First war of independence: 1857

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Reflections from Lucknow on the
Great Uprising of 1857

Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones


So much has been written about the Great Uprising of 1857, and as the 150th anniversary draws near, in 2007, we can expect a lot more. Everyone is familiar with the outline of the events of the Uprising but there are some aspects that have not been discussed in great detail. My research for this paper has been mainly based on the work of Indian historians, for we have heard enough from the British point of view.

The uprising is usually presented to us in military terms, not surprisingly, because it started as a revolt by sepoys against the East India Company’s troops. But I want to show why what began as a mutiny in the Army quickly became a popular uprising against the British occupation of India. And to do this, we need to look closely at the signs of revolt that occurred in Lucknow between February 1856 as the British annexed the kingdom of Awadh and May 1857 when the uprising began in the old Lucknow cantonment.

These signs may seem insignificant in themselves, but if one adds them all up, together they indicate the feeling of resentment that was growing against the British during this fifteen-month period. Whether we can call it the First War of Independence, is still open to debate. We have to remember that the uprising was very localised, and that its main focus was only in three or four cities in northern India : Meerut, Kanpur, Delhi and Lucknow. We also have to remember that the powerful Nizams of Hyderabad, in the South, decided to throw in their lot with the British, and that in Calcutta, which was then the British seat of Government, and where you might logically expect an uprising, nothing happened.

To set the scene, Wajid Ali Shah, the last King of Awadh, had been deposed by the British Resident, Major General Sir James Outram, on 7 February 1856. Almost immediately, the ex-King decided to travel to London to seek a personal interview with Queen Victoria. He felt that if he could meet the British Queen personally, he could persuade her that the annexation of Awadh had been a mistake. He hoped, vainly, that he could get her to reverse the annexation and re-install him as King.1

Wajid Ali Shah started his journey to Calcutta on 12 March accompanied by his mother, his brother and two of his wives. From Calcutta, he intended to take a ship to England. Although this was a voluntary move on the King’s part, the feeling percolated in Lucknow that the King had somehow been forced into exile. The impact of the King’s departure from his capital, on 12 March 1856 (5 Rajab 1272) was described by the writer Kamal-ud-din Haider - ‘The condition of this town [Lucknow] without any exaggeration, was such that it appeared that on the departure of Jan-e-Alam [Wajid Ali Shah] that the life was going out of the body, and the body of this town had been left lifeless - there was no street or market and house which did not wail out the cry of agony in separate from Jan-e-Alam.’2 The poet Shahid wrote ‘Laknau bekas hua Hazrat, jo London ko gaye, hum yahan nalan hain whoh faryade - dushman ko gaye.’3 The British had not anticipated that the King would leave his capital, nor that his relatives who were left behind would put up such a fight. Just two weeks after the King had departed, his elder brother, Mohammed Mustafa Ali Khan, stood up after the Friday prayers in the Jama Masjid in Lucknow and told the congregation not to obey the orders of the feringhis.

Once the King had gone, his army was disbanded by the British, who set up their own regiments in what they called the Awadh Irregular Force. But less than half the officers and men who had served in the King’s army could be enlisted into this, or into the new police force which was being established at the same time.4 Because men in the King’s army had traditionally brought their own weapons with them when they entered service, they could not be disarmed when they left. By the end of 1856 there were an estimated number of 30,000 discharged, armed officers and men, pensioned off and left to wander around the countryside without an occupation.5 Not only were they armed, but they were angry and bored, men on the loose, who were to form the bulk of the forces fighting against the British in a few months. There were also an estimated 14,000 civilian contractors to the ex-King’s army, now also without work, because the British had brought in their own contractors. And there was a very small number of European officers who had served in Wajid Ali Shah’s Army, and who remained loyal to him. These white rebels were called renegades and traitors by the British when they joined the uprising, but they continued to fight with the Indian troops.6

For the townspeople, the most visible signs of change were when the British started demolishing buildings in Lucknow. Lucknow was one of the most beautiful and wealthy cities in the whole of India, so it was easy to imagine the resentment people felt when they saw their homes and their splendid public buildings beings knocked down. The Khas Bazar, in the heart of Lucknow, which was a luxury market and a trading centre, was demolished only a month after the King had left. Elihu Jan, who had been the Queen Mother’s hookah bearer, reported that ‘My husband’s shop was cleared away. All the bazaar was cleared away. The English like grass better than bazaars.'7 A Hindu temple on the north bank of the river Gomti, was also knocked down. One of the most insensitive actions of the British was to seize and convert a holy shrine, the Qadam Rasool, which was said to house a footprint of the Prophet Mohammed, into a power magazine.

