From book THE LAST MUGHAL, The fall of a dynasty, Delhi, 1857, page 300-301
Zahir Dehlavi, who attended on Zafar as a page throughout the siege, saw him sink lower and lower as july gave way to August, until he reached a state approaching helpless despair. ‘He was always in a sad and melancholy mood,’ Zahir wrote long afterwards, and at ll times his eyes were full of tears. In the evenings he used to go in and sit in his oratory, the Tasbih Khana, by himself and would curse the rebels. We were instructed to be persent by turns, and one night while I was on duty, we heard the guard asking us all to be alert, and we all put on our turbans and got ready. When the king appeared, we all stood up and greeted him. The king sat in the tasbih khana on his low throne, leaning back against a bolster. Then he addressed us saying, ‘do you realize the full consequences of what is happening?’ Shahzada Hamid Khan replied, ‘After one hundred and fifty years your Majesty’s prestige has been restored, and the lost Empire of the Mughals has returned.’
The King shook his head. ‘My children,’ he said, ‘you do not understand. Listen: I did nothing to attract this destuction. I did not have treasures and riches, nor land nor Empire. I was always a beggar, a Sufi sitting in a corner in search of God, with a few people around me, eating my daily bread. But now the great fire that was lit in Meerut has, by the will of the Lord, blown over to Delhi, and it has set this great city alight. Now it seems I and my line are destined to be ruined. The name of the great Timurid [Mughal] Emperors is still alive, but soon that name will be completely destroyed and frogotten. These faithless people [The sepoys] who have rebeleed against their masters, and have come here for shelter, will all be gone before long. When these people have been unfaithful to their own leaders what can i expect of them? They have come to ruin my house, and once they have ruined ti they will flee. Then the English will cutoff my head, and those of my children, and they will display them on top of the fort. They will not spare any one of you, and fi any of you are saved, then remember what I am telling you: even when you will take a morsel of bread in your mouth it will be seized and flung far off from you, and the noble men of Hindustan will be treted like base villagers.
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