Empire: World History - 328. Indian Uprising 1857: The Reign of Terror (Part 7)

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

How did the British finally break into Delhi during the 1857 Uprising? Why did a sudden solar eclipse change the fate of the siege overnight? Why is the British victory considered one of Delhi’s greatest tragedies? In Episode 7 of the series, William and Anita discuss the bloody Siege of Delhi, the British assault which spelled the end of the Mughal Empire.  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.mpower.com. Well, hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Duremberg. Now, in the last episode, we saw the Army of Retribution, reeking, havoc on Delhi. The rebels, despite their vast numbers, suffer from a fatal lack of centralised command. Everyone's doing basically whatever they want. And while the British could coordinate

movements via the Telegraph, they still have those lines, remember, in India. They also have steamships and they have some kind of sense of coherence. Whereas the rebel centres in Delhi, Lucknow, Jansy, they're all isolated, their little islands unto themselves. And add to that, You've got the monsoon rains of 1857 that have drenched the plains. The British forces, they're reinforced by fresh troops, and they've got a lot more weaponry and a lot more ordinance. And loyal Punjabi columns joining them as well. And they are all ready. They are all hungry to strike the two symbolic hearts of this rebellion, the Mughal capitals of Delhi and Lucknow.

So, Willie, I think what would be really good is to get into the preparations for this assault. You know, they've got what they need. They're tooled up. They're manned up. The 7th of September is the big date to push forward. Tell us how they begin. So the key thing is to get this ordinance, as you call it, this enormous siege train, these massive howitzers and mortars into position where they can really pulverize the walls.

And they start on the 7th September. And there's this 10-day period when they just roll these cannon forward slowly but meticulously, using the cover of various mogul gardens. There's a whole bed of orchards and all sorts of cover for them. And over 10 days, they move these cannons ever closer to the wall till they're so close that they can just pulverize them. And it's an incredible rain of iron. It's not just the walls they're going for and the bastions,

the Maury, the Kashmiri, and the water bastions in particular, but they're also just lobbing in shells beyond to try and reduce the restrictions. resistance. And the moguls and their sepoys are busy working equally hard to repair the walls. Every night, as soon as the British rise at dawn, they find that the walls that were, the tops of the walls, the parapets have been replaced. And so there's a real sense on both sides that they're now knuckling down for the final struggle. But on the 13th of September, the British strategists declare that the breaches are in the military term practicable.

In other words, that they are sufficiently reduced that a storming party with ladders can get over it. And the final assault on Delhi is set for dawn on the 14th. Right. And just in the run-up to that, just looking at the sources from Delhi themselves. I mean, they discuss and they talk about what it felt like to be in the city when this sort of rain of iron is coming down. describe it being like the day of judgment. So imagine that. You've got a rattled population. Not all fighters, a lot of civilians in there as well.

They have been shaken and battered. And now it feels like the end is nigh. So you've got the British on their side, you know, feeling quite good about this. They've managed to make practicable holes in the walls that they can get through. They're drinking their last rations of rum. They're sharpening their bayonets. They're writing their wills and they're writing their letters to their loved ones. There's even a church service on the ridge where a man called Padre Rotten.

I mean, unfortunate name. Padre Rotten is reading from the Old Testament. And he's doing the doomiest bits, you know, the doom of the bloody city of Nineveh, he's talking about. You know, it's a city full of lies and robbery. And he's, of course, likening his side to the angels, the side of the angels, and all the demons are below. And he says, you know, draw the waters for the siege. Fortify thy strongholds. And, you know, this fire and brimstone, Reverend Rotten says, you know,

then shall the fire devour thee. The sword shall cut thee off. It shall eat thee up like the canker worm. There is a multitude of slain, a great number of carcasses. They shall stumble upon their corpses. So, you know, it really is kind of absolutely hyped up, amped up and talled up British side. And in the other end, you know, in Delhi itself, you've got people cowering in cellars. They too are praying to their God.

