← Empire: World History
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- [00:01]
William Dalrymple
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- [00:19]
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- [01:00]
Anita Anand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand.
- [01:03]
William Dalrymple
And me, William Dalrymple.
- [01:05]
Anita Anand
Today we are following the moment that the Indian Mutiny of 1857 erupts in Delhi. We left you. Meerut had already risen. British authority is crumbling. A column of rebel sepoys, with those from the surrounding countryside joining in, following them from behind, are racing towards the capital across the bridge of of boats.
- [01:27]
William Dalrymple
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.
- [01:44]
Anita Anand
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 immortal indecision. But he has to decide right here, right now, who is he gonna back? Who is he gonna back? The rebels or those who stand against them? And it is a decision that is not only gonna affect the future of the British in India, but the very basis of his right to rule.
- [02:11]
William Dalrymple
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 10 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 Emirut 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 a thousand other ordinary common criminals. From that moment, the violence and the arson began. The sepoys and the newly freed prisoners rampaged through the cantonment, burning down bungalows, 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 lam has been raised, they can set fire to the tinder which has been building up in the Mughal capital. So these guys arrive in Delhi just before dawn, and it's them that Zafar 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.
- [04:14]
Anita Anand
Just to remind you who Zafir is. I mean, Zafir is the king sitting in Delhi. He's in his 80s, he's an aesthete, 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 Zafar does. Zafar 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 Asanullah 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 Selimga, 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 toll house 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 guts. 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 Zafar is. And Zafar then gives the order that the gates of the city and the fort should be closed because worried about being overrun, worth 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.
- [06:06]
William Dalrymple
Now, as the messenger is reporting this to Zafar, a group of 20 cavalrymen 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 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, Zafar can see behind them this crowd of convicts from the Meerut jail, along with some Gujar tribesmen that they picked up overnight, who are these nomads who were 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 there, 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 Zafar's own record of the event, and we have that it survives, he said. They said, we have come from Meerut 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. And 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 and the men were murderers and would surely kill him.
- [07:51]
Anita Anand
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. Willi, there is terror that's spreading like a virus.
- [08:09]
William Dalrymple
Absolutely. And you're quite right, it is the world turned 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 Zafar's interest. But now instead, these nominally British servants are going to Zafar saying they've killed the British and would. 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 apparent. The first thing that the sepoys tell Zafar is that it's all about this cow fat and pig fat that they think is coated on the bullets. We know now that in fact the British have changed the recipe and there's no cow or. 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 cast, destroy their faith and convert them all to Christianity. And you see that in the next, you know, half an hour of. Of the uprising.
- [09:19]
Anita Anand
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. There are Indians who have converted to Christianity. There are some Brits, as you've talked about in the previous, or people of mixed heritage who have converted to Islam. You know, so what do they do with this sort of porridge culture that they must come across of all different.
- [09:48]
William Dalrymple
Skin colors, this chutney fied culture, as Salman Rushdie calls it. Exactly.
- [09:52]
Anita Anand
Yeah. Yeah.
- [09:53]
William Dalrymple
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 Sepoy who came under the audience hall to ask Zafar 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 dharma. Their dharma and their din, their fai. 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. Chiman Lal who has been converted to Christianity. And this was a big shock because normally people did not convert to Christianity. In this period, the Reverend Jennings, who we'll hear more of in a minute, had converted Chiman Lal to Christianity, who was a Hindu.
- [11:06]
Anita Anand
I mean, yeah, the name suggests that he was a Hindu. Yeah. So losing caste for Hindus is the biggest deal of all.
- [11:12]
William Dalrymple
And there'd been a great deal of upset. People had filled the streets to watch this convert make this ceremony. And there were kind of lots of mutters in the crowds and Zafar at that point had carried on employing him. Anyway, on this particular Fatal morning of 11th May, 1857, Chiman Lal has been attending to his patients in the hospital in Daria ganj. And these 1st Cavalrymen that we saw crossing the bridge of boats ride through the Rudjgut Gate and. 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.
