329. India’s Greatest Rebellion: The British Raj is Born (Part 8)

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Empire: World History

Episode 329 — India’s Greatest Rebellion: The British Raj is Born (Part 8)

Original Air Date: January 29, 2026
Hosts: William Dalrymple (“Willi”) and Anita Anand

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Episode Overview

This finale in the Empire series on the 1857 Uprising (also called the "Indian Mutiny") focuses on the climactic siege and fall of Lucknow, a city that not only represented the last major bastion of resistance but, through its destruction, symbolized the decisive shift from Mughal-Company rule to the grim reality of the British Raj. The hosts explore the social, political, and cultural significance of Lucknow’s fall, the pivotal roles played by key figures—especially Begum Hazrat Mahal—and the brutal legacy of the siege on the city’s soul. The discussion powerfully links the events in 1858 to the broader consequences for Indian society, culture, and even modern global politics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Unique Resistance of Lucknow

• Lucknow as the Heart of People’s Uprising:
  • While Delhi was the political heart of the mutiny, Lucknow was unique as a "complete peasant war," uniting landlords, peasants, and all sections of society (02:25).
  • “The entire population of Avad, from the great Talukdar landlords to the peasants, rise up…” – William Dalrymple (02:25)
  • Historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee is repeatedly cited for emphasizing the mass character of the Lucknow revolt.
• Contrast to Delhi:
  • In Delhi, rebels were often outsiders and less united; in Lucknow, it was “everybody’s in it.” (05:33)
• Complex Grievances:
  • Sepoys were “peasants in uniform” with diverse grievances: high taxes, personal slights, religious reasons, and local injustices (05:40).

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2. Begum Hazrat Mahal—The Soul of Lucknow’s Resistance

• Leadership in Crisis:
  • Hazrat Mahal, a once-marginal figure in the Awadhi court, becomes “the soul of the resistance” because she is both resourceful and charismatic (06:49–07:37).
  • “She rises above… her sex, the expectation of her sex, her position, everything.” – Anita Anand (06:33)
• Strategic Unity:
  • She creates a fragile but powerful coalition, keeping both landlords and the masses together (08:42).
  • Credited for stirring, populist proclamations:
    • “The British will try to destroy your religion, they will take your land. They have already broken their treaties…” – quoted by Anita Anand (07:57)

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3. British Relief and Brutality: The Sieges and Slaughter

• First Relief of Lucknow—A Catastrophic Blunder:
  • Generals Havelock and Outram’s force becomes trapped with insufficient numbers to evacuate civilians (03:12).
  • “All they'd done was add extra mouths to the defenders while the rebels closed the ring around them.” – William Dalrymple (03:12)
• Colin Campbell (‘Old Kabardar’) and the British Counterattack:
  • Scottish General Colin Campbell—disciplined, methodical, cautious—leads the final major assault (12:02).
  • Known by Indians as “Old Kabardar,” denoting his risk-averse strategy (12:02).
• The Thin Red Line:
  • The Queen’s crack regiments (93rd Highlanders) are deployed—seen as the real British Army, not the Company’s (12:43).
• Secunderbag Massacre:
  • Campbell’s Highlanders blow open a small hole in the Secunderbag garden walls—trapping defending rebels and resulting in “one of the great slaughters of the mutiny” (15:03).
  • “They just get their bayonets out and they kill every single one of the troops in this enclosed space… the piles of bodies are so high that the soldiers actually have to climb over them to find more people to kill.” – Dalrymple (15:59)

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4. Journalism, Propaganda, and Moral Reckoning—William Howard Russell

• A Witness to Atrocity:
  • Times correspondent William Howard Russell arrives, bearing witness to the shocking brutality of British reprisals.
• Truth Amid Propaganda:
  • Russell calls out the bloodlust of British troops:
    • “British troops as being drunk with blood…” – Anita Anand (18:31)
    • “Is this a war or is it a series of executions?” – William Howard Russell, quoted by Anand (18:31)
• Contrast with Jingoistic British Press:
  • In the UK, labels of Indian ‘savagery’ prevailed, even among liberals like Charles Dickens:
    • “He says, delete Delhi. So what the great victory of Russell's moral stature is that he dares to report the truth.” – Dalrymple (18:14)
• Setting the Record:
  • Russell’s honesty exposes the scale of British cruelty and challenges official narratives (18:12–18:31).

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5. The Final Fall and Destruction of Lucknow

• British Return, Overwhelming Force:
  • Spring 1858: Campbell returns with 31,000 men and over 160 heavy guns—the largest British army ever assembled in India (19:41).
  • “They have built three massive lines of defence… but Campbell… outflanks these… and storms the Kaiserbagh palace complex.” – Anand (20:44–21:06)
• Looting and Vandalism:
  • British troops run amok through the opulent Kaiserbagh palace, destroying art, architecture, and looting treasures (22:51).
  • “Chandeliers are pulled down and smashed with musket butts. Cashmere shawls ripped up and then used as saddle cloths…” – Anand (22:51)

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6. 'Herbicide’—The Killing of a City

• Systematic Destruction:
  • Historian Mukherjee describes the aftermath as “herbicide”—not just killing people, but erasing a city’s very spirit (25:26).
  • “About four fifths of the city is just wiped out. Today, there’s a little bit of Kaiserbagh, a couple of pavilions… but you have to go back to old photographs to realize what was lost…” – Dalrymple (25:26)
• Urban 'Spatial Cleansing’:
  • British deliberately erase Lucknow’s winding Mughal streets for broad, straight boulevards—seeking to prevent future resistance by making military occupation easier (27:23).
  • “It’s like everything that ever made Lucknow what it was has gone—completely gone after the British do what they need to do…” – Anand (28:30)

