The Last Mughal
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49. DG, 8 May 1855. The article is full of British assumptions, usages and stereotypes about Indians and cannot actually have been written by a sepoy as it purported to be.
50. Tytler, An Englishwoman in India, p. 81.
51. Ibid., pp. 110–11.
52. Ibid., p. 111.
53. Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, p. 72.
54. K. C. Yadav, The Revolt of 1857 in Haryana, New Delhi, 1977, p. 41.
55. OIOC, Home Misc. 725, Kaye Mutiny Papers, Item 35.
56. H. H. Greathed, Letters Written during the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, p.xiv.
57. Tytler, An Englishwoman in India, p. 114.
58. ‘How the Electric Telegraph Saved India’, reprinted in Col. Edward Vibart, The Sepoy Mutiny as Seen by a Subaltern from Delhi to Lucknow, London, 1858, pp. 253–7.
59. Julia Haldane, The Story of Our Escape from Delhi in 1857, Agra, 1888, p. 2.
60. Tytler, An Englishwoman in India, p. 114; see also Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi, London, 1898, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 42.
5: The Sword of the Lord of Fury
1. Zahir Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr: An eyewitness account of the 1857 Uprising, Lahore, 1955, p. 38.
2. Ibid., p. 44. For the King’s stick, see Proceedings on the Trial of Muhammad Bahadur Shah, Titular King of Delhi, before a Military Commission, upon a charge of Rebellion, Treason and Murder, held at Delhi, on the 27th Day of January 1858, and following days, London, 1859 (hereafter Trial), p. 26, Evidence of Ghulam Abbas. There are several accounts of the King’s movements that morning which mutually contradict each other, especially as to when Zafar became aware of the sepoys’ presence, and at what point Douglas and the hakim appeared. I have gone with Zahir Dehlavi’s version of events as it is the most detailed and seems particularly credible and well informed, even though the account was written – or reached its final form – many years after the events it describes.
3. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 44. On the death of the toll keeper and the servants, see The City of Delhi during 1857, translation of the account of Said Mobarak Shah, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Eur Mss, B 138.
4. Trial, Evidence of Jat Mall, p. 72. According to Jat Mall’s evidence at Zafar’s trial: ‘I heard a few days before the outbreak from some sepoys of the gate of the palace, that it had been arranged in case greased cartridges were pressed upon them, that the Meerut troops were to come here, where they were to be joined by the Delhi troops, and it was said that this compact had been arranged through some native officers, who went over on court martial duty to Meerut.’ If this is right, then Tytler’s subahdar-major and close friend, Mansur Ali, may actually have been one of the mutineers.
5. Trial, p. 78, Evidence of Makhan, mace bearer of Captain Douglas, and p. 88, evidence of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan
6. Ibid., pp. 26–7, Evidence of Ghulam Abbas.
7. OIOC Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
8. National Archives of India (hereafter NAI), Mutiny Papers, Collection 56, no. 7, Defence of the King.
9. Ibid.
10. Trial, pp. 26–7, Evidence of Ghulam Abbas.
11. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 56, no. 7, Defence of the King.
12. Ibid.
13. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 8, Theo to EC (undated but? April 1857). Also, from the same box, typescript mss by Emily Bayley, Account of the escape of Sir Theophilus Metcalfe from Delhi after the Outbreak of the Mutiny. Also OIOC, Eur Mss D610, Theophilus Metcalfe file. For his prophecy, see Wilkinson, Johnson and Osborn, The Memoirs of the Gemini Generals, London, 1896, p. 30.
14. Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi, London, 1898, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 44.
15. For the building of the magazine on the site of Dara Shukoh’s palace, see Sylvia Shorto, Public Lives, Private Places, British Houses in Delhi 1803–57, unpublished dissertation, NYU, 2004, p. 112. The Delhi College moved from the Ghaziuddin Medresse to the old British Residency building in the early 1850s after the Residency moved outside the walls to Ludlow Castle in the Civil Lines.
16. Edward Vibart, The Sepoy Mutiny as Seen by a Subaltern from Delhi to Lucknow, London, 1858, pp. 40–41.
17. Bayley, Account of the escape. For the mob, see Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 240.
18. Bayley, Account of the escape.
19. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 45.
