Empire: World History - 323. Indian Uprising 1857: The Rebels March On Delhi (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

How did the mutiny amongst sepoys –Indian soldiers– turn into a national crisis? What ultimatum did the rebels give the Mughal emperor when they reached the Red Fort in Delhi? Why did the British fail to see what was coming?  In Episode 2 of the series, William and Anita discuss how the rebel sepoys travelled along the Bridge of Boats to take the rebellion to Delhi. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com  For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Editor: Bruno Di Castri Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Durhampool. Today we are following the moment that the Indian Mutiny of 1857 erupts in Delhi. We left you. Mirat had already risen. British authority is crumbling.

A column of rebels sepoys with those from the surrounding countryside joining in, following them from behind, are racing towards the capital across the bridge of boats. The fate of India stands in the balance. Are the rebels going to succeed and get rid of the British or are the British going to retain their authority? Prisoners are being freed. British families are being attacked

and the sepoys storm. the Red Fort, demanding the blessings of the Emperor. And what of the Emperor? You know, seeing that storm of smoke and dust converging upon the place where he sits, he's a man notorious for his indecision, but he has to decide right here, right now, who is he going to back? Who is he going to back? The rebels or those who stand against them?

And it is a decision that is not only going to affect the future of the British in India, but the very basis of his right. to roar. You may remember that some sympathetic officers in the Indian regiments had told the British that this uprising was about to break out, that there was about to be a mutiny, and that the idiotic commanders just ignored it and went off to their regimental dinner. And just as the sepoys had predicted, the evening of May the 10th saw an astonishing flare-up of violence. While many of the British officers were preparing to attend the evening church service, the Indian troops, primarily from the 3rd cavalry and the 11th native infantry,

rose up in open revolt. There was a huge commotion in the bazaars. They went straight to the jail in Myrout and they released the imprisoned and shackled sepoys who'd refused to bite the bullet. This was the first decisive action, breaking into regimental jail and releasing imprisoned comrades, along with around 1,000 other ordinary common criminals. From that moment, the violence and the arson began. The sepoys and the newly free prisoners rampaged through the contunement, burning down bungalows.

They attacked and killed British officers and civilians, including women and children. And they destroyed government buildings and anything else associated with the British. And what was extraordinary was that the British troops who were there, there was an entire regiment of them, did nothing. They were incredibly slow to react and very poorly coordinated. and they focused on guarding their own barracks rather than actively pursuing the mutineers.

So overnight, the rebels head to Delhi to the capital. They're only 60 miles away. They know that if they can get there before the alarm has been raised, they can set fire to the tender, which has been building up in the Mughal capital. So these guys arrive in Delhi just before dawn, and it's them that Zaffa sees from his little oratory as he's looking out over. the river and he sees the first of the rebellious cavalry crossing the bridge of boats. I just to remind you who Zaffer is.

I mean, Zaffir is the king sitting in Delhi. He's in his 80s. He's an East Threat. He's more comfortable in a poetry recital than he is on any kind of battlefield. And we have this account from a young attendant who talks about what Zuffer does. Zuffer tells him to send an express camel messenger to find out what's going on. What is this fire all about? Who's kicking up this rising dust?

He also at the same time summons his prime minister, Hakeem Asunullah Khan, and Captain Douglas, who is the commandant of the palace guards. Now, this is a man that the British have put in charge, if you like, of being responsible for security in the palace. He's answerable to the resident there. But before they can even get back, or before they do get back, it's the messenger who comes back. And he's seen with his own eyes what.

has gone on. He rode as fast as the bastion of Salimga, which is a few thousand yards away, and from there he could clearly see that it was Indian cavalrymen in their company uniforms still, who are clattering across the bridge of boats with their swords drawn. Now, these are the men who'd already looted and burned the tollhouse on the east bank of the river. Some of the servants of the British officials, whom they happened to meet on the way, had been hacked to death as they passed. And the messenger, who is breathless and in a panic, because this is never something you expect to see, says that early morning bathers are now running away, sort of naked or half naked in panic from the guards. They're trying to get out of, you know, that vicinity of violence

and get into the city through the Calcutta Gate just to the north of the palace where Zuffer is. And Zuffer then gives the order that the gates of the city and the fort should be closed because worried about being overrun, worried what this means, worried who's coming in. And if it's not too late, he orders that the bridge should also be broken. Now, as the messenger is reporting this to Zaffir, a group of 20 covermen trot up calmly to the strand separating the palace from the river. This was an area of sand. And traditionally, in the Mughal Empire, anyone could go there and make a petition to the emperor. This was always the tradition from the time of Shah Jahan when the palace was first built.

