Indian Rebellion
At the outset of the Indian Mutiny he made his name by riding with despatches from General Anson from Karnal to Meerut and back again, a distance of 152 miles in seventy-two hours, through country full of hostile cavalry. Following this feat, the commander-in-chief empowered him to raise and command a new regiment of 2000 irregular horse, which became famed as "Hodson's Horse", and placed him at the head of the Intelligence Department.
In his double role of cavalry leader and intelligence officer, Hodson played a large part in the reduction of Delhi. As already indicated, his major achievement at this time was the capture of the Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah II; and his major discredit the execution of the three Mughal princes, Bahadur's sons Mirza Mughal and Mirza Khizr Sultan and his grandson Mirza Abu Bakr.
The British knew that the old Emperor of India (or "King of Delhi") was proving to be a focus for the uprising and the mutineers, and that he, his sons and their army were camped just outside Delhi at Humayun's Tomb. The General in command said he could not spare a single European. Hodson volunteered to go with 50 of his irregular horsemen, this request was turned down but after some persuasion Hodson obtained from Colonel (later General) Archdale Wilson permission to ride out to where the enemy were encamped. Hodson rode 6 miles through enemy territory into their camp, containing some 6000 or more armed mutineers, who are said to have laid their arms to grounds when he ordered them to. Some have seen this abject surrender as highly symbolic of the decline of the Turks and Mughals, which had started after Aurangzeb; but the fact was that the mutineers, or rebels, at Delhi were simply demoralised after their hard-fought defeat and severe privations.
Here he accepted the surrender of Bahadur Shah II, the last of the Moghul Emperors of India, promising him that his life would be spared. The capture of the Emperor in the face of a threatening crowd dealt the mutineers a heavy blow. As a sign of surrender the Emperor handed over his arms, which included two magnificent swords, one with the name ‘Nadir Shah’ and the other with the seal of Jahangir engraved upon it, which Hodson intended to present to Queen Victoria. The swords he took from the Emperor were given to the Queen as a symbol of the Emperor's surrender and are still held in the Queen's Collection.
The sons of the king, the princes had refused to surrender, demanding guarantees of safety and on the following day with a few horsemen Hodson went back and demanded the princes' unconditional surrender. Again a crowd of thousands of mutineers gathered, and Hodson ordered them to disarm, which they did. He sent the princes on with an escort of ten men, while with the remaining ninety he collected the arms of the crowd. The princes were mounted on a bullock-cart and driven towards the city of Delhi. As they approached the city gate, a crowd of people again started to gather around them, and Hodson ordered the three princes to get off the cart and to strip off their top garments. He then took a carbine from one of his troopers and shot them dead before stripping them of their signet rings, turquoise arm-bands and bejewelled swords. Their bodies were ordered to be displayed in front of a kotwali, or police-station, and left there to be seen by all. The gate near where they were killed is still called the Khooni Darwaza, or 'Bloody Gate'.
This action was controversial at the time, the future Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, then a junior officer serving in the Delhi campaign would later call it a "blot" and criticized "an otherwise brilliant officer" for exposing himself to criticism. Other first hand accounts, such as William Ireland also called into question the exigency of the execution. His service record showed that he had often behaved in arbitrary fashion before, and he had previously been removed from civil duties by the then Governor General of India, Lord Dalhousie.
Read more about this topic: William Stephen Raikes Hodson
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