20. Bayley, Account of the escape. Emily says the brick was thrown from the Jama Masjid, but as this is in the opposite direction to the route Theo must have taken from the Kotwali in Chandni Chowk to the Kashmiri Gate, it must be an error.
21. Trial, Evidence of Chunni, News-writer for the Public, p. 84.
22. Ibid., Evidence of Jat Mall, News-writer to the Lt Gov. of Agra, p. 73.
23. Ibid., Evidence of Makhan, Mace bearer of Captain Douglas, p. 78. For Jennings with his glass, see ibid., Diary of Chunni Lal, News-writer, p. 102, and NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 39. For the problem of Fraser’s girth, see Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 58.
24. Trial, Evidence of Makhan, Mace bearer of Captain Douglas, p. 79.
25. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, pp. 80–81.
26. Trial, Evidence of Jat Mall, News-writer to the Lt Gov. of Agra, p. 73.
27. Ibid., Evidence of Makhan, Mace bearer of Captain Douglas, p. 79.
28. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 57. See also OIOC, Eur Mss, B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah; Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, pp. 80–81.
29. Trial, Evidence of Mrs Aldwell, p. 92.
30. For Abdullah Beg, see Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, pp. 60–61; also OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah. For Gordon, see General Sir Hugh Gough, Old Memories, London, 1897, pp. 108–9 Also National Army Musuem, 6309–26, Lt Gen. F.C. Maisey, The Capture of the Delhi Palace. Gordon gave himself up to the British at the fall of Delhi but was never brought to trial. According to General Fred Maisey, who was in charge of prosecutions, Gordon had converted to save his life, and there was ‘no proof’ that he was guilty of firing on the British. At the end of his letter home Maisey writes, ‘so I got the poor fellow off trial. He was, however, not released and the matter has been reported to the Commander in Chief. What the final result will be I do not know’.
31. Abdul Latif, 1857 Ka Tarikhi Roznamacha, ed. K. A. Nizami, Naqwatul Musannifin, Delhi, 1958, entry for 11 May.
32. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Dastanbuy, trans. Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi, Delhi, 1970, pp. 30–33. Dastanbuy purports to be Ghalib’s diary of the Uprising. Although it was clearly rewritten after the British victory and was written partially with a view to proving his loyalty to the victorious British, there can be little real doubt that it reflects the aristocratic Ghalib’s genuine dislike of the sepoy rabble. Frances Pritchett argues this case very well in Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990, p. 19, as does Ralph Russell in The Oxford Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals, New Delhi, 2003, p. 12.
33. Ghalib, Dastanbuy, pp. 30–33. Where Faruqi’s translation seems clumsy I have used instead the more colloquial version of Ralph Russell in The Oxford Ghalib, p. 118–19.
34. Sarvar ul-Mulk, My Life, Being the Autobiography of Nawab Sarvar ul-Mulk Bahadur, trans, from the Urdu by his son, Nawab Jawan Yar Jung Bahadur, London, 1903, p. 16.
35. Zahir Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, pp. 28–9
36. Metcalfe Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 77. I have added some material from an alternative rendering and slightly different selection of material of the same original Urdu text published as A Short Account of the Life and Family of Rai Jiwan Lal Bahadur, Late Honorary Magistrate of Delhi with extracts from his diary relating
to the time of the Mutiny 1857 compiled by his son, Delhi, 1902.
37. Account of an anonymous news-writer, NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 39.
38. Trial, Petition of Mathura Das and Saligram, p. 43.
39. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
40. Dehli Urdu Akbhar (hereafter DUA), 17 May 1857.
41. Ibid., 17 May 1857. The final paragraph is from the DUA of 31 May 1857.
42. This translation is my own colloquial reworking of the more literal translation given by Frances Pritchett in Nets of Awareness, p. 24.
43. Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, ed. Anthony Sattin, Oxford, 1986, p. 115.
44. Ibid., p. 116.
45. Vibart, The Sepoy Mutiny, pp. 14–19.
46. Ibid., p. 18.
47. N. A. Chick, Annals of the Indian Rebellion 1857–8, Calcutta, 1859 (reprinted London, 1972), pp. 86–7.
48. Ibid., p. 89.
49. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 41.
50. Ibid., pp. 47–8.
51. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 39.
52. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, pp. 47–8.