But these things did not happen without protest by the townspeople. In fact, Sir Henry Lawrence, the new Commissioner was so worried about local reaction that he wrote to the Governor General saying that:

much discontent has been caused by the demolition of buildings and still more by threats of further similar measures: also regarding the seizure of religious and other edifices and plots of ground as nazul, or government property.8

However, the seizures went on. By the autumn of 1856, the British had requisitioned the ex-King’s administrative headquarters, the Moti Mohal, and the old military headquarters, the Macchi Bhawan Fort. When the King’s risaldar in charge of the Fort refused to surrender it, he was overpowered by British troops, who broke into the godowns and seized weapons including 35 pieces of cannon.

There were other indications too, that the British were now taking over every aspect of old Lucknow. The Kings of Awadh had collected a huge menagerie of animals over the years - racing camels, elephants, rhinoceros, tigers, and pigeons, as well as pedigree horses. The cost of feeding all these animals was over a thousand rupees a day, but after the King left, there was no money to feed them. So the British decided to auction them all off. The auction took place just three weeks after the King had gone, in spite of protests from the men who had looked after the animals.

One of the things an occupying force always tries to do, is to control information, and the British were no exception here in Lucknow. The last King, Wajid Ali Shah had wanted to set up an electric telegraph so that messages in morse could be sent in and out of his Kingdom. But the Governor General had absolutely forbidden this, even before annexation.10 However, as soon as the King went, the British installed their own electric telegraph, in the former Banqueting Hall of the Residency, so they could get messages to and from Calcutta.

There were several Urdu language newspapers published from Lucknow during this period. One was called Tilism, and the British authorities arrested the editor on charges of providing misinformation. He was jailed for three months, but released after just one month, due to the public outcry. There is something very modern about all of this, arresting editors of vernacular newspapers is a sure sign of a nervous occupying power. Another newspaper, whose editor was Mirza Bedar Bakht, a grandson of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah, was called Payam-e-Azadi, which means ‘Message of Freedom’ and it was financed by the Nana Sahib of Bithur. It called for the people of Awadh to unite and fight the new rulers, but it was also quickly closed down. In fact the British were so worried about Payam-e-Azadi that not only was it banned, but anyone found with a copy was liable to execution.11

With the King gone, great numbers of servants and staff who had served in the royal palaces were now out of work and they naturally blamed the British for their predicament. They were now without money and without employment. Traders suffered as well, when new taxes were introduced by the British who started charging a market ground rent for traders and also imposed a higher tax on opium.

There was increasing trouble in the countryside too. Outside Lucknow, in the rural areas, a new land settlement, called the ‘summary settlement’ was imposed by the British on the people they found actually farming the land. This meant that the taluqdars, who were the real owners of much of the land, lost out and were dispossessed. Before annexation they had owned 67 per cent of the land. After the ‘summary settlement’ this was reduced to just 38 per cent.12 We get an indication of the warlike atmosphere already present in the countryside. Many of the taluqdars lived in small forts, supported by feudal armies, men that they could call up and arm in times of trouble. In September 1856, the Chief Commissioner ordered 574 forts in Awadh, belonging to taluqdars and zamindars to ‘surrender all warlike stores or artillery’ immediately.

This alienated the taluqdars, who could have supported the British during the revolt that followed next year. But in fact when Hanumant Singh, a taluqdar was asked for help by the British he replied, giving them this answer: ‘Sahib, your contrymen came into this country and drove out our King. You sent your officers round the districts to examine the titles to the states. At one blow you took from me lands which from time immemorial had been in my family.’13 This then was the reaction in the countryside - bitter resentment against the British, mirrored by the same feelings of anger amongst the urban population in Lucknow.

By mid-1857, leaders from the four main groups of people most affected had come together to form a revolutionary junta, called the Sazman-jawanan-Awadh. It was made up from:
(a)  The royal group - the King’s relatives, who had stayed behind when Wajid Ali Shah went to Calcutta.
(b)  The religious groups led by Maulvi Ahmad Ullah Shah, the Maulvi of Faizabad, who called for a jihad against the British.
©  The dispossessed military, that is, the officers and men from the King’s disbanded army.
(d)  The rural element, the taluqdars with their feudal armies, led by Raja Mahmudabad, Raja Jia Lal from Faizabad and Khan Ali Khan from Salone.


