Photographer: Felice Beato.
Old Delhi, India.

Taken a few months after the eruption of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, a photograph by British-Italian photographer Felice Beato, reveals a moat with floating debris and the damaged surface of what once was the Northern gate of the old city of Delhi – locally known as the Kashmiri gate.

Founded by the fifth Mughal emperor Shahajahan in 1639, as Shahjahanabad, the city was a major rebel stronghold during the 1857 Sepoy mutiny with the Kashmiri gate itself the target of a British assault.

On 14th September, 1857, loyal Indian and English soldiers of the third column of the besieging British army had led a suicidal charge to blow the barred doors with gunpowder, under a constant volley of enemy fire from barely ten feet above. They had eventually succeeded in demolishing a part of the gate – albeit after losing many men.