Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/99

Rh commanding, to the left, a magnificent view of the Jamí Masjíd, of a white Jain temple, and of the town. Straight in front of the entrance gate was the Chandní Chauk, or Silver Market; to the right, outside the walls of the city, were the Jamnah, Hindu Ráo's house, and the ridge, so famous during the siege, at the moment indicating the direction of the lines of the native infantry regiments which constituted the British garrison. Within the fort were gardens laid out in the formal style of the east, and along the river front were a number of marble pavilions, generally octagonal, covered with gilded domes, some of them of great beauty.

The principal occupant of this inner citadel was Bahádur Sháh, titular King of Dehlí, the twentieth successor of the illustrious Akbar. He was King of Dehlí in name, and in name only. The empire had departed from the feeble hands of his predecessors before the English had become a power in India. The Khorásání adventurer Nádir Sháh had plundered the palace in 1739. Less than ten years later, the Afghán Ahmad Sháh Durání had repeated the infliction. In 1788 the rebel Ghulám Kádir had blinded, within the palace, the reigning Emperor Sháh Alám. For fifteen years the city had, then, been occupied by the Maráthás. The English had made their first acquaintance with it in 1803, when Lord Lake rescued the blinded representative of the Mughals from the tyranny of the Central Indian conquerors. From that date the English had maintained the representative of the Mughal in splendour and comfort in the halls and palace of his ancestors. There, in the citadel within Dehlí, his will was supreme. It did not extend an inch beyond it. Wisely, then, the English — when, under the able guidance of Marquess Wellesley, they assumed the responsibilities of empire — did not restore to the Mughal