Farzana Read online

  Here, then, was Mirza Najaf’s ultimate successor and the supremo with whom Farzana would have to collaborate. It is a mark of how well she succeeded that before long she would be entrusted with outsmarting the most malign of Mahadji Scindia’s rivals and holding the fort, in fact Delhi’s Red Fort, for the emperor and his new Maratha sponsors.

  JEWEL AMONG WOMEN

  But Mahadji Scindia’s triumph had been dearly bought. The running costs of his new office were ruinously high, as was the stipend payable to the emperor, while his chances of boosting revenue receipts looked as doomed as those of his predecessors. With the notable exception of Sardhana, the jagirs at the treasury’s disposal were worthless. The three years of anarchy and drought after Mirza Najaf’s death had exhausted the countryside; there was nothing more to be squeezed from the destitute farmers, and almost every noble, landowner and jagirdar in Hindustan was in arrears with his payments of tribute.

  Among the richest of these defaulters were every Maratha’s long-time enemies, the Rajput princes scattered across the desert to the south-west of Delhi, notably in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur. Though reluctant to confront these famously belligerent rajahs and maharajahs, Mahadji Scindia recognized that they represented his only realistic chance of raising the sums required. After a final attempt to extract any significant revenue from the estates closer to Delhi, he thus fired off a demand to the Rajput princes for their unpaid arrears. This was not merely an attempt to raise money; it was also a political challenge in that compliance would signify the Rajputs’ acknowledgement of his right to exercise authority on behalf of the emperor. He knew it would be rejected out of hand – as indeed it was. Rather than wait for a response he had in fact already mobilized the strongest force he could muster, including his own swarms of light cavalry, the bulk of the imperial army and de Boigne’s newly formed brigade. At the head of this now even more formidable ‘Army of Hindustan’ Mahadji Scindia marched out of the capital heading south for Rajputana in early 1786.

  Before leaving, he summoned Farzana. The Rajputs were not Scindia’s and the empire’s only enemies, nor were they a direct threat to Delhi. But the Sikhs to the north were. Although currently lacking an effective leader, Scindia considered the fanatical Sikh brotherhoods to be as unpredictable and dangerous as ever and more than capable of launching an assault on the city in his absence. ‘The Sikhs are the terror and plague of this part of India,’ confirmed Antoine Polier in the following year. ‘It is computed that their whole force if joined together would amount to nearly 200,000 horses.’8 The Jesuit Father Wendel, currently living in Lucknow and writing his memoirs, was not so alarmist. He compared them to ‘a vast but rough and shapeless body without a head’. ‘Among 10,000 men there will be at least as many commanders and, what is more, each is independent of the other and no more master of the troops of which he has command than the others are of him.’9 But this scarcely prejudiced the ferocity of their attacks. Two centuries of Mughal persecution had turned these one-time cultivators into ‘desperate landless men fortified by religious enthusiasm and a militant creed’.10 Brandishing curved sabres and smoking matchlocks, and clad in loose robes of indigo with their hair uncut and beards unbound, the Sikh bands would stream from ‘the jungles and impervious woods with which their country abounds’ to terrorize the inhabitants and plunder everything they could lay their hands on. Their horsemanship was widely acknowledged to be unparalleled, even if William Francklin had less respect for their tactics.

  On a sudden they stop, discharge their pieces with a deliberate aim, when suddenly wheeling about, after performing three or four turns, they renew the attack. The shock is impressive when offered only to infantry, but against artillery they cannot stand. It is a fact well known and established that a few field pieces is sufficient to keep in check their most numerous bodies.11

  This was where Farzana came in. The Sardhana Brigade boasted eighty-four such field pieces, all mounted on gun carriages and drawn by teams of those sleek Gujerati bullocks that Modave had so admired. Additionally, Sardhana itself was strategically placed in the fertile Doab, between the imperial capital to the south, the ‘impervious woods’ of the Sikh states to the north-west and the low-lying plains of Rohilkhand to the north-east. It was this location, as fraught with danger as it was full of possibilities, that had seen Reinhardt charged with defending the capital from the Sikhs in the 1770s. On occasion, Farzana had herself led units of the brigade into action and the spirited descriptions of her ‘riding at their head into the heavy fire of the enemy’ probably refer to these earlier Sikh skirmishes.12

