Bahadur Shah II, grandson of the last Mogul Emperor Shah Alam, was already sixty-two when he succeeded to the honorific title of King of Delhi in 1837. Two decades on he was a short, frail man with a white beard and a crooked nose. In his physical prime he had been famed for his athletic prowess, his horsemanship and his ability to shoot birds from the back of an elephant. In later years he preferred the more sedate pursuits of poetry writing, manuscript illustration and miniature painting. He also enjoyed cooking and is said to have invented a pepper-flavoured sweetmeat. He did not drink alcohol but may have been addicted to opium, which would explain his eccentric belief that he could transform himself into a fly or gnat and ‘in this guise convey himself to other countries and learn what was going on there’. His most redeeming quality was his religious toleration. The product of a Muslim–Hindu marriage – his Sufi father, Akbar Shah, had married a Rajput princess – he always displayed a marked respect for his mother’s faith. He would not eat beef, appointed several Hindus to high positions in his court, and always wore a caste mark on his forehead and the brahmanic thread round his throat when visiting Hindu temples. He even employed a Christian convert in his household, silencing the man’s critics with the words, ‘There is no cause for shame in what he has done.’
He lived in the Lal Qila, or Red Fort, the magnificent palace built by Shah Jahan during the height of Mogul rule in the mid seventeenth century. A thousand yards long and six hundred wide, it stood on the west bank of the Jumna in the heart of the walled city. Its centrepiece was the beautiful Diwan-i-Am, or Hall of Public Audience, where the Emperor would sit in a marble-panelled alcove, inset with precious stones, to hear the complaints of his subjects. But more lavish still was the Diwan-i-Khas, or Hall of Private Audience, ‘built of white marble, beautifully ornamented, the roofs supported on colonnades of marble pillars’. It was here, seated on the peerless Peacock Throne, that the Moguls used to hold their private meetings. Wrought of solid gold, the throne was ascended by steps and covered by a canopy surmounted with four peacock figures, their beautiful colours replicated by countless inlaid jewels. By Bahadur Shah’s time only its marble pedestal remained; the throne itself had been looted by Nadir Shah of Persia in 1739. But the Diwan-i-Khas still justified the famous inscription on its exterior: ‘If there be a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!’
On one side of the Diwan-i-Khas were the Royal Baths and the small enclosed Pearl Mosque; to the other the Khas Mahal, the King’s private apartments, and the Rang Mahal, which housed his favourite wife, Zinat Mahal. All were set upon a solid masonry wall of red sandstone, 20 yards high, which looked down upon the sands of the river. The wall extended for about a mile and a half and on the city side rose to a height of 35 yards. There were two main points of entry, both from within the city: the Delhi Gate to the south and the bigger Lahore Gate to the west, the latter containing the apartments of Captain Douglas, the British commander of the King’s Bodyguard. But not all the dwellings within the fort were of palatial standard. ‘Inside… was a maze of houses,’ wrote Charles Metcalfe, son of the former Resident, ‘some of masonry, some of mats, some of mud. The larger houses contained underground rooms, intricate passages, enclosed courtyards… Dirt and filth were everywhere, inside and outside. Rich carpets and dirty mats were side by side on the floors; ivory and silver chairs were covered with filthy rags.’ Metcalfe added:
Men and women skilled in the preparation of poisons, of drugs to cause unconsciousness, so as to facilitate robbery and incest, throve within the palace walls. Wrestlers, jesters, dancing-girls, who danced naked to inflame the passions of old age, musicians, forgers, swindlers, thieves, receivers of stolen property, distillers of spirits, compounders of sweetmeats and opium, all formed a part of the palace community… Wives intrigued against wives, mothers against sons; men and women scoured the country far and wide for beautiful girls to sell as slaves within the palace. In such a hotbed of villany [sic], any conspiracy was possible.
Bahadur Shah ruled over this inflammable mass of competing interests – but not much else. Like his father and grandfather before him, he was a Company pensioner whose temporal power did not extend beyond the walls of the Red Fort. Moreover, his relations with the British had been strained since his accession: first Calcutta refused to increase his already generous stipend of a lakh of rupees a month; then Lord Ellenborough did away with the tradition of presenting him nazirs three times a year. The final insult was Dalhousie’s refusal to recognize as heir the King’s youngest and favourite son, eleven-year-old Mirza Jawan Bakht, after the death of the heir-apparent in 1849. Instead the government nominated Bahadur Shah’s eldest surviving son, Mirza Fakir-ud-din, on condition that he vacated the Red Fort on becoming King. Fakir-ud-din’s compliance probably cost him his life. He died in agony in July 1856, after eating a dish of curry, and was almost certainly poisoned. Once again Bahadur Shah proposed Jawan Bakht as his heir; and once again the British chose his next eldest son, Mirza Korash, but as Shahzadah rather than King and with a reduced pension of 15,000 rupees a month.
It was all too much for the octogenarian monarch. Egged on by Queen Zinat Mahal, Jawan Bakht’s ambitious mother, Bahadur Shah began to plot against the British. According to his personal physician and close adviser, Ahsanullah Khan, the King’s intrigues actually began in 1855 when he sent his nephew with a letter to the Shah of Persia, requesting money and troops to fight the British. Despite subsequent letters, Ahsanullah was not aware of any reply, though during the Persian War of 1856–7 the King told him that he had ‘strong hopes’ of receiving financial and military assistance from the Shah. An itinerant mendicant, with good contacts in the palace, claimed that these hopes were fostered by Hasan Askari, an influential Muslim priest, who told the King that he had had a divine revelation that the dominion of Persia would extend over the whole of Hindustan and ‘that the splendour of the sovereignty of Delhi will again revive’. Delhi Muslims in particular were excited by the possibility that Persian troops might invade India to eject the British. The anticipation was heightened by the anti-British sentiment of the leading Indian journal, Sadik-ul-Akhbar (Authentic News), copies of which were delivered to the Red Fort. Ahsanullah claimed that the royal princes attached great importance to the journal’s false reports that the British were being defeated by the Persians, and may have communicated its contents to the King.
So was Bahadur Shah party to the army’s conspiracy to mutiny? It is difficult to say. Ahsanullah was not aware that the King had been in contact with Bengal troops during the cartridge question, though his master undoubtedly ‘believed that his own prosperity would go hand in hand with the ruin of British power’. According to the King’s secretary, however, the Red Fort received intelligence that the troops would mutiny at Meerut a full twenty days before they actually did. Three days before the outbreak, he added, the King’s personal attendants were predicting that the army would soon revolt and ‘come to the palace, when the government of the King would be re-established’.
