327. India’s Greatest Rebellion: The British Strike Back (Part 6)

15:00Anita Anand:So I said that Mahmood took a slightly different lesson from the papers that we both studied. His view was that while it was chaotic, there were very strong and sometimes successful attempts to set up an administration. At the top, there is a court of administration. It's called that. And it's made up of the sepoy officers and palace officials. And had that actually worked, that could have provided a glue and an authority which everyone follows. And you're right, there is a problem because the moguls have not actually been involved in the nitty-gritty of local administration for two generations.

15:37Anita Anand:Yeah, they've lost the habit.

15:39William Dalrymple:They don't know what the paperwork is. They don't know where the filing cabinet is. It's a mess, right?

15:44Anita Anand:All that. So, 1803, the British take Delhi. In that point, they run the show. And the Mughals haven't had to collect taxes. They just had to organize poetry readings and spectacles and organize nice sort of parties at Holi and Diwali and Ducera. But what is needed now is taxes to pay the troops, gunpowder to replace the ammunition. How do you keep the prices of grain down? And how do you stop the sepoys from looting the local shops and raping the courtesans? And this is what's being worked out. And there is a measure of success. And what we found in the mutiny papers was, for example, muster rolls every morning for the local cotoal.

16:25Anita Anand:So we know who turned up every morning at the police station to keep the administration. So it's not like it's sort of complete chaos. It's not the rule of curse. But you have got a lot of armed ruffians running around, often feeling that they're not being appreciated, often feeling they're not being fed and looked after. And we also have petitions, as well as the military camp, as well as the papers from the different seapoy regiments, talking about things like how much ammo we got left and what's left in the treasury. There are also the petitions which people are presenting to the court. So one of the largest delegations to come before Zafar in the first days of the uprising is from the outer suburbs, the two suburbs outside the wall, which are Bahar Gunj and Uzawodin.

17:11Anita Anand:Uzawodin is very much still there as a great Sufi shrine and rather a posh suburb these days. And they complain. So this petition complains that the people they call the Talangas, the sepoys, come out of Ajmeri Gate and oppress us, the shopkeepers. They take our goods by force without paying anything. The troops enter the houses of the poor and penniless and take anything they find, even the string beds, dishes, and piles of firewood. So this is where these mutiny papers were so important, because quite often this has been very much romanticized in nationalist historiography as a great national uprising.

17:47Anita Anand:But when you actually look at the documentation, you've got shopkeepers complaining that the guys aren't paying for the goods they're taking, that they're pinching the string beds. And it says, whenever we, your humble servants, or even the most respected citizens, go to the Tilangas and plead with them about the misery to which we've been reduced, they merely threaten us with guns and swords. We have been reduced to such extremities by the depredations of the troops that we submit this petition to his majesty. So, you know, what we're getting is all the actual, you know, when you've taken away the rhetoric, this is the reality of what is obviously a very bloody and brutal uprising.

18:25William Dalrymple:I mean, there's something really touching about the end of the petition as well, because they do believe that this old man, you know, this poor old man who sort of had this all unfolding around him, can even do anything about it. So, you know, what they say is, you know, he may turn his gaze of justice and commiseration towards us, send a royal order to the Telangas, that they give us no more trouble, that with the support of our gracious sovereign, we may be left to live our lives in peace. May the sun of prosperity and success and all glory shine brightly for your sake. Oh, Lord of all. And who they're talking to, who they're addressing, is a man who is just as stressed out as all of them.

19:04William Dalrymple:I mean, they haven't knocked his door down. He doesn't know whether they might or they might not. They're talking about Zafar, the last Mughal. He's in the middle of all of this. Does he have the power to do anything for these people who are appealing for his help?