  The familiar terrain, the limited scale of the encounters, and the proximity of her Sardhana headquarters combined to make the perfect campaigning ground. By the Sikhs her prowess as a military commander was already respected, as was the brigade’s firepower. Mahadji Scindia thus had every confidence that Farzana and her guns would suffice to keep an unpredictable foe in check and ensure Delhi’s safety. ‘Committing so important a trust to her charge was sufficient proof of the high idea the Maratha chief had conceived of her capacity,’ declaims the almost unreadable Francklin. ‘Her conduct now evinced that that confidence had not been misplaced, and her spirited exertions in defence of the king’s authority acquired and deserved applause in the breasts of all.’13

  Though Scindia’s apprehensions about the safety of the capital proved well founded, they were also badly misdirected. It was not ‘the enemy without’ who would take advantage of his absence but opponents within. Rather than exposing herself to wild Sikh onslaughts in the scrublands of the Punjab, Farzana would be obliged to wheel about and brave more concerted opposition in the dark cloisters of the Red Fort.

  A sizeable faction at the Mughal court had always regarded the supremacy of the Hindu Marathas as an intolerable insult to Islam and had been scheming to get rid of Mahadji Scindia ever since he had entered the city. Discontent now turned to treason as Mansur Ali, the superintendent of the imperial household, hatched a heavy-handed conspiracy. A lifelong protégé of Shah Alam and a palace eunuch, Mansur Ali has been described as ‘either a very blundering politician, or a very black-hearted traitor’.14 The conspiracy suggests he was both. It involved usurping Scindia’s power by turning the emperor against him and by using for this purpose a man who, as a fellow Muslim, was not only keen to see the back of the Marathas, but had pressing reasons of his own to humble Shah Alam.

  This newcomer was a crazed Afghan Rohilla, Ghulam Qadir. As a grandson of Najib-ud-Daula, the Rohilla chief who had governed Delhi on behalf of the Afghan conqueror Ahmed Shah Abdali when Farzana was a child, Ghulam Qadir had long nursed expectations of inheriting the governorship of the capital. On this understanding, as soon as Scindia had ridden out of Delhi at the head of his ‘Army of Hindustan’, Mansur Ali had written to Ghulam Qadir urging his speedy appearance in the capital with a view to extracting from his majesty the vacant office of Amir-ul-Umara, the title declined by Mahadji Scindia.

  The hot-headed Ghulam Qadir needed little urging. Twenty years earlier, the Rohillas had been driven out of Rohilkhand by the Nawab of Awadh, their armies broken up and their people dispersed throughout Hindustan. All that remained to them was the fort of Ghausghar in Saharanpur, about 100 miles north-east of Sardhana. Ghulam Qadir had been at Ghausghar ever since, ruing an abortive attack on Delhi by his father in 1779 and plotting his revenge on the emperor he held responsible for that defeat. An ugly reputation as a thug and a bully clung to his name but it was not exceptional, nor was it considered dangerous until, on his father’s death in 1785, he imprisoned his mother, seized the property of an elderly uncle and took control of his army. Mansur Ali’s invitation to march on Delhi was thus timely. Here was an opportunity to press his claim to the city’s governorship, rid the empire of the Hindu Marathas and Mahadji Scindia, and avenge his father by commandeering the emperor.

  The road from Saharanpur to Delhi passed close to Sardhana. Ghulam Qadir gave the town a wide berth. He was aware of
Farzana’s influence at the imperial court and had no wish to alert her to his plans. He thus reached Delhi unopposed and set up camp at Shahdara on the east bank of the Jumna immediately opposite the Red Fort. Although the bulk of the imperial army had gone with Mahadji Scindia, a contingent headed by the Deshmukh (collector of land revenue) had been left behind to protect the emperor. A man of little brain and less military expertise, though with a great opinion of himself and a greater contempt for the Rohillas, the Deshmukh sent a small force across the river with orders to destroy Ghulam Qadir’s camp. His contempt for the Rohilla was misplaced. No sooner had the palace troops gained the opposite bank of the river than they were set upon and driven off by the Rohillas. Those who survived the initial onslaught fell back on their boats, which promptly sank in the turmoil. All but a handful of the sepoys drowned.

