Hussey put his horse straight into a canter and made for the droog – with him a corporal carrying a flag of truce so large that it trailed in the earth, for it was Hervey’s intention that everyone watching from the walls should know what it signified, and that they might therefore ponder on what he trusted the hijdas had been telling them all night.

Within the citadel, warned by the ‘Rahabs’ somehow that defied understanding, the Ranee stood with her bodyguard. She’d dressed in her finest silks – yellow, like her rissalah ‘sworn to die’ – with a jewelled sword at her waist and a pistol in each hand. She would not be taken alive by Ashok Acharya only to be put to death in ignominious fashion later. He would for sure storm her fastness once his own walls were breached, for what did he have to bargain with but her life? He had more than enough guns and men to do so. He’d pay dear, though. He’d made of her a ‘tigress’ – for his own purposes, and no doubt laughing at the deceit – and so now he would feel her claws.

Down came the drawbridge save for a last few feet, and Hussey rode up to place with great ceremony the ultimatum in the hand of the officer of the watch.

As he galloped back, the drawbridge rose laboriously. The walls – the cannon – remained silent.

‘Were any words exchanged, Mr Hussey?’

‘He said “Namaste”, General,’ replied the cornet, sounding perplexed.

‘Promising.’

The ultimatum, in Hindoostanee, was stark:

Immediately upon the delivery of these presents, all troops and their followers within the walls of the palace are to surrender to the forces of His Britannic Majesty’s Honourable East India Company upon guarantee of safe passage and amnesty, except the person of Ashok Acharya who must surrender unconditionally and quit the palace without arms. Flags of surrender are to be hoist at once. Or else the palace will be taken by the explosion of a second mine, and by storm, in which case No quarter for troops, nor followers of either sex, nor children, shall be given.

But no one other than his closest staff, and soon Ashok Acharya (and, if the hijdas had done their work, Acharya’s poor ‘foot soldiers’) knew what precisely was the threat contained in the ultimatum, for he wanted no Jericho … And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword – like Badajoz and its murderous blood-lust, rape and rapine.

The Prussian said that intruding a principle of moderation into the business of war was absurd, but that not merely offended his sensibility (which he might reasonably overcome) but went against his experience of battle so-won. The ultimatum was a ploy, a ruse de guerre. He’d no more intention of putting the dewan’s men and their followers to the sword than he had the means of a second mine. But none within the walls could know that – or, at least, be sure of knowing.