after a long delay, the Risaldar came to say that King was coming. Presently Mirza Ilahee Buksh and the Maulvee appeared escorting the King’s Palanquin, closely followed by that of the Begum [accompanied by her son Mirza Jawan Bakht and her father Mirza Quli Khan] with their attendants and a host of the fugitives from the palace and city. The Palanquins stopped and a message was sent to me that the King wished to hear from my own lips that his life would be spared.
I rode up to the spot, seizing the opportunity to interpose my men between the King’s immediate party and the crowd pressing behind, the appearance of which was threatening. I dismounted for a moment and reassured the King and the Begum (both of whom were evidently much agitated and frightened) by the promise that his life would be spared, provided no attempt was made at a rescue.2
In addition to guaranteeing Zafar’s life, Hodson promised the King that he would not be subject to ‘dishonour (be-izzat) or any personal indignity’.3
I then remounted and in sufficiently loud tone to be heard by the crowd repeated the words, adding a command to my men to shoot the first person who attempted to move. I then desired Mirza Ilahi Bakhsh and Maulvi Rajab Ali to proceed with the Palanquins as soon as they were a sufficient distance from the crowd.4
The journey through the no-man’s-land towards Delhi seemed to Hodson to take for ever. As he told a colleague, ‘the slow shuffling pace of the [palanquin] bearers, their continual changing of their shoulders, and the pressing on of the crowd,’ kept the atmosphere edgy and tense. But the cavalry sawars rode close to the King’s palanquin, and no attempt at a rescue was made. As the party neared the walls of the city, the crowd of stragglers slowly thinned until by the time they got to the Lahore Gate, Hodson’s sawars found they were alone with their captives.5 The guard at the gate asked who Hodson had within the palanquin, to which he replied, ‘only the King of Delhi’. They then passed down Chandni Chowk, and into the Fort, as Zafar returned to his ancestral palace no longer Emperor, but now prisoner.
Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare. One British surgeon described ‘an old man with an anxious expression on his thin face’ being carried through the litter of his ransacked palace. ‘His countenance gave no signs of cruelty,’ wrote the surgeon, ‘but appeared mild.’6 Hodson handed his prize over to Charles Saunders, the successor to Hervey Greathed as head of the civil administration of Delhi, and then went to report his coup to General Wilson.
To Hodson’s surprise and disappointment, Wilson did not seem especially pleased by the news of the King’s capture: ‘Well I am glad you have got him,’ was all he said. ‘I never expected to see either of you again.’7 According to Fred Maisey, who was also in the room at the time, the old general was actually ‘in the most tremendous rage at the king being brought in alive … it seemed to me that the news was far from welcome, which made me doubt all along the assertion [by Hodson] that General Wilson had guaranteed the King’s life’.8 General Wilson later strongly denied that he had ever done so, and there is good reason to believe him, for both the civil and military authorities in Delhi had received strict and specific instructions from Canning in Calcutta not to offer any terms to the Mughals save that of unconditional surrender.
That afternoon, Zafar was taken to Zinat Mahal’s haveli in Lal Kuan, where to add to his sufferings he was given the charmless and aggressive Kendal Coghill as a guard: ‘I had the satisfaction of receiving the “King of Hindoostan” as a prisoner,’ Coghill wrote to his brother the following day, ‘and immediately placed him safe with a double sentry over him. It wasn’t a manly thing to do, but I couldn’t help calling him a pig and other appropriate epithets, and to ask him about our families. I would have shot him dead if he had only looked up, the brute, and gave the sentries orders that if he tried to stir to drop [i.e. shoot] him.’9
The following morning Hodson persuaded Wilson to sanction a second expedition to Humayun’s Tomb.
This time the object was to pick up Mirzas Mughal, Khizr Sultan and Abu Bakr, the three princes who had commanded the Mughal forces during the Uprising, and whose presence in the tomb had now been confirmed by Mirza Ilahe Bakhsh.*10 As before, Wilson made it a condition that he should not be bothered by the prisoners, and as no guarantees of the princes’ lives had ever been discussed, Hodson interpreted his General’s orders as he wished.