There seems little doubt, therefore, that the rising at Meerut was anticipated by some soldiers and civilians at Delhi. The key evidence linking the outbreaks at Meerut and Delhi was provided by Jat Mall,* a British spy who was a regular visitor to the Red Fort. He claimed to have been told by sepoys on duty at the fort, a few days before the outbreak, that ‘it had been arranged in case greased cartridges were pressed upon them, that the Meerut troops were to come here, where they would be joined by the Delhi troops’. An officer of the 38th Native Infantry later testified that a carriage containing sepoys from Meerut arrived in his regiment’s lines during the afternoon of 10 May. His wife concluded that they were ‘emissaries sent over from Meerut to warn the soldiers to be prepared for the next day’s proceedings’. Jat Mall confirmed the arrival of letters at the palace that day ‘bringing intelligence that 82 [sic] soldiers had been imprisoned, and that a serious disturbance was to take place in consequence’. As a result of this, the sepoys guarding the palace made no secret of their belief that, after mutinying, the troops at Meerut would come to Delhi. The King may not have been personally aware of the plans for a joint rising, but members of his household certainly were.
The first mutineers to reach Delhi were twenty sowars of the 3rd Cavalry. At seven in the morning of 11 May, they rode up to the toll-house at the eastern end of the bridge-of-boats and cut down the toll-keeper. As they were setting fire to the toll-house, a European civilian† drove up in a gharry. He was shot and his body thrown in the Jumna. The sowars then crossed the bridge, one man continuing on through the city’s Calcutta Gate, the rest turning left on to the tract of ground beneath the eastern wall of the Red Fort known as the Zer Jharokha (‘below the balcony’).
The lone rider made straight for the Lahore Gate of the fort, but was refused entry by a guard of the 38th Native Infantry. His presence was at once reported to Captain Douglas, the Commandant of the Palace Guard, whose quarters were above the gate’s long vaulted entrance. Douglas came down and asked the sowar what he wanted. His bold reply was that he had just arrived in Delhi, having mutinied at Meerut, and had come to the guard for a drink of water and a pipe. On hearing this, Douglas ordered his arrest, but he galloped off before the guard could act.
Meanwhile, in the royal quarters at the opposite end of the fort, Ahsanullah Khan overheard a disaffected sepoy of the 38th telling the door-keepers of the Diwan-i-Khas that the Meerut garrison had mutinied and was about to enter Delhi, and that he and the rest of them ‘would no longer serve the Company, but would fight for their faith’. Before he could intervene, he was summoned to his master’s private sitting room. ‘Look!’ said Bahadur Shah, pointing out of the window, ‘the cavalry are coming in by the road of the Zer Jharokha!’
Ahsanullah advised shutting the gate below, and the King gave the necessary orders. But no sooner had this been done than five or six sowars reached the closed gate and began to call out: ‘ Dohai Badshah! [“Help, O King!”] We pray for assistance in the fight for the faith.’ Afraid to reply, Bahadur Shah sent Ghulam Abbas, his vakil, to fetch Captain Douglas.
When Douglas arrived, he asked for the gate below the sitting room to be opened so that he could speak to the mutineers. The King refused, saying the men were murderers. Eventually Ahsanullah persuaded Douglas to speak to the soldiers from the relative safety of the stone-lattice railing that ran between the King’s apartments and the Diwan-i-Khas. Ghulam accompanied him and could see thirty to forty troopers gathered below. ‘Some had their swords drawn,’ recalled Ghulam, ‘others had pistols and carbines in their hands; more were coming from the direction of the bridge, accompanied by men on foot, apparently grooms, with bundles on their heads.’
Douglas leant over the balcony and said loudly: ‘Don’t come here! These are the private apartments of the ladies of the palace. Your standing opposite them is a disrespect to the King.’ On hearing this, the troopers moved off, one by one, in the direction of the Rajghat Gate, which gave access to the southeast quarter of the city. When they had gone, the King instructed Douglas to close all the gates of the palace and city ‘lest these men should get in’.
Douglas went first to the city’s Calcutta Gate, the closest to the bridge-of-boats, where he found the commissioner, Simon Fraser,* the magistrate, John Hutchinson, and Fraser’s head clerk, Mr Nixon. Fraser had already closed the Calcutta Gate and was telling the kotwal to see to the others when a report arrived that the mutineers had entered the city by the Rajghat Gate and were plundering the adjacent European quarter of Dariagunge. As if in confirmation, five sowars appeared at the gallop from the direction of Dariagunge and fired a volley at the huddle of Europeans, hitting Hutchinson in the arm and causing the others to scatter. Fraser took cover in a sentry-box, where he found an abandoned musket and used it to shoot dead one of the sowars; the other mutineers fled down a side-street. Fraser then mounted his buggy and drove off in the direction of the fort.
Douglas and the others followed on foot, but were attacked by sowars en route. Nixon was killed and, to save themselves, Douglas and the wounded Hutchinson leapt into the ditch that surrounded the fort. Unfortunately Douglas fell awkwardly and landed on some rocks, badly injuring his feet and back. When the sowars had departed, Douglas’s servants carried him and Hutchinson up to his apartments in the Lahore Gate. There the casualties were received with some consternation by Douglas’s house guests: the Delhi chaplain, Revd Jennings, his beautiful and recently engaged daughter Miss Jennings and her friend Miss Clifford. Fraser was also present.
Anxious to save the two young ladies, Douglas sent for Ahsanullah Khan and Ghulam Abbas. When they arrived, he told them to ask the King for two palanquins so that the ladies could be taken to Queen Zinat Mahal and placed under her protection. Fraser made an additional request for the King to send two of his cannon and a detachment of infantry to defend Douglas’s quarters. Ahsanullah and Ghulam hurried back to Bahadur Shah, who gave orders for the immediate dispatch of the palanquins and the guns. But it was too late.
Fraser, armed only with a sword, had accompanied the King’s advisers as far as the covered walkway that linked the Lahore Gate to the royal palace. There he encountered a large crowd of men and boys, clapping their hands in mock congratulation. Jat Mall, who was present, recalled:
Mr Fraser, seeing such marked feelings of hostility, began to return to Captain Douglas’ quarters, and as he reached the foot of the stairs, Haji, lapidary [seal-engraver], raised his sword to make a cut at him. Mr Fraser, who had a sheathed sword in his hand, turned sharply around, and thrust at him, with the sword in its sheath, saying to the havildar of the gate guard, ‘What kind of behaviour is this?’ Upon which the havildar made a show of driving off the crowd; but no sooner was Mr Fraser’s back turned, than the havildar nodded with his head to the lapidary, to signify to him that now he should renew his attack. The lapidary, thus encouraged, rushed upon Mr Fraser, and inflicted a deep and mortal wound on the right side of his neck. Mr Fraser at once fell, when three other men… who had been concealed in an out-house adjoining, rushed out and cut him with their swords over the head, face and chest till he was quite dead.
One of the three men who joined in the attack was an armed retainer of the King; the other two were in the service of the King’s chief minister, Mahbub Ali Khan.