And they are praying that he comes back because it really does feel to everybody there through that long, long night that God is nowhere with them. And so you've got, you know, the sun rising and it rises over this final moment. And where does it actually all begin, Willie? Well, what you say about people carrying sellers is absolutely right. but it's also true that in a sense the less committed sepoys have gone back to their villages and those that remain are the real hardcore rebels. And they are there and they know that they're likely to die

and they're all set to die in as costlier fashion as possible for the British. And one force we haven't mentioned, as well as the people of Delhi and as well as the court and as well as the sepoys, the East Indy company's own army that have mutinied, there's all these jihadis, Ghazis, as they call themselves. And it's very interesting writing this book that asked Mughal in the aftermath of 9-11, because these were words that didn't mean much to the victorious. Jihadis and Ghazis were not sort of buzzwords, but they were so present when I was writing this book. And these forces, which were very much there in the mutiny papers, had never really been written up.

And they were basically ordinary Muslim, some of them were peasantry, some of them were aristentery, some of them were aristocrats from, you know, military households. And they come to Delhi to die. Yeah. They come with axes, with swords. And they also were preparing to make a last stand in as costly a fashion for the British as possible. If they were going to lose Delhi, they were going to take as many Brits with them. So you get this sensation on the night before, these two sides getting ready for a final meltdown, a final confrontation.

So, William, I'm just really, can we, before we go, any further, just talk about the jihadi aspect of this, because the wisdom that is passed down is that these were freedom fighters who really, you know, it wasn't religion was secondary, but it was pride in one's country that made them want to push out the British, that they, you know, had enough of being told what to do by people who didn't respect them. But you have found something else in this, which sort of changes the complexion. And so, and it's going to be controversial. People aren't going to like it, but tell us what you found. Well, whether it's controversial or not, it's there in the mutiny papers, which are the biggest seam that we have of the records of the mutineers.

I mean, what you've definitely were you right is that in the 50s and 60s, nationalists, often Marxist historians, interpreted this uprising in nationalist Marxist economic terms. And so it was about, you know, the British crushing the Indian economy and getting rid of the looms and sending imports and cutting off the thumbs of weavers and all of that kind of stuff. All that sort of stuff was very much there in the historiography of the 50s and 60s. Writing this book after 9-11, when every newspaper was full of jihadis and the word jihad was on everyone's lips, it was very striking to see how much it was also on the lips of the Muslim fighters in 1857. And you had a similar sort of spin coming from the Hindus too, where they were talking about fighting for their Dharma, Dharma and Dean, and fighting for their way of life in a wider sense, their religion and their way of life,

was very much the rhetoric, certainly, being used in the papers, in the publications, in the Deli Odu Akbar, the newspaper, which went through under its editor, Mohamed Bukkah, published edition every week with a full newspaper, all of which survive of these editorials. I mean, Bucca himself was an extremely religious man, and from the beginning was talking about this in religious terms. But he's very interesting because, you know, we think of jihad as being such a sort of exclusively Muslim thing. He was saying this is something that all Indians should be, should be fighting together. And he uses...

What, whatever, whoever your god is, you fight for your god. And he's using exemplars from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana saying, you should fight as the pandavas fought for Dharma. That's so interesting, right. This is a very syncretic city in the 1850s. Hindus and Muslims are living very successfully side by side. And one of the British strategies in the course of the siege, and we haven't really mentioned this, is to try and sow dissent between the Hindus and Muslims. The Hindus and Muslims. And there's one moment when they nearly succeed. And the reason they nearly succeed is that there are these bunch of Ghazis, jihadis, living in the Jamah Masjid. These are the kind of really hardcore guys. And news

comes that they want to sacrifice cows on Eid. Right. And Zhafahar, sends out a message saying there's nothing in the Quran saying you have to sacrifice cows. You can sacrifice goats. Perfectly well. And he then has this extraordinary thing when he, in order to prevent cows being kills, he sends out an order to arrest every cow in Delhi. And there are these wonderful succession of messages that, you know, you have these petitions which arrive and these orders which are sent out.

And he orders the police to arrest the cows in the streets. And then as now, you know, cows are wandering around the streets of Delhi munching away at what they can find on the roadside. And then there's this letters coming back for the police saying, we filled all the jails with the cows. And there's no more room. So they have to find more places to put the... To put the incarcerated moos.

I mean, just to clarify this completely, what Zuffer is very cleverly trying to do is keep them safe. So there is no report that, you know, would be like a flame to, you know, gunpowder that says a cow has been killed, which would aid. alienate the Hindu population completely and break up this brotherhood. Correct. And there's the British intelligence chief who's a guy called William Hodson, who will hear about towards the end of this episode because he becomes very important in the aftermath of the assault.