- [11:56]
Anita Anand
On the other side, you've got characters like this extraordinary one, Mrs. Aldwell. Now, Mrs. Aldwell does not sound like a particularly Indian name, Willie, does it? But she manages to save herself, but because of her knowledge of Islamic culture and tell us about what she does.
- [12:11]
William Dalrymple
So Mrs. Aldwell is in fact an Anglo Indian Christian. Her mum is Hindu, her father is Mr. Aldwell. Presumably she is about to be killed when she makes the Muslim profession of faith, the 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 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 up to. This tall, sturdy looking man with a fair face, extremely sunburnt, rather sort of butch, sort of jim 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.
- [13:43]
Anita Anand
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, you know, 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, you know, these, 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 Zafar. 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.
- [15:06]
William Dalrymple
They've got lots to lose, these guys.
- [15:08]
Anita Anand
A lot of, yeah, everything, you know, it's, it's sort of. I'm all right, you know, I. 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 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 at the actions. And he's talking about of 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.
- [16:01]
William Dalrymple
Well, the biggest toff of all, certainly in his own eyes, is of course, our friend the poet Ghalib. And Ghalib, you know, loves a good Mushayra, a poetry reading, he loves a party. He's not gonna back all these guys turning up from the Meerut jail and a bunch of Gujar nomads looting the British Kantoo. 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, Ghalib is rather one for the women. And so he's very much taking their side of 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 worry is that this is all gonna 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.
- [17:22]
Anita Anand
I mean, it does actually feel a little bit like a Russian Revolution situation where you have sort of the masses, the have nots, joining in with an uprising and the haves 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'd be useful to understand how quickly this is all unraveling. So we're really 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 Zafar 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 converted the first man to fall. They all take refuge and 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 balkis, just so you know, are sort of like palanquins that you sit in and they have curtains that might hide you. But seeing that no attention was likely to be paid to 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 remedied 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.
- [19:31]
William Dalrymple
Exactly.
- [19:31]
Anita Anand
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.
- [19:56]
William Dalrymple
Yeah. He inflicts a deep and mortal wound on the right side of his neck. Frazer 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're 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 and eventually makes it to safety. But this is the kind of. This is what's going on. These, you know, there's very few people from the top of the British establishment who are left alive even by mid morning.
- [21:44]
Anita Anand
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 Koh I no diamond, you know, utterly made up nonsense. You know, 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, Willi, 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 Cause you're gonna miss what comes next. So he's got this feeling in his water that things are spinning out of control.
- [22:31]
William Dalrymple
He feels that particularly. Cause I think his wife has just died in a kind of. In a horrible way with some terrible fever, hallucinating and shrieking. And it's a terrible death. So he's. He's had his whole life torn up just before this, anyway. And then on May 11, not only does he have to turn into disguise and creep out of the city where he was the magistrate, a very senior official. So he only just survives and his house is burnt down. And anyway, we'll see a lot more of him in the episodes to come because he remains an important character.
- [23:00]
Anita Anand
Yeah.
- [23:01]
William Dalrymple
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 Urdu Akbar, which is the leading newspaper. And this is Mohammed Baka, who's the father of one of the most famous Urdu poets, a guy called Azad. And for Mohammed Baka, 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 uprising 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 could have been led by angels or mysterious figures from. From. 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 Christians such a body blow that within a short time this carnage has utterly destroyed them.
- [24:06]
Anita Anand
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 Baka's son is Mohammed Hussain, 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 splendor and glory, the possessors 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 tlungas of the east have killed them all.
- [25:23]
William Dalrymple
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.
- [25:43]
Anita Anand
Welcome back. Now, towards the early afternoon around 3 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 Zafar'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 are 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 Zafar 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, Zafar. And he's not even opening the door to them.