The crowd then rushed up the stairs to Douglas’s apartments but found its way barred. Jhokun, Douglas’s mace-bearer, had locked the door and was in the process of securing the others when some of the mob burst in a different entrance and gave admission to Fraser’s murderers. They rushed into the inner apartments and began to attack the inhabitants with tulwars. Jhokun fled, but was caught at the bottom of the stairs by Mamdoh, one of the King’s bearers, and asked where he had hidden Captain Douglas. ‘He forced me upstairs with him,’ remembered Jhokun.
I said, ‘You have yourselves killed all the gentlemen already;’ but on reaching the room where Captain Douglas was, I saw that he was not quite dead. Mamdoh perceiving this also, hit him with a bludgeon on the forehead, and killed him immediately. I saw the other bodies, including those of the two ladies.* Mr Hutchinson was lying in one room, and the bodies of Captain Douglas, Mr Jennings, and the two young ladies in another, on the floor, with the exception of that of Captain Douglas, which was on a bed.
When Bahadur Shah learnt of the murders, shortly after ten, he gave orders for all the gates of the fort to be closed. But the two companies of 38th Native Infantry on guard at the palace refused to obey. Soon after, recalled Ghulam, these sepoys and about fifty sowars marched into the courtyard of the Diwan-i-Khas ‘and commenced firing their muskets, carbines, and pistols in the air, at the same time making a great clamour’. Ghulam added:
The King hearing the noise, came out, and standing in the door of the hall… told his immediate attendants to direct the troops to discontinue the noise… On this the noise was quelled and the officers of the cavalry came forward, mounted as they were, and explained that they had been required to bite cartridges, the use of which deprived both Hindus and Mahomedans of their religion, as the cartridges were greased with beef and pork fat, that they accordingly killed the Europeans at Meerut, and had come to claim his protection. The King replied, ‘I did not call for you; you have acted very wickedly.’ On this about one or two hundred of the mutinous infantry, the infantry from Meerut having also arrived by this time, ascended the steps, and came into the hall, saying, ‘that unless you, the King, join us, we are all dead men, and we must in that case just do what we can for ourselves’. The King then seated himself in a chair, and the soldiery, officers and all, came forward one by one, bowed their heads before him, asking him to place his hand on them. The King did so, and each withdrew… The tumult and noise was very great, all speaking loudly together.
Captain Robert Tytler of the 38th Native Infantry had been up since dawn. A tall, thick-set officer in his late thirties, he lived with his second wife in the military cantonment north-west of the city, beyond the rocky spine known as the Ridge. Tytler had lost his first wife Isabella to a fatal illness, leaving him to care for two infant boys. A replacement was essential, and in 1848 he had married nineteen-year-old Harriet Earle, ten years his junior. The daughter of a Bengal officer, Harriet was a plain but hardy soul who had spent her early years in India. At the age of eleven she went to live with an aunt in England and never saw her father again: he died shortly before her return in 1846; her mother left India soon after. Harriet’s need for emotional and financial security, therefore, was as great as Tytler’s need for a surrogate mother. But they grew to love each other and, by May 1857, had two boys and a girl of their own, making five children in all. The three eldest were at school in England, leaving Harriet with two infants and another one on the way. Amiable, motherly and eight months pregnant, she was known as the ‘angel of the regiment’ and the subalterns used to beg her ‘to ask their young women to lunch… to give them a better opportunity of carrying on their little flirtations’.
That morning, 11 May, the whole Delhi Brigade* had paraded to hear the general order announcing the execution of Jemadar Issuree Pandy of the 34th. Tytler, fluent in Hindustani, stood in for the sick regimental interpreter. As he read out the order, the men began to hiss and shuffle their feet, ‘showing by their actions their sympathy with the executed sepoy’. Tytler was still fuming when he returned home, telling his wife that he would give his men ‘drill to their heart’s content’. Harriet Tytler added:
The early morning passed as usual, every door being… hermetically sealed to keep out the raging hot wind. Tattees were fixed to the outer doors and watered. We had all had our baths and Marie [her French nanny] and the children had had their breakfast, when my husband and myself sat down to ours. This was about eight o’clock… Just as we were getting through our last course (melons), the door flew open and the tailor rushed in with his hands clasped and in a most excited manner said, ‘Sahib, Sahib, the fanj [army] has come.’
Tytler buckled on his sword and made straight for the adjutant’s house, where he found his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Knyvett, Captain Gardner and the brigade-major. He was told that mutineers were marching from Meerut to Delhi and given orders to take his company, along with Captain Gardner’s, to the White House at the northernmost point of the Ridge, overlooking the new powder magazine, to ensure that no mutineers crossed over from the other side of the Jumna. But the earlier signs of disaffection were repeated as men in both companies seized more cartridges than they were entitled to and marched off with excited cries that their officers were unable to silence.
Lieutenant Edward Vibart of the 54th Native Infantry – ‘Butcher’ to his family – was also in his bungalow when he received word that his regiment had been ordered to march down to the city to deal with some sowars from Meerut who were ‘creating disturbances’. Still just nineteen, the eldest son of a well-regarded cavalry officer,† Vibart was already a company commander on account of the high number of officers absent from his regiment. When he reached the parade-ground he found Colonel Ripley, who had been with the regiment for barely a year, excitedly giving orders to the assembled officers. Vibart’s company and the Grenadiers, under the command of Major Paterson, were sent to the artillery lines to escort two guns to the city, while the rest of the regiment made straight for the Kashmir Gate, the closest of the nine main gates in the city’s outer wall that extended for seven miles and contained up to 160,000 people.
Within the Kashmir Gate was a small fortified enclosure known as the Main Guard that was always garrisoned by a European officer and fifty sepoys: on duty this week was Lieutenant Proctor of the 38th Native Infantry. As the 54th, with its band playing and Ripley at its head, passed through the inner gates of the Main Guard into the open ground in front of St James’s Church, it was confronted by a body of mutinous sowars. ‘Our quarrel is not with you but with your officers,’ they exclaimed, before opening fire on Ripley and the others. Ripley ordered his men to load and return fire, but most shot in the air or at their own officers. In desperation Captain Wallace of the 74th, the field-officer of the day who had taken command of the Main Guard, ordered the 38th to engage the mutineers but they would not, saying that the time had come to avenge themselves on those who had tried ‘to subvert their caste and religion’. After shooting two of the rebels, Colonel Ripley was chased and cut down with swords before the horrified eyes of Wallace and Proctor in the Main Guard. He was then bayoneted by his own men. Four of his officers and the regimental surgeon were also slain, though a further three officers managed to escape.