William Hodgson is waiting for a massive bust up between the Hindus and the Muslims at Eid over this issue. And Zuffer effectively make sure it doesn't happen. It's one of his principal contributions is to keep Hindu and Muslims together. So as far as he's concerned, they're both fighting for their faith against the Christian missionaries. So what we've got then is we've got religious zealotry on this long night of Bible reading and fire and brimstone. And you've got the diehards, if you want, the people who are fighting for their gods, for their dean and their Dharma. And you've also got the sepoys who were probably quite prominent in mutinning or rising up against the British,

who know that they've got nowhere to go now because they've got nowhere to go now. if they lose, they're going to die and everyone they love is going to die. So they are the diehards who are fighting. How does that dawn then play out? You know, the morning that they're all in anticipation. The morning bugle goes up at 3 a.m. They file down to Kutzebagh, which is the Mughal Garden on the edge of the city walls. And they use the cover of the garden walls and the orchards within it to move safely up to where the artillery is now on the front line. And just as Dawn comes up, I think there are three columns. The bugle goes and it is your absolute madness. The first party to go is a small party of sappers, led by two young lie lie lie

lie lie lieutenants, Sackeld and Hume. And they have to run across this broken bridge under a wall of fire and lay powder bags at the gate. That's the only way to blow the gates in. They have to put the powder sacks of gunpowder. literally under the gate where everyone can shoot. I mean, that in itself is like a suicide mission. If you're under heavy barrage, it's just unthinkable that you'll get there.

And one of them, Sakeld is indeed shot through the arm and leg. But Hume manages to jump into the ditch. They put the gunpowder there, lay the fuse, and bam, they blow the gate and the bugle sands. And the first obstacle is the ditch, which they've blown the walls down, but they haven't filled in the ditch. So they've got to go down first. 20 feet deep by 25 foot broad. And the British have all been issued with scaling ladders. So the ladders are fetched, put into place.

The troops go down the glass sea. And many of them are killed at this point because the ladders are slow to come up. There's various issues with getting them there. And it's 10 minutes before the first troops had succeeded in rising out the far side of the glassy and to climb into the breach where they've not the walls down. You aren't joking when you said this is kind of almost the precursor to trench warfare because how many were lost trying to just get out of their trenches or the ditches and the number of lives they claimed. I think that's fascinating.

Okay, so the ones 10 minutes in, you've got the first men who are finally making the run. Into the breach. One of them is this 16-year-old Fred Roberts, who later is a kind of greatest military hero. He's Lord Roberts of Kanderhar at the end of his reign. And we met him in the Rudder Kipling episode as an old man talking about Kipling. But he, age 16, is in this first scaling party. And he writes, up went our men beautifully like a pack of hounds. We gunners had done our work so well that the breach was perfect.

And we gained the ramparts with comparatively slight loss. Okay. So he makes it sound easy, but there are other accounts as well. So I'll just present to you, Richard Barter, who's one of the first over the top. And he's running forward, and he remembers seeing, you know, the heads of the defenders, the rebels sort of popping up over the ramparts. And this is what he rises. He says, while along the walls, they swarmed thick like bees. The sun shone full upon the white turbans and black faces, sparkling brightly on their swords and their bayonets. And our men cheered madly as we reached the breach.

So, you know, Roberts might have thought it was quite plain sailing. you've got those, you know, probably from a lower socio-economic background, may I suggest, who was sort of being sent and pushed up front, who was saying, my gosh, you know, actually we're getting mowed down there. There are so many of them. They're thick like bees out there and firing at us. Okay, so what happens then? So they reach the breach.

Do they go straight through? I mean, how quickly do they get in? Not quickly. He also writes, three times the ladder party was swept away, and three times the ladders were snatched from the dead and the wounded. It was hard work getting up the breach, which is like sloping bank of sea sand from the pounding of the shot. So they're stumbling down the thing, trying to get up this incredibly steep. They've got ladders, the men holding the ladders being shot, people that have been replacing them.

Well, not just shot. I mean, it's medieval, isn't it? Because he also writes, and we have a lot to thank Bartow Forgers for writing, you know, his thoughts down afterwards. But, you know, it's like medieval sieges. They're heaving huge blocks of masonry down. at the ladder. So every time Barta and his friends are trying to get up, some of them are being brained by this rain of rocks that is coming down. And there's this very sweet final note, he says. He says, once he gets up to the top, he and his friend Fitzgerald find themselves

standing close up on the bastions. And he said, we shook hands and parted. He down the right to the breach, eye along the parapet to the left, towards the Kashmiri gate. I never saw him again. he was killed by a discharge of grape shot inside the walls immediately after I parted from him. So there's massive carnage. Absolutely. These are very, very high casualties. The British have half thought that, you know, as so often in war, they think that they've pelted the other side with artillery and the other side will now just sort of lie down and let them. Well, they'll run.