19:19Anita Anand:So yes and no. The sepoys have come to submit to his authority nominally. But, you know, these are rough guys with guns from the sticks. And there are reports in some of the accounts of them sort of wandering up, you know, not obeying the usual Mughal etiquette where people have to prostrate themselves and even go flat. Instead, these guys just walk up to the suffer and say, Araybhan Shah, hey, king. Oh, my God. And they touch his beard and all this sort of stuff. Can I give that a bit of context? That is like somebody in Britain going to King Charles.

19:54William Dalrymple:What's up, Charlie? You know, it is entirely casual and unacceptable. Arribacha! You know, hey, it's just terrible. It's like giving him a street name. Arribuda! Old man! How are you? Oh, my God. So, I mean, how did Zuffer, did he write about how that felt? Do we know how he felt about that?

20:12Anita Anand:So, yes, we have lots of reports of him getting obviously very depressed because these guys are completely out of control. They've murdered the Brits on whom he depends for his pension. And he realizes that whether he likes it or not, he's now cast his lot with this bunch. And, you know, increasingly, he's worried that this isn't going to end up well. And this becomes particularly the case only one month later, Anita, when the British turn up again. Tell us what happens.

20:38William Dalrymple:Right. Yeah. So they're not doing nothing because it's been a shock to them. But, you know, what are they going to do? Are they going to get on boats and leave? No, they're not. Of course they're not. again, they're going to try and do something about it. So they are licking their wounds in Shimla, which is the sort of summer capital. It's where a lot of the Brits went during the heat. And they're trying to work out just how do we sort this out? What do we do about this? By June 1857, they managed to muster together a force and march it onto a place called the Delhi Ridge. Now, that's sort of a high level of ground above the old city.

21:10William Dalrymple:And this is, I think, a bit of an irony about this story, William. Tell me if you agree, because we call it the Siege of Delhi. But for much of that summer period, it really is the British who are being besieged because they've got this position. But, you know, it sort of leaves them stuck a bit in a quagmire, doesn't it?

21:27Anita Anand:Exactly. So the Delhi Ridge is still there. It's part of the Aravali Range, which goes all the way through Rajasthan to Gujarat. This is the last shudder of it, really, before it gives up. Where they camp is exactly where Delhi University is today. If you go to St. Stephen's or go to give a lecture up in the university, you go under the Delhi Ridge. and then up onto it to the university buildings, which is just beside what's called the Flagstaff Tower. But the force which gets there under General Archdale Wilson in June is too small to attack the city. So they're meant to be besieging the city.

22:01Anita Anand:But within days, they realize that they are now just made themselves the focus for the attacks of the people inside the city. And what the situation is is that they're saved really instantly by the disunity of the sepoys. Each sepoy regiment, remember all these guys have marched from various parts. Some have come from Rajasthan, some have come from central India, some have come from the Ganges plains. They've all marched into Delhi, and they all camp separately, and they take it in turns to attack the British. So rather than having a sort of concentrated strategy whereby they're all attacking together and overwhelming this actually quite small force, what they do is they take it in turns.

22:40William Dalrymple:Wear them out, wear them out, wear them out.

22:42Anita Anand:But each day, having done their little attack and bravely climbed the hill and shown how brave they are and, you know, taking pot shots at the Brits in their trenches, they then march down the hill again, have a rest and the next bunch take over. Go home in time for their tea. No land is won. Yeah.

22:57William Dalrymple:But it's not just, you know, the constant attack from people, you know, the sepoys, but also, you know, Diliwala, you know, people who are from Delhi because they're all in this now. But they are also being perpetually attacked by the weather because you point out this is high summer. So, I've passed out in Delhi in a Delhi market at that time of year. It is hot. The sun is remorseless. You've been in London too long, Anita. I mean, I did. I literally passed out in the street. It was too hot when I was going shopping for my wedding. Actually, it was a very lovely woman who was begging for money.

23:29William Dalrymple:And I fell right almost into her lap. And she was the one who was looking after me. It was a very strange thing. Anyway, but cholera, sunstroke, heat exposure, you know, all of that kind of thing. that must have been taking its toll on those Brits on the ridge, as well as that, you know, sort of constant wave after wave of attack on them.