The junta was also being joined, and encouraged, by troops coming into Lucknow from Faizabad and Sultanpur, together with a nephew of the Emperor Bahadur Shah, with his own fighting men.

The story of Lucknow during 1857 and 1858 can be divided into three distinct phases: the Uprising and siege of the Residency from May to November 1857; preparations to defend the city, from November 1857 to February 1858; the retaking of the city by the British, in March 1858.

Phase One: May to mid-November 1857

The first sign of the uprising was on 2 May 1857 when the 7th Awadh Irregular Force, one of the new regiments, stationed in the British cantonment at Lucknow, refused to use greased cartridges. It was disarmed the following day by Sir Henry Lawrence, and two weeks later twenty soldiers who took part in this protest were hanged in front of the Macchi Bhawan Fort. This was followed by more hangings in June.

While it is usual to say that it was the greased cartridges that provided the spark for the subsequent uprising, the Lucknow historian Mr. Roshan Taqui said, quite correctly, that it was ‘the stealing of Awadh that was the key to revolt, far more important than tales of greased cartridges or plots to convert all sepoys to Christianity.’14

During May, people in Lucknow quickly learnt that Meerut and Delhi had been seized by Indian soldiers. The Emperor, Bahadur Shah issued a general firman to say he had possession of the whole country and requested the Awadh troops, among others to join. At the same time there were clear indications that the British now realised how dangerous their position had become, and they started to make preparations to defend themselves in Lucknow.

There were several significant signs that the British were now starting to panic. During this period in early summer, a procession to the Hussainabad Imambara was fired on by British troops, and the leader of the procession, Agha Mirza Kambalposh, was hanged by the British, in front of the Macchi Bhawan Fort.15 Then the house of the wealthiest moneylender in Lucknow, Shah Behari Lal, was forcibly seized by the British, and incorporated into the British Residency, because it formed an important tactical outpost if the Residency was attacked. The townspeople also reported seeing convoys of carts filled with grain ad munitions heading for the Residency, as well as firewood, charcoal and fodder for the cattle being taken in.

The Qaisarbagh Palace, the ex-king’s home, was raided for the first time by the British, who seized the crown jewels, much treasure and a number of weapons. Sir Henry Lawrence then ordered more demolitions between the British Residency and the Macchi Bhawan Fort. He had an 18-pounder gun put on top of the Fort gateway pointing towards the street where the public hangings were taking place. Control of the old Lucknow Cantonment at Marion, was lost at the end of May when it was set on fire.

The British had planned to withdraw to two areas in central Lucknow, which they thought they could hold, the Residency and the Macchi Bhawan Fort. But in early June, Henry Lawrence, realised they could not hold both, so he ordered that the Fort should be blown up with the 250 barrels of gunpowder stored inside. The British then retreated to the Residency, which was a site of about 33 acres situated isolated from the rest of British India because as soon as they barricaded themselves in the Residency their new electric telegraph was destroyed by the townspeople, who cut up the wires, hammered them into bullets, used the wooden telegraph supports for firewood, and adapted the cast-iron tubing into rifle barrels. It was not just British people and a handful of Europeans who were in the Residency, but an almost equal number of Indians, most of whom were servants.

Interestingly, it was the taluqdars’ leaders, Raja Mahmudabad and Khan Ali Khan who were responsible for persuading the revolutionary junta in Awadh to surround the British Residency. Originally they had planned to march to Delhi to join the Emperor’s troops. But having forced the British into a tight corner in Lucknow, they hoped to frighten them into surrender, because this would have had an important symbolic impact on the rest of the country.16

In the meantime, Wajid Ali Shah, after having reached Calcutta, decided not to go any further, but sent his mother and brother to meet Queen Victoria, on his behalf. He took no part in the uprising in Lucknow, not even as a figurehead, in fact, he condemned the revolt.17 Even so, he was locked up in Fort William for several months. It was the queen he left behind in Lucknow, Begam Hazrat Mahal, who provided the royal focal point for the townspeople. Her young son, Birjis Qadr, only ten or twelve years old, was crowned King in July 1857 and he became the nominal head of the revolutionary junta.