They'll either lie down or run. That's what they'll do. But they don't. And that actually is the next chapter of this story, which is interesting, because there's one thing to breach a city. You know, you can blow a hole, a hole in a wall. you can send men in through that hole, even if it is a costly thing to do. But then you have to keep the city and you have to keep pushing into that city. And if it's a city that's filled with people who know that life or death depends upon keeping them out.

And also, I mean, this is a city that's like a labyrinth, isn't it? I mean, it's old Delhi with all of its little gullies and alleyways. If you don't know it, how do you know where you're going? And how do you know what's above you? And how do you know what's coming around the corner? So it is, I mean, it could be a death trap for these people, couldn't it? So it is a death trap for the most famous of all the British in the attacking force. The party that's been told to sweep right from Kashmiri Gate towards the Mori Bastion is led by none other than John Nicholson.

This sort of the psychotic, brave madman. And he leads the charge. And he gets in the Kashmiri Gate successfully. and they head right. But it's just after that that Nicholson is shot down. And I've been to the place where he was shot. It's still there, the little plaque set up by the Victorians that no one's taken down yet.

And you can see where he lie. Because as so often, again, you know, it's bad wounds don't necessarily kill you immediately. No, it's almost a blessing if you do go quickly because actually the lingering and the agonising of a long, slow, drawn-out death is just unbelievably painful. and that's what, nine days? Nine days dying.

Wow. And what he lives long enough to see is the hesitation by his nemesis, Archdale Wilson, this very hesitant British commander. Oh, he hates Wilson. So Nicholson lies lingering in a state of near death for nine agonizing days. And what he sees is Archdale Wilson, the commander who he hates and thinks is too timid, almost ordering the withdrawal. Because the Brits get within the walls, and they expect that, normally, with any siege, once you're within the walls, that's it. The city's

taken. You've won. Yeah, that's it. But in this case, the sepoys who have anticipated the English coming in because they can see the effect of the siege battering, and they know that they can't save the walls, which are just crumbling in front of them. So several days before that, these guys build a set of trenches just 100 yards within the city, opposite St. James's church. And you can still walk to this day. All these places... I mean, that's really clever, clever warfaring there, Willie,

because what you're in effect saying is that, you know, the rebels, what they've done is that they've said, okay, we lose the wall, but we'll make a wall within a wall and then another one, like an onion, that you can get through the outer. But then you've got another, you know, another barrier. You shall not pass. We've got to get through those others as well. And for nine whole days, that wall within the wall holds.

The British may have got within Kashmiri Gate, but they've only got 100 yards. Right. And the whole thing is in the balance, because there are no more reinforcements. If this assault fails, you know, it may be another two years before the British gather enough troops to fight this. And this is, you know, everything, the fate of India, literally hangs in the balance. And at this point, either side could have broken and run. Both sides are in a very bad way. The British have had far more casualties than they expected.

Nicholson is clearly dying. Yeah. And Wilson is seriously pondering whether he should retreat to similar. And Nicholson's very characteristic last contribution in this before he finally succumbs is when he hears that Archdale Wilson is thinking withdrawing, he whispers, Thank God that I have yet the strength enough to shoot that man. That's hilarious. I mean, if true, those are the best dying words I've heard.

Okay. He's a great character. I have to say, I love my villains. And Clive just provided endless material when I was doing the anarchy. John Nicholson was the brilliant. A bloodthirsty moor is brave till the end. I mean, if you're sort of there on a stretcher in agonising pain, without the kind of painkillers we have today.

And the one thing you can think of shooting your commander. I'm shooting Archdale Wilson. If it's the last thing I'd, Archdale, it's almost, I mean, it's comedic and also gory. Okay, so does he do it? Because, you know, Nicholson is not going to shoot him, and Nicholson is not much longer for this world. So, I mean, how does that play out then?

