Sublime

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

What was never discussed was whether the Company was legally empowered to try Zafar at all. For though the government took the position that Zafar received a pension from the Company, and was therefore the Company’s pensioner and thus subject, the actual legal position was considerably more ambiguous. While the Company’s 1599 charter to trade in

In response to the various charges, Zafar offered only a single, short but strikingly coherent written defence in Urdu, denying that he had any connection with the Uprising and maintaining that he had all along been the helpless prisoner of the sepoys. “I had no intelligence on the subject previous to the day of the outbreak,” read Zafar’s

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

Aurangzeb reneged on his promise and secretly had Murad arrested. After three years in prison the Prince was accused of murder and sentenced to death. He died at the age of 37, on the 14th December 1661.

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 this point of view, Zafar could certainly be tried as a defeated enemy king; but he had never been a subject, and so could not possibly be called a rebel guilty of treason. Instead, from a legal point of view, a good case could be made that it was the East India Company which was the real rebel, guilty of revolt against a feudal superior to

Did he do a deal with Nader? We will probably never know. The Nezam does seem to have been given an easier ride in the collection of tribute than the other great nobles; Nader’s warning to Mohammad Shah about the Nezam before he left could have been a dark joke, a double bluff.