The Red Year: A Story of the Indian MutinyTracy, Louis
History
The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny
Tracy, Louis
India -- History -- Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858 -- Fiction
On the morning of the 11th, the sun that laid bare the horrors of Meerut
shone brightly on the placid splendor of Delhi. This great city, the
Rome of Asia, was also the Metz of Upper India, its old-fashioned though
strong defenses having been modernized by the genius of a Napier.
Resting on the Jumna, it might best be described as of half-moon shape,
with the straight edge running north and south along the right bank of
the river.
In the center of the river line stood the imposing red sandstone palace
of Bahadur Shah, last of the Moguls. North of this citadel were the
magazine, the Church, some European houses, and the cutcherry, or group
of minor law courts, while the main thoroughfare leading in that
direction passed through the Kashmir Gate. Southward from the fort
stretched the European residential suburb known as Darya Gunj (or, as it
would be called in England, the "Riverside District") out of which the
Delhi Gate gave access to the open country and the road to Humayun's
Tomb. Another gate, the Raj Ghât, opened toward the river between the
palace and Darya Gunj. Thus, the walls of city and palace ran almost
straight for two miles from the Kashmir Gate on the north to the Delhi
Gate on the south, while the main road connecting the two passed the
fort on the landward side.
The Lahore Gate of the palace, a magnificent structure, commanded the
bazaar and its chief street, the superb Chandni Chowk, which extended
due west for nearly two miles to the Lahore Gate of the city itself.
Near the palace, in a very large garden, stood the spacious premises of
the Delhi Bank. A little farther on, but on the opposite side of the
Chowk, was the Kotwallee, or police station, and still farther,
practically in the center of the dense bazaar, two stone elephants
marked the entrance to the beautiful park now known as the Queen's
Gardens.
The remainder of the space within the walls was packed with the houses
and shops of well-to-do traders, and the lofty tenements or mud hovels
in which dwelt a population of artisans noted not only for their
artistic skill but for a spirit of lawlessness, a turbulent fanaticism,
that had led to many scenes of violence in the city's earlier history.
The whole of Delhi, as well as the palace--which had its own separate
fortifications--was surrounded by a wall seven miles long, twenty-four
feet in height, well supplied with bastions, and containing ten huge
gates, each a small fort in itself. The wall was protected by a dry
fosse, or ditch, twenty-five feet wide and about twenty feet deep; this,
in turn, was guarded by a counterscarp and glacis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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