So there's one other story just before the turning point in this. And this is our old friend Theo Metcalf, the junior magistrate, who we've seen move from a sort of near-do-well sort of son of Theophilus Metcalfe used to be the British resident, too keen on dogs, too keen on horses, too keen on women. Playboy about town, basically doesn't do very much, makes up shit. You know, every time he's asked for any kind of intelligence report, he just goes. He's flashman.

He's basically a flashman character. He's flashman. I mean, he's hilarious. So what he does, as he goes and he collects all the gossip, and he says, behold, I have an intelligence report for you. But he has undergone something of a transformation because Theo Metcalf, and if you've listened to some of the previous ones in this series, has completely underestimated the feeling of the rebellion. And so, you know, when he finds himself having to beg at the doors of his former friends, please let me in when he's fleeing for his life. And one after the other, they either turn him away or they betray him or they, you know, basically set him up to be killed.

He is getting coarsened and hardened and, you know, this sort of like quite a happy galucky kind of, you know, charlatan of a man is turning into quite a wounded psyche and getting angrier and more calm. At this point, Willie, he's almost unrecognizable from the young man that we know who made up shit in intelligence reports. That's right. And he is the one person in the attacking force that really knows Delhi. I mean, everyone else is from elsewhere. Theo had lived in the city. He knows the alleys. He'd gone wandering around to the courtesans and to the jewelers and all this stuff. And he knew the city, which he'd grown up in backwards. So in the initial assault, he is sent to capture the Jamimazid. And there's this fantastic scene when they find this area where, which is not defended, and they get way ahead of any other British force down right to the street on the edge of the Jabim Masjid, almost within sight of the Red Fort.

And it's complete silence and it's eerie. And he realizes something is wrong because there's no shooting, there's no sniping, there's just complete silence in the street. And he senses that something is happening. And eventually he gets up to the street immediately next to the north gate of the Jamimazid, which, of course, we know is where the jihadis and the guards. with their axes, the real fanatics be waiting. And these guys gingerly move up the street, looking left and right, trying to work out

as an ambush, seeing where they think it's complete silence. And it's only when they get to the steps of the Jabimazir, there's this eerie, creaking noise, and the gates swing open. And these fanatical jihadis come racing down the steps with their axes. None of them, for some reason, seem to have firearms. The jihadis are just got the kind of traditional swords, spears, arrows, and particularly battle axes. And these guys go down. And they drive Theo back, despite the fact they've got this antiquated weaponry.

So Theo survives this jihadi break, if you like, this sort of extraordinary eruption of the Ghazis out of the Jammar Masjid, makes it back to the British front line at St. James' church. and for the next eight days there is this complete stalemate. The sepoys are in their trenches. The British can't go forwards. They don't want to go back. Archdale Wilson is considering retreat, but Nicholson's threatening to shoot him if he does. And what both sides have forgotten is the lunar cycle.

So it's a total stalemate. The sepoys are in their trenches. The British are facing them. Archdale Wilson is thinking of retreating, but Nicholson's going to shoot him if he does. And it looks like this could go on for months. But, but, but, William, look up, just look up, because something from the heavens is going to change everything.

Let's take a break. Join us after the break. Welcome back. So just before the break, everyone's exhausted. Nobody knows how this is going to end. It looks like it's going to go on and on for months. But then it's almost as if the heaven. Evans speak. What do I mean by that, Willie? I haven't lost my mind because the answer is writ

large in the sky, isn't it? So exactly. On the morning of the 18th of September, the sun is completely eclipsed for five whole minutes. Now, this is a surprise for everyone because no one, you know, been looking at their almanacs to see when there's going to be an eclipse happening in the middle of all this fun and games. But it has a particular. significance for the Hindus. Remember, the Hindus are the majority of the sepoys. Even today, in India, an eclipse is considered to be a moment of incredibly bad luck. And I've got conservative friends in Rajasthan who will not go out on the day before or after an eclipse. They will stay inside and keep their curtains, even today.