By the middle of November, British forces led by Sir Colin Campbell were able to enter Lucknow and rescue the Indian and British people trapped in the Residency. But his military force was not strong enough to recapture the whole city, and he withdrew to the Alambagh Palace, south of Lucknow. There are many accounts of this rescue mission available.

Phase Two: mid-November 1857 to end of February 1858

‘History is written by the victor’ and what happened in Lucknow between November 1857 when British evacuated the Residency, and March 1858 when they marched back to retake the city has not been told in any detail. Limited information and a few photographs exist, but the story can be pieced together. The most significant event was that the revolutionary junta, led by Begam Hazrat Mahal, started to build huge earthen ramparts around the city. It is said that she sold her jewellery and valuables for Rs 5 lakhs to pay for the labourers who worked on these sites. There is an interesting description of the ramparts by Martin Gubbins, the Financial Commissioner who had been trapped in the Residency during the siege. He wrote that ‘these fortifications consisted of screens made of wooden palisades, placed in a bank of earth and the roads and passages were everywhere intersected by their ditches and traverses-their batteries were usually formed of strong rafters of wood stuck upright and deeply embedded in the ground, and strengthened and supported by a bank of earth, a square embrasure being left in the centre for the muzzle of the cannon.’18

There were two lines of defence, the first, outer line, formed by the Haider Canal, which ran along the south of the city. This became a wet ditch, with earthen ramparts behind it. The inner line, with dry ditches, skirted round the main street, Hazratganj, and the Moti Mahal, the administrative headquarters and the Qaisarbagh palaces, the King’s home.

A British officer wrote that by March 1858, the inhabitants ‘had left nothing undone to strengthen the city...every outlet had been covered by a work and strong barricade and loop holed parapets had been constructed in every direction. The various buildings formed a range of most massive palaces and walled courts of vast extent and they had been fortified with the greatest skill. Guns swept the long streets and narrow lanes and others were mounted even on the domes of mosques and royal palaces.’19 Not surprisingly, as they waited for the British to begin the mother of all battles, those who could, sent their families away, and there was a steady stream of people evacuating the city. In the countryside, villagers had been pressurised not to supply the Britishers with food, and on the whole, this was a successful manoeuvre. Certainly British reports talk of the difficulty of foraging for supplies.

Phase Three: from 1 March to 16 March 1858

With all the defensive precautions in Lucknow, the British regiments would have had a tough time re-entering the city, and they did. It took them two weeks, from 1 March to 16 March 1858 to fight their way back into the heart of Lucknow.

The British forces were able to re-enter the city because they had been joined by Gurkha soldiers, sent by the King of Nepal. Advancing together, they captured three isolated palaces south of the city. One of these was La Martiniere School on the bank of the river. Indeed, it is said that one could still see bullet holes in the School chapel as late as 1945. In front of the School, the British engineers built a bridge of boats so they could cross the river. The British forces had divided themselves up to form a classic pincer movement. Major General Sir James Outram led his troops across the river on to the north bank and round the outskirts of the city, through fields and gardens, which were not defended. By the time the British had reached the Faizabad Road, the defenders of Lucknow had suffered their first major strategic defeat.

Outram then advanced towards the Badshah Bagh palace, on the north bank, where Lucknow University stands today. He began firing across the river, towards the palaces that lined the south bank. He also captured the two fixed bridges on the river, the Stone Bridge and the Iron Bridge. The Iron Bridge had been mined, but the mine failed to explode, and the breastwork, which had been laid across it, was dismantled by British engineers.

Meanwhile, Sir Colin Campbell had crossed the Haider Canal, over a temporary wooden bridge that the engineers put up, and he advanced along the main street, Hazratganj. There was huge resistance here as he captured the Begam Kothi Palace which was held by an estimated 5,000 Indian troops.20 By 15 March 1858, Campbell had captured the symbolic heart of Lucknow, the Qaisarbagh Palace and Hazrat Mahal and young Birjis Qadr, the boy King, were forced to flee. This was almost the end of the fighting. The religious leader Maulvi Ahmad Ullah Shah retreated to one of the most sacred sites in the old city, the Dargah Hazrat Abbas, in Kashmiri Mohalla. He was pursued by the British, and although the townspeople tried to stop the British and the Gurkha troops by throwing bricks down from the roof tops, they couldn’t succeed. The capture of Lucknow was followed by days of looting, particularly in the Qaisarbagh Palaces, and it is estimated, in sterling, that over a hundred and fifteen million pounds worth of goods were destroyed or stolen and carried back to England and Nepal.