- [26:30]
William Dalrymple
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 this stuff, but these guys 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 Zafar's appalled by these ruffians turning up who, you know, they're not even local boys. It's not like they're from Delhi. The East India Company recruits from Eastern up, which is in the eyes of, you know, sophisticated people of Delhi is like, you know, ruffians. Absolutely. Exactly.
- [27:04]
Anita Anand
Yeah. It's like getting sort of, you know, sort of, yeah, importing the dock workers in London at that time and putting them in Knightsbridge is what it feels like.
- [27:12]
William Dalrymple
Exactly that.
- [27:13]
Anita Anand
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, Yamaj, 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 attendants to tell the troops to shut up, stop being so noisy. And he calls him, he says, I.
- [27:40]
William Dalrymple
Did not call for you. Yes, you have acted very wickedly. Yes. And on this, about 200 of these infantry ascend 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.
- [28:03]
Anita Anand
But you know what? Sapphire answers them back in kind. So they're there arguing with him. It's basically an Argy Bargie with a king, as you know, the most common of the commoners. So Zafar just says to the sepoys, 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 Zafar's shoulders. What is he going to do? And he's known, Willy, as being notoriously indecisive.
- [28:36]
William Dalrymple
He is.
- [28:37]
Anita Anand
So this is. This is bad for him.
- [28:39]
William Dalrymple
And this is a crucial moment. Everything hangs on this moment. His decision at this moment. He can't, you know, he can't not make a decision. These guys are in front of him. The Brits are all dead, you know, and some of them were his friends. Captain Douglas was the guy that was marching him around every day. And one nobleman, Abdul 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, Meroli, a place called Zafa Mahel, 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 its 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. The troops in the British regiments who mutiny and kick the whole thing off. And there are places we'll. We'll come to luck. Now, I think in the. 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 deli wallets. And this is the moment that, contrary to all expectations, the king has blessed this rabble who've turned up in his palace.
- [30:38]
Anita Anand
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 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 Metcalfe's friend, a very brave man called Lieutenant Willoughby, who is surrounded by sepoys who are trying to get their hands on the weapons. Because, you know, if you're. If you're going to rise up, you need everything, all the armaments you 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.
- [31:49]
William Dalrymple
And amazingly, he survives. He somehow manages to sort of dig himself down into.
- [31:55]
Anita Anand
Yeah, extraordinary thing.
- [31:56]
William Dalrymple
So the people outside are all killed, and he has managed to do this in such a way that he actually survives it, although he's deafened for, I think, for the rest of his life. This enormous explosion does not kill him.
- [32:07]
Anita Anand
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 merch called James Morley. And Morley's interesting. He lived with his family and that of his business partner, William Clark in the Bazaar Kashmir Katra in Daria Ganj 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, 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. They're 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, Willie? These tantalizing bits and scraps of history. It's amazing.
- [33:32]
William Dalrymple
Yeah, this is what I based it all on. What was exciting was to find that not only do you have the British sources, such as James Morley, we're about to tell his story, which he survives to. 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 rape. And all these people send their petitions and they have all survived and they're in the National Archives.
- [34:03]
Anita Anand
It's an amazing thing.
- [34:04]
William Dalrymple
Unlike the rest of India, where we have only really the British account, we have only 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.
- [34:32]
Anita Anand
So Morley, who has just poked his nose out, this is what he. 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 Ferengico. Mar Ferengico. 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 latte 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, like, 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. Willy. Because he's there for hours and he's.
- [35:54]
William Dalrymple
Of course, terrified because he'd seen 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 had been split in pieces with hatchets and cupboards had 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 and 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 inflicted before his mother's eyes. I closed my eyes and shuddered, but opened them again upon an even more dreadful sight. Clarke 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. Clarke. I just sat down and placed my hands on my knees.
- [37:35]
Anita Anand
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 tribe is. Who are very, very interesting. Were there survivors? What happens to the survivors of all of this?
