‘Upstairs.Take every officer that you can find and bring them all down here. I want French officers taken to the banqueting hall.The rest go into the mess lounge. Remember, no harm is to be done.You understand?’

‘Acha, sahib!’ They saluted, and then called their men after them as they pounded up the staircase at the end of the hall and entered the first floor sleeping quarters of the Nizam’s officers.At once there was the crashing of doors being flung open and the first of the sleepy shouts of anger and outrage. A small door opened at the end of the hall and a stout, bleary-eyed man in a silk dressing gown fastened with a wide leather belt stumbled into the hall.

‘What the bloody hell is the meaning of this?’ he bellowed at Arthur, then blinked. ‘Who the hell are you, sir?’

‘Colonel Arthur Wellesley, of His Majesty’s 33rd Foot,’ Arthur said formally. ‘And you, sir?’

‘Major MacDonald, quartermaster to the Nizam and president of the officers’ mess. Now then, what’s going on here?’ He glanced up the stairs as the thud of footsteps and shouting reverberated down the length of the hall. ‘Sounds like we’re being invaded.’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Arthur replied. ‘I’m here on the orders of the Nizam. He requires the temporary detention of all the officers of his battalions garrisoned in Hyderabad city. That includes you, so if you wouldn’t mind?’ Arthur gestured to the mess lounge.

MacDonald folded his arms and puffed out his chest. ‘I think not, sir. How do I know you are speaking the truth?’

Arthur drew his sword. ‘That’s how. Now move.’

MacDonald stumbled back a pace then edged towards the lounge door and hurried across to one of the cane chairs and slumped down. With a loud chorus of shouts the first of the officers taken from their rooms were escorted downstairs and separated into the two large rooms overlooking the riding ring. The officers continued to shout their angry protests at their treatment as the grinning sepoys thrust them into chairs and kept them covered with their bayonets. When the last of them had been brought downstairs Arthur pulled a chair into the hall and climbed on to it so that he could be seen by all in both rooms, and raised his hands to quiet them.

‘I need your attention, gentlemen!’

The protests continued as loudly as ever and Arthur had no wish to seem like some ineffectual schoolteacher. He drew one of his pistols, cocked it, raised it towards the ceiling and fired. In the enclosed hall the detonation of the powder charge was thunderous and silenced the men at once. A moment later a large lump of plaster crashed to the floor, missing Arthur by inches.