And he has this octagonal audience chamber where anyone can go and talk to the emperor and at the right time give their petitions. So these guys just go straight up to him. They've got swords drawn, others have got pistol and carbines in their hands, and they're coming from the direction of the bridge. And in the distance, Zuffer can see behind them this crowd of convicts from the mirror at jail, along with some Gujar tribesmen that they've picked up overnight, who are these sort of nomads who are always involved in any violence in the Delhi region at this period. And they halt under this, the gilt dome and the latticework screens of this audience chamber

called the Saman Burj. and they're right down on the sand below and he's up in the marble belfry, if you like, looking down onto them. And they begin to call for the emperor. And according to Zuffer's own record of the event, and we have that, it survives, he said,

they said we have come from Mirut after killing all the Englishmen there because they asked us to bite bullets with our teeth that were coated with the fat of cows and pigs. This has corrupted the faith of Hindus and Muslims alike. At this, Douglas, the commander of the palace, offered to go down and talk to the men. There's a little, you can go down it. I've often done this little spiral staircase from the audience hall down to the sands below,

and you can go down there to this day. But the emperor forbade it, saying that he was unarmed, at the men were murderers and would surely kill him. You've got to understand, you know, from his point of view, this is the world turned upside down, because men in uniform were usually obedient. Men in uniform were usually in control, and these are the men who've drawn their weapons. and are basically overrunning his kingdom. Willie, I mean, there is terror that's spreading like a virus. Absolutely.

And I mean, you're quite right. It is the world turn upside down because not only are these men in uniform who normally obey, they are specifically the enforcers of the British. These are the sepoys who have been the strong arm, the bouncers, if you like, the enforcers of British rule. And when they turn up, normally they're doing what some white officer has told them. which may not be in Zuffer's interest. But now instead, these nominally British servants are going to Zuffer saying they've killed the British

and would he lead them in their uprising? But what's interesting is that even in those very first moments of the uprising, the religious character of it is apparently. The first thing that the sepoys tells Zuffer is that it's all about this cow fat and pig fat that they think is coated on the bullies. we know now that in fact the British have changed the recipe and there's no cow or pig fat in those cartridges or on it but they are convinced that this is part of a wider conspiracy

to take away their caste, destroy their faith and convert them all to Christianity and you see that in the next half an hour of the uprising but these sort of men who have their swords drawn and who are saying that they're on a religious crusade if you like I mean what do they do to their own people because there are people who have crossed the Rubicon, if you like. There are Indians who have converted to Christianity.

There are also some Brits, as you talked about in the previous or people of mixed heritage, who have converted to Islam. So what do they do with this sort of porridge culture that they must come across? Of all different skin colours. This chutnified culture, as Southern Rushdie calls it, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's really the crucial way that we can understand what's actually going on. because quite a lot of the historiography, the explanation of what's going on,

has been written by economic or Marxist historians, and they're always talking about how the British have taxed people. And, you know, there's a wide variety of things that people resent about British rule. But if you look at what happens in those first minutes in the uprising in Delhi, you get a very clean litmus test of what it's actually about. And we saw that that sepoi, who came under the audience hall, to ask Zuffer to help them. He says it's all about religion.

It's all about the fact that they've been asked to bite these pig fat and cow fat cartridges which are going to take away their Durham, their Dharma and their din, their faith. And then literally in the first 10 minutes of those guys riding into Delhi and beginning to create mayhem, you see exactly what it's about. Because there's a very famous character called Dr. Chimonlau, who has been converted to Christianity. And this was a big shock because normally, commonly people did not convert to Christianity in this period. The Reverend Jennings, who will hear more of in a minute, had converted Chimunal to Christianity.

Who was a Hindu? I mean, yeah, the name suggests that he was a Hindu. So losing caste for a Hindu is the biggest deal of all. And there'd been a great deal about people who filled the streets to watch this convert, make this ceremony, and there were kind of lots of mutters in the crowds. And Zuffer at that point had carried on employing him. Anyway, on this particular fatal morning of the 11th of May 1857, Chimun Lal has been attending to his patients in the hospital in Daria Gunge. And these first cavalrymen that we saw crossing the bridge of boats ride through the Rajgut Gate and he is cut down.

He's literally the first victim inside the city and he's not a Brit. He is an Indian. He was born a Hindu but the fact is he's converted to Christianity. And this is all seen through the prism of people that want to resist Christianity being enforced upon them. On the other side, you've got characters like this extraordinary one, Mrs. Oldwell. Now, Mrs. Aldwell does not sound like a particularly Indian name, really, does it? But she manages to save herself because of her knowledge of Islamic culture. And tell us about what she does. So Mrs. Oldwell is, in fact, an Anglo-Indian Christian. Her mom is Hindu. Her father is Mr.

Oldwell, presumably. She is about to be killed when she makes the Muslim profession of faith for Kalima. and the Muslim soldiers, accept that she's a Muslim and leave her. And then there's actually company soldiers who've taken on Islam. There's one guy called Abdullah Beg, who, despite his name, is a Brit. And he is one of the most interesting characters in the Delhi uprising. And I got very intrigued by him because he is a Brit convert to Islam who goes over to the rebels. And on the arrival that morning of May the 11th of the mutineers, he immediately identifies himself with them and becomes a leader and advisor.

and is seen throughout the uprising, and there are many accounts of what he's up to, this tall, sturdy-looking man with a fair face, extremely sunburnt, rather sort of butch, sort of gym-toned guy, is manning one of the artillery bastions on the Red Fort firing at what will be a besieging force of Brits. So that's one aspect of it. One is that it's clearly a religious thing. It isn't just that they mind British rule per se, It isn't just that they mind being taxed and looted and having all the other things that colonialism does to a conquered people.