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7. The End of an Era—The Trial and Exile of Bahadur Shah Zafar

• Show Trial and Imperial Gaslighting:
  • The last Mughal emperor, Zafar, faces a rigged trial, accused of masterminding a global Muslim conspiracy (29:00–32:00).
  • Dalrymple highlights the absurdity, noting the British had once been Mughal vassals themselves (31:45).
• Russell’s Poignant Portrait of Zafar:
  • Russell describes Zafar as “a dim, wandering eyed, dreamy old man… with a feeble hanging nether lip and toothless gums.”
    • “Not a word came from his lips… in silence he sat day and night with his eyes cast on the ground…” – Dalrymple, quoting Russell (32:46)
• Zafar’s Final Poem:
  • Dalrymple recites Zafar’s legendary last poem, suffused with grief at the loss of his city and beloved (read at 33:40–36:08).

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8. The Aftermath—British Rule and Indian Futures

• The End of Syncretism:
  • The “White Mogul” era of reciprocity and romance between Britons and Indians is over; racial and cultural separation rules (36:57).
• Destruction of Muslim Power:
  • The British hold Muslims responsible for the revolt; Mughal and North Indian Muslim elites are ruined, displaced by Hindu banking classes (37:19–39:57).
• Seeds of Modernity and Future Dissent:
  • The lost Muslim elite splits—some embrace Westernization (founding universities like Aligarh), others turn away, leading in time to the Deobandi movement that later influences modern Islamism (39:57).
• Foreshadowing Partition and World Affairs:
  • The trauma of 1857 is linked to later events—from Gandhi’s independence movement to the emergence of radical groups and, ultimately, global geopolitics (39:57).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Mass Character of Lucknow’s Uprising:
  • “You get the entire population up in arms… It’s also a class rebellion. It’s a revolution. It’s all sorts of different things put together. But Lucknow is unique.” – Dalrymple (04:33)
• Hazrat Mahal’s Proclamation:
  • “The British will try to destroy your religion, they will take your land. They have already broken their treaties…” – Anand (07:57)
• On British Atrocities:
  • “Is this a war or is it a series of executions?” – William Howard Russell, quoted by Anand (18:31)
• On the Cultural Destruction of Lucknow:
  • “It’s one of the great bits of British imperial vandalism up there with the Summer Palace in Peking…” – Dalrymple (26:46)
• Russell’s Portrait of the Fallen Emperor:
  • “Not a word came from his lips. In silence he sat day and night with his eyes cast on the ground…” – Dalrymple quoting Russell (32:46)
• Zafar’s Poem:
  • “Delhi was once a paradise where love held sway and reigned. But its charms lie ravished now, and only ruins remain… The heart distressed, the wounded flesh, the mind ablaze, the rising sigh, the drop of blood, the broken heart tears on the lashes of the eye…” – Dalrymple (poetry recitation at 33:40–36:08)
• Aftermath and Legacy:
  • “1858, the British won, but they did lose as well… they lose the hearts of Indians forever. If anything, they’ve lit the spark that will eventually lead to Gandhi and Nehru and Jinnah…” – Anand (36:08)
  • “The year Ghalib dies is the same year that Gandhi is born.” – Dalrymple (37:05)

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Important Timestamps

• Lucknow: City of Corpses, Siege Revisited: [03:12]
• Hazrat Mahal’s Leadership Emergence: [06:33–08:57]
• Arrival of Colin Campbell/“Old Kabardar”: [12:02]
• Secunderbag Massacre: [15:03–15:59]
• William Howard Russell’s Account: [17:34–18:31]
• British Devastation of Kaiserbagh: [21:06–22:51]
• Herbicide—Destruction of Lucknow: [25:26–28:30]
• Trial and Exile of Zafar: [28:30–33:40]
• Reading Zafar’s Last Poem: [33:40–36:08]
• End of an Era, British Aftermath: [36:08–39:57]

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Episode Tone & Style

Dalrymple and Anand are passionate, erudite, and at moments, deeply emotional—especially when reflecting on the human and cultural cost. While scholarly, the dialogue is vivid and filled with lively repartee, personal asides, and appeals to empathy. Their use of Indian and British cultural references (from “kick-ass women” to “G4S security force”) lends the discussion contemporary immediacy.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode is a poignant, exhaustively detailed account of the final and most devastating phase of the 1857 Indian Uprising. By centering Lucknow—a city of extraordinary culture and now a symbol of imperial destruction—the hosts deliver a searing lesson on how history’s grand conquests bring not just military but also cultural, moral, and even psychological ruin. Their narrative ties a tragic 19th-century episode to the origins of both Indian independence and the complex legacies of modern South Asian and global history.

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Highly recommended for those who want to understand not only the facts of the rebellion but its enduring emotional, cultural, and political resonance.

Transcript

[A]

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[A]

In the finale of our series on the great uprising of 1857, we leave Delhi a smoking ruin and turn our eyes to the final battlefield of Lucknow.

[B]

And this was once a centre of luxury, of poetry, of beauty, of art. And now it is a city of corpses, blood and despair, under siege from the rebels.

