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Article: Ignorant armies clash by night.(BOOKS)(The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857)(Book review)
- Article from:
- CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health
- Article date:
- September 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Association for Religion and Intellectual Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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William Dalrymple
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
Knopf, 2007, xxiii + 534pp. $30
The Sepoy Mutiny is one of those historic disasters that gets worse with the passage of time. The story has been told over and over again, though never with the splendid fresh documentation Dalrymple has gathered here and seldom with as much color and verve. But the more we see its dreadful consequences swell, spread, and fuse with other troubles, the more ghastly it seems.
Everyone knows, more or less, how the introduction of the Enfield rifle, with cartridges (whose top had to be bitten off before loading) that contained both cow and ...