Ranking officers such as Colonel Richard Baird Smith, Wilson's chief engineer, and Brig. Gen. Neville Chamberlain prevailed upon Wilson to keep up the struggle for Delhi. On September 16, the magazine that Willoughby had blown up was captured. To the delight of the British, some 171 guns and vast stores of ammunition had somehow escaped damage in the explosion. The narrow lane leading to the Lahore Gate was widened and made navigable by blasting the houses along its curbs. On September 19, the Burn Bastion was taken, and on the following day the Lahore Gate finally fell to the British. As the weary days of fighting continued, news of victories was welcome. News of Nicholson's ebbing life was not. When the great soldier died, he was widely mourned and has ever since rested securely in the British pantheon of war heroes. The last remaining redoubt of the sepoys was believed to be the king's palace, but when its gates were blown open, it was found to be nearly deserted. At dawn on September 21, a royal salute told all within hearing distance that Delhi had been taken by the Army of Retribution. The seat of the once-great Mogul Empire was forever gone.

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Bahadur Shah, disillusioned and tired of being manipulated by the sepoys, had hidden a few miles north of the city in Emperor Homayun's tomb. This was discovered by the intrepid but headstrong Major William Hodson, who was famous along the Northwest Frontier as the leader of hard-riding irregulars known as Hodson's Horse and who now managed intelligence for the British at Delhi. With 50 of his men he set out on September 21 to bring in the errant king.

Bahadur Shah had huddled inside the cloisters of the tomb while thousands of his servants and well-wishers sullenly watched the approaching British horsemen. The king knew that resistance on his part would be pointless, and he accepted Hodson's promise that the major would spare his life if he gave up quietly.

Followed by a vast entourage of Indians, Hodson led his captive back to Delhi. Then, he and 100 of his irregular cavalrymen returned to Homayun's tomb, this time to bring back the king's two sons and grandson. Despite a mob of royal retainers and partisans, many of whom were armed, Hodson was able to flush the young scions of the Mogul dynasty from their hiding place. Hodson, surrounded by a hostile crowd, did something that has ever since been criticized but may have saved his life and those of his escort — he raised his carbine and summarily executed the three princes. Amazingly, the shocked mob did nothing. Hodson, as he had done many times before, stunned his adversaries into submission by sheer audacity. The bodies were dumped unceremoniously at the spot where the king's sons were thought to have committed atrocities against the English. As the British chaplain observed, 'It was a dire retribution.'

Bahadur, humiliated by a trial, exiled for life in Rangoon and saddened by the death of his sons and grandson, described his feelings in a poem he wrote before his death on November 7, 1862: 'All that I loved is gone/Like a garden robbed of its beauty by Autumn/I am only a memory of splendor.'

This article was written by John H. Waller and originally published in the March 1998 issue of Military History. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today!

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