[A]

But the Scottish general, the brutal Scottish general Lord Clyde, is marching up to the city to stamp out the final fire of rebellion.

[B]

And you know, this is a red line in Indian history. Where the East India Company falls, the British Raj takes over. And this is an entirely different grip on the Indian subcontinent. India will change forever. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand.

[A]

And me, William Drimple.

[B]

Now, this is our series finale of our Empire special on the 1857 uprising. So we are going to turn our attention back to a place where we started, the glittering domed capital of Lucknow, the city of poets, of courtesans, of music, of art. It is now, though, a city of corpses.

[A]

And if Delhi was the political heart of the rebellion, Anita, Lucknow, you could say, really, is it? So, in Delhi, the sepoys were fighting for an old king. But in Lucknow, the entire population of Avad, from the great Talukdar landlords to the peasants, rise up in what one of our guests, for a future bonus, Rajungshu Mukherjee, the great expert on the rebellion in Lucknow, has famously called a peasant war.

[B]

So let me just remind you, we last looked at Lucknow when the British were trapped in the Residency. So the date was September 1857. You had the generals Havelock and Outram, who have finally fought their way in it Is, you know, celebrated in Victorian law as the first relief of Lucknow. But I mean, relief isn't really the word that comes to mind, is it, Willy? Far from it.

[A]

It wasn't at all. It was a bit of a cock up because they fought their way in through these narrow streets, losing hundreds of men, only to realize that they didn't have enough force to evacuate the women and children at all. And so all they'd done was add extra mouths to the defenders while the rebels closed the ring around them. So inside this six acre site of the Residency of Lucknow, which is still sort of preserved as a memorial for the Brits, a sacred site that every visitor to indeed used to visit, but today now rather neglected landmark just outside the main thoroughfares of lucknow, inside that six acre ruin, the situation is now incredibly desperate. There's 2,000 soldiers, a thousand civilians, surrounded by an entire province in arms. And everyone is with the rebels. No one wants the British to survive. Everyone wants to see the British driven out and expelled forever.

[B]

It is as if they are in a pressure cooker and someone's just turned up the heat basically around them. And if you do read Rudrangshu Mukherjee's work, I just point you towards his other than revolt, because what he argues, Willi, and I'd love to know your take on this is that Lucknow was fundamentally different from anywhere else in India. We talked about Delhi in the last episode, but this place, this place was the one that the British would struggle with the most. And why was that? Why was it so different?

[A]

That's absolutely correct assessment. And what's interesting about 1857 when you study is that it's different in different places. Lucknow is one thing where you get the entire population up in arms. Delhi is much more, much more fractured because these are not local boys, they've come in from outside. Everyone in Delhi regards them as sort of uncouth provincials. It's like sort of mud booted Yorkshire farmers walking into Virginia Woolf's Bloomsbury or something. You know, these guys are definitely outsiders and Ghalib thinks them as sort of a peasant rabble. But you get other rebellions too. You get, you know, for example, there's a Santal rebellion, you get these sort of tribal rebellions in remote areas, you get various rural uprisings in the countryside. So the old exam question that every historian of India has had to answer at some point, you know, is it an uprising, is it a mutiny? Is it's that. It's both and more. It's also a tribal rebellion. It's also a class rebellion. It's a revolution. It's all sorts of different things put together. But luck now is unique.

[B]

The mass movement, it's. Everybody's in it, you know, in it.

[A]

Everyone is for it. Exactly. And that's. That's not necessarily the case elsewhere.

[B]

That is fascinating. And I think. I mean, I'll quote Mukherjee again, and I know we are going to talk to him in a bonus episode, but, you know, he says the sepoys weren't just soldiers. They were peasants in uniform and their grievances were personal, you know, from their home villages. So somebody could be fighting because their taxes were too high. Another person could be fighting because they were, you know, insulted. Another could be fighting for the glory of other. These. These reasons were complicated, but they were united as a people. And so, you know, you've got the British huddled in that residency with a sea of rebellion lapping at the walls and holding the rebellion together with all of these disparate groups, which is not an easy thing to do, as we found out in Delhi. You know, with all of these groups that aren't listening to each other, aren't talking to each other. They hold together a bit better here because of one woman. You know, I like a powerful woman.

[A]

You certainly do. This is one of your key girls, this one.

[B]

Me too. Begum Hazrat Mahal was her name. And tell me, I mean, you know, jokingly, you say she's my kind of girl, but she kind of is because she rises above her sex, the expectation of her sex, her position, everything. Now tell everybody why she's so special.

[A]

Well, she's an intriguing character and we've mentioned already twice in this, and we will mention him again, Rudrangshu Mukherjee. Rudrangshu is the guy who's really dug deep into the uprising in. And he has excavated her story. As we heard last time in the first round of the LTN story, she was a rather sort of junior member of the harem. She came from a black African background. Her father was a black African. She got left behind when Wajid Ali Shah was exiled to Calcutta. But that turned out to be a reason for promotion, in a sense, when the city rises up in 1857 because she's got the only male child, Birjis Kaddar, Wajid Ali Shah's only son in the city. So she rises up now and becomes really the soul of the resistance.

[B]

I love the fact that you called her the soul of the resistance. And the reason she is the soul of the resistance is because she is clever. I mean, she's cleverer than a lot of the men around her. And actually, it's really interesting in this Mutiny series, we've come across quite a few powerful, as I like to call them, kick ass women. Rani of Shahsi being another.

