The Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

  121. Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives, ‘Narrative of Munshi Jiwan Lal’, p. 229.

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

  123. OIOC, Montgomery Papers, Eur Mss D 1019, no. 184, 4 August 1857; no. 192, 24 August; no. 194, 23 August 1857; no. 196, 30 August. For the offer to blow up of the Bridge of Boats, see DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File No. 1, Services performed by Mirza Elahee Bahksh by W. L. R. Hodson, 1 December 1857.

  124. Greathed, Letters, p. 217.

  125. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 14, letter from Lt W. Hodson to C. B. Saunders on the terms of BSZ’s surrender, 29 November 1857.

  126. Dihli Urdu Akbhar, 13 September 1857.

  127. Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1858, ed. Anthony Sattin, Oxford, 1986, p. 163.

  128. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 48.

  129. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 6, EC to GG (undated, but clearly the night of 13–14 September 1857).

  130. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 52.

  131. Ibid., p. 52.

  10: To Shoot Every Soul

  1. Charles John Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1910, pp. 156–7.

  2. Letter signed ‘Felix, to the Editor of the Lahore Chronicle’, 30 September 1857.

  3. Fred Roberts, Letters Written during the Indian Mutiny, London, 1924, p. 62.

  4. Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, pp. 52–4.

  5. Roberts, Letters, p. 62.

  6. Letter signed ‘Felix’. Also Roger Perkins, The Kashmir Gate: Lieutenant Home and the Delhi VCs, Chippenham, 1983, pp. 23–8.

  7. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), Coghill Letters, 6609–139, letter from Lt Coghill to his brother, datelined Delhi, 22 September 1857.

  8. NAM, 6301/143, diaries of Col. E L. Ommaney, vol. A, pt 6, entry for 14 September.

  9. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, p. 55.

  10. Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Eur Mss B 138, Account of Said Mobarak Shah.

  11. John Edward Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative of the Siege of Delhi, London, 1858, p. 275.

  12. Roberts, Letters, p. 62.

  13. OIOC, Photo Eur 31 1B, Hardcastle Papers, pp. 306, 333–5. See also the description of Zahir Dehlavi in Dastan i-Ghadr: An eyewitness account of the 1857 Uprising, Lahore, 1955, p. 113.

  14. Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Two Native Narratives of the Mutiny in Delhi, London, 1898, ‘Narrative of Mainodin’, p. 70.

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

  16. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 55.

  17. Arthur Moffat Lang, Lahore to Lucknow: The Indian Mutiny Journal of Arthur Moffat Lang, London, 1992, pp. 90–92.

  18. Ibid., p. 92; also Charles Allen, Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier, London, 2000, pp. 322–3.

  19. Lord Roberts of Kandahar, Forty One Years in India: From Subaltern to Commander in Chief, London, 1897, vol. 1, p. 236.

  20. Colonel George Bourchier, CB, Eight Months Campaign against the Bengal Sepoy Army during the Mutiny of 1857, London, 1858, p. 69.

  21. Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative, p. 295.

  22. OIOC, Vibart Papers, Eur Mss F 135/19, Camp Delhi, 15 September 1857.

  23. Roberts, Letters, pp. 63–5.

  24. Major W. S. R. Hodson, Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India, London, 1859, p. 296.

  25. Ibid., p. 294.

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

  27. Barter, The Siege of Delhi, p. 58.

  28. NAM, Coghill Letters, 6609–139, letter from Lt Coghill to his brother, datelined Delhi, 22 September 1857.

  29. Lord Roberts of Kandahar, Forty One Years in India, vol. 1, p. 238.

  30. OIOC, John Lawrence Collection, Eur Mss F 90, Folio 19b, NC to JL, datelined Skinner’s House.

  31. Lord Roberts of Kandahar, Forty One Years in India, vol. 1, pp. 238–9.

  32. OIOC, John Lawrence Collection, Eur Mss F 90, Folio 19b, letter datelined Camp before Delhi, 17 December 1857.

  33. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghad, pp. 111–12.

  34. Ibid., p. 112.

  35. Ibid., pp. 113–15.

  36. Sarvar ul-Mulk, My Life, Being the Autobiography of Nawab Server ul Mulk Bahadur trans, from the Urdu by his son, Nawab Jiwan Yar Jung Bahadur, London, 1903, p. 20.

  37. Aslam Farrukhi, Muhammad Husain Azad, 2 vols, Karachi, 1965, vol. 1, p. 104.

  38. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Dastanbuy, trans. Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi, Delhi, 1970, p. 40.