I will see your friends and I'll raise you members of family, shall I? Because there are If there's a family who've told me stories about cows shouldn't be milked on Eclipse Day because the milk will be poisonous. You can't look up at the sky directly to have a look at it. Also, you can only look at it in a bucket of water, only the reflection. Otherwise, the evil spirits will enter you. I mean, there is so much superstition that surrounds an eclipse, that this is only going to be seen, particularly, as you say by the Hindus, as a portent of great evil, that something wicked this way comes,

that God is not on their side anymore. Exactly. So what happens is that the following morning, the British wake up, and they've forgotten about the eclipse, it doesn't mean more than the little astronomical quirk to them. But for the Hindus, it means the change of a difference. It means the end of everything. And they flee. So when the following morning, on the morning of the 19th September, the British wake up,

and they're suddenly aware that there's no shooting from the opposite trenches, and a few people pop their heads up and realize there's no shooting, and then they get up and they clamber out of their trenches. And the sepoys have all gone. Just crazy. Unknown to the British, the sepoys have fled down the road, and they're heading off to luck now to make their final stand there. They just take it that Delhi is doomed.

And one of the people who was aware of all this happening was, of course, poor Zaffir, all these sepoys who've been clogging the halls of his palace, even his special hall, the Doanichas, which should have been only access for the VIPs. These guys have been hanging around, making a nuisance of themselves. But on the night of the 18th September, they just all disappeared. Zuffer realizes that there's no one left to fight and that he will be picked up the following morning by the British. So again, fatally taking this as a sign of divine judgment, he goes into his prayer chamber and he takes out the Mughal's special relics of the prophet. There's a hair from the prophet's beard.

And there's various other, there's a footprint of the prophet. Then he gets his boat party to let him out of the water gate on the side of the Red Fort, which is the same gate that the sepoys came to on the morning of the outbreak and begged him to come down and lead them. And he gets into the boat and he floats downstream in the darkness in the moonlight to Nizamuddin to the Sufi shrine where he deposits the sacred relics. And then goes across the road to Humayans tomb to await the surrender in the tombs of his forebears. It's the great, it's like a kind of prototype of the Taj Mahal sitting on the end of the river Jumna. But it's like, and it is like a fallen pharaoh going to the pyramids and waiting for his death. I mean, that's the strength of that imagery.

He's basically waiting to join the people who've died before him. And so it passes. I mean, they, you know, it is a route from there on in because there aren't any defenders. You know, people have left. They've gone. Whoever is left, I guess, Willie is sort of cut down without mercy. because, you know, you've got an angry and tired and frightened, you know, formally out of their wits. They've watched their friends like Barker watching his friend die in front of him.

You know, the blood is up. So what happens then after those troops have left and the Brits then get in? So what happens is that the Brits surround the city and lock the gates. And then takes place arguably the most terrible massacre to take place in the entire. 250 years of British rule in India. And it's odd that in the sense, Jallin Wallabag, which you've written about so well, has taken the place of this as the sort of supreme British atrocity, because you could make a very strong case for saying that this is the worst thing the British ever did in India.

Every male over the age of 16 is killed. There are one or two exceptions like Ghalib who've got special letters and by virtue of their position. do not get killed. But anyone in the city over the age of 16 is massacred. And some of the British who see this are as horrified as anyone else. There's a character called Edward Weibart who has written some brilliant letters that I've used a whole way through this book. And Weibat had two sisters in the Bibigar at Kanpur at the massacre that we dealt with two episodes ago. And he is all. set on the night before the attack to re-caverton revenge. But what he sees now disgusts him.

He says, the orders went out to shoot every soul. It was literally murder and I was perfectly horrified. I've seen many bloody and awful sights lately, but one such as I witnessed yesterday, I pray, I never see again. The women were all spared, but their screams on seeing their husbands and sons butchered were most painful. Heaven knows I feel no pity, but when some old grey-bearded man is brought and shot before your very eyes, hard must be that man's heart, I think, who can look on with indifference. I mean, that's just, again, so vividly, vividly portrayed. And as you say, by a man who has every reason to have the blood up, you know, as they put it, you know, the blood is up and people do terrible things with their blades and their bullets. There is one person who I would

to come back to him, that's Theo Metcalf, you know, who, I said he'd undergone this transformation. You know, he'd been hiding in a cave if you heard some of our previous submissions here in this series, this mini-series, you know, frightened for his life, he's spent, you know, weeks before thinking he's going to die at any moment, and he comes through and he gets to Delhi. And then he sees all this carnage. And when they win, when the Brits win and they've got access to Delhi, he turns into this monster. I think the way you put it is like a hanging judge, but he's there and he's got sort of lines of people in front of him and he will walk like, you know, some Gestapo villain going, that one, that one.