So why did the uprising fail in Lucknow, in spite of the bravery of the sepoys and their supporters? There are several reasons.

Firstly, lack of unity among the leaders of the revolutionary junta, in particular arguments between Hazrat Mahal and Maulvi Ahmad Ullah Shah. These arguments were so serious that in January 1858, three months before the British retook the city, over a hundred people were killed in factional fighting near the north gate of the Qaisarbagh Palace.21 Energy that should have gone towards fighting the British was wasted in fighting each other. It was also a mistake to appoint young Birjis Qadr as Commander of Awadh, instead of a more experienced man like Barhat Ahmed, who had defeated Henry Lawrence in the preliminary skirmish at Chinhat, before the siege of the Residency began.

Secondly, there was lack of money, particularly money to pay the sepoys, and there was resentment among the sepoys themselves, because there were different rates of pay for the men who came from Delhi to fight, and the men from Awadh.

Thirdly, although some of the taluqdars did support the uprising, there were others who had invested their money in East India Company bonds and it was obviously not in their interest that the British should loose. Also, because the revolt continued for almost a year, the rajas and taluqdars who had originally come into Lucknow in May 1857 had to go back to their districts to supervise the collection of the land revenue.22 In November 1857, when the British evacuated the Residency, there were nearly 100,000 fighting men in Lucknow, but by March 1858 there were only 36,000. On the other hand, the British troops, strengthened by the Nepalese Gurkhas, numbered nearly 58,000 so there was a great disparity in the numbers of the two armies.

The fourth point is that for some reason the defenders of Lucknow did not think that the British attack would come from the north of the city, so they had not put up any barricades on the north bank of the river.

The Indian troops didn’t have a guaranteed supply of ammunition. They had a number of cannons but they didn’t always have cannon balls, so they had to improvise. Sometimes they would use wooden beams, usually made of teak, which were trimmed to fit the barrels. And there was no guarantee of a continued supply of satisfactory ammunition and arms either, which is why people had to improvise and use whatever they had.

Lastly, the siege of the British Residency - although it became an epic story in the history of the British Empire, in fact was not strategically important. There was no military advantage in capturing the Residency compound, other than a symbolic one. On the other hand, if the fighting men in Awadh had marched rapidly to Delhi to join Bahadur Shah in May 1857, then I think the whole history of the uprising could have been very different.

Reference

1.  Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Engaging Scoundrels: True Tales of Old Lucknow, Oxford University Press, Delhi 2000, p 144.
2.  Roshan Taqui, Lucknow 1857 (The Two Wars of Lucknow : The Dusk of an Era) New Royal Book Co, Lucknow 2001, p 29.
3.  Ibid, p 30.
4.  Llewellyn-Jones, op cit p 135.
5.  Llewellyn-Jones, op cit p 136. Sir James Outram, the first Chief Commissioner, warned as early as June 1856 that 'the spirit of dissatisfaction evinced by this large body of armed men, now let loose upon the country to the number of 30,000 is a very serious consideration'.
6.  John Fraser, 'Europeans who sided with the Mutineers in India 1857-9: The Christian Bandsmen of the Native Infantry Regiments' Journal of the Society for Army Historicla Research 79 (2001) pp 119-30 and  'More Europeans who sided with the Mutineers in India 1857-9' Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 80 (2002), pp 110-127.
7.  William Elihu Knighton, Jan's Story or The Private Life of an Eastern Queen, London, 1865 p 13.
8.  Taqui, op. cit, p 53.
9.  Llewellyn-Jones, op. cit, p 138.
10.  ibid, pp 141-2.
11.  Taqui, op.cit, p 53 & p 66.
12.  Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt 1857-1858 A Study of Popular Resistance (new edition) Permanent Black, Delhi 2001 p 57.
13.  ibid, p 81.
14.  Taqui, op. cit, p 39.
15.  ibid, pp 59-60.
16.  ibid, p 150.
17.  Llewellyn-Jones, op. cit, p 116.
18.  Taqui, op. cit, pp 109/110.
19.  Sir James Hope Grant, quoted by Roshan Taqui, op. cit, p 217.
20.  William Forbes-Mitchell, Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny 1857-59, London 1910 reprinted Asian Educational Services 2002 p 215 of the 2002 edition.
21.  Taqui, op cit, p 227.
22.  ibid, p 169.




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Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones is Honorary Secretary of British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA).

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