The two guns and the remaining two companies of the 54th were still some distance off when they heard the distinctive sound of musketry. They quickened their pace and were nearing the Kashmir Gate when they met Captain Wallace galloping in the opposite direction. He implored Paterson and Vibart to hurry, as their fellow officers were being murdered beyond the Main Guard. ‘At this moment,’ recalled Vibart, ‘the body of our unfortunate colonel was carried out, literally hacked to pieces. Such a fearful sight I never beheld. The poor man was still alive, and, though scarcely able to articulate, I distinctly gathered from the few words he gasped out, that we had no chance against the cavalry troopers, as our own men had turned against us.’ Ripley was placed in a carriage and driven back to the cantonment. Vibart wrote:
I now entered the Main Guard, and found everything in confusion. On looking out into the open space in front of the church, a few cavalry troopers in their French-grey uniforms were seen galloping back in the direction of the palace. Lieutenant Wilson [of the Bengal Artillery] brought a gun round to bear on them, but they were out of sight before he had time to fire. As for the men of my own regiment… they had all vanished… At length it was determined to hold the Main Guard, and for this purpose the two guns were placed in position at the gate, which commanded the approach from the palace and swept the open ground in front; some of our sepoys were drawn up in support, whilst others were sent to man the ramparts and bastion, and keep a sharp look-out on every side.
With the men in position, Vibart and some others went through the inner gates to look for survivors. They recovered the corpses of four officers. ‘I shall never forget my feelings that day as I saw our poor fellows being brought in,’ wrote Vibart, ‘their faces distorted with all the agonies of a violent death, and hacked about in every conceivable way. Only a couple of hours previously we had been laughing and chatting together, utterly unconscious to the danger which threatened us.’ But Vibart had little time for such melancholy thoughts because reports now reached the Main Guard that two regiments of native infantry, the 11th and 20th, had also arrived from Meerut and were on their way to attack them.
Vibart later marvelled at the fact that the two companies of the 54th ‘did not, there and then, in combination with the detachment of the 38th… on duty at the Main Guard, openly join in the outbreak, and murder every European in the enclosure’. He attributed their hesitation to commit themselves to the fact that they expected European troops to arrive from Meerut at any moment. Certainly Vibart and the others had no reason to doubt that ‘sooner or later assistance would be forthcoming, could we only hold out long enough’. The European officers’ spirits were soon raised by successive reinforcements. The first to appear were the three officers who had escaped, though Captain Butler was covered in blood and ‘faint from a blow he had received on his head from a large brickbat’. Then, at about one o’ clock, Major Herbert Abbott arrived with one hundred and fifty volunteers from the 74th Native Infantry and two guns. Lastly, and most surprisingly, nearly two hundred men of the 54th returned with their regimental colours, claiming they had been ‘seized with panic in the confusion’ but had since reformed. It was obvious to Vibart, however, that these ‘loyal’ sepoys could not be trusted.
Back at the cantonment, news of the 54th’s treachery had prompted Brigadier Harry Graves, the 53-year-old station commander, to call out his remaining Indian troops. Detachments of the 38th and 74th regiments were sent to occupy the principal roads leading from the city, while the brigadier himself, with a strong detachment and four guns, took up a central position at the Flagstaff Tower on top of the Ridge. All European civilians were told to congregate at the tower because, though small and far from impregnable, Graves thought it offered the best defensive option until help arrived from Meerut.
Among the civilians who gathered at the tower were Mrs Peile and her young son, the family of Lieutenant Peile of the 38th who was sick and due to set off for England on 15 May. On hearing that Colonel Ripley was ‘lying at the bells of arms, dreadfully wounded’, Mrs Peile and another lady went to see if they could help.
We found him lying on a bed of very rough manufacture [recalled Mrs Peile], and a sergeant’s wife brought us a nice soft rezaie [quilt], which we folded once or twice double, and laid him upon it. This appeared to comfort his wounds, and after we had applied some lavender-water to his temples he seemed much better, and talked to us. He was, of course, in great agony, and begged of his native doctor to give him a dose of opium to deaden his sufferings, and, after some persuasion, the doctor did so. The colonel was then so much better, that he pointed to one frightful wound in his left shoulder, and told us that the men of his own regiment had bayoneted him.
Mrs Peile returned to the Flagstaff Tower at two o’clock, followed by her husband and a doolie containing the stricken colonel. Mrs Peile wrote:
By this time the people at the Flagstaff were in a great state of alarm, having heard that the King of Delhi, instead of aiding us, was sending ladders for the sepoys to scale the walls of the Magazine, and numbers of gentlemen and merchants from the city, assisted by several ladies, were bringing in boxes upon boxes of powder, caps and bullets, which were all being lodged at the top of the Tower. Our alarm was further intensified when a cart drawn by bullocks shortly after arrived at the Flagstaff, which it was whispered contained the bodies of the unfortunate officers, who had been so brutally killed in the city. The cart was covered over with one or two ladies’ dresses, to screen the dead from view; but one of their arms… was hanging over the side of the cart. Some now advised leaving for Kurnaul, a distance of about seventy miles from Delhi; but several ladies present declaimed against going, as their husbands had been absent since the morning.
One of these ladies was Harriet Tytler, who, after much toing and froing, had finally reached the Flagstaff Tower with her French nanny and two young children in the carriage of Mrs de Tessier, the wife of the artillery commander. At one point her four-year-old son, Frank, having overheard the native servants talking, came to her in tears and asked, ‘Mamma, will these naughty sepoys kill my papa and will they kill me too?’ She recalled: ‘He was a very blue-eyed, fair child. I gazed at his little white throat and said to myself, “My poor child, that little throat will be cut ere long, without any power on my part to save you.” It was a dreadful moment, but I pulled myself together and said, “No darling, don’t be frightened. No one will harm you. Stay close to your mother.” ’
An even more tortured soul on the Ridge at this time was Lieutenant Charles Thomason of the Bengal Engineers, still recovering from illness. The 23-year-old son of a former Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, Thomason had recently become engaged to the chaplain’s vivacious daughter, Miss Jennings. When he heard that the rebels were murdering civilians, he made up his mind to ride to the fort to rescue his fiancée. But his brother officers would not let him go, saying: ‘You can never save her. She must have been killed long ago.’ They were right.
As the day wore on, a number of European civilians sought refuge in the Main Guard, including Mr de Gruyther, the deputy collector, and Mrs Forrest and her three daughters, the family of the assistant commissary of ordnance. But there were no means of sending them up to the cantonment and they were ‘forced to remain in the densely crowded enclosure of the Main Guard throughout the scorching heat of the day, without food or sustenance of any kind’. Such an ordeal was infinitely preferable to the fate of many other Europeans. When the Delhi Bank was attacked and plundered around noon, Mr Beresford, the manager, retreated to the roof of one of its outbuildings with his wife and children. Armed only with a sword and a spear, the couple managed to prevent the mob from climbing the staircase. But others scaled the wall and soon put an end to their desperate resistance, though not before the plucky Mrs Beresford had impaled one man on her spear.