Hodson rode out with an escort of 100 sawars at eight in the morning, accompanied as before by his negotiators Maulvi Rajab Ali and Mirza Ilahe Bakhsh. Again, Hodson and his two British deputies halted outside the entrance to the tomb complex, and sent in the two Indians to negotiate. According to Lieutenant MacDowell, who left the only record of what happened, ‘We sent in to say that the princes must give themselves up unconditionally, or take the consequences.’
A long half hour elapsed, when a messenger came out to say that the princes wished to know if their lives would be promised if they came out. ‘Unconditional surrender’ was the answer. Again we waited. It was a most anxious time. We dared not take them by force, all would have been lost, and we doubted their coming. We heard the shouts of the fanatics [jihadis] begging the princes to lead them on against us, and we had only one hundred men and were six miles from Delhi. … There were about three thousand Mussalman followers [in the walled tomb garden]. In a suburb close by [Nizamuddin], about three thousand more, all armed; so it was a ticklish bit of work …
At length imagining that sooner or later they must be taken, the princes resolved to give themselves up unconditionally, fancying, I suppose, that as we had spared the King, we would spare them. So a messenger was sent to say they were coming. We sent ten men to meet them, and by Hodson’s orders, I drew the troops up across the road, ready to receive them and shoot them at once if there was any attempt at a rescue. Soon they appeared, in a small ‘Rath’ or Hindustanee cart, drawn by bullocks, with five troopers on each side. Behind them thronged about two or three thousand (I am not exaggerating) Mussalmans. We met them and at once Hodson and I rode up, leaving the men a little in the rear. They bowed as we came up, and Hodson, bowing, ordered the driver to move on.
Hodson told the sawars to hurry the princes along the road, while MacDowell and his troopers formed up between the crowd and the princes, advancing slowly towards the courtiers and attendants, forcing them back into the garden of the tomb.
Hodson and myself (I stuck to him throughout) with four men, [then] rode up the steps [and] through the arch, when he called out to the rabble to lay down their arms. There was a murmur. He reiterated the command and (God knows why, I can never understand it) they commenced doing so …
What we wanted was to gain time to get the princes away, for we could have done nothing had they attacked us … There we stayed for two hours collecting their arms, and I assure you I thought every moment they would rush on us. I said nothing, but smoked all the time to show I was unconcerned; but at last, when it was all done, and all the arms put in a cart, Hodson turned to me and said, ‘We’ll go now.’ Very slowly we mounted, formed up the troop, and cautiously departed, followed by the crowd. As we got about a mile off, Hodson turned to me and said, ‘Well, Mac, we’ve got them at last’; and we both gave a sigh of relief.11
What happened next is disputed. According to Hodson, when they finally caught up with the princes, three miles away, close to the walls of Delhi, and near an archway known ever after as the Khuni Darwaza, or Bloody Gate, a large and threatening crowd was closing in on the princes and looked to be on the verge of rescuing them. According to other accounts, including that of MacDowell, it was only a small crowd and was not in any way threatening. But there is no doubt as to what Hodson did next.
Stopping the cart, he ordered the three princes to get out, and to strip naked. Then taking a Colt revolver, he shot them dead, in cold blood and at point blank range, one after another. He then stripped the corpses of their signet rings and turquoise bazubands (armlets), which he pocketed, and seized their bejewelled swords. The following day Hodson wrote to his s
ister, saying that however exhausted he was from his various exertions, ‘I cannot help being pleased with the warm congratulations I received on all sides for my success in destroying the enemies of our race. The whole nation will rejoice.’ He added: ‘I am not cruel, but I confess I did enjoy the opportunity of ridding the earth of these wretches.’12
The bodies were taken away and left out naked in front of the kotwali, where the British troops queued up to see them. ‘I saw them there lying stark and stiff,’ wrote Fred Maisey, ‘and I must say I was glad to see them, for of their guilt there never was a doubt, and I really believe the king was, to a great extent, a puppet in their hands.’13 Charles Griffiths also applauded Hodson ‘for ridding the world of the miscreants’, adding that ‘he was upheld in the deed by the whole Delhi army, men in every respect better qualified to form a judgement in this particular than the sentimental beings at home’.