But what's actually caused them to revolt is the threat to their religion. And we see that very clearly. But what we also see, and this is really interesting, is a class divide in Delhi. Well, I was going to talk about that a little bit because, you know, one thing that the specified attacks on people who've converted would suggest is that the local populace is on the sides of the uprising. and that they're informing that guy lives in that house, that guy lives in that house, because people riding from miles away wouldn't know a convert from a cockatoo necessarily. But that is not the case that basically everybody is on the side of the mutineers because it fractures along class lines.

So you've got the really enthusiastic insurgents who are the workmen, the lower middle class, if you like, and particularly these words of talking about jihad are stirring up that part of the population, that this is an affront and it's an insult to our religion. Punjabi Muslim manufacturing, merchant classes have actually long supported the Mujahideen movement. You know, it's part of their belief, you know, their fight for their religion. It's a holy duty to do that. And these are the people who kind of fall in behind the sepoys who have their swords drawn and who are screaming at Zuffer.

Now you need to become the leader of this movement. But you also have, you know, they're not a homogenous group in Delhi. You've had people who are of different faiths living cheek by jowl for generations. So you also have the Delhi Toffs who are Hindu and Muslim. So those with money and means who are Muslim, they're not on the side of the uprising. They've got lots to lose these guys. A lot of, yeah, everything, you know, it's sort of, I'm all right. You know, what are you doing?

You're completely ruining everything for the rest of us. And you've got this division of people who say that they are law-abiding. They're really angry at this chaos that is about to be visited upon them. And there's a really lovely bit of first-person account from a man called Abdul Latif, who is a nobleman. I mean, that's the best way of describing him. You know, somebody who has had generations of privilege behind him. And he says, look, that the teachings of all religions were ignored and violated. Even the poor women and children were not spared.

The elite and the respected gentry of the city were appalled. all at the actions. And he's talking about the insurgent sepoys. And were seen pleading with them. Ah, he says, an entire world was destroyed. And as a result of these sins, this city was struck down by the evil eye. Well, the biggest toff of all, certainly in his own eyes, is of course our friend, the poet, Garlib. And Garlib, you know, loves a good Mushaira, a poetry reading.

He loves a party. he's not going to back all these guys turning up from the Muirut jail and a bunch of Gujar nomads looting the British cantoomans. And he is very put out by this. He says, swarming through the open gates of Delhi, the intoxicated horsemen and rough foot soldiers ravished the city. Woe for the fair ladies of delicate form with radiance, faces as the moon and bodies gleaming like newly mined silver.

As we know, Garliv is rather one for the women. and so he's very much taking their side on this. And as far as he's concerned, and he's very clear about this, this is the rabble of the lower classes rising up and destroying the order, which suits him very nicely. He's very happy with the order. He doesn't love the British, but he's quite intrigued by things like the telegraph and their technology.

And his main worries that this is all going to fall apart. And he says, noblemen and great scholars have now fallen from power, he wrote, and nameless men with neither name nor degree, nor jewels nor gold now have prestige and unlimited riches. So he sees it as a revolution, which is not what he's after at all. I mean, it does actually feel a little bit like a Russian revolution situation where you have sort of the masses that have nots joining in with an uprising and the halves just saying, hang on a minute, this is not okay,

and this is going to be very, very bad for us in the long run. But you also need to understand, it be useful to understand how quickly this is all unraveling. So we're really, you know, only up to the late morning of the 11th of May. So if you imagine sort of the 10th of May is the starting point of this, the morning of the 11th of May, 1857, you start having a convergence on the Red Fort in Delhi. So Douglas, who's the commandant of the palace guard, you know, mentioned him before, where Zuffer sort of summons him and, you know, his own messenger comes back before Douglas even manages to get his boots on. You also have the British resident, Simon Fraser, and you have the Reverend Jennings,

who is the vicar in Delhi who can. inverted the first man to fall, they all take refuge inside the Lahore Gate of the Red Fort and they ask for help from the palace staff. Now this is, you know, not hard to understand. They've worked with these people. They know them by name. They possibly know their families by name. You know, they've been close. So it's not unusual for them to be asking, you know, people that they've known very well to help them and hide them. This is though what an eyewitness says about the reaction they get to their pleading for help and to save them from this violence. The will to obey was wanting, writes the eyewitness.

The king's household had become rebellious, refusing to obey. Fraser remained for some time awaiting the Balkis, and Barquis just so, you know, are sort of like palaequins that you sit in and they have curtains that might hide you. But seeing that no attention was likely to be paid his orders, he turned away, as if to enter Captain Douglas's home, pressed by the crowd, he ordered them to stand off. The gateway was guarded by a company of infantrymen, and he now ordered them to load and close the gate, but they refused.

