Siege of Lucknow

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sikandar Bag in Lucknow after being stormed by British troops, photo by Felice Beato , March 1858 - The decayed corpses of Indian rebels lie in the courtyard

The siege of Lucknow is an event of the Indian uprising of 1857 and, alongside the siege of Kanpur, from a British perspective one of the two great victim dramas of the uprising put down by the British. The garrison was defended by the British from early June to November 18 against overwhelming forces of insurgent troops and Indian civilians. After that, Lucknow fell back into Indian hands. The garrison town, located off the Grand Trunk Road , was retaken by British troops under the leadership of Sir Colin Campbell on March 15, 1858, because of its high symbolic and strategic value .

Lucknow had previously been the capital of the Indian state of Avadh . Applying the Doctrine of Lapse , the ruler of Avadh had been dethroned in 1856 for mismanagement by the British East India Company . The annexation of Avadh is considered to be one of the causes of the outbreak of the 1857 uprising.

Background of the siege

La Martiniere in Lucknow. As the former ruler's seat, Lucknow had large palaces and gardens. Photo by Felice Beato from 1858

Wajid Ali Shah , the ruler of Avadh, had been dethroned by the British East India Company in 1856 using the Doctrine of Lapse and exiled to Calcutta . The deposition of the ruler met with strong rejection within the state of Avadh as well as among parts of the population of the rest of the Indian subcontinent. The sepoys who served in the Bengali army of the British East India Company and 60 percent from Avadh were severely affected . For many of their families still living in Avadh, the tax legislation, which was strictly implemented by the British, led to impoverishment. In addition to the social and economic policy pursued by the British East India Company, through which large parts of the Indian population lost land rights, employment opportunities and influence, as well as the increasing efforts in the 19th century to Christianize India and the annexation of other Indian princely states in previous years , this is considered to be one of the causes of the uprising. In addition, there was growing dissatisfaction among Indian troops with their British commanders. The starting point of the uprising were the infantry units of the Army of Bengal . The infantry units of this army sat down - unlike the armies of Madras and Bombay - largely of members of the higher Hindu - box ( Brahmin and Kshatriya ) together. Cavalry and artillery had a significantly higher proportion of Muslims. Since the British feared that the Hindu soldiers would take caste issues more important than their duty, the trading company saw this concentration as a threat to military discipline. To ensure that it had modern, powerful troops that it could deploy across Asia, the British East India Company became increasingly less considerate of caste issues and expanded its recruiting base to include Gurkhas and Sikhs . The latter met with strong rejection, especially among Brahmin sepoys. In 1856, the General Service Enlistment Act required new Indian recruits to serve outside of India. Out of consideration for sepoys of the higher Hindu castes, the service abroad was voluntary up to this point, since according to the prevailing opinion they lost their caste membership when they crossed the open sea.

The external trigger of the uprising is generally considered to be the introduction of the Enfield rifle , whose cartridge cases, according to a rumor widespread among the British-Indian armed forces, were treated with a mixture of beef tallow and lard. The use of these cartridges represented a violation of their religious duties for both devout Hindus and Muslims. On May 10, 1857, there was an open uprising in Merath , after troops stationed there were to drill with this new rifle for the first time. About 50 British officers and civilians were murdered during the uprising. The insurgents withdrew to Delhi that night , where the 82-year-old Bahadur Shah Zafar II , the last of the Mughals, resided. His sphere of influence was limited to his palace, the Red Fort in Delhi. Nevertheless, he was considered a nominal sovereign by both the Indian population and the Indian provinces and states. Delhi was therefore the place where the insurgent troops gathered.

The siege

Prepare for the siege

The garrison town of Lucknow was under the command of Sir Henry Lawrence . Only a few weeks earlier he had replaced his predecessor, who had acted haplessly and tactlessly since the annexation of the state of Avadh. The news that Sir Henry Lawrence reached via Delhi prompted him to immediately prepare Lucknow for a siege. Unlike Hugh Wheeler , who commanded the garrison town of Kanpur , he prepared for a prolonged siege. Hugh Wheeler, on the other hand, assumed that insurgent troops would withdraw to Delhi very quickly and had therefore only prepared his garrison for a brief siege. The residence in Lucknow, on the other hand, had sufficient provisions to survive more than two months without external supplies. Sufficient drinking water was available within the residence. The numerous buildings offered the besieged much better protection than those in Kanpur. There was also a cemetery within the defended area, where the dead, wrapped in sheets, could be buried. The number of besiegers was, however, significantly higher than in Kanpur and they shot at the fortified residence from closer than was the case in Kanpur. After the massacre on Sati Chowra towards the end of June, the representatives in Calcutta had little hope that the residence in Lucknow would be spared anything comparable.

The 32nd regiment of the British Army and four regiments of the British East India Company were stationed in Lucknow; Henry Lawrence, however, did not dare to disarm these four regiments because he feared that this could be the spark that sparked the outbreak of the uprising. As early as May 23, he had food stored. His own residence and 16 adjoining buildings offered better defenses than the actual garrison, so he had it prepared for a siege by building bastions and ditching defensive trenches. 855 British and 712 Indian officers and soldiers as well as a total of 1,433 British civilians holed up there. There were hundreds of women and children among the civilians. Most of the Indian troops stationed in Lucknow mutinied from May 30, the Muslim festival of breaking the fast .