Exactly that. With absolutely no emotion, he condemns scores of people to death. And it's kind of worse than that because he's also making a personal fortune at the same time. He goes straight to the jeweller's quarter and he gets the jewelers hung and takes all the jewelry. He's a looter and he uses his position. to enrich himself as well as to take revenge. And the other thing he does is that his family house, Metcalf House, it's still standing. Today it's an Indian Army defence building.

His house, which his father had turned into a museum, his father was obsessed with Napoleon. And he had what he called the Napoleon Gallery, full of Napoleon memorabilia, including a statue of Napoleon by Canova. Wow. That Napoleon himself had sent to William Fraser. William Fraser, who we met in other episodes of this podcast, was this white mogul who represented the opposite of this whole sort of Victorian horror show.

Fraser loved Mughal Delhi. He commissioned paintings. He commissioned the great Fraser album, which is one of the great masterpieces. But he was also made a great sort of humanity. When he heard that Napoleon was in St. Helena without any books, he sent his entire library to St. Helena to Napoleon. And it sank on the way, including presumably lots of lovely Mughal masterpieces. Oh, wow. But Napoleon heard that this young man, this young officer, had sent all these books to him

and said, I didn't receive the books because the ship sank. But here is my bust by Kanova and my ring. And both of these were inherited by... By Theo's father. And so all of that is in the house. So yes, what happens to the house? What does he do? What does he do?

And so the whole house is burnt down. So two things happen now. One is Theo tries to find the bust of Napoleon, which is incredibly valuable, and he finds it in a Shiva temple being worshipped as Mahadev as... That is weird. Napoleon's being worshipped as Shifji, the Lord of the Dance. That is so mad. But the house itself is a ruin, and he is convinced that the villagers, well, I think he had good reason to think that the villagers around the house had looted it. And objects from the house were found in all the village houses. So he gets the whole village around Metcalf House, which is just outside the wall, and he hangs the village from the rafters.

It's horrific. All of the villages. Everybody. Jesus. You know what, Willie, I have been fond of Theo for a long time. You know, his early days, he was a buffoon, but he was likable. You know, he sort of learned the language. He went around, sort of mucking around with, you know, the locals.

All that. Making his way with the least amount of work possible. I approved of that. I thought that was quite fun. But he turns into an absolute... He turns into a war criminal. Straightforward. Monster.

Monster. And what's interesting is that at this point, there are so many war criminals, obviously. The blood is up. Everyone is messy. But Theo Meckoff, I think, is almost the only person in the East India Company's civil service to be dismissed for what he does after the fall of Delhi.

Right. It is considered to be so beyond the pale, even at the standards of the time. Right. Gosh. and it must have been bad. Yeah, the fact that he personally enriched himself, I think, was the thing that people really minded. So, I mean, let's stick a pin in Theo Metcalf and just walk away quickly and abert our eyes.

What about Zephyr? Because we last left him. He was waiting for his doom in Hama'u's tomb. Who comes for him in the end and what happens? So from the kind of end of July, it looks as if Zinnat Mahal, who is Zafar's much younger wife, who has got two kids of her own that she wants to inherit. She has traitorously in the eyes of the mutineers reached out to the British on the ridge. And Zinaat Mahal is in correspondence with William Hodgson, the British intelligence chief.

And at this point, she sends a message saying that if you grant our life, we will surrender to you in Humayans' tomb. And Hodgson takes that. So on the 20th of September, he rides out with a party to Humayon's Tomb, which is quite a brave thing to do, because in Humayan's tomb is not just Zaffa and all his kids, but quite a lot of the armed court who are surrounding him. So there's two or three thousand people within the garden of Humayan's tomb. It's not a place you'd go in the middle of this uprising. But Hudson believes that he's got a deal and he walks in and he takes the surrender of Zinnat Mahal and Baha'adashah Zafah who are promised their life in return for a peaceful.

surrender. And he marches them up to Delhi and places them not back in the hall of audience, which he'd left 10 days earlier, but in the stables. He's lodged where the horses have been kept in a state of imprisonment. Meanwhile, his Diwanikas, the centre of the Mughal Palace, is a British officer's meth, and they're serving pork and bacon and having a high old time on planters' chairs and that sort of thing in the palace. And the face. And the face. The famous atrocity takes place the next day when Hudson goes back and takes the surrender of the princes, of which there are about 10. So the princes have been left without their parents, and the next day, Hodson comes back and arrests them. And they say, do we get our life promise to?