  39. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, pp. 97–9.

  40. Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative, p. 238.

  41. South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge, Campbell Metcalfe Papers, Box 6, EC to GG, 25 September 1857.

  42. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 174.

  43. Quoted in R. Montgomery Martin, Indian Empire, London, 1860, vol. II, p. 449.

  44. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 164.

  45. William W. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi by an Officer who served there, Edinburgh, 1861, p. 254.

  46. NAM, Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Delhi, 15 September 1857.

  47. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 178.

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

  49. Ibid.

  50. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, ed. S. Moinul Haq, Pakistan Historial Society, Karachi, 1958, p. 32.

  51. National Archives of India (hereafter NAI), Political Consultations, no. 12–27, 5 November, copies of telegrams arriving from Delhi at the Lahore telegraph office, received from Brig. General Neville Chamberlain, 17 September 1857.

  52. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, pp. 30–31.

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

  54. NAM, Wilson Letters, AW to his wife, Delhi, 18 September 1857.

  55. NAI, Political Consultations, no. 12–27, 5 November, copies of telegrams arriving from Delhi at the Lahore telegraph office, received from Brig. General Neville Chamberlain, 17 September 1857.

  56. Ibid.

  57. From interviews with Kulsum Zamani Begum’s daughter, Zainab Zamani Begum, in Khwaja Hasan Nizami, Begmat ke Aansu (Tears of the Begums), Delhi, 1952.

  58. Delhi Commissioner’s office (hereafter DCO) Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 1, Services performed by Mirza Elahee Bahksh for W. L. R. Hodson, 1 December 1857.

  59. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, p. 32.

  60. Munshi Faizuddin, Bazm i-Akhir, Yani sehre e-Delhi ke do akhiri badshahon ka tareeq i-maashrat (The Last Convivial Gathering – the Mode of Life of the Last Two Kings of Delhi), Lahore, 1965, p. 27.

  61. Mehdi Hasan, ‘Bahadur Shah, his relations with the British and the Mutiny: an objective study’, Islamic Culture, Hyderabad, vol. 33, no. 2, 1959, pp. 95-III.

  62. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 1, Services performed by Mirza Elahee Bahksh.

  63. Ibid., File no. 14, letter from Lt W. Hodson to C. B. Saunders on the terms of BSZ’s surrender, 29 November 1857. This crucial letter from Hodson is the earliest and most authentic account of the intrigues than preceded Zafar’s surrender. It has never before been used by any historian.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Memoirs of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, pp. 32–3.

  67. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 196.

  68. Harriet Tytler, An Englishwoman in India: The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828–1888, ed. Anthony Saltin, Oxford, 1986, pp. 163–4.

  69. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, pp. 117–18.

  70. Farrukhi, Muhammad Husain Azad, vol. 1, p. 105.

  71. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 106–7.

  72. Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994, pp. 25–6. Also Farrukhi, Muhammad Husain Azad, vol. 1, pp. 109–10.

  73. NAI, Foreign, Foreign Dept Misc., Precis of Palace Intelligence, contains an en
try that shows how much Zafar feared eclipses: in the entry for Thursday, 9 January 1851 it is written that ‘Sookhamund Astrologer intimated that there would be an eclipse of the moon on Thursday night the 13th of Rubbee Ool Ouwal, and that HM should not appoint that day for his departure to the Kootub. Instructions were accordingly issued for HM’s departure on the following day, Friday.’

  74. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, pp. 183–4.

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

  76. Khwaja Hasan Nizami, Begmat ke Aansu, Delhi, 1952.

  77. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi, p. 257.

  78. NAM, 6309–26, Lt Gen. F. C. Maisey, ‘The Capture of the Delhi Palace’, pp. 4–7.

  79. Ibid. pp. 7–11.

  80. Ibid., p. 12.

  81. NAI, Foreign Dept, Secret Consultations, 30 October 1857, pt 1, no. 83, to Chief Commr of the Punjab, 20 September 1857.

  82. Allen, Soldier Sahibs, pp. 326–7.

  83. Ibid., pp. 326–7.

  84. NAI, Foreign Dept, Secret Consultations, 30 October 1857, pt 1, no. 86, from Mil. Seer, to Chief Commr of the Punjab, 23 September 1857.

  85. OIOC, Vibart Papers, Eur Mss 135/19, Vibart to his Uncle Gordon, 22 September 1857.

  86. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 128.

