Sublime

Thanks to the Maharaja’s guards, Ghalib was one of the only citizens of Delhi to remain unmolested in his house, and almost the only member of the courtly elite to survive the fall of Delhi with his property, such as it was, intact.

Throughout the autumn and the early part of the winter of 1857, while the battle for Lucknow still raged in the eastern half of Hindustan, much of the effort of British administration in Delhi went into preparing for the historic trial of the man who was now clearly going to be the last of the Mughals.

From Tobruk Buck was shipped to Italy by submarine, where he was imprisoned first in the Certosa di Padula monastery, from where he subsequently escaped. He was recaptured and sent by train to Germany. During that journey he cut a hole in the floor of the rail carriage and escaped once more. Again he was recaptured. He was branded a serial escapee,

With the bulk of the German armor deployed against the British Second Army at Caen, Collins’s VII Corps sliced across the Cotentin Peninsula and reached the sea on June 18, isolating the port of Cherbourg and its defenders. Collins turned north and a week later Cherbourg capitulated, sending 39,042 German troops into Allied captivity.

Herat was symbolically as well as strategically important. It was one of the great cities of Asia, and was ringed with strong fortifications from the time of Shahrokh, Timur’s son, who had made it the capital of his empire.

Just before 3 p.m., the judges retired to consider their verdict. A few minutes later, they returned to unanimously declare Zafar guilty “of all and every part of the charges preferred against him.” Normally, noted the president, such a verdict would have resulted “in the penalty of death as a traitor and a felon.” Thanks, however, to Hodson’s

The Afghans refused to believe Nader was dead, and after a pitched battle they broke through to the tent and found the body lying in its own blood, with an old woman weeping over the head. The Afghans fought their way out of the camp and set off back to Kandahar. Not far from the camp they ran into a convoy of looted treasure that Mohammad Qoli