The battle rages through the morning and into the afternoon. By the evening we have taken the bazaars stretching from the Kashmiri to the Mori Gate. We are tired and thirsty. In Kashmiri Gate there are many liquor shops. We break in and drink whatever we can find. The goras get drunk. All night they sing ho, ho, in praise of a bottle of rum. We ransack houses, take gold and coins from the dead. We drive cows and buffaloes tethered in homes out of the city wall for safe-keeping with our Mazhabis. Wilson Sahib Bahadur is very gussa and has all the remaining liquor spilt into the moat and orders anyone found looting to be shot. Who is to shoot whom? Sahibs say they will appoint prize agents to divide the loot. We say achcha.

Next morning the battle is resumed. We have to fight our way into every street and every lane. Everywhere we see women in veils and little boys helping the rebels. The goras say the rebels killed their memsahibs and children, so they kill every woman or child that comes their way.

It takes four days of fighting in the bazaars before the gates of the Red Fort are thrown open to us. We march in through Lahori Gate with our bands playing. There is no one in the Red Fort except a blind woman and an old cripple. Goras make sport of them with their bayonets; one plunges his weapon from the front, another from the behind to see if they can meet in the middle of their victim’s body. They have a good laugh.

The British flag is hoisted. We present arms. The goras sing a song praying for long life to their Queen. A salute of twenty-one guns is fired in Her Majesty’s honour. The goras are housed in the palace. We are ordered to encamp in the open beyond the moat.

The next day we drive the rebels out of Chandni Chowk and the bazaars surrounding the great mosque Jamia Masjid. There are no singing girls in Chawri Bazaar, no whores in Qazi-ka-Hauz, no hijdas in Lal Kuan. But we get plenty of gold and silver, cows and buffaloes. We blow up many old palaces and set fire to many streets. The goras want to blow up the Royal Mosque, but Wilson Sahib Bahadur says: ‘No, it will anger the Pathans, Biloches and Punjabi Mussalmans on our side.’ The sahibs are wise.

The mosque is allotted to the Sikh risallahs. The space under the domes is for the men! To the long verandahs on the sides we tether our horses. There are two cisterns in the middle of the vast courtyard. One we use to bathe ourselves; the other to bathe our horses.