23:48Anita Anand:So what you get is you've got the Brits entrenched on the ridge. And it's one of the, you know, the 1850s is the moment when modern warfare really begins. It's the same sort of fighting that you're getting in the First World War, where people are in trenches with barbed wire, and it's pretty gruesome. And because it's such close combat, no one is clearing the dead bodies out of the way. And so bodies of these successive regiments of sepoys, which are shot every day, piling up in the heat, putrefaction flies everywhere.

24:25William Dalrymple:But that's cholera and typhoid soup right there, isn't it?

24:27Anita Anand:Exactly that. But at the same time, you've got this terrible suffering in the city. And what we read in the mutiny papers is these little petitions, which are sometimes very, very sweet and moving. The kebab man complaining that the sepoys are eating his kebabs and refusing to pay him. The woodchoppers who can't get into the forest because of the fighting. And there's quite a lot from the Tawafs, the courtesans who are very famous in Chauri Bazaar. One of them is complaining that their rooms have been taken over as a sniper-lessed. There's a lot of other sepoys who are trying to sort of, you know, do worse things to the courtesans.

25:02Anita Anand:And we have detailed stories. Some of these stories, what was lovely was that petitions which were packaged individually when you come across them in the mutiny papers turn out to often be one of a succession of petitions from the same person or the same family.

25:16William Dalrymple:Yeah, and nobody's listening to them because nobody can do anything. Can I just, we're going to take a break in a second, but just one little observation just before we go to the break. I mean, it's horrible for the kebab seller. It's beyond appalling for those poor courtesans who are raped almost daily. One gets the impression from looking at the papers. But you do have a little bit of a window of opportunity for those people who want to run off together, you know, because it's chaotic. It's very striking. There's a lot of this going on. So, you know, lovers sort of like, you know, sort of, okay, nobody's looking at us.

25:49William Dalrymple:Let's get out of here. And you've got a lot of petitions, don't you, in this bundle of people saying, hang on a minute, my daughter has run off with that man who I hate. And I need you, Zuffer, to go and get her back because, you know, I just, there were lots of these, weren't there, Willie? I mean, it was a thing.

26:06Anita Anand:There was an amazing number. And I think partly it's that order is breaking down and, you know, the opportunity now in quite a conservative society, to run off and elope exists in a way that it doesn't in normal life. But there's also just something about warfare in general. Have you ever read that wonderful book, The Love Charm of Bombs?

26:25William Dalrymple:No, but I do know that birth rates go up when people think they're going to die. Exactly. People think we haven't got anything to lose.

26:32Anita Anand:Let's go for it.

26:32William Dalrymple:Got to spend the time somehow.

26:34Anita Anand:And this is what we were surprised by when we went to this. We were expecting to have lots of administrative documents from the court of administration. That was what we were looking for and thinking we were going to come across. Instead, you get these fantastic love stories. There's a woman called Balahia who runs off with a guy called Bikari, having looted me of all my wealth, which she took by stealth, according to her surprised and hurt husband, who comes to Zafar and says, I've just lost this girl. There's another one. These little sort of stories normally snips through the net, but because of this, you learn about it.

27:07Anita Anand:So there's a former courtesan named Husseini who married one Sheikh Islam. Now, Sheikh Islam turns out to be himself a convert from Hinduism. And obviously was quite a sort of, I think, quite a dull sort of religious character. And the courtesan decides that that's not what she's after at all. She doesn't want Sheikh Islam, the convert. And she instead runs off with Hudbaqsh the shoemaker, who the jilted husband describes as a spy and a gambler. Right. Perhaps a courtesan Husseini is missing her old life and doesn't want to hang out with the Sheikh anymore.

27:44William Dalrymple:I mean, you know, all of these love affairs to one side, there is also another fact of war, apart from the fact that people do it a lot more when they think they're about to die, that everyone loves a man in uniform. Now, was there a lot of that kind of thing going on with sepoys who've suddenly arrived from different parts of the country?

