* Ahsanullah Khan went even further than Jat Mall by revealing that men of the 38th Native Infantry had told him that ‘they had leagued with the troops at Meerut’ before the mutiny, and that the latter had ‘corresponded with the troops in all other places, so that from every cantonment troops would arrive at Delhi’. Even after the outbreak, said Ahsanullah, ‘letters were received at Delhi from which it was evident that [sepoys all over India] had beforehand made common cause among themselves’. Later the mutinous officers at Delhi wrote – and got the King to write – to many more regiments, inviting them to join the rebellion. (See additional evidence of Ahsanullah Khan, PP, HC, 1859, XVIII, 268.)

† He may well have been Charles Todd, the assistant in charge of the Delhi telegraph office. Yet Todd is not supposed to have left the office to check the line across the Jumna until 8 a.m. See Prologue.