  87. Rashid ul-Khairi, Dilli Ki Akhiri Bahar, ed. S. Zamir Hasan, Delhi, 1991, cited by C. M. Naim in his essay on Sahbai in Margrit Pernau (ed.), Delhi College, New Delhi, 2006.

  88. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 127.

  89. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi, pp. 255–6.

  90. Dehlavi, Dastan i-Ghadr, p. 128.

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

  92. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 1, Services performed by Mirza Elahee Bahksh.

  93. NAM, 6309–26, Lt Gen. F. C. Maisey, ‘The Capture of the Delhi Palace’, p. 13.

  94. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 1, Services performed by Mirza Elahee Bahksh.

  95. Hodson, Twelve Years, p. 300; for Mirza Ilahe Bakhsh, see DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 14, letter from Lt W. Hodson to C. B. Saunders, 29 November 1857, para. 5.

  96. Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative, p. 318.

  97. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi, p. 274.

  98. NAM, 6301–143, Col. E. L. Ommaney’s diaries, entry for 21 September 1857.

  99. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 14, letter from Lt W. Hodson to C. B. Saunders on the terms of BSZ’s surrender, 29 November 1857.

  11: The City of the Dead

  1. Delhi Commissioner’s Office (hereafter DCO) Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 14, letter from Lt W. Hodson to C. B. Saunders, 29 November 1857.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid., File no. 10, letter no. 3, from Lt W. Hodson to C. B. Saunders, 28 November 1857, ‘GUARANTEE THE LIFE OF THE KING FROM BE IZZAT AT THE HANDS OF THE GORA LOGUE’.

  4. Ibid., File no. 14, letter from Lt W. Hodson to C. B. Saunders, 29 November 1857.

  5. William W. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi by an Officer who served there, Edinburgh, 1861, p. 263. Ireland explicitly has the party entering the town through the Lahore Gate, though the Delhi Gate might be expected to be the obvious point of entry for a party coming from Humayun’s Tomb.

  6. James Wise, The Diary of a Medical Officer during the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, Cork, 1894, pp. 114–15.

  7. Major W. S. R. Hodson, Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India, London, 1859, p. 307.

  8. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), 6309–26, Lt Gen. F. C. Maisey, ‘The Capture of the Delhi Palace’, p. 13.

  9. NAM, Coghill Letters, 6609–139, letter from Lt Coghill to his brother, datelined Delhi, 22 September 1857.

  10. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 1, Services performed by Mirza Elahee Bahksh for W. L. R Hodson, 1 December 1857.

  11. Hodson, Twelve Years, pp. 310–12.

  12. Ibid., p. 302.

  13. NAM, 6309–26, Lt Gen. F. C. Maisey, ‘The Capture of the Delhi Palace’, p. 16.

  14. Charles John Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1910, pp. 204–5.

  15. Sir George Campbell, Memoirs of My Indian Career, London, 1893, vol 1.

  16. Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), Eur Mss Photo Eur 271, Letters of Hugh Chichester, letters to his father, Delhi, 24 September 1857.

  17. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi, pp. 307–8.

  18. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 202.

  19. OIOC, Saunders Papers, Eur Mss E187, correspondence pt IV, private letters 1857–60, K&J 716, 1–79, no. 44, Matilda Saunders to Eliza Saunders, Delhi Palace.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Cited by Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, London, 1978, p. 317.

  22. Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994, p. 27, quoting Hali’s biographer Salihah Abid Hussain.

  23. Mrs Muter, My Recollections of the Sepoy Revolt, London, 1911, p. 132.

  24. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, entry for 30 October 1857.

  25. Ibid., entry for 23 December 1857.

  26. Ibid., entry for 30 October 1857.

  27. R. M. Coopland, A Lady’s Escape from Gwalior and Life in the Fort of Agra during the Mutinies of 1857, London, 1859 pp. 268–9.

  28. Michael Maclagan, ‘Clemency’ Canning, London, 1962, p. 98.

  29. Ibid., p. 140.

  30. OIOC, Eur Mss Photo Eur 271, Letters of Hugh Chichester, letters to his father, Camp Delhi, 24 September 1857.

  31. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi, pp. 280–81.

  32. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, Box 1, File no. 5, 2 October 1857, no. 279, C. B. Thornhill to G. I. Hansey.