28:01Anita Anand:There absolutely is. And a lot of the complaints are from Delhi men who've lost their girlfriends or their wives to sepoys, to handsome sepoys in uniform coming in from UP. So there's a guy, one guy who's a tin beater, complains that his wife has run off with a sepoy called Zia. And it's a disgrace on the family, all this sort of stuff. But what is lovely is that you really get the nitty gritty. You don't just get the court. You don't just get the commanders. You get stuff you don't normally get in history, which is the ordinary people. And there's this one particular unfortunate courtesan called Manglo, who we had about 10 petitions from her and all the other courtesans, because she's kidnapped very early on by a cavalryman called Rustam Khan and kept in captivity.

28:46Anita Anand:and we see this story go over literally 10 different petitions as it develops over the summer and Zafar tries to get her released but Rustam Khan won't release her and it's kind of you have soap operas basically it's fascinating for us but obviously very tragic for them at the

29:01William Dalrymple:time awful so I'm just sort of thinking you know we'll go to a break but I'm going to leave you with this image before we come back because we're coming back with a big character you've got Zafar in the middle who is being plagued by constant complaints and appeals from the kebabwala to, you know, the grieving husband whose wife has been taken in the night and doesn't know where she is. You have got sepoys behaving badly and, you know, the economy that Delhi thrives on, you know, the sort of hand-to-mouth economy falling apart because these guys are not paying for what they're eating. So, you've got all of that suffering.

29:36William Dalrymple:Around it, you've got another ring of misery where you've got these sort of Brits who are up on the ridge who are being just pounded constantly by these attacks on their position and who are swimming in a soup of decay with all of the disease that it entails. The only one thing that keeps the British going, and we've got this again from a British officer who says, it is pure distilled hatred that keeps them on that ridge and keeps them alive because they're not fighting a war anymore. They are just waiting to get revenge.

30:18William Dalrymple:Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu, fire. Tens across the board. I could be happy with anything, even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time.

30:34Anita Anand:Maybe.

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30:53William Dalrymple:Welcome back. Now, just before the break, we were telling you that the British are biding their time and they're driven on this diet of revenge. Food is scarce. Revenge, that feeling of revenge. is there aplenty. And the man who comes to represent the embodiment of that revenge is Nicholson. So you said about General Archdale Wilson, who was in charge. We haven't really talked about him because he's a bit of a, well, would we say chinless wonder in the scheme of things as far as the British are concerned?

31:21Anita Anand:So Archdale Wilson is sort of super cautious, paralyzed by indecision. And Nicholson has never, ever had a moment of hesitation in his life. He's this sort of terrifying Old Testament prophet, jet black beard, a gaze that supposedly make a man's knees knock together. And he's a sort of astonishing sort of just a psycho. He's a man of few words. One typical note in the archives has a letter to his boss, John Lawrence, that reads in full, sir, I have the honor to inform you that I've just shot a man who came to kill me, your obedient servant, John Nicholson.

32:02William Dalrymple:That's it. Okay, stop. And the letter, his boss is not a shrinking violet either. John Lawrence is a man of the staccade. He's a man of daring do. He leads from the front. But even to him, that's going to be quite shocking. What? What? What are you saying? So a bit more about Nicholson, as well as being one of our sort of mysterious Irishmen who comes over to do the oppressant that his people have suffered as well from British rule. He has been a frontier administrator in the Punjab and he has this reputation for being so violent, so unhinged that locals actually start worshipping him as if he's some kind of deity.

32:45William Dalrymple:I mean, what do they call him? They think he's one of the pantheon.

32:50Anita Anand:I was doubtful of this. It sounded too much like a sort of British Orientalist story. But it's there in the archives. It's absolutely there.

