The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  44. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 96.

  45. Hodson, Twelve Years, p. 214.

  46. W. H. Russell, My Diary in India, London, 1860, vol. 2, p. 14.

  47. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 67, no. 50, entry for 14 July 1857.

  48. Ibid., Collection 60, nos 213–14, 23 June 1857.

  49. John Edward Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative of the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, pp. 91–2.

  50. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 4, GG to EC (undated but? late June 1857).

  51. Ibid., Box 6, EC to GG (undated but clearly 20 June 1857).

  52. Ibid., Box 8, which contains a long exchange of letters between Theo and his sister and brother-in-law about the long-delayed auction of the contents of Metcalfe House, some of which was finally sold off at the end of 1856 and invested in the Delhi Bank.

  53. Ibid., Box 6, EC to GG (undated but? 20 June 1857). I have added the touching final paragraph from a subsequent letter, Box 6, EC to GG, datelined Camp before Delhie, Main Picquet, Hindu Raos, 13 July 1857.

  54. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Camp Delhi cantonments, 10 and 11 June 1857.

  55. Fred Roberts, Letters Written during the Indian Mutiny, London, 1924, p. 29.

  56. Charles John Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1910, p. 81.

  57. Ewart letter, cited in Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, London, 1978, p. 288.

  58. Colonel George Bourchier, CB, Eight Months Campaign against the Bengal Sepoy Army during the Mutiny of 1857, London, 1858, p. 35.

  59. Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative, p. 154.

  60. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, pp. 69–70.

  61. Quoted, without reference, in Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, 1857, p. 287.

  62. Delhi Gazette Extra, 8 July 1857.

  63. Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative, pp. 106–7.

  64. Ibid., pp. 81–2.

  65. Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, ed. Anthony Sattin, Oxford, 1986, p. 145.

  66. Ibid., p. 147.

  67. Ibid., pp. 148, 151.

  68. Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative, p. 136.

  69. NAM, Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Camp Delhi cantonments, 6 and 13 July 1857.

  70. Cadell mss, quoted in Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, p. 281.

  71. Greathed, Letters, p. 33.

  72. Ibid., p. 45.

  73. NAM, Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Camp Delhi cantonments, 17 July 1857.

  74. Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857, ed. C. A. Bayly, Oxford, 1986, p. 80.

  75. OIOC, John Lawrence Papers, Mss Eur F 90, Folio 19b, copy of a letter from Brigadier Gen. A. Wilson to Sir John Lawrence, Camp before Delhy, 18 July 1857.

  76. Durgodas Bandyopadhyay, Amar Jivan-Charit, cited in Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism, New Delhi, 2003, p. 441.

  77. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 63. For fruit and sweetmeats, see Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, p. 32.

  78. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.

  79. Bouchier, Eight Months, p. 44η.

  80. Quoted in Farhan Ahmad Nizami, Madrasahs, Scholars and Saints: Muslim Response to the British Presence in Delhi and the Upper Doab 1803–1857, unpublished PhD, Oxford, 1983, pp. 212, 217.

  81. See Swapna Liddle’s excellent essay on Azurda in Margrit Pernau (ed.) Delhi College, New Delhi, 2006. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan mentions Maulvi Sarfaraz Ali in his list of Delhi’s leading citizens and talks of him as ‘a very able scholar. He teaches the traditional and rational sciences and Geometry and

  Algebra with great skill. He studied Hadis and Tafsir under Maulvi Sadruddin Khan [Azurda] and now serves as a teacher on behalf of the esteemed one at Dar ul-Baqa Madrasa’. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Asar us Sanadid, Delhi, 1990, vol. 2.

  82. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.

  83. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 18.

  84. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, pp. 134, 167.

  85. Ibid. pp. 135–7, 141–3, 169.

  86. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 15, no. 19 (no date, but early July 1857).

  87. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 36.

  88. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, pp. 90–91.

  89. William W. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi by an Officer who Served There, Edinburgh, 1861, pp. 159–61.

  90. Niall Fergusson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, London, 2003, pp. 149–50.

  91. See Edward Thompson, The Life of Charles Lord Metcalfe, London, 1937, p. 101.

  92. Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 8, CM in Clapham Common to GG, 30 July 1853.