  33. Delhi Gazette Extra, 10 December 1857.

  34. Ibid., 2 January 1858.

  35. John Edward Rotton, The Chaplain’s Narrative of the Siege of Delhi, London 1858, pp. 325–6.

  36. Coopland, A Lady’s Escape, p. 259.

  37. Richard Barter, The Siege of Delhi, London, 1984, p. 76.

  38. Lord Roberts of Kandahar, Forty One Years in India: From Subaltern to Commander in Chief, London, 1897, vol. 1, pp. 258–9.

  39. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, pt 6, entry for 1 November 1857. Ommaney’s diary is the most important single source for the imprisonment of Zafar. As far as I am aware it has never been used before by any historian.

  40. Ibid., entry for 24 November 1857.

  41. Ibid., entry for 28 September 1857.

  42. Coopland, A Lady’s Escape, pp. 274–7.

  43. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi, pp. 280–81.

  44. Coopland, A Lady’s Escape, p. 276.

  45. OIOC, Saunders Papers, Eur Mss E 186, correspondence pt III, official and demi-official letters, 1857–60, no. 128, Ommanney to Saunders, 1 October 1857 says that Zafar is asking for his barber ‘to shave his once royal face’.

  46. Ibid., no. 26, Lawrence to Saunders, 29 December 1857.

  47. A cutting survives in Ommaney’s diaries, entry for 6 November 1857: NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A.

  48. Ibid.

  49. OIOC, Eur Mss Photo Eur 271, Letters of Hugh Chichester, letters to his father, Delhi, 24 September 1857.

  50. Cited 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, p. 219.

  51. Coopland, A Lady’s Escape, pp. 278–9.

  52. Quoted in Charles Ball, The History of the Indian Mutiny, 1858–9, vol. 2, P. 179

  53. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, entries for 20 and 23 September 1857.

  54. Ibid., entry for 15 October 1857.

  55. Ibid., entry for 23 September 1857.

  56. Ibid., entry for 19 November 1857.

  57. Ibid., entry for 19 November 1857.

  58. Ibid., entry for 13 Novem
ber 1857.

  59. Ibid., entry for 21 October 1857.

  60. Ibid., entry for 19 November 1857.

  61. These documents are now in the NAI and form the core of the Mutiny Papers collection.

  62. NAM, 6301/143, Diaries of Col. E. L. Ommaney, vol. A, entry for 27 November 1857.

  63. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, pp. 199–200.

  64. Ibid., p. 234.

  65. Mrs Muter, My Recollections of the Sepoy Revolt, London, 1911, pp. 137–8.

  66. Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, pp. 235–7.

  67. Records of the Intelligence Department of the Government of the North West Provinces of India during the Mutiny of 1857, Edinburgh, 1902, vol. 2, pp. 298–9.

  68. A Short Account of the Life and Family of Rai Jawan 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. 48.

  69. DCO Archive, Mutiny Papers, File no. 1, Services performed by Mirza Elahee Bahksh.

  70. NAI, Foreign Secret Consultations, no. 524, 29 January 1858, Ramchandra to Burn, 27 November 1857.

  71. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Dastanbuy, trans. Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi, Delhi, 1970, pp. 43–6.

  72. Hali’s account, from Ralph Russell, The Oxford Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 129–30.

  73. Ghalib’s own account, from ibid., p. 130.

  74. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, p. 20.

  75. Cited in Pavan Varma, Ghalib: The Man, The Times, New Delhi, 1989, p. 153.

  76. Cited in Gopi Chand Narang, ‘Ghalib and the Rebellion of 1857’, in Narang, Urdu Language and Literature: Critical Perspectives, New Delhi, 1991, pp. 2–3.

  77. Ibid., p. 3.

  78. Cited in ‘The Sack of Delhi as Witnessed by Ghalib’, Bengal Past & Present, no. 12, January-December 1955, p. IIIn.

  79. Delhi Gazette, 21 December 1857.

  80. Russell, The Oxford Ghalib, p. 132.

  81. Cited in Narayani Gupta, Delhi between Empires, New Delhi, 1991, p. 23. For the destruction of shanties, see ‘The Sack of Delhi,’ p. 112.

  82. Records of the Intelligence Department, vol. 2, pp. 298–300.

  83. Ireland, A History of the Siege of Delhi, pp. 279–80.

  84. Sarvar ul-Mulk, My Life, Being the Autobiography of Nawab Sarvar ul Mulk Bahadur, trans, from the Urdu by his son, Nawab Jiwan Yar Jung Bahadur, London, 1903, p. 21.