32:57William Dalrymple:Then Nikolseni, like Saini is a soldier. So Nikolseni would translate as, you know, one of the warriors of Nikolsen. And I suppose they're trying to, if they drew flowers and things before Nikolsen, he's not going to smite them. It's the please don't smite me. I'm your friend kind of school of thought. Not only do they think he's this embodiment of Vishnu, but instead of being flattered, Nikolsen is such a psycho that he thinks, I don't mind. They can worship me. But if I see a single man, one man prostrating himself or, and he says, or begin chanting, they're going to be dragged away and they are going to be flayed.

33:35William Dalrymple:So they are going to be whipped three dozen lashes for anybody with a cat of nine tails who has the temerity to come and prostrate themselves in front of me. I'm just not having that. So the message from Nicholson is, you know what? Worship me because I'm worth it. But just do it quietly. because if I hear it or see it, I'm going to flog you to near death. Nutter. Tell us more.

34:00Anita Anand:I have to say when I was researching this book, he was a gift because he just comes out with this stuff time and time again. And he's just, you know, he's this completely Victorian psycho. He actually proposes a bill to be passed in Parliament as a serious measure. He sends this to London to allow, and here's the direct quote, the flaying alive, impalement and burning of the murderers of the British women and children of Delhi. The idea of simply hanging the perpetrators of such atrocities is maddening. I will not, if I can help it, see fiends of that stamp let off with a simple hanging. As regards torturing the murders of women and children, if it be right otherwise, I do not think we should refrain from it simply because it is a native custom.

34:46Anita Anand:We are told in the Bible that stripes should be meted out according to faults. And if hanging is sufficient punishment for such wretches, it is too severe for ordinary mutineers. If I had them in my power today, I would inflict the most excruciating torches I could think of with a perfectly easy conscience. So that's the kind of guy. Yeah. Okay. So this guy has arrived.

35:08William Dalrymple:Now, I think there are probably mixed emotions on the ridge because if you've got that guy arriving, there is going to be a certain feeling of rejoicing among the people who've been sitting in their own excrement, seeing the rotting bodies of their colleagues around them, that finally we have a man. But if you've got sort of Wilson, who's been there already, who's been trying to hold things together, he is certainly, I mean, forgive the French, kind of think, oh, shit. And so how does that power balance work itself out there?

35:37Anita Anand:So you get very contrary emotions with Nicholson. Most people, I have to say, are completely in love with him. He's regarded as the great hero. And there are a whole series of books with titles like The Hero of Delhi. He's the avenging angel, isn't he? Yeah, he's the avenging angel. And he doesn't believe in process. He doesn't believe that there should be trials or anyone. When his boss, John Lawrence, wrote to him and said, can you send a list of the people you've court-martialed? He writes back on the envelope without opening it, the punishment for mutiny is death. I'm not doing paperwork.

36:13William Dalrymple:I'm just killing them. I'm basically John Lawrence. doing you a favour, we don't have to follow this up. And he's got with him, I mean, we should say that he has British troops when he arrives, who have spent the last few months, in his words, cleansing the countryside, but he's got Punjabis and Bhatans with him as well in that force. That word cleansing. Now, I know what ethnic cleansing means today. Is it the same in the Nicholson playbook as well? What does cleansing mean to him?

36:42Anita Anand:This means exactly what it means in Gaza today. It's exactly the same thought, exactly the same feelings of revenge, and frankly, the same sort of motive in that there is this sensation that there has been rape of innocent women, which is an important part of the story. and Nicholson makes this bloody road through the Punjab to get to the Delhi Ridge. He is constantly attacking sepoy regiments, marching 20, 30 miles a day to ambush them when they don't expect it. And he's already a hero to the Brits by the time that he arrives at the ridge. And he immediately trains his guns on Wilson. If I could, I would depose Wilson and take command himself, he says, on arrival.

37:31Anita Anand:And so Wilson has every reason to feel, you know, that this guy is a threat. Well, this man has no respect for him.