Mr. Fraser then remonstrated with the men for their behaviour. They remained silent. And by this time, so imagine this is a man who is used to having his orders obeyed without question. It is very, very clear that the silence is ominous, exactly. It is just imminent, imminent threat. So a great crowd, and they find themselves surrounded by a great crowd of men and boys. Mr Fraser tries to get into Captain Douglas's quarters but he just about manages to get to the foot of the stairs

and a palace official, one of the men who until two days ago would have listened and doffed his cap to him takes out his sword and rushes at him with the blade. Yeah, he inflicts a deep and mortal wound on the right side of his neck. Fraser falls down and all the others rush at him and cut them with their swords over his head, his face and his chest until he's dead. And at this point, of course, Captain Douglas and the Reverend Jennings run up to their apartments, block the doors, but they're too late. The crowd rushes in, attacks them with swords and murders them, plus Jennings' two daughters.

So there's a terrible bloodshed. By the middle of the morning, the three most important Brits are dead. And the only senior official who's left alive is our friend Theo Metcalfe, who we were talking about in the last episode, who's this young gad about town and this gossip. And he's always been rather just a sort of hopeless student disappointment to his parents, but he hasn't been a sort of bad character. But what we see in the next episodes is Theo Metcalf turn into a sort of brutal avenging angel for this violence that's taking place now. Now he survives because as he's walking through the streets of Delhi,

someone drops a brick on his head and he's knocked unconscious and falls into a gutter. And he, therefore, misses all this violence. And while everyone's combing the streets, looking for Brits, Theo is out cold in the gutter and is ignored by everybody. I think they think he's dead. And then he actually wakes up in darkness, which, you know, has saved his life. He wakes up in darkness, finds the streets empty, and he manages to creep to a friend's house,

get into disguise as a stable boy. And the following day, he creeps out of Delhi, dressed in Indian clothes. eventually makes it to safety. But this is what's going on. There's very few people from the top of the British establishment who are left alive even by mid-morning. Yeah, I mean, Theo Metcalfe is endlessly fascinating to me. So, I mean, we first became obsessed with him

because he's the person who's sending Queen Victoria the gossip about the Coenol Diamond, you know, utterly made up nonsense. He doesn't really take his job very seriously. He will, as William has hinted, become a really central figure in this story. But I was really interested, Willie, in the fact that he was quite a depressive at heart as well. And he sort of feels this loss of control coming, that the Brits are going to lose control of India.

I think it's just even weeks before the uprising even starts that one of his mates is going back to England and he says, you're lucky because you're going to miss what comes next. So he's got this feeling in his water that things are spinning out of control. He feels that particularly because I think his wife has just died. in a horrible way with some terrible fever, hallucinating and shrieking. It's terrible,

so he's had his whole life torn up just before this anyway. And then on May the 11th, not only does he have to turn into his guys and creep out of the city where he was the magistrate, a very senior official. So he only just survives in his house

is burnt down. Anyway, we'll see a lot more of him in the episodes to come because he remains an important character. Yeah. But there's also very good records for some of the main, sort of, you know, ordinary people in the streets of Delhi.

And one of my favorite is this editor of the Delhi-Odu Akbar, which is the leading newspaper. And this is Mohamed Baka, who is the father of one of the most famous Odu poets, a guy called Azad. And for Muhammad Baca, you know, contrary to all the gloom of the Brits, this is a liberation. He's a pious Muslim. He's seen the Muslims pushed into a corner by the Brits.

And he writes an editorial for the next edition of the newspaper, which, you know, describes this upright. as being a place of miracles. He says, some people swear that when the Turk troopers came here, there were female camels ahead of them, on which rode green-robed riders, and then they vanished instantly from sight. In other words, they're going to be led by angels

or mysterious figures from Muslim mythology. Their arrogance has brought them divine retribution, he writes about the English. As the Holy Quran says, God does not love the arrogant ones. God has given the Christian such a body blow that within a short time this carnage has utterly destroyed them. So, I mean, it's not just the editor who's deeply excited by this,

that it is, you know, sort of providence that this uprising is happening. But his son is also really energized by this. He's a young man, 27 years old. And Bukh's son is Muhammad Hussein. But he will not be known by that name. Later, he's going to become a very, very famous poet, Azad. And the second edition of the paper to be published after the arrival of the sepoys in Delhi contains Azad's first ever published poem

and I'm going to read a bit to you because it's interesting. It's called a history of instructive reversals and this is a guzzle and it begins with a set of rhetorical questions almost like a catechism if you like. You know, where now was the Empire of Alexander? Where is the realm of Solomon? And then it moves on to the fate of the Christians in India

whose days are numbered in his mind. So this is what he says. World seizing, world bestowing, the possessors of skill and wisdom, the possessors of splendour and glory, the possesses of a mighty army. But what use was that? Against the sword of the Lord of Fury. All their wisdom couldn't save them. Their schemes became useless. Their knowledge and science availed them nothing. The telangas of the East have killed them all. Let's take a break and see what happens in the palace next, the crucial events of the afternoon of the 11th of May 1857. Welcome back. Now, towards the early afternoon, around three o'clock, the situation, of course,