I saw them that same afternoon; nor can it be said that I or others who viewed the lifeless remains felt any pity in our hearts for the wretches on whom had fallen a most righteous retribution for their crimes. The eldest [Mirza Mughal] was a strong well-knit man in the prime of life, the next [Khizr Sultan] somewhat younger, while the third [Abu Bakr] was quite a youth of not more than twenty years of age. Each of the Princes had two small bullet-holes over the region of the heart, the flesh singed by gunpowder, as the shots were fired close … The bodies remained for three days, and were then buried in dishonoured graves.14
The attitude of Maisey and Griffiths was the norm among the British in Delhi: although there was a whole series of inquiries later launched into Hodson’s conduct, what was examined was not the shooting of the princes, but instead his clemency in presuming to guarantee Zafar’s life.*
All morning, while Hodson was busy in Humayun’s Tomb, curious British soldiers had been going in parties to stare at the captive King, who sat miserably in his wife’s haveli, ‘like a beast in a cage’, according to one officer.†15 ‘I have seen the old Pig of a king,’ reported a dismissive Hugh Chichester to his father. ‘He is a very old man, just like an old khitmatgar [servant]. One was always supposed to take off one’s shoes on going to visit mosques, or to have an interview with the King. But these little affairs we drop now.’16 Other officers wrote home saying how they had treated the King ‘with great disrespect’, forcing him to stand up and salaam to them, while one boasted that he had pulled the King’s beard.17
Among Zafar’s visitors on the night of the 22nd was the new Civil Commissioner, Charles Saunders, and his wife Matilda, who went to see the King to break the news that two of his sons and one of his grandsons had been shot dead. Charles Griffiths was part of the guard on duty. ‘Sitting cross-legged on a cushion placed on a common native charpoy, in the verandah of a courtyard, was the last representative of the Great Mogul dynasty,’ he wrote.
There was nothing imposing about his appearance, save a long white beard which reached to his girdle. About middle height, and upwards of seventy years old,‡ he was dressed in white, with a conical shaped turban of the same colour and material, while at his back two attendants stood, waving over his head large fans of peacock feathers, the emblem of sovereignty – a pitiable farce in the case of one who was already shorn of his regal attributes, a prisoner in the hands of his enemies. Not a word came from his lips; in silence he sat day and night, with his eyes cast on the ground, and as though utterly oblivious of the condition in which he was placed. On another bed, three feet away from the King, sat the officer on guard, while two stalwart European sentries, with fixed bayonets, stood on either side. The orders given were that on any attempt at a rescue, the officer was immediately to shoot the King with his own hand.18
When the death of the three princes was announced to Zafar, he was so shocked and depressed that he was unable to react. But according to Matilda Saunders, Zinat Mahal was thrilled when she heard the news through the purdah curtain that had been hung ‘in the tiny cabin-like rooms’ where she had been lodged. ‘She said she rejoiced in the death of the elder sons of the King for now her son [Mirza Jawan Bakht] had a chance of succeeding to the throne. Some people might call this honest, however no throne in this world will he find, poor deluded woman, as she will soon discover.’19
Matilda Saunders then went and called on Taj Begum, who was being kept in a separate room from her long-time rival.
We went to see another wife once said to have been a great beauty – she is called the Taj Begum. We found her looking very sad with black muslin thrown over head and shoulders. Her mother and brother had both died of cholera since the assault, and she is now no longer the King’s favourite. Zinat Mahal became very jealous of her and had her shut in prison for 3 years.
