THE SIEGE OF LUCKNOW AND OTHER EVENTS IN THE REVOLT OF 1857

(Started from 21st October 2005)

The uprising of 1857 is a landmark in the history of India. The revolt took place due to the oppressive and exploitative nature of the rule of the English East India Company. Even though discontented Indian soldiers of the East India Company's Army gave the lead, the common people joined it in large numbers giving the Revolt a popular and more complex character.

Indian subordination to the English East India Company began in 1757 with Siraj-ud-daulah's defeat in the Battle of Plassey. Thereafter began a process of steady and co-coordinated conquest of the Indian Subcontinent by the British imperial power. One by one the Indian Princes had to accept British rule or acknowledge their paramount authority. The Mughals, the titular sovereigns of India, became British puppets. The main indigenous power in India, the Maratha Confederacy, was defeated decisively. Proud Maratha chiefs like Holkar, Scindia, and Gaikawad had to swear allegiance to the British. The brave Sikhs were conquered as well.

A hundred years of British rule made the situation in India, especially in what is today Uttar Pradesh and Bengal, very bad. The changes introduced by the new masters in the administration, economy and society brought hardships to the common man. He was now governed by laws that he did not understand, rack-rented by a harsh economic policy and found traditional socio-economic systems crumbling around him and being replaced by despair and poverty.

In the erstwhile kingdom of Awadh (modern Western Uttar Pradesh) public sentiments were especially inflamed because of the treatment meted out to their beloved ruler, the Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. He was summarily deposed by the British on the pretext of misrule in his dominions and taken to Calcutta as a prisoner in all but name. But British rule, which replaced that of the popular Nawab, was even more harsh and disastrous for the people of Awadh as it brought large-scale unemployment and the imposition of alien economic measures that gave the peasants as well as the landed gentry a hard time.

It was in this context that the people of India, especially North India, became ready to organize themselves to fight the British and drive them out of India. Historians over the ages have explained this phenomenon in different ways. Early British historians like Malleson and Kaye have explained the Revolt of 1857 as a conspiracy of the disgruntled Princes of India. Marxist historians have identified elements of class struggle due to the participation of the peasants and the Subaltern School of history has concentrated on trying to obtain knowledge about the sentiments of the common people involved in the revolt.

 Some of the important dates in the context of the Revolt are given below: -

29.03.1857 -	Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Native Infantry wounded the European officers of his regiment and was captured after a brief struggle. This incident took place at Barrackpore, Bengal.
08.04.1857 -	Sepoy Mangal Pandey was hanged at Barrackpore.
10.05.1857 -	The Sepoys at Meerut rose.
20.05.1857 -	Mutiny at Agra.
30.05.1857 -	Mutiny at Lucknow with the participation of the common people.
03.06.1857 to 14.06.1857 -	Mutinies at Benares, Kanpur or Cawnpore, Jhansi, Allahabad, and Gwalior.
30.06.l857 -	Siege of Lucknow Residency by the Sepoys began.
17.07.1857 -	Cawnpore was retaken by the British.
20.09.1857 -	Delhi was recaptured by the British.
17.11.1857 -	Lucknow Residency was relieved by Sir Colin Campbell.
21.03.1858 -	Lucknow was totally recaptured by the British.
17.06.1858 -	The Rani of Jhansi died fighting at Kotah-ki-Serai near Gwalior city.
18.04.1859 -	Tatya Tope, one of the major leaders of the Revolt and a trusted associate of Nana Sahib, was hanged at Sipri.
08.07.1859 -	Lord Canning, the Governor-General of India, declared a ' State of Peace' throughout India.

We can gauge the seriousness of the Rebellion from the fact that out of the 74 regiments of the Regular Native Infantry in the Bengal Army of the East India Company, 54 fully or partially rebelled. The rest were either disarmed or disbanded. Only 3 were considered loyal enough by the British to retain arms.

One of the main storm centers was Lucknow, the capital of the erstwhile Princely State of Oudh, which was especially aggrieved due to the removal of its ruler Wajid Ali Shah by the British.

The Sepoys (Indian soldiers in the Company's Army) revolted in Lucknow in May 1857 and there was unrest in the city as well involving the common people. In less than a fortnight the rebels rendered the British administration in the whole of the erstwhile Kingdom of Oudh non-existent.

Sir Henry Lawrence, the Chief Commissioner of Oudh, brought all Europeans, military and civilian, within the Residency complex. The Residency complex was the official area of Lucknow on the banks of Gomti River with an approximate area of 60 acres. This where Sir Lawrence and his people held out during the siege that ensued. The Residency building itself and the network of buildings around it was surrounded by the Indian rebels and pounded by cannon and musket-fire.

Relieving forces under the Generals Havelock and Outram who came in September 1857 were themselves hard pressed by the Sepoys.

Finally on the 21st of march, 1858 after 20 days of fierce fighting, Lucknow fell to the new Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in India: Sir Colin Campbell. He came to relieve Lucknow himself due to its strategic and symbolic importance.

Cawnpore or Kanpur, Benares and Allahabad were centers of the Revolt too. Some places like Cawnpore witnessed even more bitter fighting than Lucknow. There the formidable Nana Sahib, the dispossessed adopted son of the last Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II, led the rebels. In Arrah the rebels of the Danapur Cantonment joined the local chieftain Kunwar Singh who fought bravely and skillfully in spite of being 80 years old.

This exhibition of Litho prints/engravings from the collection of Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata presents the scenes of those days as depicted by artists like Lieutenant C. H. Mecham, Captain D. S. Greene and T. Black (tinted litho from an original sketch by Major Vincent Eyre). It is hoped that the viewers will be given a vivid picture of those days by this effort.

INCIDENTS IN THE MUTINY
Trying positions of the Naval Guns and Greene's Battery, 1857 Tinted Lithograph by Capt. D.S. Greene	View from the Doomree Bungalow Tinted Lithograph by Capt. D.S. Greene