And he doesn't give an answer. So the prince has got no particular option, because Hudson's got troops with him this time. And so they go with him. And there are, I think, a party of six or seven of them and all that. their finery. And as they head towards the city, many of the troops and courtiers who'd be hanging around with them and who minds to follow them and then begin to get sort of more nervous about what's going to happen. And so crowd around the princes. At that point, Hodgson, in his own account, fears that there's going to be a rescue operation. So he

stops the carriage in which the princes are kept. He orders the princes out and he shoots them one by one with his colt revolver in cold blood. He then takes all their jewelry and all their finery, puts it in his pocket, does not report it, and throws the naked bodies of the dead princes at the Cotwell. And the place where they were shot has been known ever since as Cunidarwaza, the bloody gate. Do you know that doesn't actually – it's not bloody gate. Do you know what Kuni Therazar actually translates to the murderers gate? The murderers gate. News of that surely must be rampaging through the country.

What's the reaction? I mean, what happens? This is the terrible end of the uprising in Delhi. The rebels have fled. And in the aftermath of this massacre of the princes, the last princes of the mogulai, the descendants of Babur, descendants of Timor, the descendant of Geng, scar, all these people, the blood all converges in these group of young men that have just been massacred. It's at this point that the British order the troops out into pursuit of the rebels.

And the last horror before we wrap this up for today and just present Ghalib's elegy on Delhi is the description of Richard Barta, the same guy who, if you remember, had been up on the walls, whose friend had been killed but he had not. He said goodbye to his friend and never saw him again. He is at the front of the troops marching out towards that now. And he describes the city just covered in corpses from the massacre of the week before. Every male in the city is dead and their bodies are lying up. This is his account.

The march out of the city was simply awful. The advance guard consisting of cavalry and artillery Had burst and squashed the dead bodies Which lay swelled to an enormous size in the Chandichak And the stench was fearful Men and officers were sick all round And I thought I'd never get out of the city It was a ride I don't care ever to take again

And the horse felt it as much as I did For he snorted and shook As he slid rather than walked over the abominations which the street were covered. Dead bodies were strewn about in all directions and every attitude that the death struggle had caused them to assume in every stage of decomposition. In many instances, the positions of the bodies were appallingly lifelike.

Some lay with their arms uplifted as if beckoning. And indeed the whole scene was weird and terrible beyond description. The atmosphere was unimaginably disgusting, laden as it was with the most noxious and sickening odours. So the glittering city of Delhi that we've described in previous episodes is now just ruins, ruins and corpses and gore. And one of your favourite people from this time period, Garlip, the poet, he is a survivor. And why don't we leave his words to sort of end what this all felt like? He is kind of the last survivor of the court.

for everyone else is killed, hung, massacred of the old elite. He is the last. And one of the great sort of wonders of the historiography of this is that we have Gar-Lib's account surviving of these horrors. So it's like having Shakespeare described the Battle of Britain or something. You know, it's like you have the greatest writer in Urdu describing the greatest tragedy in the history of Delhi. And he survives because he's got a sense of humour when he's interviewed by this sort of,

sort of, you know, intelligence colonel asking why he didn't come to the ridge and present himself and why he shouldn't be shot. The colonel says, are you a Muslim? And Karlob says half. And the cuddle says, what does that mean? And he says, I drink wine, but I don't eat pork. And the colonel laughs. And Garlip gets off. He makes him laugh and manages to survive. And so we have his description. And in the months to come, the Muslims have moved out of the city. And a year later, when they're allowed back, he writes this letter. He says, the male descendants of the deposed king, such as survived the sword, draw an allowance of five rupees a month. The female descendants, if old are boards, if young prostitutes. The city has become a desert. By God, Delhi is no more a city

but a camp, a contunement. No fort, no bazaars, no watercourses. Four things kept Delhi alive. The fort, the crowds at the Jabimazid, the weekly walk at the Amna Bridge, and the early fare of the flowermen. none of these survive. So how could Delhi survive? Yes, it is said that there was once a city of that name in the realm of India. We smashed the wine cup and the flask. What is it now to us if all the rain that falls from heaven should turn to rose red wine? So with that, the final act of this drama, we're going to circle back to it because I'm aware that we haven't told you what happens to Zuffer who has been spared, whether his children have not, and we'll come back to that in the next episode.

And we are also going to take you in the next episode to Lucknow, a place you now know fairly well from our podcast. Till the next time we meet is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Durham.