The officers at the Main Guard could see ‘dense pillars of smoke’ from the direction of the city and knew that a ‘great destruction of property was going on’. But they were powerless to intervene. The church was plundered before their eyes by an excited mob who smashed the monuments and cut down the bells before departing with the plate, the stools and even the cushions. The adjacent government treasury was also sacked. Most galling of all for Vibart and his fellow officers was their inability to respond to repeated requests for assistance from Lieutenant George Willoughby, commissary of ordnance, who was in charge of the Delhi magazine, the biggest in upper India with a vast store of muskets, field guns, ammunition and powder. Willoughby, a shy, undistinguished man – short and fat with a penchant for side-partings and twin-moustaches – had barricaded the gates of the magazine with the intention of holding out until evening when ‘the European troops would be certain to arrive from Meerut’. His tiny garrison consisted of two veteran officers, Lieutenants Forrest and Raynor – fifty-seven and sixty-one years old respectively – and six other British employees of the Ordnance Department. Together they had placed two 6-pounder guns loaded with double charges of grape inside each gate, in case they were forced, and a further four guns near to the central office. They had also issued muskets to their reluctant Indian assistants, who were already showing signs of insubordination, and laid a powder-train between the main store and a tree in the centre of the yard so that, in extremis, the magazine could be blown up.
At about ten thirty a detachment of palace guards arrived and demanded possession of the magazine in the name of the King. Willoughby ignored them. An hour later, recalled Forrest,
the subadar of the guard on duty at the magazine informed Lieutenant Willoughby and me that the King of Delhi had sent down word to the mutineers that he would without delay send scaling ladders from the palace for the purpose of scaling the walls; and which shortly after arrived. On the ladders being erected against the wall, the whole of our Native establishment deserted us by climbing up the sloped sheds on the inside of the magazine and descending the ladders on the outside. After which the enemy appeared in great numbers on the top of the walls, and on whom we kept up an incessant fire of grape, every round of which told well, as long as a single round remained.
The one-sided battle raged for some time. During a lull in the fighting, Willoughby and Forrest went to the main gate to ask who was commanding the attack. The response was that ‘a son and grandson of the King’s were present, organizing the attack on us; but the men who ascended the scaling ladders and entered the magazine were all sepoys of the 11th and 20th regiments’. Conductor Buckley, assisted only by Lieutenant Forrest, was loading and firing the four guns near the magazine office. Together they fired at least four rounds from each gun, though ‘the enemy were then some hundreds in number, and kept up a continuous fire of musketry on us from within forty or fifty yards’. But these guns were put out of action shortly after three o’clock when, in quick succession, Buckley was hit by a musket ball in the right arm and Forrest by one in the left hand.
It was at this critical moment that Lieutenant Willoughby gave the signal for firing the Magazine. Conductor Scully, who had from the first evinced gallantry by volunteering for this dangerous duty, now coolly and calmly, without hesitation, and yet without confusion, set fire to the several trains. In an instant and with an explosion that shook the city and was heard distinctly in Meerut, the Magazine blew up. The wall was thrown flat upon the ground, and it is said that some hundreds of the enemy were buried under the ruins or blown into the air.
One rebel source estimated that twenty-five sepoys and up to four hundred onlookers were killed by the massive explosion, with many of their bodies ‘blown far into the city’. The European fatalities included Scully and the pair who had been manning the guns covering the gates, Sergeant Edwards and Sub-Conductor Crow. But the rest of the tiny garrison somehow survived and, singed and bloody, reached the Main Guard, where they were given a joyous reception by their fellow Europeans.*
About this time, Major Abbott’s detachment was recalled by Brigadier Graves. Convinced that the Main Guard was lost without the sepoys of the 74th, Major Paterson sent Mr de Gruyther to remonstrate with the brigadier. But the guns set off, nevertheless, and were seized en route by a mutinous picket of the 38th which returned them to the Kashmir Gate. ‘On seeing them re-enter the Main Guard without an officer we were all greatly astonished,’ remembered Lieutenant Vibart, ‘and on Major Abbott asking the drivers why they had returned, they gave some evasive reply. Meanwhile several of the 38th Sepoys kept entering the enclosure in parties of threes and fours, and we could observe our men getting very restless and uneasy.’ Abbott, determined to wait no longer, ordered his men to set off for the Ridge with the two guns. The civilians were to accompany them on one of the gun wagons. But less than half of Abbott’s command had passed through the Kashmir Gate when some of the 38th Sepoys closed it and began to fire at the remaining Europeans.* Vibart recorded:
Almost at the first discharge I saw Captain Gordon [of the 74th] fall from his horse; a musket-ball had pierced his body, and he fell without a groan within a few feet of where I was standing. The next moment I saw Miss Forrest hastily dismount from the gun wagon on which she was seated and jump across his prostrate body… Scarcely knowing what I was doing, I made for the ramp which leads from the courtyard to the bastion above. Everyone appeared to be doing the same. Twice I was knocked over as we all frantically rushed up the slope, the bullets whistling past us like hail… Poor Smith and Reveley, both of the 74th, were killed close beside me… Osborn, of my own corps, was shot through the thigh.
The first officers to reach the bastion immediately jumped the 25 feet that separated its embrasures from the ditch below and scrambled up the counterscarp.† The rest were about to follow when, hearing the ‘despairing cries’ of women sheltering in the nearby officers’ quarters, they turned back and found a group of them ‘in a state bordering on distraction’, notably the Misses Forrest and their mother, who had been shot through the shoulder. Leading the terrified ladies to the parapet, the officers tried to make a rope by tying their sword-belts together; but it broke when tested. So some of the officers dropped first so that they could break the fall of those who followed. One by one the ladies jumped. But the last, a fat old lady by the name of Mrs Forster, was too terrified to leap and had to be pushed ‘headlong into the ditch beneath’. For a time the fugitives huddled close to the recessed wall to avoid the bullets from above. Eventually all the mutineers left to loot the treasury and they were free to attempt the steep counterscarp. ‘Again and again,’ noted Vibart, ‘did the ladies almost reach the top, when the earth, crumbling away beneath their feet, sent them rolling back into the ditch. Despair, however, gave us superhuman energy, till at length we all succeeded in gaining the summit.’
Vibart’s group – the last to leave the Main Guard – was composed of five officers, six women and one Indian servant.* As they struggled through a belt of thorny bushes and thick undergrowth in the direction of Metcalfe House, to the north of the city, Mrs Forster was unable to keep up. A combination of her fall into the ditch, a slight bullet wound on her temple and the intense heat had sapped all her energy and, for a time, she was carried by two officers. But her enormous weight made such a task impossible and, having fallen unconscious, she was left on the ground and never seen again. The rest of the group, their clothes in tatters and parched with thirst, eventually reached Metcalfe House where they were hidden in the cellar by Sir Theophilus’s khidmatgar and refreshed with food and beer.