37:37William Dalrymple:He's also openly disrespecting him. You know, if there's no chain of command, if you see this man has nothing but disdain for his commanding officer, who is Wilson, you know, Nicholson is giving permission to everybody else to disrespect Wilson as well.

37:50Anita Anand:But he mends the situation pretty quickly. Within a week, I think, of arriving, he takes a force off to ambush a sepoy party that they see leaving the southern gate of the city. And Nicholson pulls off this extraordinary ambush. He travels at night to get ahead of them. He waits in a marshy area just as they're going to have to cross. And as soon as this force arrives on the edge of the marsh, he unleashes this ambush. Grapeshot rains down on the marsh of Najafgar, and the sepoys who are caught in the swamp are completely destroyed. And this is the first time since the siege of the ridge began two months earlier that there's actually been a full-scale engagement and there's been movement beyond the trench.

38:38William Dalrymple:So we're talking about Nicholson. I just should add that when you look at Victorian sources at the time, how they talk about Nicholson, what they describe, the avenging angel, it's a man who doesn't stop to sleep or eat. He is just a machine of war. That's how they sort of – it's a little bit like if we've ever read – oh, God, I sound so pretentious – but it reminds me of Coriolanus, Shakespeare's, you know, that he just – I'm very impressed with Shakespearean reference. Yes, but it's also that machine of war. The man does not sit – he's covered in blood, you know, sort of from head to toe because he's there for a reason.

39:11William Dalrymple:Anyway, look, that's Nicholson on the one side. I do want to talk a little bit though, Willie, about the other side as well, because the rebels, they have a new commander as well. And he's also quite a striking character, Bakht Khan. Now tell us about Bakht Khan.

39:26Anita Anand:Bakht Khan is a very serious Muslim. He is an extraordinary military power as well. And why Najafgar is important, this ambush is important, is that this new hero among the sepoys is humiliated by the new hero among the British. The two rising stars go head to head at Najafgar, and Nicholson ambushes Bakkan, and Bakkan's moment of glory is eclipsed by Nicholson. And then the other thing that happens is that because Nicholson has left this desert behind him on the road to Delhi, destroying all naval troops. The cleansed route. Yeah. The road is now open up. And what happens about the 4th of September, which is about a month after Nicholson finally makes it into Delhi, is that this enormous eight-mile-long siege train turns up with these massive guns, these super guns of the time from a place called Ferozpur in the Punjab.

40:34Anita Anand:and it's an incredible sight because these enormous guns, these heavy howitzers, mortars, and these enormous super guns are pulled by elephants. There's this enormous sort of elephant cavalcade of artillery turn up and then 653 hackeries, as they call, which are bullet carts full of ammunition. So all the things that the Indians do not have in the city, they're expending all their ammunition. There's an attempt at one point to get the local firework makers, which of course do very well in a Mughal city where there's always, you know, Dussara and Duwali. So the only people that know anything about gunpowder in the city are the firework makers.

41:15Anita Anand:But the British managed to probably blow up the firework makers, the gunpowder manufacturers. It's not clear whether it's an accident or whether it's a British sort of plot. The people in the city are paranoid enough to assume the British have done it. But just as the rebels are beginning to run out of ammo, 653 bullet carts, loads of shells, bullets, and these enormous things that really makes the impression are these siege guns. They're giant 24-pounders, the six of them, that take whole teams of elephants to pull.

41:54William Dalrymple:I mean, they're city destroyers, these siege guns. I mean, that's what they do. They will take out a wall as if it's made of cardboard. and once you've got a breach and a wall, basically you can take that city. Now, what is also interesting, just another observation and something that Indians talk about a lot, is that in Nicholson's party, he's got a European infantry about 400 strong. So, new men, new legs, new eyes, not knackered, not dying of dysentery. He also has a large party of Sikh cavalry and a Baloch battalion. Now, often in conversations in India, you'll have, you know, why did Indians fight for the British and against Indians?