[A]

She is one big kick ass woman.

[B]

Kick ass woman sort of riding into battle. But if we talk about Hazrat Mahal, she does good proclamation, let me tell you. Let me commend unto you her proclamation. So this is the kind of thing that she is gut stirring stuff. And so she says unto her people, the British will try to destroy your religion, they will take your land. They have already broken their treaties. And it's that kind of tub thumper that gets men to follow her and to say, you know what? We are one, we are together and we are behind you.

[A]

I'm sure if you've been around Lady 57 Eater, you'd have been very much on the same proclamation front.

[B]

I like to think I'm doing that right now in London. I think, you know, in my own little way. Yeah, yeah, give me a revolution. I'm all there.

[A]

The Hazrat Mahal of Gul Haggar podcast.

[B]

Yes. Okay, I'll take it, I'll take it. So, I mean, she manages Willy to keep the Dalak Dars, you know, the great landlords, the ones who never hear the word no frankly on side. I mean, she gets them to fight with her. Tell me more about that. Because it's great.

[A]

So she creates a coalition. I mean, what's interesting is that this woman who is almost invisible in the records before 1857, becomes the symbol of resistance against the British in Lucknow during the uprising. And it's the fate of Lucknow to be the last stand of this rebellion. As we've seen, poor Raniv Jhansi has been hunted down and killed and her body cremated. As we saw in the last episode, Delhi has fallen and the Moguls are now in prison. We'll have yet to see the trial of Zafar, but we'll come to that before too long. And Lucknow is the last center of resistance. And what you see in the autumn of 1857 is the arrival first of the rebels of Delhi, driven out of Delhi by the assault on Kashmiri gate that we dealt with in the last episode.

[B]

Are they the ones driven out, Willi? Or are they the ones who just took off and left during the eclipse? I often wonder what they tell their children, the ones who took off.

[A]

Well, I think it's probably a bit of everyone. Everyone that Wasn't that wasn't killed, that hadn't got anywhere else to go. And so Lucknow is the last place. There's a strong party that think that the walls of Delhi have been breached but Lucknow is still standing.

[B]

Right? Right. So let's go there, we'll be safe there, we can fight from there.

[A]

You know, it's a two week journey on horseback to go from Delhi to Lucknow. It's not, it's not impossible. And so you have these guys trudging down the roads rather like Covid times when all these migrant labor from, from up had to walk back from Del working. There's a similar sort of scene, all these guys filling the roads, wounded, roughshod, thirsty in this, in this heat. And they start coming back and they've got nowhere else to retreat to. So you know, this is the last stand of the last rebels.

[B]

And there's another thing, isn't there with this? Because you know what's making them able to put one exhausted foot in front of the other is the news from Delhi of what the hell the British have done to the people who they did get their hands on. You know, the devil's so called Devil's Wind and Nicholson's terrible treatment of civilians sometimes he had nothing to do with anything in Delhi. So you know, if you're not going to go to Lucknow, where the hell are you going to go? Because if they get you, we know what they do to you.

[A]

The attitude of the British were there was no innocent people in, in Delhi. They took the view that everyone there was guilty. And so every male, I mean it's a hell of a thing, every male above the age of 16 is balloted. The streets are literally filled, jam clogged with corpses, one over each other. So anyone that's gone out is making it to Lucknow and they don't have long to relax there because a month and a half later, Sir Colin Campbell, who is this fascinating character, a Glasgow carpenter's son who has risen through the ranks due to his military talent. He's now 65, a veteran of the Peninsula War, the two opium wars we've dealt with in our Opium War series, the Crimea. And he is both a military genius but also someone who's incredibly cautious. He's a kind of cross between Nicholson and Archdale Wilson if you like. He's the sort of two in one.

[B]

Can I tell them all his nickname? I love his nickname. Can I tell them his nickname? Because we have this thing. So every mother tells her child when they don't want the child to do anything, Kabardar, which is don't you dare or you better take care. And he gets that nickname, Old Kabardar, because, you know, they say he never takes a risk, but he didn't have to, you know, just don't even risk it. So that's his nickname, Colin Campbell. And he has a very different army with him as well. I mean, it's not the East India Company army anymore. These are crack squads, like the Queen's regiments. They're 93rd Highlanders, otherwise known as the Thin Red Line. And this is the very cream of the British fighting force, which has now come.

[A]

Yeah, the Victorian books make a great deal of this because the British always looked down on East India Company armies and regarded them as slightly second division, almost like a sort of G4S security force rather than the actual troops.

[B]

Other security forces exist. Don't sue us G4S anyway, as you were. Carry on.

[A]

Well, yeah, anyway, the Victorians regarded the British army proper as a cut above every other force in the world. And from memory, I think these guys were on their way to China. They were on their way to the China coast when the ships get turned around back to Calcutta and they get then sent up the country with Campbell to relieve Kanpur. And we last saw these Highlanders in their kilts marching on Kanpur ready to revenge the dead of the Bibi Ga. They've done that. They've created havoc and butchery in Kanpur and now they're making their way for a final bout of revenge killing in Lucknow. But Campbell is clever, he's canny. He's a canny Scotch and he knew how. In the previous attempt to relieve Lucknow, they just marched through the middle and lost half their force. Because this is, you know, Latna with narrow lanes is a perfect guerrilla fighting territory. Snipers in windows can just take out any of these guys as they stroll in their kilts through the streets. So Campbell avoids the narrow streets and he goes a long way around. He goes through the parks and palaces. He reconnoiters very successfully. And he uses a very clever method of blasting his way through the outer defences, like Shahnajaf and Secundabag, through the gardens. And he makes it, if you like, three quarters of the way round the city and comes into the Residency from the rear and one of the great slaughters of the entire mutiny. We saw the great slaughter in Delhi in the last episode once Nicholson and the other troops had burst into Kashmiri Gate. The equivalent in the Fall of Luck now is what happens in Secunderbug now, this is a high walled garden and it's closed off on four sides. And what Campbell does is he just blows a hole in one tiny bit of the wall.

