DELHI 1857 : The Siege, Assault, and Capture as Given in the Diary and Correspondence of the late Col. Keith Young, C.B.

The siege and storming of Delhi was the turning point of the Indian Mutiny – the moment when British rule in the sub-continent hung in the balance. Colonel Keith Young, Judge-Advocate General of the Indian Army, and a high-ranking British official, was an eye-witness throughout, and this substantial account is drawn from his private papers and were originally intended for his family’s eyes only. Most of them were letters to his wife, who, with other European ladies, was in the relative safety of the hill-station at Simla, while the Mutiny was unfolding. The letters describe the outbreak of the Mutiny, with the famous story of the greased cartridges, – the catalyst for the outbreak – and the proclamation of the aged King of Delhi, last of the Mughal emperors, as the mutineers’ titular leader. The letters go on to describe the advance on Delhi by a small British relief force, the siege and the final desperate storming and capture of the city. Long out of print, this 1902 publication is a rare and valauable eye-witness account of one of the Mutiny’s key episodes.