is getting tenser, unbearably tense, and sepoys are gathering in the palace, and they are getting restless, because what next? You know, they've killed all the Brits they can get their hands on, they've killed every Christian convert, they can get their hands on, now what? So they collect around Zuffa's private apartments. Remember, he sort of sealed himself off saying, I don't, I'm not going to take any kind of petitions from you, because you guys, going to kill me, you're all armed and you're all mad. But they surround him. They kind of give him no choice. And they're quite shocked because they clearly expected Zuffer to to shower them in gold for coming and liberating him. And, you know, they're throwing themselves at his feet

saying, we are here to serve you Zuffer and he's not even opening the door to them. And I think, again, there's a class thing going on here in that everyone in Delhi knows how to behave in front of the emperor. They remove their shoes, they bow down, they do all the stuff. But these kind of just sort of stride in, some of them even ride in on their horses. And they follow none of the courtly etiquette. And they say, come on, King, do your thing. Come and support us. And Zuffers are appalled by these ruffians turning up. You know, they're not even local boys. It's not like they're from Delhi. The East Indy Company recruits from Eastern UP, which is in the eyes of, you know, sophisticated people of Delhi is like, you know,

ruffians. They're ruffians. Absolutely. Hoodlums. Exactly. Yeah. It's like getting sort of, you know, sort of, you know, sort of, yeah, importing the dock workers in in London at that time and putting them in Knightsbridge is what it feels like. Exactly that. So they're there and they're demanding an audience and they're perplexed that he's not just coming out saying, you know, look, listen, you match, we've come to fight for our religion and we're here to pay our respects to you. What's the problem? And he's not still having it. So he hears noises.

He comes out. He stands at the door of the hall of special audience and he tells his attendance to tell the troops to shut up. stop being so noisy. And he calls his... He said, I did not call for you. Yes. You have acted very wickedly. Yes.

And on this, about 200 of these infantry, send the steps, again, but they're not allowed to do this, with all their shoes on, their boots, muddy boots. And they just say to him, unless you, O King, join us, we are all dead men. They know that everything hangs on this. And we must, in that case, just do what we can for ourselves. But you know what, Zaffir answers them back in kind. So they're there arguing with him. It's basically an argy-bargy with a king, you know, the most common of the commonest.

So Zuffer just says to the seapho's, look, I've got nothing for you. And this is a quote. I have neither troops, magazine, nor treasury. I am not in a condition to join anyone. And they come back with only, all right, give us your blessing. We'll provide everything else. And there is a long pause while the entire weight of the world sits on Zuffer's shoulders. What is he going to do?

And he's known, Willie, as being notoriously indecisive. He is. So this is bad for him. And this is a crucial moment. Everything hangs on this moment. His decision at this moment. You can't, you know, you can't not make a decision. These guys are in front of him.

The Brits are all dead. Some of them were his friends. Captain Douglas was the guy that was marching him around every day. And one nobleman, Abdel Latif, says, the king was like a king on the chessboard after the checkmate. There's nothing he can do. And so he decides to just go for it. He hasn't got much to lose.

He knows that the Brits are planning to abolish his monarchy or at least get him out of the red fort. They want to shove him into a palace near where I live in the far south of Delhi, a place called Zuffamahel, which is a place I love going for walks, very close to here. They want to throw him out to there, get him out of the main palace. And he takes the decision that although these guys are ruffians and although they're not his natural kind of guys,

he's got no option but to support them. So he sits himself down in a chair and all the soldiers come forward one by one, and bow their heads before him, asking him to place his hand on them. And the king does so, and each one withdraws. And this is a crucial moment. He's given his blessing to the mutiny. And that is what it is at the moment. It is just a mutiny.

One of the great sort of historiographical chestnuts that, you know, is a sort of classic exam question about the uprising is, you know, is it a mutiny? Is it a national war of independence? Is it a revolution? And the answer is it's all those different things. But it definitely starts as a mutiny. It's definitely the truth.

in the British regiments who mutiny and kick the whole thing off. And there are places. We'll come to Lucknow, I think, in the fourth episode. And that is, you know, the whole city rises up. But in Delhi, it doesn't because these are not local guys. They don't know these people. They've all got provincial accents. They don't speak like cultivated Delhi Wallers.

And this is the moment that, contrary to all expectations, the king has blessed this rabble who, turned up in his palace. I mean, that act of putting your hand on somebody's head is a very Indian thing. It's like, you know, may all the blessings of the Lord be upon your head. And it crosses religious divide. So, you know, he's doing that. Barely have they got back off their knees and onto their feet.

And the whole palace, in fact, the whole city is shaken by a colossal explosion. So, I mean, if you were sort of evoking the name of God and suddenly everything is shaking, you might think that the word of God has spoken. And the reason the whole place is shaking down to its foundations is because just half a mile north of the Red Fort, there is a massive arsenal, the largest arsenal of guns and ammunition in the whole of the north of India.