Captains Tytler and Gardner had spent most of the day on picket duty at the White House. On the pretext of sheltering their men from the sun, but really to prevent them from witnessing the disorder in the city, they had ordered the majority to pile arms and rest in the house. But one by one the sepoys had slipped outside to watch the fires and listen to the gunfire. Tytler recalled:
When I went into one of the rooms, I [saw] a native, from his appearance a soldier, haranguing the men of the companies and saying that every power or Government existed its allotted time, and that it was nothing extraordinary that that of the English had come to an end, according to what had been predicted in their native books. Before I could make a prisoner of him the magazine in the city exploded, and then the men of the two companies with a tremendous shout took up their arms and ran off to the city exclaiming, ‘Prithiviraj ki jai!’ or ‘Victory to the Sovereign of the World!’
The two officers ran after them and managed to round up about thirty men from each company, mainly old soldiers who had served with them in Afghanistan. They then marched them up to the Flagstaff Tower, collecting any stray troops along the way. ‘The Brigadier, European officers and civilians were congregated in front of the door facing the road leading to the Cashmere Gate of the city,’ recalled Tytler, ‘from whence they expected momentarily an attack to be made on them by the mutineers in the city; in front of this body of officers, were the only two remaining guns of the Delhi brigade in position, and to their left was a cart containing the mangled remains of the officers murdered in front of the church in the city… The remnants of the native infantry regiments were to the right of the tower, sitting and standing in groups in a most sulky mood, whilst in rear of the tower stood some of the carriages and horses of the officers.’ Inside the tower Tytler found that the women and children ‘had been sent into the narrow confined stair-case leading to the top, which added to their misery and discomfort, from the suffocating heat of the day’. Convinced their position was hopeless, Tytler urged Brigadier Graves to order an immediate retreat to Meerut by a ford on the right of the cantonment. The brigadier was unconvinced, saying they would all be shot down as soon as they left the safety of the tower. ‘My men will never shoot us,’ replied Tytler.
On hearing this a number of the officers present shouted their dissent. ‘For God’s sake don’t listen to Tytler,’ said one. ‘He has been talked over by his men.’
‘Look here gentlemen,’ responded Tytler, ‘it is not for you to say listen or don’t listen to Tytler. We cannot hold our post, therefore it is our duty to form a retreat.’ Tytler then told the brigadier that the remaining men of the 38th were the best in the regiment and would almost certainly cover the retreat.
‘Go and ask your men,’ said the brigadier in a resigned tone, overwhelmed as he was with anxiety, fatigue and the heavy responsibility of protecting the European community.
So Tytler approached the remaining two hundred men of the 38th and asked them whether they would protect the retreat. Most said that they would, but only if he commanded and arranged for the two guns to accompany them. Tytler agreed and went to tell the brigadier, who was swayed, ultimately, by the arrival of Major Paterson and the survivors from the Main Guard. The order to retreat was given and there was an unseemly rush for the carriages. Tytler had had the presence of mind to order up his gharry and into it tumbled his wife and two children, their French maid Marie, and Mrs Gardner and her young son. Like Harriet Tytler, Mrs Gardner was also eight months pregnant. Harriet recalled:
It was a terrible crush, for a carriage only meant for two persons inside to have six. How we all got in I don’t know. Marie and myself sat with our backs to the horses with little Edith on my lap and Frank crouching with terror at my feet, hiding himself in our petticoats, while Mrs Gardner and her boy sat opposite…
Poor Colonel Ripley, on hearing we were all taking refuge, ordered his doolie (litter) bearers to carry him in his bed to where we were… I can never forget his poor death-stricken face, and could realize his feelings of despair at coming to be with his comrades and then being left by them to his sad fate. It was nobody’s fault. There were not enough conveyances as it was to save the lives of all those in the Flag Staff Tower. Those who could get away on horseback or in carriages had a chance of escape. Those who had not almost to a man met their deaths on the way.
The carriages with the women and children went first, followed by the guns and lastly the officers with the remnants of the 38th and 74th regiments. But as the troops, headed by Captain Tytler, reached the cantonment at the bottom of the Ridge they were met by two sepoys of the 38th who had been ‘scorched in a frightful manner’. They were, they said, the sole survivors of the guard from the magazine that had been deliberately blown up by the English. Hearing this, some of the ‘loyal’ sepoys moved off towards their lines; others asked Tytler why he had broken his promise by letting the guns go ahead. Tytler offered to ride to the front of the column and bring back the guns, but the sepoys would not have it. ‘Sir, we cannot follow you,’ explained one of the veterans. ‘The Europeans and natives are two, we fight for you, we spill our blood for you, and you treat us in return by blowing up our brothers with gunpowder. Go, Sir, go, you have been our father and mother, always kind to us, with bahana (subterfuge) we will prevent the cavalry from following you; but we cannot come ourselves.’
In a final attempt to win over the sepoys, Tytler borrowed another officer’s horse and galloped after the guns that had gone down the Karnal road. But when he caught up with them, two miles from the Flagstaff Tower, their drivers ignored his entreaty to halt. ‘Oh no, no halting now,’ one sneered, ‘when we do halt, it shall be in the city of Delhi.’
As a disconsolate Tytler rode back down the crowded road, he came across his wife’s carriage, which, like most of the column, had followed the fast-moving guns instead of crossing the ford towards Meerut. Harriet implored him to stay with them, and for a time he was torn between family and duty. But Mrs Gardner’s pleas for him to find her husband settled the issue. Telling Harriet to hurry on to Karnal, a further 60 miles up the Grand Trunk Road, he headed back to the cantonment. The road now looked like the aftermath of a large fair, ‘carriages, horses, men running and screeching to each other in sad and awful confusion’. At the bridge over the canal that marked the western boundary of the cantonment, Tytler met Captain Gardner, ‘running and walking, quite faint and exhausted’. Tytler could see ‘dense crowds of natives’ pouring into the cantonment from the south and, realizing there was no time to lose, shouted to Gardner to jump up behind him. Together they galloped after the motley procession of Europeans, passing their sickly quartermaster, Lieutenant Holland, whose horse was lame. Holland was later overtaken by mutinous sowars, badly wounded in the back and left for dead.* The European death toll would have been much higher if most of the mutinous sowars had not preferred to loot the houses between the city and the cantonments.
The fugitives faced other hazards, notably Gujar tribesmen and hostile Hindu villagers. Tytler and Gardner had to beat off two attacks by lathi-wielding Gujars before catching up with the carriage containing their families. Transferring the syce to his horse, Tytler drove the gharry while Gardner stood behind it. Another attack by Gujars resulted in the loss of the horse, however, and the syce was put on the roof. But the combined weight proved too much for the tiny carriage and, a mile or two further on, one of its wheels splintered. They continued on foot, the men carrying the bigger children and Marie the youngest, and eventually requisitioned a bullock-drawn government cart at the point of a gun. The cart took them as far as Panipat, where another cart, this time horse-drawn, and a separate carriage were procured.
The two coachmen were suspiciously dressed [remembered Captain Tytler], each armed with a double-barrel gun, swords and pistols, and amused us the whole way with news about [Ambala] having fallen, that the European Artillery guns had been seized by the native troops, and various other fabrications, advising us strongly to leave the road and strike off to the right; when they found this would not answer, they tried to separate our two carriages… by one driving rapidly, and the other very slow; this, however, we soon put a stop to.