When I was leaving, the King called me back and told me he hoped to see me again, and that he hoped I would act as an ambassador between him and Charlie. I answered ‘Kubbeen Nai’ which means No Never! Said very emphatically. Twice I repeated it to make sure the old wretch understood me thoroughly. I spoke to the Rifle Guard outside who were guarding him while Charles was assisting Mrs Grant onto the Elephant, and said I hope you will keep the king safely, don’t let him run away. ‘Oh no Ma’am,’ [he replied, ‘]there’s no fear of that, we are a great deal too fond of him!’ So I said, ‘that’s right,’ and walked away wishing them Good Morning.20
When, that same evening, a young officer, Henry Ouvry, saw the princes’ bodies lying naked at the kotwali, he wrote in his diary that this was just the beginning of the work of retribution for which the British had so long planned: though ‘sick of blood’, he wrote that he had no doubt that ‘we shall have to execute a vast number before we are done’.21
Little time was lost before this self-fulfilling prophecy began to be realised. Gallows were erected throughout the gutted city – ‘they say there is not a neighbourhood of Delhi without its own place of execution’, wrote one Delhiwallah – and the hangings began.22 The largest was ‘right in centre of Chandni Chowk, a hideous erection of wood that was the only new and uninjured structure’ in the entire street.23 On a trip to take the air down the Chowk shortly afterwards, the twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Edward Ommaney casually noted in his diary that he saw ‘19 men hanged opposite the Kotwali on one gallow, and 9 on the other’.24
Ommaney was disgusted to see that, as in Paris during the Revolution, large numbers had gathered to watch the entertainment provided by the executions. The Chowk, he noted, was ‘crowded with officers and Europeans’. ‘How transient seems this life,’ he wrote in his diary that night, ‘when one sees a man so quickly part with it: a few moments and the animated body has separated from that spirit which has gone to appear before its maker, and yet to look at the crowd, how little they feel or seem to understand the awful awful change taking place before their eyes.’25 He also noted that ‘there was a very small drop as the Provost Sergeant said the rope would not stand a long one’ – the implication of this being that a short rope meant a slow and more lingering death by throttling; while a long drop would break the neck and bring instant death.26
Other observers were gleefully explicit that the short rope was a deliberate strategy to prolong the death of the victim. According to one source, the executioners were bribed by the crowds of British soldiers who were standing around, puffing cigars, making sure that the hangmen kept their victims ‘a long time dying … as they liked to see the criminals dance “a Pandie’s hornpipe” as they termed the dying struggles of the wretches’. One provost-marshal alone put to death ‘400 or 500 wretches’ before ‘thinking of resigning his office’.27 Some hangmen even experimented with ‘artistic’ methods of dispatching their victims ‘in figures of eight’.28
It was reports of this sort of thing which began to worry Lord Canning in Calcutta. On 25 September he wrote to Queen Victoria about the
violent rancour of a very large proportion of the English Community against every native Indian of every class. There is a rabid and indiscriminate vindictiveness abroad, even am
ongst many who ought to set a better example, which is impossible to contemplate without something like a feeling of shame for one’s fellow countrymen. Not one man in ten seems to think that the hanging and shooting of 40 or 50,000 Mutineers beside other rebels, can be otherwise than practicable and right …29
Not all the prisoners in Delhi were hanged; many others were shot. Hugh Chichester wrote that ‘There has been nothing but shooting these villains for the last three days, some 3 or 400 were shot yesterday,’ noting that while some young boys that the British came across were allowed to pass freely out of the city gates, ‘most of them are put to death’.30 According to Major William Ireland, ‘Offenders who were seized were handed over to a military commission to be tried. The work went on with celerity. Death was almost the only punishment, and condemnation almost the only issue of a trial. The gentlemen who had to judge offenders were in no mood for leniency.’31 It was not just bloodlust and the urge for revenge which provided the motive for this mass slaughter: there was also money to be made. Informers were paid 2 rupees for every arrest, while the captors were allowed to keep ‘all money and gold found on the persons of mutineers captured’.32
All this was cheered on in the Delhi Gazette Extra by George Wagentrieber, who returned from Lahore after the fall of the city to cover the work of retribution to which he had so long looked forward: ‘Hanging is, I am happy to say, the order of the day here,’ he wrote soon after his return.
The Last Mughal Page 45