  Knowing that he would be held responsible for the disaster, the Deshmukh sneaked out of Delhi under cover of darkness and fled south to Scindia in Rajputana. The victorious Ghulam Qadir was left to cross the river unopposed and, with an escort of some seventy or eighty troopers, enter the Red Fort. Here he was met by his accomplice, the eunuch Mansur Ali, and taken straight to the imperial palace. Shah Alam was under no illusions about Ghulam Qadir. At the time the river Jumna, which has since meandered some 500 metres to the east and dwindled to a trickle, washed against the very walls of the fort; the emperor had a clear view of the Rohilla camp from the battlements and had witnessed the calamity that had overtaken the Deshmukh’s small force.

  By way of response, pressing appeals for help had immediately been dispatched to Mahadji Scindia (who was by now somewhere near Jaipur), to Najaf Kuli Khan, (Mirza Najaf’s remaining adopted son who, though still an opium addict, was at least within striking distance in his fort at Rewari), to Farzana at further-off Sardhana, and even to the British Resident in Lucknow. All were directed to come to the emperor’s rescue immediately. Meanwhile the few sepoys who had survived their dunking in the Jumna had vanished into the crowded bazaars and alleys of the city. Others who remained at the fort had been bribed by the treacherous Mansur Ali to make themselves scarce. The terrified emperor was left defenceless.

  Pressured by Mansur Ali, whose loyalty he still did not question, the emperor was prevailed upon to receive Ghulam Qadir in the Diwan-i-Khas (the Hall of Private Audience). He accepted Qadir’s formal gift of five gold mohurs, heard his excuses for having repulsed the Deshmukh’s troops (the Rohilla put it down to ‘zeal for the service of His Majesty’), and entertained his application for the still-vacant post of Amir-ul-Umara – all the while listening intently for the clatter of hooves and rumbling of wheels that would signal the arrival of a saviour. Shah Alam then presented Qadir with the traditional khilat, or robe of honour, and promised favourable consideration of his application. The Rohilla thereupon withdrew from the royal presence with a humble salaam, swaggered across the palace compound and, without so much as a backward glance, brazenly installed himself in the quarters reserved for the Amir-ul-Umara.

  Two days later a rumble of wheels and a clatter of hooves outside the fort’s gates did finally herald the approach of support. Unfortunately, Ghulam Qadir heard them first. According to his spies, the riders included Europeans and the gun carriages were hauled by Gujerati cattle. It was the Sardhana Brigade. If Shah Alam’s summons had elsewhere received a tardy response, in sleepy Sardhana it had come like a thunderbolt from the blue. Bugles had sounded, messengers leaped into the saddle, orders echoed across the parade ground. Two thousand sepoys and fifty European officers had been stood to arms within a matter of hours. Farzana herself, booted and be-daggered for action, had overseen the hitching of Reinhardt’s bulls to twenty heavy guns and ample powder wagons. The whole expedition had then rumbled out of the brigade’s lines, heading for Delhi as fast as the gun carriages would allow.

  Ghulam Qadir was still ensconced in the Red Fort. He was thus separated from the bulk of his army by the width of the river. He was in no position to take on the Sardhana Brigade in a trial of strength, nor did he suppose any such action would be necessary. According to Francklin he had other plans.

  Awed by this loyal lady and her European officers, the artful Rohilla endeavoured, by the most studied respect, to acquire Begum Sumru’s support in the extension of his usurped authority, assured her of a grateful return on his part, and proffered her an equal share in the administration of affairs.15

  Farzana would have none of it. Well acquainted with the ‘characteristic perfidy’ of the Rohilla, she flatly rejected his offer, whereupon Ghulam Qadir came back with an even less enticing suggestion. To cement his proposed alliance he now added an offer of marriage.

  Offers of marriage, as opposed to expectations of cohabitation, were scarcely novel. A French colonel named Montigny had recently been attracted as much by Farzana’s wealth as her charms. He had withdrawn his suit on being told, possibly by the begum herself, that her resources had been depleted by keeping her troops at arms and her farmers fed during the terrible years of drought. Francklin, with unabashed masculine condescension, supposes Farzana must nevertheless have been tempted by Ghulam Qadir’s marriage proposal, though even he admits that a share of the Rohilla’s worldly goods would hardly have been an incentive to one already so wealthy. Neither, presumably, would Farzana have been reassured by the rumour that Ghulam Qadir was in fact a eunuch; he had ‘suffered mutilation at a young age to fit him for the office of zenana page’, it was said, ‘for which injury he had ever sought the opportunity of a cruel revenge’.16

  Incensed and insulted, rather than tempted, Farzana gave Ghulam Qadir’s second offer as short shrift as she had the first. Rather did she order her troops into the fort. She was there to defend the emperor, she declared, and was quite prepared to sacrifice her life in his cause if that should prove necessary. ‘The baffled Rohilla retired across the river,’ reports Francklin, ‘and remained for some time quiet in his camp.’

