by which movement the whole of the cavalry, both European and native, were enabled to charge through the intervals with their galloper-guns, pursuing the enemy to the Jumna, where great numbers perished. All the artillery and stores of the enemy fell into the hands of the English; and three days after the battle Louis Bourquin, the commandant, with four other French officers, surrendered themselves.
The British general now entered Delhi without resistance. He immediately requested and obtained an audience of the sovereign, with whom a secret communication had previously been opened. He beheld the unfortunate descendant of a long line of illustrious princes "seated under a small tattered canopy, the remnant of his former state, his person emaciated by indigence and infirmities, and his countenance disfigured by the loss of his eyes, and marked with extreme old age and a settled melancholy." This was Shah Aulum (King of the World!), once the gallant Shazada, whose military energy had alarmed and annoyed the British Government, but for many years the suffering captive of those who had secured his person for the sake of abusing his name to purposes of selfish aggrandisement. He had allied himself with the Mahrattas, and thenceforward his life had been an almost unbroken series of calamities; till, at length, a ruffian chief, of Rohilla origin, named Gholaum Kaudir Khan, having obtained possession of the city of Delhi, and with it of the person of the Emperor, committed the most dreadful excesses, "almost without parallel in the annals of the world."[1] The apartments of the women, which in the East usually command some respect even from the most abandoned, were rendered by Gholaum Kaudir the scene of crimes, of which violent and indiscriminate plunder was the lightest; and the Emperor, after being exposed to every insult which malice and insolence could devise, was deprived of sight by the dagger of the wretch who had previously heaped upon him every other misery.
- ↑ Captain Duff. "History of the Mahrattas."
