Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c42.s2.10

v3.c42.s2.10

The torture and dishonour inflicted by Ghulām Qādir Khan on the Delhi royal family, on its tender babes and aged women, on its servant-girls, eunuchs, petty store-keepers and humble valets as well as the highest princes,— form a long chapter, which fills, in my manuscript of Khairuddin’s Persian history, 33 foolscap folio pages, with 20 lines to the page and drags on from day to day for two months. But a modern historian cannot conduct his reader through all the agonised circles of this Inferno of the living; he must pass over the horrid details and give only a brief general sketch of the kinds of suffering borne by the Timurid royal house, not a hundredth part of which was endured by the house of Capet, whose misery too found a mercifully speedy end on the guillotine.