  93. For the Lucknow Rottons, see Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow, New Delhi, 1992, p. 32.

  94. Ram Babu Saksena, European & Indo-European Poets of Urdu & Persian, Lucknow, 1941, pp. 128–33.

  95. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 171.

  96. Ibid., pp. 177, 179.

  97. Ibid., p. 180.

  98. Habib, ‘The Coming of 1857’, p. 13; see also, in the same volume, Iqbal Husain, ‘The Rebel Admininstration of Delhi’, p. 30. Also Stokes, The Peasant Armed, p. 89. The original constitution of the court is illustrated in Surendranath Sen’s New Delhi, 1957, opposite p. 80.

  99. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 63, no. 36, entry for 13 August 1857.

  100. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 36.

  101. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 142.

  102. Trial, Supplement: Evidence of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 169; see also Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 22.

  103. Delhi Commissioner’s Office (hereafter DCO) Archive, New Delhi, Mutiny Papers, File no. 5028, July 1857, Translation of a letter from Munshee Mahomed Bakar, 28 July, editor of the Delhi Oordoo Akhbar.

  104. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 103, no. 132, entry for 14 July 1857.

  105. Ibid., Collection 45, entry for 26 July 1857.

  106. Ibid., Collection IIIc no. 64, entry for 30 July 1857.

  107. Ibid., Collection IIIc, no. 44, entry for 29 July 1857.

  108. Ibid., Collection IIIc, no. 64, entry for 30 July 1857.

  109. See Margrit Pernau’s brilliant essay, ‘Multiple Identities and Communities: Re-contextualizing Religion’, in Jamal Malik and Helmut Reifeld, Religious Pluralism in South Asia and Europe, New Delhi, 2005, p. 167.

  110. Greathed, Letters, p. 166.

  111. Sarvar ul-Mulk, My Life, p. 16.

  112. Siraj ul-Akbhar, 27 July 1857.

  113. OIOC, Montgomery Papers, Eur Mss D 1019, no. 236, Montgomery to the Secr, to the Chief Commissioner of the Punjab, 17 August 1857.

  114. DCO Archives, New Delhi, Mutiny Papers, File 63, 7 August 1857.

  115. For the return of the soldiers to Zafar’s garden, see Trial, p. 17.

  116. Ibid. pp. 25–26.

  117. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 19, no. 10, entry for 19 July 1857, letter from the spy Gauri Shankar.

  118. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, pp. 98–9.

  119. DCO Archive, New Delhi, Mutiny Papers, File no. 5028, July 1857, Translation of a letter from Munshee Mahomed Bakar

  120. Ibid., Box 4, File 17; also File 3, letters from Sec. to Gov. Gen. to H. H. Greathed, passim.

  121. Greathed, Letters, pp. 153–4.

  122. Delhi Gazette Extra, 22 July 1857.

  123. Ibid.

  9: The Turn of the Tide

  1. John Edward Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative of the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, pp. 190–91.

  2. Charles John Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1910, pp. 119–20.

  3. R. G. Wilberforce, An Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny, London, 1894, p. 75.

  4. Cited by Charles Allen, Soldier Sahibs:
The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier, London, 2000, p. 293.

  5. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, pt 6, entry for 21 July 1857, Umritsur.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Major Charles Reid, Defence of the Main Piquet at Hindoo Rao’s House as recorded by Major Reid Commanding the Sirmoor Battalion, London, 1957, p. 44.

  8. Wilberforce, An Unrecorded Chapter, pp. 28–9.

  9. H. H. Greathed, Letters Written during the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, p. 179.

  10. Cited by Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 304.

  11. Lionel J. Trotter, The Life of John Nicholson, Soldier and Administrator, London, 1898, pp. 275, 277, 281.

  12. Cited by Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857, ed. C. A. Bayly, Oxford, 1986, pp. 81–2.

  13. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 108.

