The old King was brought to trial shortly afterwards at the palace, and found guilty of complicity in the murders of our country men and women, and was transported beyond the seas, dying in British Burmah before he could be removed to the Andaman Islands, where, in accordance with his sentence, he was to have remained in imprisonment for the term of his natural life.  The vicissitudes of fortune, numberless as are the instances among men of royal birth, can scarcely show anything more suggestive of the transitoriness of earthly pomp and grandeur than the case of the last King of Delhi.  Sprung from the line of the great conqueror Tamerlane, the lineal descendant of the magnanimous Akbar and of Shah Jehan the magnificent, he ended his days as a common felon, far from the country of his ancestors, unwept for and unhonoured.

September 22.—­Lieutenant Hodson, also on the 22nd, took prisoner, at a place some miles from Delhi, the two eldest sons and the grandson of the King.  These men, more especially the eldest, who was Commander-in-Chief of the rebel army, had been deeply implicated in the murders of May 11, had urged on the sepoys and populace in their cruel deeds, and were present at the terrible massacre of our people which took place in the Chandni Chauk on that day.

Hodson’s orders were precise as to the fate of these blood-thirsty ruffians, and though his name has been vilified and his reputation tarnished by so-called humanitarians for the course he adopted in ridding the world of the miscreants, he was upheld in the deed by the whole Delhi army, men in every respect better qualified to form a judgment in this particular than the sentimental beings at home who denounced with horror this perfectly justifiable act of speedy and condign punishment.

The three Princes were placed in a gharee, or native carriage, and, guarded by Hodson’s native troopers, were conducted towards the city.  Before they entered, the carriage was stopped, and Hodson spoke to his men of the crimes committed by the prisoners.  Then, dismounting from his horse and opening the door of the gharee, he fired two shots from a Colt’s revolver into each of their hearts.  After being driven to the Kotwali, or chief magistrate’s house, in the centre of the Chandni Chauk, on the very spot where our country men and women had suffered death, the three bodies were stripped save a rag around the loins, and laid naked on the stone slabs outside the building.

Here I saw them that same afternoon; nor can it be said that I or the others who viewed the lifeless remains felt any pity in our hearts for the wretches on whom had fallen a most righteous retribution for their crimes.  The eldest was a strong, well-knit man in the prime of life, the next somewhat younger, while the third was quite a youth not more than twenty years of age.  Each of the Princes had two small bullet-holes over the region of the heart, the flesh singed by gunpowder, as the shots were fired close; a cloth covered part of the loins, but they were otherwise quite naked.  There was a guard, I think, of Coke’s Rifles stationed at the Kotwali, and there the bodies remained exposed for three days, and were then buried in dishonoured graves.