[B]

It's not a big hole, it's a really small. It's a small bridge. It's not huge at all. What, three feet square we're talking.

[A]

Exactly. And these guys in their kilts have to clamber through it. Yeah, but there's no way out because of this for the rebels inside. And so once the Highlanders have clambered in to secunderbag, they just get their bayonets out and they kill every single one of the troops in this enclosed space.

[B]

I remember reading about this and the rocket fuel that these troops were on, I mean, apart from the fact they've got through a tiny little entrance so there's no way out for them either, is that they have, you know, they're screaming at the top of their voice, remember Kanpur? Remember Delhi? And that is, you know, the thing that is pushing them forward to this no quarter fight, that they will kill or be killed. It's as simple as that. So they are a terrifying force that break upon this place.

[A]

Well, they're literally bayoneting men trapped against these walls. And the story is that the piles of bodies are so high that the soldiers actually have to climb over them to find more people to kill. I mean, it's a rific horrific scene. Dead bodies blocking the gateways. Anyway, after this, Campbell, by this odd route which, which avoids his troops coming into much direct danger themselves, reaches the Residency and unlike the previous attempt by Neil, he evacuates the civilians and the garrisons. And then without pausing immediately, he withdraws them all from the city, leaving only a tiny force in the Allenbag on the outskirts. And so the rebels reclaim Lucknow. But this sense of victory is illusionary.

[B]

It's not going to last very long, is it? Because they're not going to leave it now that they know they can take it. So it's just, you know, a tick, tick, tick of time. And at this point, I want to introduce somebody we've talked about before on this podcast who we, you know, respect hugely. A man called William Howard Russell, probably, I would say, the first war correspondent he wrote for the Times. He was a man who had a conscience. He was a man who could admit when he'd got something wrong. You know, he'd come with one state of mind and it could be changed because of the evidence of his eyes. So Russell is there on the scene and this is one of Those moments where you see him doing a 180 degrees and changing his mind about what the hell is going on here under the flag that he worships. What do they say?

[A]

So Russell is disgusted by what he sees the Brits up to. And what's fascinating is that the British have been fed in their news up to now, particularly in the Illustrated London News, which is the most read magazine and which has been covering this in a very jingoistic fashion. And the British are just being told that the Indians are these savages who go around raping Indian women and that genocide is too good for them is really the message. And this is heard in London. And even someone like Dickens, Dickens is always the person that sticks to my mind because he's someone who's, you know, usually on the side of the oppressed, the minorities, the underdogs.

[B]

He's vile about this. Yeah, he's vile.

[A]

He says, delete Delhi. So what the great victory of Russell's moral stature is that he dares to report the truth. And in a world that is being fed propaganda and fake news, he's the only source of truth.

[B]

The way he counters it is just by saying what he sees. So he describes British troops as being drunk with blood. He sees them doing things which are unconscionably inhumane, breaking every rule of not gentlemanly conduct, but warfare, the conduct of warfare. And at one point he asks, and this is a very famous quote from Russell, is this a war or is it a series of executions? And all of this is sort of starting to filter out. But the final act for luck now is yet to come. You remember we just said a little while ago. So the rebels manage to take back the city because the British withdraw. But it's not for very long because in the spring of 1858, Campbell, of course, comes back and he comes back with 31,000 men this time. 31,000 men, and I think something in the order of 160 plus heavy guns. It is the largest army ever assembled by the British in India and just mad. And the rebels, remember, are led by Begum Hazrat Mahal, you know, this extraordinary woman, and she has somebody else by her side who we've not really mentioned, and he is a holy man. Tell us who's right at her shoulder at this point.

[A]

So the Mulvey of Faizabad is in many ways the Begum's rival. At the early part of the uprising, before the Begum had really established herself as the sole voice of the rebels in luck. Now, the Morbi had rather fancied himself for that position too. And he's one of these sort of jihadi mulveys that we talked about in the last episode. There is. The language of jihad is very much on the lips of many of the rebels at this time. And reading it today, obviously we read it after we're used to hearing it on the lips of Al Qaeda and ISIS and so on. The words jihad and ghazi leap out of the pages of the primary sources. In a way, perhaps they didn't to someone writing this in the 50s or the 60s or the 40s. Anyway, the Mulvi is very much of that persuasion and now working alongside his former rival, the Begum Hazrat Mahal, they know that they are the last stand of the uprising. They know the British are going to come back and they have built three massive lines of defence. Tell me about that, Anita.

[B]

Well, I mean, the lines of defence are really considerable. They're great, except they haven't reckoned that Campbell's going to come with so many people and that he is going to have the ability to outflank these three massive lines of defence. So it happens on March 14, the British storm Kaiserbag. You know, it's a huge palace complex that is the pride of the kings of Avedh.