  14. Greathed, Letters, p. 169.

  15. Ibid., p. 171.

  16. Robert H. W. Dunlop, Service and Adventure with the Khakee Ressalah, London, 1858, pp. 64–5, 69.

  17. Sir Henry W. Norman and Mrs Keith Young, Delhi 1857, London, 1902, p. 217.

  18. Greathed, Letters, p. 174, 6 August to his wife; Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Fraser Collection, Eur Mss E 258, Bundles 11 and 12, from the same to Mr Pidcock, 5 August 1857, Camp before Delhi. For details of Peake & Allen’s shop, see Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, London, 1978, p. 289.

  19. OIOC, Eur Mss C 190, A. C. Warner to Dick, 31 May 1857, cited in Narayani Gupta, Delhi between Empires, New Delhi, 1991, p. 21.

  20. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 64.

  21. NAM, 6211/67, Letters of Lieutenant Charles Henry (Harry) F. Gambier, 38th Native Infantry, HG to Annie Forrest, Camp Delhi, 20 August 1857.

  22. Ibid., HG to Annie Forrest, Camp Delhi, 1 September 1857.

  23. OIOC, Vibart Papers, Eur Mss F 135/19, Camp before Delhi, 12 September 1857.

  24. Ibid., Camp before Delhi, 27 August 1857 to Uncle Gordon.

  25. For Neill’s treatment of Kanpur, see Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, pp. 209–11, and Andrew Ward, Our Bones Are Scattered, London, 1996, pp. 454–7, 477. For Sikhs grilling their captives, see Lt Vivien Dering Majendie, Up Among the Pandies or A Year’s Service in India, London, 1859, pp. 186–7.

  26. Col. A. R. D. Mackenzie, Mutiny Memoirs – being personal reminiscences of the Great Sepoy Revolt of 1857, Allahabad, 1891, pp. 107–8.

  27. Cited by Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, p. 354.

  28. Delhi Gazette Extra, 20 June 1857.

  29. Cited by Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, pp. 201, 340.

  30. Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative, p. 123.

  31. Greathed, Letters, pp. 161, 205–6.

  32. Cited by Allen, Soldier Sahibs, p. 305.

  33. Dihli Urdu Akbhar, 23 August 1857.

  34. Delhi Gazette Extra, 21 June and 8 July 1857.

  35. National Archives of India (hereafter NAI), Mutiny Papers, Collection 61, no. 426; 21 August 1857 refers to a search for fishing rods in the city.

  36. Abdul Latif, 1857 Ka Tarikhi Roznamacha, ed. K. A. Nizami, Naqwatul Musannifin, Delhi, 1958, entry for 7 June 1857.

  37. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 128, no. 39, 12 June 1857.

  38. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, ed. S. Moinul Haq, Pakistan Historial Society, Karachi, 1958, p. 16.

  39. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 57, no. 185/186, 28 July 1857.

  40. Ibid., Collection 61, no. 296, 4 August 1857.

  41. Ibid., Collection 57, no. 328, 14 August 1857.

  42. Delhi Commissioner’s Office (hereafter DCO) Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 3, letter from the spy Turab Ali, 5 August 1857.

  43. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 61, no. 547 (undated but probably late July/early August 1857).

  44. Ibid., Collection 61, no. 396, 17 August 1857.

  45. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 21.

  46. Ibid., pp. 28–9.

  47. 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, pp. 43–4.

  48. Ibid. p. 45.

  49. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 20, no. 14 (undated but late August 1857); also Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 29.

  50. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 3, letter from the spy Turab Ali, 5 August 1857.

  51. Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi, London, 1898, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, pp. 199–200.

  52. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, pp. 28–9.

  53. For the nobles, see Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 197; for tax collecting in Gurgaon, see NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 20, no. 14 (undated but late August 1857); also Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 29.

  54. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 20, no. 14 (undated but late August 1857).

  55. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 206.

  56. Dihli Urdu Akbhar, 23 August 1857.

  57. OIOC, Eur Mss, B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.

  58. Ibid.

  59. For the lack of sulphur, see NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 15, no. 11, 21 August. For the use of captured English spirits in gunpowder manufacture, see Collection 60, nos 627–638. For problems in gunpowder manufacture see also DCO Archive, New Delhi, Mutiny Papers, File no. 5028, July 1857, Translation of a letter from Munshee Mahomed Bakar, 28 July, editor of the Delhi Oordoo Akhbar. For absence of percussion caps see Greathed, Letters, p. 45, and for failing shells see p. 67. For Gujars looting gunpowder in the early days of the Uprising see Dihli Urdu Akbhar, 31 May 1857.

