The Black Prince

On 29 March 1849, the ten-year-old Maharaja of Punjab, Duleep Singh, was ushered into the Shish Mahal, the magnificent mirrored throne room at the centre of the great fort of Lahore. The boy's father, Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, was long dead, and his mother, Rani Jindan, had been forcibly removed some time earlier, and incarcerated in a palace outside the city. Now Duleep Singh found himself surrounded by a group of grave-looking men, wearing red coats and plumed hats, who talked among themselves in an unfamiliar language. In the terrors of the minutes that followed – what he later remembered as the 'crimson day' – the frightened but dignified child finally yielded to months of British pressure. Within minutes, the flag of the Sikh Khalsa Army was lowered and the British colours run up above the gatehouse of the fort. Read more on Wikipedia.