This situation was taken advantage of by certain Hindu princes who had been deprived of power or of pensions previously granted. Nana Sahib, the deposed raja of Poona, was the leader, and the unsuspecting authorities allowed him to travel about the country stirring up discontent and conspiring with other disloyal native chiefs for a general uprising and massacre, which, according to their programme, occurred in northern India during the summer of 1857. If the British had desired to play into the hands of the conspirators they could not have adopted a policy more effective in that direction. Utterly unconscious of danger and unsuspicious of the conspiracies that were enfolding them, they relieved city after city of its guard of English troops and issued arms and ammunition in unusual and unnecessary quantities to the sepoys, at whose mercy the entire foreign population was left. The outbreak occurred according to the programme of Nana Sahib, who proved to be a leader of great ability and strategic skill, and in nearly every city of northern India, particularly at Delhi, Lucknow, Cawnpore and other places along the Ganges, men, women and children, old and young, in the foreign colonies were butchered in cold blood. In Agra 6,000 foreigners gathered for protection in the walls of the great fort, and most of them were saved. Small detachments of brave soldiers under General Havelock, Sir Henry Lawrence, Sir Colin Campbell, Sir Hugh Rose, Lord Napier and other leaders fought their way to the rescue, and the conspiracy was finally crushed, but not without untold suffering and enormous loss of life. On the evening of May 11, 1857, about fifty foreigners, all unarmed civilians, were brought into the palace at Delhi, and by order of Bahander Shah, the Mogul whom the mutineer leaders had proclaimed Emperor of India, were thrust into a dungeon, starved for five days and then hacked to pieces in the beautiful courtyard. The new emperor, a weak-minded old man with no energy or ability, and scarcely intellect enough to realize his responsibilities, pronounced judgment and issued the orders prepared for him by the conspirators by whom he was surrounded. But retribution was swift and sure. A few weeks later when the British troops blew in the walls of the palace citadel after one of the most gallant assaults ever recorded in the annals of war, the old man, with two of his sons, fled to the tomb of Humayon, who occupied the Mogul throne from 1531 to 1556, as if that sanctuary would be revered by the British soldiers.