  60. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Dastanbuy, trans. Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi, Delhi, 1970, p. 37.

  61. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 15, nos 5 and 6, 16 August 1857.

  62. Dthli Urdu Akbhar, 23 August 1857.

  63. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 70, no. 243, 30 August 1857.

  64. Ibid., Collection 62, no. 80, entry for 3 August 1857.

  65. OIOC, Montgomery Papers, Eur Mss D 1019, no. 174, Delhee News, 2 July 1857.

  66. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 62, no. 167, 5 September 1857.

  67. Ibid., Collection 67, no. 143 (undated but late August 1857).

  68. Ibid., Collection 62, no. 54, 24 June 1857.

  69. Ibid., Collection 63, no. 42, 16 August 1857.

  70. Ibid., Collection 62, no. 165 (undated).

  71. Ibid., Collection 62, no. 84, 4 August 1857.

  72. Ibid., Collection 62, no. 71, 22 July 1857.

  73. Ibid., Collection 60, no. 687, 7 September 1857, and no. 688, 11 September 1857.

  74. Ibid., Collection 62, no. 71, entry for 22 July 1857.

  75. Ibid., Collection 60, no. 605, entry for 29 August 1857.

  76. Ibid., Collection 71, no. 96, entry for 5 July 1857.

  77. Ibid., Collection 71, no. 95, entry for 5 July 1857, a second witness statement of the same incident. There is also an account of this incident in Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 21.

  78. Dihli Urdu Akbhar, 23 August 1857.

  79. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, pp. 2045.

  80. Ibid. p. 204. See also Stokes, The Peasant Armed, p. 85.

  81. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 206.

  82. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.

  83. Ibid.

  84. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 123.

  85. Greathed, Letters, pp. 225–6.

  86. Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, p. 44.

  87. Greathed, Letters, p. 227.

  88. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, pp. 2078.

  89. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 124.

  90. Ibid., p. 125.

  91. Ibid., pp. 125–6.

 
92. OIOC, Vibart Papers, Eur Mss F 135/19, Camp before Delhi, 27 August 1857.

  93. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.

  94. Ibid.

  95. Colonel George Bourchier, CB, Eight Months Campaign against the Bengal Sepoy Army during the Mutiny of 1857, London, 1858, p. 47.

  96. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 135.

  97. Greathed, Letters, p. 251.

  98. Lord Roberts of Kandahar, Forty One Years in India: From Subaltern to Commander in Chief, London, 1897, vol. 1, p. 219.

  99. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 209.

  100. Ibid., p. 218.

  101. Ibid. pp. 215–19. For replacing Zafar with Jawan Bakht, see OIOC, Montgomery Papers, Eur Mss D 1019, no. 197, Delhee News, 31 August 1857.

  102. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 16, no. 20, 6 September 1857. See also Trial, P. 142.

  103. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 147.

  104. Zahir Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr: An eyewitness account of the 1857 Uprising, Lahore, 1955, p. 111.

  105. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah for details of the damdama.

  106. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 73, No. 158, 8 September 1857.

  107. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 226. For the prominent role of the jihadis in attacking the construction parties, see Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 31.

  108. OIOC, Montgomery Papers, no. 198, 7 September 1857 (for the suicide ghazis) and NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 16, no. 27.

  109. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.

  110. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 65, no. 36, petition of Maulvi Sarfaraz Ali, 10 September 1857.

  111. Greathed, Letters, p. 206.

  112. OIOC, Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.

  113. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 57, no. 461, 10 September 1857.

  114. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 45.

  115. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 147.

  116. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 45.

  117. OIOC, Vibart Papers, Eur Mss F 135/19, Camp before Delhi, 12 September 1857.

  118. Charles Ewart to his mother, cited in Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, p. 297.

  119. Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative, p. 260; also Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, p. 302.

  120. NAI, Mutiny Papers, Collection 73, no. 167, 13 September 1857.