They finally reached the post office at Karnal, after an exhausting and nerve-racking journey of more than sixteen hours, at ten in the morning of 12 May. There they met up with a number of other fugitives and, the following day, continued on to Ambala, passing a detachment of the 4th Light Cavalry, who told their cart-men, ‘Drive on, let them go, they have only three days to live.’
The last Europeans to leave the Delhi cantonment were Colonel Knyvett of the 38th and his adjutant, Lieutenant Gambier. They had followed their sepoys back to their lines in an attempt to bring them to order. When this failed, they decided to spend the night at the quarter-guard but were woken at nine by the sound of gunshots: the mutineers were coming in from the city. They left immediately, Gambier pulling his exhausted colonel by the wrist. The following morning, on an island in the Jumna, they met up with the survivors from the Main Guard, one of whom was Gambier’s great friend Lieutenant Proctor. This group had left Metcalfe House with a bag of provisions at dusk on the 11th, narrowly avoiding a band of sepoys on the plain beyond the Najafgarh Canal.
The fugitives now numbered eight men and five women and considered themselves a ‘match’ for any ‘straggling party of mutineers’. But they did not reckon with hostile civilians. After fording the main stream of the Jumna, they were captured and stripped by a howling mob of Gujars, and only the intervention of a yellow-robed fakir, his face covered with paint and ashes, saved them. During their stay with the fakir they managed to bribe a villager to carry a letter in French to Meerut. They were also joined by two sergeant’s wives who had escaped from Delhi with their babies. On Sunday, 17 May, having left the fakir’s house the day before, they were taken to the house of an elderly German-born Jew named Francis Cohen who had been rewarded for some previous service to the government with the zemindaree of several villages, and was ‘native now in all but religion and kindness of heart’. He put the upper storey of his house at the fugitives’ disposal, and produced ‘skirts and petticoats’ for the women and ‘all kinds of native attire’ for the men.
That afternoon, recalled Vibart, having eaten a ‘plentiful repast’ washed down with beer and cognac, ‘we were all sitting round the table, quietly talking over our recent adventures and hairbreadth escapes, and looking forward with light hearts to setting out next day on our journey to Meerut, when all of a sudden a tremendous shout was raised without’. The noise gradually grew louder and more distinct until the fugitives realized with horror what was being shouted, ‘ Badsháh ká fouj! Badsháh Delhi ká fouj aya! (“The King’s troops! The King of Delhi’s troops have come!”)’
And there [wrote Vibart], sure enough, on looking out, we saw some forty troopers, dressed in the French-grey uniform of the mutinous 3rd Cavalry, drawn up in line just outside the walls and demanding admittance. The first thing we called for was to be supplied with arms; the next thing we did was to throw off the clean clothes we had on and jump into our former old ones… In the space of a very few seconds we were once more clad in the filthy garments of the previous day, and stood ready to meet the worst. In the midst of all of this excitement two European officers were observed riding up the street, and as they were followed very quietly a few paces in rear by the troopers themselves we came to the conclusion that they were friends not enemies… I was not long in recognizing both officers to be old friends – Gough and Mackenzie, of the 3rd Cavalry.
Mackenzie later told Vibart that General Hewitt had at first discounted their letter because ‘it was considered hopeless to send a party to succour fugitives who were in such close proximity to Delhi’. But Mackenzie had insisted on making an attempt to save the women and children, and Gough had volunteered to go with him. ‘Amongst the many praiseworthy deeds recorded during the Mutiny,’ wrote Vibart, ‘perhaps few are deserving of more commendation than the self-sacrificing devotion of these two officers.’
The seventeen fugitives finally reached Meerut the following morning and were taken to the Damdammah, where their arrival caused a ‘considerable sensation’. Gambier wrote: ‘There was something affecting in seeing ladies suffering such hardships. Mrs Forrest, with her painful wound, and others of them unable to walk, with scorched arms, and faces peeling from the sun, torn clothes and shoeless feet, presented a sufficiently pitiable spectacle. All around us looked so dazzlingly clean, that we hung our heads like convicts.’ But none was more downcast than Mrs Fraser, who had just been informed of the death of her husband.*
Lieutenant Forrest, on the other hand, had reached safety with all his family. He and the other two survivors from the Delhi magazine, Lieutenant Raynor and Conductor Buckley, became the first Indian mutiny recipients of the recently instituted Victoria Cross.† Promoted captain, Forrest was killed in action at Dehra Dun in 1859.
The Indians in the greatest peril in Delhi on 11 May were Christian converts and government officials. Among those murdered on sight was Kalla Saheb, the deputy collector, whose body was seen with his son’s in front of the Treasury. Others fled, including the kotwal and his deputy, while the more resourceful switched allegiance. Mainodin Hassan Khan, thanadar of Pahargunge, was on official business at Hutchinson’s cutcherry when the mutineers reached Delhi. For a time his conduct was exemplary: he located the kotwal and gave him Hutchinson’s order to close all the city gates; he then returned to his police station outside the city, where he met Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, Hutchinson’s deputy, and helped him to escape.
Realizing that British authority in Delhi was at an end, Mainodin changed from his uniform into Indian dress and headed for the Red Fort, in his words, to ‘ask for an interview with the King, in hopes that I might get some appointment to give me influence to stop the butchery of Europeans, and ensure the protection of my own family’. En route he noticed that the kotwali had been sacked and that all the shops were closed. ‘On every side the scum of the population was hurrying to and fro,’ he wrote, ‘laden with the plunder of European houses.’ The Lahore Gate of the fort was guarded by a line of 38th Sepoys ‘ready for action’. But they ignored him, and he entered the fort on foot, finding it deserted. He eventually located a senior royal official and gained admittance to the King’s apartments.
Prostrating himself before Bahadur Shah, Mainodin stated that his object in seeking an audience was to put an end to the plunder and butchery, particularly that of European and Christian women and children. ‘I am helpless,’ responded the King, ‘all my attendants have lost their heads or fled. I remain here alone. I have no forces to obey my orders: what can I do?’
Mainodin replied that if he was appointed kotwal in the King’s name, he would do his best to restore order.
‘My son,’ said the King, ‘this duty I will expect from you; you have come to me in a moment of difficulty and danger; do whatever seemeth good to you: I command you.’
Mainodin then asked if he could have the services of two of the King’s chobdars to give him more authority to stop the slaughter. He also suggested sending one of the royal princes through the city to order the shops to open. The King seemed to approve, but wanted to check with his hakim. So Ahsanullah Khan was sent for and Mainodin repeated his proposal. ‘What necessity is there for chobdars to accompany you?’ asked Ahsanullah, ‘the bagheelog (mutineers) will never abandon the slaughter of Christians. If they are interfered with, yet worse things may happen. When satiated with the blood of Christians, they will direct their attention to us and to our property. Let us take care of ourselves.’
