alf-shod and bewildered, to the
Prince, and confessed the ignominious reverse he had suffered. Nor can we
fail to note the superb fortitude with which these heroic souls bore the
load of their severe trials; when their food was at first reduced to the
flesh of horses brought away from the deserted camp of the enemy; when
later they had to content themselves with such grass as they could snatch
from the fields whenever they obtained a respite from their besiegers;
when they were forced, at a later stage, to consume the bark of the trees
and the leather of their saddles, of their belts, of their scabbards and
of their shoes; when during eighteen days they had nothing but water of
which they drank a mouthful every morning; when the cannon fire of the
enemy compelled them to dig subterranean passages within the Fort, where,
dwelling amid mud and water, with garments rotting away with damp, they
had to subsist on ground up bones; and when, at last, oppressed by gnawing
hunger, they, as attested by a contemporary chronicler, were driven to
disinter the steed of their venerated leader, Mulla Husayn, cut it into
pieces, grind into dust its bones, mix it with the putrified meat, and,
making it into a stew, avidly devour it.

Nor can reference be omitted to the abject treachery to which the impotent
and discredited Prince eventually resorted, and his violation of his
so-called irrevocable oath, inscribed and sealed by him on the margin of
the opening surih of the Qur'an, whereby he, swearing by that holy Book,
undertook to set free all the defenders of the Fort, pledged his honor
that no man in his army or in the neighborhood would molest them, and that
he would himself, at his own expense, arrange for their safe departure to
their homes. And lastly, we call to remembrance, the final scene of that
sombre tragedy, when, as a result of the Prince's violation of his sacred
engagement, a number of the betrayed companions of Quddus were assembled
in the camp of the enemy, were stripped of their possessions, and sold as
slaves, the rest being either killed by the spears and swords of the
officers, or torn asunder, or bound to trees and riddled with bullets, or
blown from the mouths of cannon and consigned to the flames, or else being
disemboweled and having their heads impaled on spears and lances. Quddus,
their beloved leader, was by yet another shameful act of the intimidated
Prince surrendered into the hands of the diabolical Sa'idu'l