And Theo Metcalf's friend, a very brave man called Lieutenant Willoughby, who is surrounded by seapoys who are trying to get the hands on the weapons. Because, you know, if you're going to rise up, you need everything, all the armaments, can get your hands on. He absolutely doesn't want them to have a single bullet and he blows up the arsenal. And with it, he blows up the people who are sort of besieging the arsenal as well as most of the British defenders who've been fighting so hard. And amazingly, he survives. He somehow manages to sort of dig himself down into it. Yeah. Extraordinary thing. So the people outside are all

killed. Yeah. And he has managed to do this in such a way that he actually survives. though he's deafened for I think for the rest of his life, this enormous explosion does not kill him. Yeah, I mean, he doesn't get killed, but it's only sort of by lunchtime and virtually every other British person within the city walls has been killed. So one of the few still left alive is a British merchant called James Morley. And Morley's interesting. He lived with his family and that of his business partner, William Clark, in the Bazaar Kashmir, Qatar in Daria Ganges in Old Delhi. Now, this area of the city, and it's his bad luck, it's one of the first to rise up. So the family hide themselves at the back of the house while the servants are told

to keep watch and wait and watch the gate in case of trouble. But the mob, when they arrive, they sort of drift off to loot elsewhere to sort of more wealthy areas of the city. And for three hours, they're there sort of hiding, cowering and scared, nothing happens. And no news has reached the family. So Morley says, okay, it might be okay to poke my head out and have a look. Now, these little snippets of information, can I just say how extraordinary it is that we still have them? Some of them were after the event, but also there are archives full of little sort of chits of paper and little scraps,

which people have sort of written on thinking they're their dying words and stuck in their socks or stuck in their hats, which then are amassed. And I mean, a lot of them in the Indian archive, aren't there really, these tantalizing bits? and scraps of history. And this is amazing. Yeah, this is what I based it all on. What was exciting was to find that not only do you have the British horses, such as James Morley, we're about to tell his story,

which he survives to tell this story. And as we'll see, the rest of his family are killed. But we have petitions to the emperor from people who are selling wood or making grilling kebabs, or, you know, really the ordinary people or a courtesan who's captured by the mutineers and raped. And all these people send their... petitions and they have all survived and they're in the National Archives. It's just, it's an amazing thing.

Unlike the rest of India where we have only read the British account, we have really the Victors account in Delhi by a freak thing that the British capture this archive and they keep it with a view to prosecuting anybody that's inside it, anyone that's been, you know, stood up against them. But for this reason, it's preserved and it's sitting in the Indian National Archives and my friend Bruce and I went through all this and we had a wonderful time translating all this stuff and bringing it out for the first time. But let's go back to poor old Morley.

So Morley, who has just poked his nose out, this is what he says. I took a thick stick in my hand. I walked into the street. It was altogether empty. I continued to walk down it without meeting anyone. There was only one old man sitting in a shop, and at length I heard a great noise behind. And looking around, I saw a large crowd rushing into my gateway.

They had also seen me. And some men came rushing down the street. towards me. I immediately ran down the street to my left, running along when two men out of nowhere, another lane, calling out Mar farengico, which means kill the foreigner. They rushed at me. One man had a sword in his hand. The other had a lati. I stopped suddenly. I turned around quickly. I gave the man with the sword a blow over the head, which brought him to the ground. The other man aimed a blow at my head, but I stooped forward and the lati only grazed my shoulder. I swung my stick round. it caught him just below the knee, which made him sit down howling with pain.

So can you get more visceral than that of an experience of a man who thought he was going to die? And he sees, you know, the mob collecting. And so all he can do is just run for his life, he can't take them all on. And he eventually ends up hiding in a shed, used for storing carts, as men who are out to murder him pass by. And then pick up the story from there, Willie, because, I mean, he's there for hours. And he's, of course, terrified because he's seen the... the mob run into his house where his family are hiding. So as evening comes, he creeps out, determined to try and find the fate of his wife and family. And he left this account.

Everywhere things were lying about that had been most wantonly destroyed. Tables have been split in pieces with hatchets and cupboards have been emptied out, and everything strewn on the floor. Jams and jellies were lying in heaps. And there was an overpowering smell from the brandy and wine that had run out of the broken bottles. Every detail is distinctly imprinted in my mind. For that cowardly shrinking from a knowledge of the worst which is common to us all, I lingered in the outer room and kept looking around it at length. I nerved myself and stepped into the next room just before me, pinned to the wall,

was poor Clark's little son with his head hanging down in a black stream of blood trickling down the wall and a large black pool which lay near the feet. And this cruel death must have been done. inflicted before his mother's eyes. I closed my eyes and shuddered, but opened them again upon an even more dreadful sight. Clark and his wife lay side by side, but I will not, I could not describe the scene. I have said that she was far advanced in pregnancy. I heard an explanation going to the bedroom. I saw the old Dobie wringing his hands and crying. I rushed to the door, but I could not enter. I could not face the spectacle. I could not bear to think that I might

see my poor wife as I had just seen poor Mrs. Clark. I just sat down and placed my hands on my knees. It's appalling. So let's talk about a couple of other families as well because I'm completely obsessed with the titlers and I think they are hugely interesting. Likewise, the wagon tribes who are very, very interesting. Were there survivors? What happens to the survivors of all of this? So there's quite a large British population in Delhi. by this stage, by the 1840s, 1850s, there's an entire suburb called the Civil Lines, which are full of bungalows where the British community live. And while the ones who are within the walled city can't get out because the walled city is walled,

and unless they get into disguise and escape, you know, dressed as Indians as Theo Metcalf does, they are stuck and most of them die. There's a handful such as Morley and Theo who survive. But the ones who are up in the civil lines are in a kind of British. dominated area next to the British cantoomond. And the British soldiers don't know what to do. The civilians don't know what to do. And so the word goes out that they've got to gather at a place called the Flagstaff Tower.

