line to slay the infidels. Battle is about to be joined, and with God’s undiminished grace Your Majesty is about to witness the conquest of his enemies.53

  When the British forces began to move forward at 1 a.m., Richard Barter of the 75th Gordon Highlanders found himself in the front line.

  Three hours of marching later, just after 4.20 a.m., the rebel position came into view in the darkness, illuminated by a single bonfire that had been lit by the sepoy gunn
ers. ‘A jet of smoke went up from a small mound near the fire,’ he wrote afterwards,

  and presently a round shot from a large piece of ordnance came tearing through some trees to the right of the road. The order was now given to the 75th to wheel [to the right] … whilst our deployment was going on another shot came from the Enemy and striking the horse of Grant, our interpreter, full in the chest, passed clean through his body and out at his tail, giving his rider a nasty fall but not hurting him otherwise. Immediately after there was a cry to my left close to where Grant’s horse had been killed and I saw our first wounded man fall to the rear with his arm smashed by a shot.

  They were coming in thick and fast now, and as we were directly in front of the enemy’s battery and they had our range exactly, the General ordered the 75th to lie down while the other regiments were getting into position. I was not at all sorry to dismount and made myself as small as I possibly could, while the shot went shrieking over our heads with the peculiar sound which once heard is never forgotten. After a few minutes the order came, ‘The 75th will advance and take that battery.’ In an instant the line was up.

  Soon our fellows were dropping fast … their shot striking the line at every discharge. I remember one in particular taking a man’s head off, or rather smashing it to pieces and covering my old Colour Sergeant Walsh with blood and brains so that it was some time before he could see again.

  Barter’s troops soon got to within 150 yards of the sepoys’ batteries, and could see their infantry drawn up in line on the low ground, firing at the advancing British.

  Gaps were made in the different Companies only to be filled up the next moment, and still the line advanced … I saw a shrapnel shell burst exactly in the faces of one of the Companies of the right wing. It tore a wide gap and the men near it involuntarily turned away. I called out, ‘Don’t turn men, don’t turn,’ and was at once answered ‘Never fear Mister Barter sir, we ain’t agoing to turn.’ And on they went quietly closing up the gap made by their fallen comrades.

  The time had come to end all this and … the order was given ‘75th prepare to charge’ and down went the long line of bayonets … a wild shout, or rather yell of vengeance went up from the line as it rushed to the charge. The enemy followed our movements, their bayonets were also lowered and their advance was steady as they came to meet us, but when the exultant shout arose, they could not stand it, their line wavered and undulated, many began firing with their firelocks at their hips, and at last, as we were closing on them, the whole turned and ran for dear life followed by a shout of derisive laughter from our fellows. In three minutes the 75th stood breathless but victors in the Enemy’s battery, capturing the heavy guns in it, and in the large camp to the rear a number of field pieces and heaps of small arms and ammunition.54

  This capture of the rebels’ field guns proved a crucial strategic moment for the British, leaving the sepoy infantry largely unsupported for the rest of the siege.55

  By eight o’clock in the morning it was all over. One of the first to flee on the rebel side was Mirza Khizr Sultan. He had placed himself at the forefront of the action, wearing ‘a very brilliant headpiece which sparkled and glistened in the sun’, but as soon as the British round-shot began falling to the Prince’s right he retired on the excuse of ‘bringing up magazine stores separated from the main body’.56 Mahbub Ali Khan tried to stop him running away, but without success, and after that ‘nothing could stay the sepoys as they hurried towards the city, pouring through the Kashmir, Lahore and Kabul Gates, leaving the gates open behind them’.57 According to Sa’id Mubarak Shah, ‘vast numbers of the mutineers, horse, foot and artillery were killed and still more wounded that day. Scores of dead were scattered over the battlefield, but most of the wounded either by their own exertions, or assisted by their friends, managed to reach the city’.58

  For some of the British it proved a bittersweet victory. It was not just that they had suffered more severe casualties than they had expected, and far more than their small force could spare; it was also that among the dead the troops recognised sepoys they had known and befriended. This was particularly so for the officers of the 38th Native Infantry, which had been stationed in the Delhi cantonments until the outbreak, and which was so cut up by the British assault at Badli that it never again took to the field as one body.59 Passing the battlefield, Robert Tytler saw his old orderly, Thakur Singh, who had begged to come in the carriage with the Tytlers when they were escaping from the Flagstaff Tower, and had been turned down as there was no room; he was lying side by side with his uncle, the regimental havildar, whom the Tytlers had known for over a decade. Harriet jotted down her complicated feelings about the dead sepoys in her memoir: ‘I saw some of our fine, tall, handsome men lying somewhat swollen by the heat and stark naked,’ she wrote.