53. According to the account by a news-writer contained in the NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 39: ‘The city’s Muslims along with some Hindus accompanied the rebels attacked all the twelve thanas of the city and the Kotwali Chabutra and destroyed them. Sharful Haq the city Kotwal disappeared while the deputy Kotwal Baldeo Singh ran away after being injured.’
54. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 49.
55. Ibid. pp. 50–51.
56. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, pp. 30–31.
57. NAI, Foreign Department, Political Proceedings, 8 January 1830, part 2, Consultation No. 42, pp. 332–5, from HM the King of Delhi, received 1 January 1830.
58. Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, ‘Memoirs’, trans. Dr S. Muinul Haq, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, Karachi, vol. 6, pt 1, 1958, pp. 1–33.
59. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 83.
60. Latif, 1857, entry for 11 May.
61. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 83.
62. Khan, ‘Memoirs’, p. 4.
63. Emily Eden, Up the Country: Letters from India, London, 1930, p. 100.
64. NAI, foreign, Foreign Dept and Misc., Precis of Palace Intelligence, see, for example, entries for Tuesday, 9 March 1852, and Sunday, 1 August 1852.
65. Trial, Evidence of Ghulam Abbas, pp. 26–7. Another shorter account of the same crucial scene, apparently written on or immediately after 11 May, is contained in the NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 39, where an anonymous news-writer recorded that: ‘Later the cavalry division and two platoons of Tilangas from the Meerutt camp and three platoons from Delhi appeared before his majesty and asked him to lead them saying we will ensure your sway over the whole country. The King assured them of his benediction and asked them to set up camp at Salimgarh.’
66. Chick, Annals, pp. 45–8.
67. Ibid., pp. 81–2.
68. Miss Wagentrieber, The Story of Our Escape from Delhi in May 1857, from personal narrations by the late George Wagentrieber and Miss Haldane, Delhi, 1894.
69. Tytler, An Englishwoman in India, p. 124.
70. Ibid., p. 125.
71. Vibart, The Sepoy Mutiny, p. 28.
72. Ibid., pp. 46–8.
73. OIOC, Vibart Papers, Eur Mss F135/19, letter datelined Meerut, 9 June.
74. Vibart, The Sepoy Mutiny, p. 53.
75. Ibid., p. 56.
76. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 81.
77. Chick, Annals, p. 90.
78. Tytler, An Englishwoman in India, pp. 129–30.
79. Ibid., p. 131.
80. Ibid., p. 131.
81. Four accounts survive of the Wagentriebers’ movements that night. The earliest, and most reliable, is that of George, printed initially in the Delhi Gazette Extra, published out of Lahore a month later, and reprinted in Chick’s Annals, pp. 78–86. Both the Misses Wagentrieber also produced accounts, which while more detailed seem in some parts to be less reliable: see Miss Wagentrieber, The Story of Our Escape, and Julia Haldane, The Story of Our Escape from Delhi in 1857, Agra, 1888. I also have a photocopy of a typescript of another unpublished mss of Miss Wagentrieber’s adventures which is still in the possession of the Skinner family in their summer house at Sikandar Hall, Mussoorie.
82. Miss Wagentrieber, The Story of Our Escape, pp. 13–14.
83. Chick, Annals, p. 82.
84. Tytler, An Englishwoman in India, p. 133.
85. Ibid., pp. 134–7.
86. Chick, Annals, pp. 82–4.
87. Haldane, The Story of Our Escape, p. 20.
88. Chick, Annals, p. 83.
89. Haldane, The Story of Our Escape, pp. 24–5.
90. Ibid., p. 40.
91. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 39.
92. OIOC, Home Miscellanous 725, pp. 389–422, Letter Written by Munshi Mohun Lal to Brigadier Chamberlain dated November 8th 1857 at DEHLIE.
6: This Day of Ruin and Riot
1. Punjab Archives, Lahore (hereafter PAL). On open display.
2. K. C. Yadav, The Revolt of 1857 in Haryana, New Delhi, 1977, p. 41.
3. Sir Henry W. Norman and Mrs Keith Young, Delhi 1857, London, 1902, pp. 11, 19.
4. Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, p. 3.
5. Fred Roberts, Letters Written during the Indian Mutiny, London, 1924, p. 8. Fred Roberts later grew up to be the celebrated Lord Roberts of Kandahar.
6. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Meerut, 12 May 1857.
7. Ibid., AW to his wife, Camp Ghazee Oo Deen Nuggur, 3 June.
8. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 9.
9. For the significance of this, see the excellent passage in Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Avadh in Revolt 1857–8–A Study of Popular Resistance, New Delhi, 1984, pp. 65–6.
10. Charles John Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1910, p. 23.
11. Roberts, Letters, p. 38.
12. Quoted by Saul David, The Indian Mutiny 1857, London, 2002, p.xxii.
13. J. W. Kaye, A History of the Sepoy War in India 1857–8, London, 1877, vol. II, P. 348.
14. Major W. S. R. Hodson, Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India, London, 1859, p. 186.
15. Charles Allen, Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier, London, 2000, p. 280. Allen’s wonderful book contains much the best account yet written of Nicholson.
16. David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, London, 2005, p. 162.
17. John Beames, Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian, London, 1961, p. 103.
18. Ibid., p. 102.
19. Ensign Wilberforce, of the 52nd Light Infantry, quoted in James Hewitt, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Mutiny, Reading, 1972, p. 33.
20. Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 217.
21. Though the story of the Nikal Seyn cult sounds suspiciously like Victorian myth, it is attested by too many contemporary accounts to be a complete invention. See, for example, the eyewitness account of Ensign Wilberforce given in Hewitt, Eyewitnesses, p. 34, or Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 119.
22. Allen, Soldier Sahibs, pp. 55, 62.
23. Captain Lionel J. Trotter, The Life of John Nicholson, Soldier and Administrator, London, 1898, p. 195.
24. Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Eur Mss E211, Edwardes Collection, letter from Nicholson to Edwardes, datelined Peshawar, 23 April 1857.
25. R. G. Wilberforce, An Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny, London, 1894, p. 43.
26. Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 293.
27. Wilberforce, An Unrecorded Chapter, pp. 40–41.
28. Ibid., p. 91.
29. Hodson, Twelve Years, p. xiv. According to his brother, ‘though he lived among
the heathen, he never forgot he was a Christian and an Englishman’.
30. Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, London, 1978, p. 289.
31. Allen, Soldier Sahibs, pp. 236–7.
32. Hewitt, Eyewitnesses, p. 38. There is a good account of his life in David, Indian Mutiny, pp. 149–51.
33. Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 236.
34. NAM, 6404–74–179, letter from Henry Lawrence to Hodson, Lucknow, 21 March 1857. For the Hare quote, see Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, p. 289.
35. Hodson, Twelve Years, pp. 185–7; David, Indian Mutiny, p. 151; Allen, Soldier Sahibs, pp. 261–2.
36. Hodson, Twelve Years, pp. 188–9.
37. Ibid., p. 184; Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 335.
38. Hodson, Twelve Years, p. 319.
39. Ibid., p. 319.
40. H. H., Greathed, Letters Written during the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, pp. 28–9; Hodson, Twelve Years, p. 191.
41. A Short Account of the Life and Family of Rai Jiwan Lal Bahadur, Late Honorary Magistrate of Delhi with extracts from his diary relating to the time of the Mutiny 1857 compiled by his son, Delhi, 1902, p. 27.
42. Ibid., pp. 29–32.
43. National Archives of India (hereafter NAI), Mutiny Papers. See, for example, Collections 15, 16, 51, 61, 67 and 71. An excellent digest of the more important of these reports can be found in OIOC in the papers of the NW Provinces’ intelligence chief, Sir Robert Montgomery, Montgomery Papers, Mss Eur D 1019. Kedarnath’s journal has been published as Appendix No. 2, Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, ed. S. Muinul Haq, Pakistan Historial Society, Karachi, 1958. For runners disguised as religious mendicants passing messages, see A Short Account, p. 29.
44. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.
45. Quoted in Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 270.
46. Hodson, Twelve Years, p. 196. Also Greathed, Letters, p. 25.
47. Zahir Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr: An eyewitness account of the 1857 Uprising, Lahore, 1955, pp. 82–3.
48. Salim Qureshi and Ashur Kazmi (trans, and ed.) 1857 ke Ghaddaron ke Khutut, Delhi, 2001, p. 112.