[A]

You see photographs of it and there's one tiny fragment of it surviving today. And I've stayed in that fragment. It was now the property of the Raja of Mahmudabad, and I was lucky enough to spend the night there with the old Suleiman Mahmoudabad, who's now dead. But in 1857, it's 10 or even 20 times the size of the enormous building that's there today.

[B]

It's enormous.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And in the photographs, it looks like, you know, one of those palaces in St Petersburg or one of those endless tsarist palaces that go on for miles and miles into the distance.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And this is where the rebels are based. And this is where Campbell comes to.

[B]

Them and he smashes through. I mean, you know, he does this quite brilliant and, you know, credit where it's due, just as a strategist, this is just brilliant. He gets around, outflanks, crashes through, intakes the Kaiserbag. And now what happens next is actually, you know, you've seen the best of British soldiery in doing that, and then you see the worst because they end up in this, as you call it. I think it's brilliantly compared to, you know, St Petersburg luxury. You see the soldiers go nuts. The British soldiers, once they are unleashed with all of this, you know, having seen and you know, cut them some slack as well, you know, they've probably seen some horrible things and done some horrible things and suffered some horrible things, but they get into this place of immense beauty and they smash it, everything up, you know, just like a rampage of hooligans. The chandeliers are pulled down and smashed with musket butts. You've got sort of cashmere shawls ripped up and then used as saddle cloths. You know, the ivory treasures are just put into campfires and burned and pockets are filled to bursting point. So I mean, the looting that goes on here, will he just tell us it's nuts?

[A]

Well, all over Britain to this day in private houses are items of loot. From this palace I have come across two houses that I know personally where there are sort of cups of the king of Uvard or jewels of the king of Uvard that are still lying around on shelves in people's houses. There are a lot of British troops that are doing a lot of looting. But in the next half we will talk about the terrible fate of Lucknow after British capture Kaiserborg.

[C]

Hi everybody, it is Dominic Sambrook here from the Rest is History. Now, you have probably been watching the scenes on the streets of Iran. You may be wondering where all this comes from. So on the Rest is History. We have just recorded a four part series on recent Iranian history. So it kicks off with the Iranian revolution that brought down the Shah Muhammad reza Pahlavi in 1978, 1979, and it's actually his son who is now leading opposition to the Ayatollahs from exile in the United States. So in this series we explore the history behind the Islamic revolution in Iran at the end of the 70s. Where did people like Ayatollah Khomeini come from? Where did their ideas come from? Why did they have so much support? Why was the Shah driven out of Iran in the first place? And what did it have to do with American intervention and indeed British intervention in the 19th century, 1950s? And we look at the unfolding story of the revolution and then the amazing story of the seizure of the U. S Embassy in Tehran, the taking of initially 66 hostages by the Iranians. This is probably the story that I most enjoyed researching and writing. So please, if you're interested in Iranian history and this what's going on, check it out. And if you want to taste it, we have a clip for you at the end of this episode.

[B]

Welcome back. So the fate of luck now hangs in the balance now. And if you think about what they did to the palace, it's not looking good, is it? And if you read Rudrangshu Mukherjee, who we keep quoting because he's done sort of, you know, the most amount of work on this, he describes what happens next as herbicide. So not genocide, but herbicide. The killing of a city, its people, its spirit, basically wiping it off the map. And that's what they do.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, they plan to do the same in Delhi. And the fact that the Red Fort survives more or less intact. About half the internal buildings of the Red Fort were destroyed and there were plans to destroy all of it, plus to level the Jaba Masjid and build a Gothic cathedral. Now, that didn't happen in Delhi because John Lawrence turns out the Punjab. And we have to thank Lawrence for the survival of the Red Fort and the survival of the Jam Masjid. Otherwise we'd have some hideous Victorian cathedral where that beautiful Mogul Mosque remains today. But no one intervened in Lucknow and about four fifths of the cities just wiped out today. There's a little bit of Kaiserberg, there's a couple of pavilions, there's lots of tombs. But you have to go to the old photographs. That was very well photographed before and during this destruction. And there's a great photographer called Beato, who was of Italian extraction, who photographs Lucknow just before this herbicide, just before they completely disrupt. Imagine St Petersburg. That's the kind of landscape you have to think of.

[B]

Or Paris, you know, something beautiful like Paris. And then you suddenly, you say, right, Paris will be no more. And you sort of crash through the boulevards and you recreate them. You know, this is. This is. You're going to wipe off every semblance of its past, its history.

[A]

Do you remember that quote we had when we started the. We first talked about luck. Now, in an earlier episode, he says, you know, not Paris, not Rome, not Constantinople. Luck now is the most magnificent. And no one has told me this. He's irritated because he's been told these people are savages. And he turns up, he finds this unbelievable magnificence and then he sees it destroyed in front of his eyes. It's just. It's one of the great bits of British imperial vandalism up there with the summer palace in Peking and the stripping of the Parthenon and all these other things that, you know, that we keep hearing about. But Lucknow is not so famous today because very few people know, I think, what was lost in Lucknow.