  Every camp follower had robbed them of their gold and silver and jewels, and the last comers of the clothes on their bodies, leaving the poor fellows just as God made them. Such handsome, splendid specimens of high-casted Hindus. One man a hole as large as a billiard ball through his forehead, a perfect giant in death. At any other time my heart would have been full of pity and sorrow at such awful sights … but I could not help saying ‘serves you right for killing our poor women and children who never injured you.’60

  At eleven o’clock the front line of British troops paused briefly at Ochterlony’s old garden, Mubarak Bagh, which he had bought and named for his bibi. Barnard, however, decided not to stop his advance, and without waiting to rest further, pressed on through the burned-out cantonments – ‘costly furniture lying about in all directions and the walls of some of the bungalows besmeared with the blood of the victims’ – on towards the Ridge.61 Here he divided his force into two columns so as to be able to attack it from both sides.

  On the heights, Mirza Mughal’s newly erected batteries were taken with little resistance. According to Zahir Dehlavi, who was watching anxiously from the city walls,

  the rebels who were posted on the Ridge seeing their fellow rebels fleeing as fast as they could inside the city, left their posts and abandoned the cannons, tents and all their ammunition and fled into the city. When the English army reached the Cantonment they saw that all the entrenchments on the Ridge were completely quiet. So they went up and occupied those posts, burnt the rebel camps, and turned the abandoned cannon towards the city62

  The only serious resistance the British met was at the Flagstaff Tower, the scene of such confusion a month earlier. Here alone the sepoys held their ground and ‘met the Europeans with a withering volley which killed many and wounded a great number’.63 Late in the afternoon there was also a belated attempt at a counter-attack up through the Sabzi Mandi. This was driven off by the Gurkhas with the unsheathed kukhri knives.64 By 5 p.m., the entire Ridge was in British hands.

  Soon afterwards the British found that the bullock cart full of bodies from the first British casualties of the outbreak was still standing near the Flagstaff Tower; now all that remained were the victims’ bare skeletons and uniforms, the regimental buttons still gleaming.65

  Meanwhile, down in the city, there was no disguising the scale of the defeat suffered by the sepoys. Zahir Dehlavi was on his way to work at the Palace when he saw the first casualties of the battle pouring in.

  About eight in the morning, I was going to the fort to attend to my duty. When I reached the gate of the Johari bazaar, I saw a large number of injured coming to the city. Each injured man was being helped by four or five Purbias. The road was discoloured with dripping blood, bathed in red as if it were Holi. Two mounted soldiers passed close by me. I saw that they had bullet marks on their chest like small holes, and on their backs blood was flowing like a fountain. Their guts must have been in tatters, yet in their right hand they were holding the pistols and also the reins of the horse. There was no pain or panic on their faces, they were well in command of themselves and were talking to each other. To this day I am surprised as to how it was possible for them to surviv
e with such wounds, let alone how were they able to ride in the four miles from the battle.

  A little later I saw a mounted soldier galloping fast on a horse. He too was scarred with the deep marks of bullets, and blood was flowing from the wounds like water from a tap, so that he was covered all over with gore. Behind him was another man on foot who had lost his arm. A couple of Purbias were with him assuring him that they would take him to the camp hospital from there, but that man was resisting this and telling them to stay away from him. By the time I reached the Fort I had encountered many such injured soldiers.66

  Amid a rising sense of panic, only Mirza Mughal kept his head, saying that, as in a game of chess, as long as the king was next to the castle, ‘he was firmly seated beyond all fear of check mate’.67

  According to Munshi Jiwan Lal, despite the scale of the British victory, the day marked a major missed opportunity in that they did not attempt to take the city. ‘The city people mounted onto the roofs of their houses,’ he wrote,

  and watched with great fear the distant firing … [They] poured volleys of abuse upon the mutineers who were seen returning to the city, accusing them of cowardice, while the troops at the city gates abused the native cavalry, which returned early in the day and took refuge in the city … Owing to the result of the battle, the soldiers seemed to lose all heart … It is much to be regretted that the English did not advance this day. Had they done so, they would have taken the city for the gates were open and the city people expressed their surprise at their holding back68

  Yet there was some wisdom in Barnard’s decision to halt at the Ridge, and to secure the heights overlooking the city. That night the British erected their tents in the shelter of the burned-out cantonment bungalows. Having conquered the high ground, and erected their guns overlooking the north wall of the city, it did not, however, take long for them to realise the extreme precariousness of their position, even without risking it further by attempting to press on into the city streets.