Delhi under " John Company "
with only the externals of royalty; a document to this effect was therefore drawn up, signed, and sealed in 1850. The principal queen, Zinat Mahal, endeavoured to get the old king to favour her son, Jiwan Bakht, for the succession, and to this he agreed, but was unable to move the Government from their decision. She therefore
determined on revenge. Sir Thomas Metcalfe died on November 3, 1853, of symptoms ofvegetable poison, supposed by some to have been administered at her instigation. On July 10, 1856, Fakhr-ud-din also died of poison, and Lord Canning had the question to decide afresh.
He caused Mirza Mahomed Korash to be recoofnized as heir, but this prince was informed that, after the old king's death, he would only be styled "shahzada," or king's son, and would be given the reduced pension of fifteen thousand rupees per mensem ; Zinat Mahal's intrigues, therefore, were again fruitless. And so the line of the Moghal emperors would have quietly come to an end, had not the Fatal Sisters decided otherwise, and Atropos, with her shears, grimly
cut the long thread of the Moghal dynasty in a manner which no one could have expected.261