- [37:53]
William Dalrymple
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 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 Metcalfe 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 cantonment. 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 of the British community who have. 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. 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. 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 Gujars, 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. The British paper of Delhi. It's the counterpart of the Delhi Urdu Akbar and Mohammed Baka, who we saw. And Wagontreiber 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.
- [40:18]
Anita Anand
Skinner's Horse, yes.
- [40:20]
William Dalrymple
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 life, because they leave later than the Titlers, and by the time that they're heading up the canal road, the road is swarming with these gujars and other dacoits waiting to land on the Brits, who are now, you know, 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 wagontreibers 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's wagontreiber reveals herself as the daughter of Secunda Sahib, speaks in perfect Hindustani and addresses the people who. And they turn out that they're actually tenants of the Skinner family who had lands on the Karnal road and they shelter them. So wagon tribe 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.
- [42:18]
Anita Anand
Okay, so I mean, the telegraph office, you cannot overestimate how important the telegraph is at this time. You know, Willi mentioned a little while earlier that the poet, the great poet Ghalib, 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 sometime during the night, something's happened, it's not working. So he sets off up the road towards Meerut 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 absolute dust cloud of men on horses, the sepoys who are the saroas who are on horseback converge upon him trying to fix the wire, and he gets hacked to pieces by 4 o' clock on the day. That same day, his two assistant telegraph operators close up the office and they realize actually they gotta get out of here. Cause something is very, very wrong. First they go to Flagstaff Tower, then off to Meer it. But before they can do anything, they tap out. And this is really 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 firsthand in Lahore, haven't you?
- [43:39]
William Dalrymple
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 Anarchy's tomb, incidentally, which is itself historic.
- [43:57]
Anita Anand
Well, we'll tell you that story another time. It's a brilliant story, the story of anarchy. But look what they say. Let me read you what the fuller of the two says. The telegraph. Cantonment in a state of siege. It reads, mutineers from Meerut. 3rd Light Cavalry. Number not known. Said to be 150 men. Cut off communication with Meerut. Taken possession of bridge of boats. 54th NI 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, you've got. 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, it's those 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 sepoys of Meera's. 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, Willi, 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.
- [45:32]
William Dalrymple
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 Simla, 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 the cool of the Himalayas Away from the heat of the. 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 gre, of the grease cartridges. And so he's 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 in Simla an entire selection of British regiments who could have stopped the whole thing in its tracks if they'd marched down that day, but they don't. However, there is a very different reaction in Lahore. And there. There's these two characters who we'll be hearing a lot more of in the episodes to come. There's John Lawrence, who's one of the most sympathetic of the characters of the British characters. It's thanks to John Lawrence, for example, that the Jammu Masjid 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.
- [47:20]
Anita Anand
Psycho John Nicholson, who. He's. 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, Willy, just can't help it. Knee jerk reaction to his name.
- [47:37]
William Dalrymple
It's quite right. And I mean, he's a psychopath, but he's an entertaining psychopath and we'll be hearing some extraordinary stories about 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 Register regiment and many Indian regiments. And so the whole thing is very much on a knife edge. John Lawrence acts immediately and the following morning the. He makes a plan and he gets all the Indian regiments to line up on parade at the cantonment. 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 seaport. 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 neutralizing 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 are 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 Zafa 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 Bahadur Shah Zafar, the emperor who's been dismissed by the British as this sort of impotent poet king, but is 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 Lawrence, who is a veteran of the Sikh wars and the pacification of the Punjab, as they call it. He's now in luck now, 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 Lucknow Residency in episodes to come. But he realizes that it all depends on Delhi. And in the next episode, we're gonna see what happens in that.
- [50:13]
Anita Anand
Yeah. So if you. I mean, 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 empireclubirepoduk.com that's empirepoduk.com till the next time we meet. It's goodbye from me, Anita Anand, and.
- [50:36]
William Dalrymple
Goodbye from me, William Durimple.