42:32William Dalrymple:This was the great moment in Delhi when you had the sepoys saying no more. So why did Indians fight them? So just a quick observation, the Sikhs, definitely after 1849 and the deposing of the last Sikh, Emperor Dilip Singh, there is a parceling up of land and given to sort of minor royals. Like, if you stay loyal to us, we will look after you. And there is this sort of very strange strange kind of conspiracy of appeasing the British. You know, they owe fealty to the British because they didn't take their lands and they didn't take their kingdom and they didn't take their king and ship him off to Queen Victoria's court.

43:10William Dalrymple:And so, it's that fealty, you know, very Game of Thrones-y that means, you know, that they will stand by the house of Nicholson. They have to because that's what they agreed to. So, that's why, you know, when people say, the bloody seas and the Balochies, why were they doing that? It's because those are deals that they've made with the British that, you know, basically don't do this to us. And we'll be there when the call comes.

43:34Anita Anand:Also, there is a feeling that the Sikhs want revenge on the Hindu sepoys who were the guys that were fighting them.

43:41William Dalrymple:Who fought them. Exactly. Yeah, it's a good point. Exactly that. Who are responsible for, you know, them losing the Sikh empire. So you've got a city, Willie, at this point, and we've got just a few minutes left of this podcast and we'll pick it up again in the next. So, you know, do join us because she can tell a really extraordinary story. It feels like an apocalypse. What was, you know, a stronghold now must feel like a coffin to the people of Delhi because they are surrounded by city destroying guns, new legs, new guns, and no shortage of ammunition on the British side. What's going on?

44:16Anita Anand:At every level, it's, you know, just the game is up. A lot of the sepoys who are not being paid slip out of the city at night and go back to their villages. They go and harvest. This is September. This is the harvest. So they go back to their villages, hope for the best, and just leave the city to its fate. No one's paying them. They've run out of ammunition. They don't see any reason to stay and get killed. And you have these descriptions of this sort of destroyed city. Now the British have been lobbing shells at it for three months. So there's ruined houses everywhere with gamblers sitting, rogues, rascals, and bad characters playing cards according to the petitions.

44:57Anita Anand:And most pissed off of all are the Delhi elite, people like Ghalib, our favorite poet. And for the last few months, he's had to endure the sight of what he regards as rustic provincials, lording it over him and his friends. And he writes these letters and diaries. He says, every worthless fellow puffed up with pride perpetrates what he will, while men of high rank like me, who once in the assemblies of music and wine lit the bright lamps of pleasure and delight with the roses far now line dark cells and burn in the flames of misery. The jewels of this city's fair-faced women fill the sacks of vile, dishonest thieves and pilferers.

45:42Anita Anand:Lovers who had never had to face anything more demanding than the perverse fancies of their fair-faced mistress now suffer the whims of scandals. And Zafar, who's the kind of most obviously the kind of head of this world of Mughal elite, has kind of really lost it by now. There are signs of madness. He's 82. And he's this sort of Indian King Lear now. We had Coriolanus a minute ago. Here's King Lear for my counter Shakespearean Trump card. We're so clever. We're so clever. And he sits there writing this sort of slightly bonkers poetry. And the British spies inside the palace are baffled by what Zafar's up to.

46:26Anita Anand:there's a spy called Gorishanka, who we have a lot of his reports surviving. And he says, the king is employed the whole day composing poetical pieces. One verse composed by him is as follows. Oh, Zafar, we are going to take London shortly. It is not far.

46:47William Dalrymple:So, I mean, William, basically, it's quite the picture, isn't it? So you've got Zafar who's wandering the halls, and I imagine in a nightgown or something, and composing this terrible poetry, completely deluded. Tomorrow we take London, that kind of nonsense. You've got everybody around him sort of looking up at the region, looking up at the reinforcements thinking, we're not going to be able to hold this anymore. We've suffered already. This is going to be a lot worse. We might be wiped out. So utter chaos, utter despair within the walls, and the Brits poised to move. Join us in the next episode when we find out what happens next.

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