[B]

I mean, it's not just an act of vandalism, though. This herbicide, this destruction of a city and its culture. You know, one terribly hard fought lesson that they've learned is that, you know, those winding streets of the, the Mughal city, you know, those beautiful little surprises that you come across in an old Mughal city of a narrow lane opening up into this beautiful kind of heavily in a courtyard. They killed lots of Brits, you know, because they were jumped on, they were ambushed. So what they want to do now is create these sort of clear lines, streets that are straight, that you can drag a cannon through, that you can march your men through, you can race your horses through without fear of being jumped upon. So, so that kind of, you know, is one of the reasons why this, this, if you like, I think might even be your phrase, spatial cleansing and turning it into like an entirely different looking city that has no past, that has no roots in this very rich, beautiful culture. And you say it goes even further than that, Willie, because, you know, the poets are silenced and there's no more music. And it's like everything that ever made Lucknow what it was has gone completely gone after. The British do what they need to do now.

[A]

At the same time that they are dynamiting the Kaiserberg and destroying one of the great urban landscapes of the 19th century and 18th century, the British are putting on trial the last Mughal emperor, Bahras Al Zafar, who we met at the beginning of this series as this multilingual poet who had created this extraordinary renaissance of Urdu poetry and turned Delhi into one of the most cultured cities of his time. Despite having almost no budget, he has surrendered to the British. And at the same time that Lucknow is being destroyed in revenge for what Lucknow did to the, to the British, the British are putting Zafa on trial, blaming him. This is an 82 year old man. He's basically seen now, now he's seen all his sons shot in front of him or hung or dragged away and their naked bodies thrown in the Cottwell. And there is a show trial when Zafa is accused of being personally the spider at the center of the web, of being at the center of what is made out by the prosecutor to be an international Muslim conspiracy stretching to Mecca and Iran. And this is complete historical nonsense. As we know, the uprising started largely in the East India Company's own army when it's largely Brahmin and upper caste troops refuse to touch this cartridge. And he can't be killed because Hudson has promised him his life when he surrendered. And so the worst that the British can do is to exile him. But that is exactly what they do. They plan to move him off to Burma and to send him to exile in Burma, in Rangoon, just as they had sent the last king of Mandalay to Bombay. So they kind of, you know, move exiled heads of state around their chessboard. And the night before he is due to be exiled, Russell gets in to see him. He's still in the stables where he's been dumped. All he has is a charpoy. And Russell, like everybody else who has read the transcripts of the trial, I think he was in luck now during the trial, so he wasn't present, but he knows the charges against him and the trial makes out that Zafar is like, you know, like some sort of villain from a James Bond movie, with a white cat controlling all this sort of specter like activity across a vast area. What he finds, and it takes the genius of William Howard Russell, who is not someone, to have the wool pulled over his eyes. What Russell sees is something plainly and evidently completely different. He was, wrote Russell, a dim, wandering eyed, dreamy old man with a feeble hanging nether lip and toothless gums. Was he really one who had conceived that vast plan of restoring a great empire, who had fomented the most gigantic mutiny in the history of the world? We called him ungrateful for rising against his benefactors. He was no doubt a weak old man, but to talk of ingratitude on the part of one who saw all the dominions of his ancestors gradually taken from him until he was left with an empty title and a more empty exchequer and a palace full of penniless princes is perfectly preposterous. And this is an important point, incidentally, I just break in here to say that until 1832, the British had actually had Fidvi Shah Alam, the vassal of Shah Alam. On their own coin, they were the vassals of the Moguls. That was their official position. So now to charge him with treachery against them is to just invert it. You know, they are the vassal. Zafar cannot be disloyal to them. They are the ones who are disloyal to him. Anyway, just to complete Russell's extraordinary moment of perception, not a word came from his lips. In silence. He sat day and night with his eyes cast on the ground, as though utterly oblivious of the conditions in which he was placed. His eyes had the dull, filmy look of very old age. Some heard him quoting verses of his own composition, writing poetry on a wall with a burnt stick.

[B]

I mean, this is again, I mean, thank God For Russell, because it also that with the other little piece of evidence that we presented in our last episode of a man who knew that his city was about to fall and is composing these just bonkers verses of Next Stop London will be there soon. He's lost his mind. I mean, there's some kind of dementia or just madness mania that has set in. But even in the throes of that, he is still able, Willy, to produce some pretty heartbreaking poetry. And there's one, you know, you've read it before on this podcast.

[A]

I have read it for I think our second episode or something.

[B]

Yeah, I'm not ashamed of asking you to do it again because the last time you did do it in our second episode, people were in tears and I think you were in tears and yeah, I wasn't in tears because I'm a hard hearted cow, but it is really deeply moving and I might cry this time. So look, read it again because it is beautiful. Go on.

[A]

So this is, this is said to be the poem which Zafar was putting on the wall with the burnt stick when Russell walked in. Whether that is true the case, no one knows. In fact, no one even knows whether it is Zafar's poem because the legend is that this was being recited by the bards who used to perform outside the Jammu Masjid. And when the people of Delhi are allowed back in again, which they're not allowed for two years, they're just like the Gazans shoved into a corner of Gaza, they're shoved over the Amina, but they're allowed back after two years. And the story goes that this is what the poem that was recited as Zafar's last poem, dedicated to Zeenat Mahal, his wife, who went with him into exile in Burma. When in silks you came and dazzled me with the beauty of your spring. You brought a flower to bloom. Love within my being you lived with me, Breath of my breath being in my being, nor left my side. But now the wheel of time has turned and you are gone. No joys abide. You pressed your lips upon my lips, your heart upon my beating heart. And I have no wish to fall in love again. For they who sold love's remedy have shut shop and I seek in vain. My life now gives no ray of light. I bring no solace to heart or eye. Out of dust, to dust again. Of no use to anyone am I. Delhi was once a paradise where love held sway and reigned. But its charms lie ravished now, and only ruins remain. No tears were shed when shroudless they Were laid in common graves. No prayers were read for the noble dead. Unmarked remain their graves. The heart distressed, the wounded flesh the mind ablaze, the rising sigh, the drop of blood, the broken heart tears on the lashes of the eye. But things cannot remain, O Zapha thus for who can tell through God's great mercy and the Prophet, all may add be well.

