Sublime

“They were well-known and well-off people, men who were the pride of Delhi,” wrote Zahir Dehlavi. “They had had no parallels in their own day, nor will we ever see their like again.”

“Their stated object was a crusade against the infidel,” wrote Sa’id Mubarak Shah, “their real one was plunder.

On the morning of the 21st, “a royal salute at sunrise proclaimed that Delhi was once more a dependency of the British crown.”96 But the captured city—the ancient capital of Hindustan, the great Mughal metropolis—was now a desolate city of the dead,

But in the months to come, the sheer quantity of intelligence that the British received from the city, and the lack of it in the rebels’ camp, did as much as anything to determine the outcome of the struggle for Delhi.

Many were looted simply because they were rich.

Zafar’s death may have marked the end of a great ruling dynasty 350 years old, but Davies was determined that as few as possible would witness this sad and historic moment.

Mirza Mughal’s attempts to act as a co-ordinating Commander-in-Chief had only very limited success.

The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the other.

Others kept up their spirits by dreaming of the riches of Delhi spread out below them, hoping to pick up “a nice little diamond or two” from the “rich old niggers.”