Mainodin replied: ‘Hakimjee, your judgement is not good. The massacre of innocent women and children is not a good work in the eyes of the Most High God. When this insurrection is suppressed, and the English power re-established, the saving of these lives will stand you in good stead. Even if you incline to the opinion that the English power is gone, these lives you have saved will redound to your glory and honour.’ Mainodin added that in his opinion the insurrection would continue ‘only a short while’.
Ahsanullah did not respond and seemed lost in thought. But the King had been swayed by Mainodin’s argument and ordered his chobdars to go with him.
Mainodin made straight for the Dariagunge district and was horrified to find rebels still burning bungalows and killing women and children. ‘I and the chobdars loudly proclaimed the orders of the King,’ he recalled. ‘Our interference was so far effectual, that the lives of some dozen persons were spared. They were sent to the Palace, and confined in the chota kasa apartments, and orders were given to feed them.’ Mainodin claimed to have saved another nineteen Christian converts by confining them in the kotwali and sending them out of the city when it was dark.
By the morning of 12 May, thanks to the intervention of Mainodin and others, almost fifty Europeans and Eurasians, mainly women and children,* had been saved from certain death and were confined in a single dark room in the bowels of the fort. ‘We were very much crowded together,’ recorded Mrs Aldwell, the Eurasian wife of a government pensioner, ‘and in consequence of the sepoys, and every one who took a fancy to do so, coming and frightening the children, we were obliged frequently to close the one door that we had, which then left us without light and air.’
Most of the sources seem to agree that Bahadur Shah was neither aware of the plot to mutiny nor particularly enthusiastic when presented with the fait accompli. He gives the impression of a frightened man, overwhelmed by events and trying desperately to keep in with both the rebels and the British. One of the most reliable Indian accounts of what went on in the city and palace after the rising was compiled by Munshi Jiwan Lal,* the administrator of the King’s Company pensions and a trusted conduit between him and Simon Fraser. Late on 11 May, according to Jiwan Lal, two subedars ‘formally tendered’ the services of the rebel soldiery to the King, who directed them ‘to take their orders from Hakim Ahsanullah Khan’. Jiwan continued:
Ahsanullah looked much perplexed what reply to give. He looked upon the outbreak as a passing thunder-cloud too black to last long. His reply was: ‘You have been long accustomed under the English rule to regular pay. The King has no treasury. How can he pay you?’ The officers replied: ‘We will bring the revenue of the whole Empire to your treasury.’ Hakim Ahsanullah then called for a return of the troops who had mutinied… [Later] Ahsanullah sought a private audience of the King, and on his advice a camel sowar was sent off with a letter to the Lieutenant-Governor [of the North-Western Provinces] at Agra. From time to time more troops arrived. The Court of the Palace became a scene of the wildest confusion, quarreling, and disputes. With a view to introduce discipline among the troops orders were issued by Ahsanullah Khan directing the different Princes to assume command of the several regiments.
Ahsanullah’s version of events is that it was the King who initiated the letter to John Colvin, the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, informing him of the arrival of the mutineers, his ‘inability to take any measures against them, and begging for help in the shape of European troops’.
The following day, wrote Jiwan Lal, the mutinous officers increased the pressure on the King by presenting him with nazirs and describing themselves as ‘faithful soldiers awaiting his orders’. This prompted Ahsanullah to warn the King ‘that no dependence could be placed on them’ and that as ‘soon as a sufficient number had been gathered together there would be a general plunder of the city’. That afternoon the palace ‘was thronged by a turbulent mob of soldiers, calling out that all the grain-shops were closed and the King’s loyal servants were starving’. Yielding to their demands ‘to personally allay the fears of the citizens’ by appearing in public, the King passed through the streets on an elephant and ordered the shops to be reopened. But most shopkeepers ignored this directive and the complaints continued. ‘Throughout this eventful day,’ noted Jiwan, ‘[the King] was distraught, perplexed and cowed at finding himself in a position which made him the mere puppet of those who had formerly been only too glad humbly to obey his orders, but who now, taking advantage of the spirit of insubordination which was rife in all classes of the city… were not ashamed to mock and humiliate him.’
The rebel officers were the real power in Delhi. They had already forced the King to write letters to the Rajas of Patiala, Jajjar, Bulbugarh, Bahadurgarh and Ellore, requesting them ‘to march at once upon Delhi with all their forces to join the King’s army, and to repel any attack on the city by the English’. Now, according to Mainodin Khan, they persuaded him to send perwanahs to other regiments of the Company army, ‘promising monthly salaries of thirty rupees to infantry soldiers and fifty to cavalry, if they would join the king’s army’. Mainodin is probably guilty of exaggeration because the famous ‘Delhi Proclamation’, issued by the rebels at this time, offered the more realistic sum of 10 rupees a month to a foot soldier and 30 to a sowar.
A chilling example of Bahadur Shah’s powerlessness was given on 16 May when the rebel soldiers accused the King and his advisers of ‘saving the lives of European ladies and gentlemen and concealing them in the Fort, and through them communicating with the Europeans at Meerut’. They had seized an incriminating letter that, they claimed, had been signed by both Ahsanullah Khan and Mahbub Ali Khan. Both vehemently denied involvement, but the mutineers would be satisfied only by the immediate execution of the European and Eurasian prisoners. According to Mainodin, who had been given command of the 38th Native Infantry,* the prisoners were ‘treacherously’ handed over by Ahsanullah Khan, who feared for his own life. Bahadur Shah tried to intervene by asking the rebel soldiers ‘to consult their religious advisors to see if there were any authority for the slaughter of helpless men, women, and children’. He was ignored. At nine in the morning a party of sepoys and some of the King’s servants arrived at the makeshift prison to collect the Christians. Only the five ‘Muslim’ prisoners – an old Indian woman who had been arrested for giving food and water to some Christians, and Mrs Aldwell and her three children who had managed to persuade the guards that they were Muslims from Kashmir – were allowed to remain. Mrs Aldwell recalled what happened next:
The women and children began crying, saying they knew they were going to be murdered; but the Mahomedans swore on the Koran and the Hindus on the Jumna, that such was not the case; that they wanted to give them a better residence… On this they went out, and were counted… a rope was thrown round to encircle the whole group, the same as prisoners are usually kept together when on the move; and in this manner they were taken out of my sight, and, as I heard, brought under the pipal tree by the small reservoir in the courtyard, and there murdered with swords by the King’s private servants. None of the sepoys took part in killing them.
Mainodin’s version is slightly different. ‘A sowar first fired a carbine,’ he recalled, ‘then all were mercilessly massacred, to the horror of the whole city. In other parts of the city, fugitives were found and [killed] at the order of native officers in command of detached parties.’
As news of the Meerut and Delhi atrocities spread to other areas of British India, it caused panic and consternation – nowhere more so than at Agra, the capital of the North-Western Provinces.