Confessions Of A British Spy

now being issued in the name of the Shâh. It did not take them
long to equalize the powers of the British governor general with
those of Shâh-i-’Âlam II. They deleted the names of the Muslim
Indian emperors from the Indian monetary coins. In 1253 [C.E.
1837] Bahâdir Shâh II became the emperor. He could not stand
the British oppressions long and, encouraged by the army and the
people, commenced a great insurrection against the British in
1274 [A.D. 1857]. Thus, he managed to have money coined
bearing his name and to have the khutba given with his name
mentioned in it, yet the British reaction to this was extremely
vehement and cruel. Entering Delhi, the British soldiers made
havoc of the city, ransacked houses and shops, and pillaged
whatever they found in the name of property and money. They
put all Muslims to the sword, regardless of whether they were
young or old, male or female, adult or infant. It was such a
massive destruction that the people could not even find any water
to drink.
One of the commanders of Bahâdir Shâh II, a general named
Baht Khân, persuaded the Sultan to withdraw his army. However,
another commander named Mirzâ Ilâhî Bakhsh, in an effort to
ingratiate himself with the British, misled Bahâdir Shâh, saying
that if he left his army and surrendered he would be able to
convince the British that he was innocent and had been forced to
preside over the insurrection and thus would be forgiven by the
British. So Bahâdir Shâh left the main body of his retreating army
and took asylum in Humâyûn Shâh’s mausoleum, ten kilometres
from a place called Qal’a-i-Muallâ within Delhi.
A traitor named Rajab Alî betrayed the Emperor to a British
priest named Hudson, who was notorious for immoral and
maladroit acts and was serving as an intelligence officer in the
British army. This man, in his turn, reported the situation to
General Wilson, the then Army Commander, and asked for his
help to arrest the Emperor. When Wilson answered that he did
not have any mercenaries to lend him, Hudson suggested that he
could do this job with a few men, advising that the Emperor must
be given the guarantee that he and his family would not be
harmed if he surrendered. At first Wilson refused this suggestion,
but after a while he agreed. Upon this Hudson, taking ninety men
with him, went to Humâyûn Shâh’s mausoleum and assured the
Emperor that no harm would be inflicted on him, his sons and
wife. Falling for the priets’s promise, Bahâdir Shâh surrendered.
The Emperor had two sons and a grandson who had not
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