And the Flagstaff Tower is this small little sort of miniature castle up on the ridge in Delhi, currently near Delhi University today. And what's left to the British community who have escaped by mid-morning all mass on the Flagstaff Tower. And there's this sort of terrible moment when they can see all the violence taking place in the city. They can see smoke rising from houses that have been set on fire. They can hear screams and bangs and have an idea that all this violence is taking place. But they don't know what to do. And they don't know whether to make a stand or whether to fight or to sort of go inside the Flagstaff Tower. All day they stay there in the heat, too frightened

to move. And as evening comes, everyone makes the decision that they've got to try and escape. up the road, up the Grand Trunk Road, to Carnal. And among those who make it are the titlers, who are this couple who are early photographers and both their accounts have survived. And they get a carriage, load it full of all their stuff and make it up the road. And they're constantly being stopped by the Gujaras, by these nomads. And sometimes they ride past them, sometimes they throw money or something to distract them. And then significantly later, the wagon tribe has followed them. And this is a really interesting story because Wagon Triber is the editor of the Delhi Gazette, which is the British paper of Delhi. It's the counterpart of the Delhi-Odu Akbar and Muhammad Bucco who we saw.

And Wagon Triber is this slightly unpleasant guy who's married one of the Skinner family. And he's always been slightly embarrassed to be married to an Anglo-Indian. He's married to the daughter of James Skinner, the famous founder of Skinner's horse. Skinner's horse, yes. We have many hints in the letters that this is a bit of an embarrassment to him. that he's got this lovely wife who's very beautiful and who's given him lots of children and looked after him. But it's not a good thing in the society of the 1840s or 1850s to be associated with Anglo-Indian or Indian women at all. But it is what saves his knife because they leave later than the titles. And by the time that they're heading up the Canal Road, the road is swarming with these Gujaras and other Dacoits waiting to land on the Brits who are now vulnerable.

and they're often fleeing with all their money. And so it's an absolute free for all. Every sort of two miles there's a roadblock with a bunch of guys with guns trying to stop them. And eventually the Wagon Tribers get stopped too. They try and charge through the first two roadblocks and they make it through. But eventually they get stopped.

And it's at this point that Elizabeth Wagon Triber reveals herself as the daughter of Secunda Saab speaks imperfect. Hindustani and addresses the people who are holding, and they turn out that they're actually tenants of the Skinner family who had lands on the Carnell Road, and they shelter them. And so Wagantribber, who's been snotty and racist all his life to his lovely Anglo-Indian wife, actually ends up having his life saved by the fact that she is Skinner's daughter and part of this old dynasty. But many others do not. And the road out of Delhi is a killing field that night, as many, many British families try to escape and are either raped or looted or just killed for their goods

as they try and flee the city. So it's a very dark day and there's only, you know, we have only these one or two accounts of the survivors. But there's one crucial thing that happens before the city completely empties of the last Brits. Anita, tell us about what's going on in the telegraph office. Okay, so I mean the telegraph office, you cannot overestimate how important the telegraph is at this time. You know, really mentioned a little while earlier that the poet, Ghaly, regarded it as one of the wonders of the world, you know, an absolute miracle of his age. So a man called Todd is in charge of maintaining the telegraph and sometimes during the night something's happened. It's not working. So he sets off up the road towards Merritt to find out

what's wrong and find whether there's a break in the wire that he has to fix. And sometime during the night, because he won't survive to tell us anything about this, this absolutely, absolutely dust cloud of men on horses, the sepoys who are the Sarawas who are on horseback, converge upon him trying to fix the wire and he gets hacked to pieces. By four o'clock on the day, that same day, his two assistant telegraph operators close up the office and they realize actually they've got to get out of here because something is very, very wrong. First they go to Flagstaff Tower, then off to mere it.

But before they can do anything, they tap out and this is really really really, really, really, they're important, and this is why the telegraph is so important, they tap out two SOS messages in Morse code and send them to the commander-in-chief at the cantonments in Punjab and on the frontier. Original transcripts of both of these survive in the Punjab archives, and you've seen them first-hand in Lahore, haven't you? I've seen them. They're actually displayed. The originals are a display when you go in there and you're filling in your forms to use the archive, two of the treasures that are there put on display

so that people can see the kind of the glories of the Lahore archive. This is in Anarchli's tomb, incidentally, which is itself historic. Well, we'll tell you that story another time it's a brilliant story, the story of Anarkali. But look, what they say, let me read you what the fuller of the two says, the Telegraph.