  Once safely established within the Red Fort, Farzana acted with renewed urgency. She ordered her artillery to be drawn up along the parapets commanding the river and her officers to mount guard over the Diwan-i-Khas and the royal apartments. Then she went to greet her sovereign. Shah Alam’s relief and gratitude need scarcely be imagined, for it was at this reception that he bestowed on his improbable saviour the title of Zeb-un-Nissa. Usually translated as ‘Ornament of her Sex’ but sometimes as ‘Jewel among Women’ or ‘Most Beautiful of All Women’, it pleased her almost as much as the award of the jagir. Personally flattering, it was above all further proof of imperial favour.

  This most satisfactory of interviews was marred only by the arrival of an ultimatum from Ghulam Qadir. The Rohilla’s bafflement had turned to rage. Unless ‘Somroo’s wife’ was immediately removed from the palace, he would be obliged, he told the emperor, to open (in fact reopen) hostilities. It was no empty threat. ‘His message having been treated with the contempt it deserved,’ notes Francklin, ‘Ghulam Qadir commenced a heavy cannonade upon the royal palace.’17 Farzana’s artillery answered from the walls of the fort. Not since Abdali’s assaults thirty years earlier had the Red Fort itself come under attack. Heavy rounds from the Sardhana cannon caused havoc in the Rohilla camp, while within the fort round shot smashed into the white marble walls of the Diwan-i-Khas. Pigeons ricocheted from the cupolas and smoke billowed from the gazebos. All was uproar and confusion. Stirred from his habitual lethargy, even the emperor rose to the occasion, ordering that a quantity of his personal plate be melted down and turned into rupees to pay for additional troops.

  Before this desperate measure had been put in hand, in through the opened gates of the fort rode Mirza Najaf’s adopted son, the opium-loving Najaf Kuli Khan, at the head of a troop of cavalry. Though a belated response to his sovereign’s call, it tipped the balance; the conspiracy collapsed. Seeing himself outgunned and outnumbered, Ghulam Qadir rounded up his Rohillas and hastily retreated to Saharanpur. His fort of Ghausghar, he suddenly remembered, had
been left undefended against the Sikhs. The perfidious Mansur Ali then congratulated Shah Alam on his lucky escape, while ‘the Ornament of her Sex’ saddled up and returned to Sardhana in triumph. No doubt the emperor’s praises still rang in her ears. Better still, beside her towered the fine figure of her latest European recruit, the Irishman George Thomas.

  AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

  Thomas was possessed of so much charm that even his enemies would dwell more on his merits than his faults. The faults, though legion, they invariably forgave or excused; his crimes were committed in extenuating circumstances, his mistakes attributed to high spirits or to the failings of others. If he drank too much, it was because he was Irish; if he had an explosive temper, that too was because he was Irish – and he always apologized for losing it; and if, for a while, he made his living as ‘a common robber’, it was noteworthy that in Hindustan the distinction between criminality and custom was a fine one.

  James Skinner found Thomas ‘frank, generous and humane’; ‘his manners were grave and gentle, and he was courteous to all’.18 To Lewis Ferdinand Smith he was one in a thousand, ‘courageous, bold, indefatigable, active, cautious, generous, hospitable and possessed of a strong natural sense’. ‘I was intimately acquainted with him, and had a sincere respect for his character.’19 Yet both these men were his sworn opponents in some of the bitterest battles they ever fought. In one such, Smith would lose his beloved brother – ‘a young man of the finest principles, purest sentiments, uncommon genius and superior talents’ – yet not even then could Smith bring himself to damn the dazzling Thomas. And as for Farzana, she too basked in the Thomas charm, indeed she blossomed in it. He was about her age, he was excellent company, he was not another Gallic suitor and he was impossibly dashing. Here, in every sense, was someone ‘after her own heart’.