[B]

Oh, poor Zafar. It wasn't well there, was it. All was not well. All was never well again. Not for him, not for his family. So Look, I mean, 1858, the British won, but they did lose as well. Because there used to be, I mean, you know, the era of the White Moguls where, you know, there was. There was reciprocity and there was love and there was, you know, affairs and there were, you know, mixed children. That's all over. But now this is another era over where there is any thought that Indians are worth anything, that, you know, they start now looking at them just wholeheartedly as savages. And by doing that, Willi, they lose the hearts of Indians forever. If anything, they've kind of lit the spark that will eventually lead to Gandhi and Nehru and Jinnah and the like saying, you know what? Get out.

[A]

And it's a strange coincidence that the year Ghalib dies is the same year that Gandhi is born.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

But it's interesting because what, you know, when India wins its freedom, it's not the Talukdars, it's not the Mughals, it's not the Marathas, it's none of the old princely order. It's the British trained lawyers.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Who in a sense use the weapons of the British against the British. They learn how to fight them and they know that the resistance like this just picking up arms is not going to destroy this massive British army. But there's another effect too. The British blame the Muslims for this because the Moguls are the figurehead, because everyone goes to the Mogul court. Because Zafa is the heart of this, even though he is unwillingly part of this. The British blame the Muslims and they destroy Mughal and Muslim power in India and the Indian Muslim elite never recover from this. It's not only the end of the East India Company and not only the end of the Mughal dynasty, but it's also the end of the Indian Muslim elite. They are destroyed at this point and they will sink from being the elite of India, which they've been really since the 12th century in North India, to this position of inferiority in Delhi. It is the Hindu banking classes that buy up the city that that take over the ruins which are left gutted by the city. And the Muslims don't quite know what to do. There's two different approaches. You find on one hand a figure like Sasayed Ahmed Khan looking to the west and believing that Indian Muslims can only revive their fortunes by embracing Western learning. And he starts a university in Aligarh, which still survives and trying to encourage Westernization of Indian Muslims. But the other approach, and this is the one in the sense that we are more familiar with, is that the Muslim elite rejects the west and turns against it. And the old madrasa I Rahimiyya, which was the main madrasa in the center of Delhi, destroyed at this point, reforms in a place called Deoband in the years after this. And it's out of the Deobandi madrasas as recently as the 1980s that the Taliban emerged. And the Taliban provide the shelter for Al Qaeda. And it is Al Qaeda out of this world that comes in 9, 11 and attacks the West. So you can see not just in a sense, the divide between Hindu and Muslim in partition, not just the difference between the old feudal order and the new order which arrives part of Gandhi and Nehru, but you also see the despair of the Muslim world which leads to the growth of Islamism and ISIS in our own day.

[B]

Do you know, it's funny you should say that, because it is our next two parter. It's the Iranian Revolution, a theocracy based on Islam and the rejection of the West. That's coming up next. And we have a brilliant guest to do that. It's Scott Anderson. He's a veteran war correspondent, author of a brilliant book, book on the Iranian revolution. So look, join us for that miniseries too, Willi. Thank you. I mean, you write beautifully, you recite poetry beautifully. I didn't cry again, but that's my failing, not yours. I'm going to think about what I've done.

[A]

I had such fun rereading. You don't normally get to reread your books from 20 years ago. And the Last Moogle, which was a book I enjoyed writing more than I think any other book I've ever written.

[B]

Very much enjoyed it. Listen, till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand, and.

[A]

Goodbye from me, William Drimple.

[B]

Close your eyes. Exhale, Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts oh, my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts.

[C]

Hi there, it's Dominic Sambrook again from the Rest Is History. Now, I mentioned during the break that we have a new series on recent Iranian history. So here is a short extract for you. If you want to hear the whole series, then search for Revolution in Iran on the Rest Is History. Wherever you get your podcasts or search for us on YouTube, There are crowds in the streets every day. There are attacks on banks and restaurants every day. And already in some towns in Iran, power has been taken from their legitimate authorities and it's been taken over by Revolutionary Strike Committees. Now, if you're with the revolution, this is very exciting. If you're not with the revolution, it is terrifying. And in his memoirs, Ambassador William Sullivan describes standing at the US Embassy and looking out through an upstairs window. And he sees in the distance troops holding back demonstrators, and he sees cars burning in the middle of the road. He sees smoke rising from burning buildings. And he thinks something has to change. You know, we have to do something. So on the 9th of November, he sends a secret cable to Washington with the title Thinking the Unthinkable. And he says, the Shah is finished, it's over, and if we don't act now, Iran, which is so vital to us, will slip out of our hands forever. He says we should ditch the Shah right now and it may well be time to do a deal with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. If you enjoyed that clip, then please search for the Rest Is History. Wherever you get your podcasts.