Cantonement in a state of siege, it reads, mutineers from Merit, third-like cavalry, number not known, said to be 150 men, cut off communication with Mirate, Taken possession of bridge of boats. 54th N.I. sent against them but would not act. Several officers killed and wounded.

City in a state of considerable excitement. Troops sent down. Nothing certain yet. The second of the telegraphs. I mean, they get word out is the important thing. So nothing that happens in Punjab will be a surprise to Lahore. The second is sent just before the two operators leave their post and run. And, I mean, to me, it sort of feels if you're a fan of Tolkien, is those large.

The last entries in the caves, you know, it is coming. The drums are getting closer. It feels got very much that kind of vibe. We must leave office. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. All the bungalows are burned down by the seapoys of Mirate. They came in the morning. We are off.

Mr. C. Todd is dead, we think. He went out this morning. He has not returned. So they have, first of all, you know, imagine the person, translating the Morse code, could not believe his eyes, how can this be happening? But crucially, Willie, this is the point, is that there is some forewarning

of what has burst upon the heads of these poor benighted people and at least a little time to prepare for what's coming their way. So there are two very different reactions to this. So there's two messages. One goes to the commander-in-chief who's up in Simler, who's called Anson, and the other goes to Sir John Lawrence, who's the commander in the Punjab. And a lot of the fate of British India over the next

months will be decided by how these guys react. So General George Anson, who's up in Simler, in the cool of the Himalayas, away from the heat of the plains, is completely hopeless. He hasn't seen active service since Waterloo, more than 40 years earlier, doesn't see the seriousness of what happened. He's already dismissed the whole business of the Greece cartridges. And so is the man, in a sense, partly responsible for this whole thing escalating in the first place. And amazingly, he doesn't do anything. He sits there. And we have letters, from his secretary who says he seems unable to grasp the importance of the situation. When he first received the bad news on Tuesday morning, he should have started off at once.

The quartermaster did his utmost to persuade him not to lose any time, but he said no, he would wait for the post. What is the use of the electric telegraph if the news it brings is not acted on at once? So there is no relief force that is sent off that night to Delhi. And arguably, you know, there is insimilar an entire selection of British regiments who could have stopped the whole thing in its tracks. if they'd march down that day, but they don't. However, there is a very different reaction in Lahore.

And there's these two characters who will be hearing a lot more of in the episodes to come. There's John Lawrence, who's one of the most sympathetic of the British characters. It's thanks to John Lawrence, for example, that the Jamomazid and the Red Fort are still standing, the two great treasures of the city where I live, Delhi. He saves them both from destruction. But he's got this underling, who is also somebody we've heard of a little on the podcast in the Irish, series, and we'll be hearing a great deal more of John Nicholson, who's this great psycho John.

You can't overestimate just how awful Psycho John is, but you get a sort of a taste of it if you've heard our Irish episodes because he pops up significantly in that as well. Sorry, Willie, just can't help it. Knee-jerk reaction to his name. It's quite right. And he, I mean, he's a psychopath, but he's an entertaining psychopath and we'll be hearing some extraordinary stories. by him in the episodes that follow.

But the key thing is that when this telegram arrives in Lahore, which is a city where there is only one British regiment and many Indian regiments, and so the whole thing is very much on a life edge, John Lawrence acts immediately. And the following morning, he makes a plan and he gets all the Indian regiments to line up on parade at the contunement. And when they arrive, they find that the English regiments are already there, with their guns loaded with grape shops and aimed directly at the sepoys.

And the order is given ground arms. And these guys have to put their guns down. They're surrounded, completely outmatched. And the Indian troops have no option but to comply. And their weapons are seized, effectively neutralising the threat of the Punjab. So it's from Lahore that the fight back will come. So this is a kind of crucial moment. And in the old British imperial books, you know, John Lawrence, John Nixon,

of the two great heroes of the hour. But it all now hangs on what happens in Delhi. If Anson can get his act together even belatedly and send off a field force to take on and recapture the rebels of Delhi, then as far as the British concerned, all may yet be well. But for Zuffer and the Mughal dynasty

and the rebels who want to get rid of the British, which is quite a lot of the people in India, except the Delhi elite, this is the moment of triumph. They have regained the momentum. The Mughal dynasty is back on the throne, a great uprising involving both Hindus and Muslims under the leadership of Bhaadha Shah Zaffir, the emperor who's been dismissed by the British as this impotent poet king, but as now turns out to be an incredibly strategic figure on whom a lot hangs. And the other key person is John Lawrence's brother, who is Sir Henry Lerner. who is a veteran of the Sikh wars and the pacification of the Punjab, as they call it.

He's now in Lucknow and he also is someone like his brother who doesn't wait around. He's busy reinforcing the residency. We'll be coming to the siege of the Latina residency in episodes to come. But he realizes that it all depends on Delhi. And in the next episode, we're going to see what happens in that. Yeah. So if you want to know whether any kind of hope from Delhi is misplaced or not, do tune in. If you can't wait for the next episode, you know you can get early access to it as well as bonus episodes, our weekly newsletter. Just sign up to Empire Club at EmpirePoduk.com. That's EmpirePodukuk.com.

Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.