Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/110

84 city, rebellion was triumphant. And in those early days rebellion had absolutely no mercy. Some fifty Christians, Europeans and Eurasians, who lived in the Daryá-ganj, the English quarter of the Imperial city, had at the first sound of alarm taken refuge in one of the strongest houses of the quarter, and had there barricaded themselves. But a handful of men and women, ill-armed and without supplies, was powerless against the roused rabble of the revolted capital. The house was speedily stormed, and the defenders were dragged to the palace, and lodged there in an underground apartment, without windows, and with only one door. After a stay there of five days they were taken out, led to a courtyard, and there massacred. Their bodies were thrown into carts, and were transferred thence to the waters of the Jamnah. One woman, terrified more for her three children than for herself, escaped, with them, the fate of her companions by declaring herself a convert to the faith of Islám. After that 16th of May there remained not in Dehlí a single Christian.

The King of Dehlí, Bahádur Sháh, had, meanwhile, assumed the responsibilities of the position which had been forced upon him. It is more than probable that the old man, left to himself, would have shrunk from the position. Outside of the walls of his citadel he had never wielded power, nor, up to the morning of May 11th, had he ever conceived it possible that he should assert himself against the western people who had conquered Hindustán. Though such a question might have been mooted in his harem, he had regarded the conversation as the wild 'chatter of irresponsible frivolity.' Yet, on that memorable morning, the position had been forced upon him. The mutinied sipáhís, who had bivouacked in his Hall of Audience, who had expelled the English from the city, who boasted their determination to drive them into the sea, must have a