Battle of Chinhat

On June 4, the uprising began in Sitapur , an important and large military station 82 kilometers from Lucknow. This was followed by further unrest in Faizabad , one of the most important cities in the province. There were also uprisings in Daryabad , Sultanpur and Salon . In the course of about 10 days, Avadh was no longer in British hands. On June 30th, Henry Lawrence learned that insurgents were gathering north of Lucknow. He tried to field these insurgent troops in open battle, although he had little information about the strength and position of the insurgents. Although Lawrence had relatively little experience in commanding a force, he led the attack himself. The British troops were forced to march towards the rebel troops in the hot midday sun with no food and insufficient water supply. They met a well-organized force of insurgents who had cavalry and who had dug themselves in with their artillery. The Battle of Chinhat was lost by the British. Lawrence had to retire to the residence with his troops. 172 Europeans and 193 Indians fell on the British side before they could retreat back into the garrison. Some of the refugees succumbed to heat stroke just before they reached the Lucknow residence.

Beginning of the siege

Lucknow had been the seat of the rulers of Avadh for many years. The city therefore had numerous large and fortified buildings. The residence was located between several palaces, mosques and administrative buildings. Lawrence initially refused to have these torn down and urged his engineers to spare the mosques and temples in the vicinity of the residence in particular. During the siege, however, these turned out to be bases for the insurgents.

The first attack by the insurgents was repulsed on July 1st. Machchhi Bhawan ; a palace in the east of the residence was evacuated and blown up. Henry Lawrence was one of the first to die after the siege began. On July 2nd, a cannonball struck his room, shattering his hip. He died on July 4th as a result of the injury. Colonel Sir John Inglis of the 32nd Regiment took over the military command. The dying Lawrence turned Major Banks over the civil administration of the garrison. However, Banks was also killed a few days later, so Inglis took over both posts.

At the beginning of July 1857, the number of besiegers consisted of around 8,000 rebellious sepoys and several hundred Indian civilians. They had some modern artillery. During the first few weeks there were several courageous attacks by the besiegers on the residence. However, they could always be successfully repulsed by the besieged in the residence. As in other disputes in the uprising of 1857, the Indian side lacked commanders who had experience in leading large troops and tactical training and whose command was recognized by all insurgents.

Due to the poor hygienic conditions, cholera and dysentery soon broke out in the residence , claiming as many victims as the shelling by the rebellious Indian troops. On average, more than 20 of the besieged died every day; many of the victims were children. At the end of August only 650 men were defending the garrison; another 120 were too sick or injured to join the defense. Only 450 of the women and children were still alive.

Attempts to end the siege

First advance of Sir Henry Havelock

On July 16, British troops under the command of Major General Henry Havelock retook Kanpur. Kanpur was about 77 kilometers from Lucknow. Havelock, who had forced his troops to march to Kanpur and decided four battles for the British side in eight days, now tried to reach Lucknow as well. Shocked by the massacres in Kanpur, the same was feared for the besieged of Lucknow. It took him six days, however, to move his troops of 1,500 men across the Ganges . On July 29, he was embroiled in another battle near Unao . At this point, he had only 850 men ready to fight due to injuries, heat strokes and illnesses. Havelock had to break off the advance. In several letters he requested reinforcements from James Neill , to whom he had given command of Kanpur. Havelock finally received reinforcements of 257 men and a few additional cannons and tried again to advance to Lucknow. He won another battle in Unao on August 4th. Afterwards, however, his troops were so weakened that a further advance did not seem possible.

Henry Havelock originally wanted to stay on the right side of the aisle and thus in Avadh. He wanted to prevent further insurgents from joining the besiegers of Avadh. On August 11, however, James Neill sent him the news that Kanpur was again threatened by larger insurgent troops. To prevent his troops from being attacked from behind, he marched his troops to Unao and there inflicted a third defeat on the insurgent troops. He crossed the Ganges here. On August 16, he hit a rebel force in Bithur . This largely eliminated the threat to Kanpur.

Henry Havelock's withdrawal had been a tactical imperative. However, it let the rebellion in Avadh flare up again and initially neutral landowners joined the insurgent troops. The message could be sent to the commander of Lucknow, Inglis, that an evacuation of Lucknow would make the most sense. The besieged were to retreat to Kanpur, which was relatively safe in the hands of the British. Inglis had to reject this suggestion, however, because he not only had too few operational men, but also too many of the besieged were seriously injured or ill. He urgently asked for reinforcements and support. The insurgents had meanwhile started to undermine the protective walls of the garrison.

Reinforcements from Lucknow

Qaisarbag Palace in Lucknow

Major General James Outram arrived in Kanpur with reinforcements in early September . Outram was higher in rank than Henry Havelock and replaced him as commander in chief of the troops. Outram, however, in a gallant gesture left Havelock in command of the relief forces for Lucknow. The troops that set out again from Kanpur to Lucknow consisted of 3,170 men. The vast majority were British, including a Scottish regiment. The troops also included a Sikh battalion. The cavalry force, however, consisted of only 168 men. The men were divided into two brigades, under the command of James Neill and Colonel Hamilton.

Unlike before, this time no insurgent troops involved the British forces, who set out for Lucknow again on September 18, in any fighting. The insurgents had also failed to destroy some of the important bridges. On September 23, Havelock succeeded in driving the insurgents out of Alambag , a large, walled park about six kilometers south of the Lucknow residence. On September 25th the advance on the besieged residence began. Because of the onset of the monsoon rain, large areas around the city were flooded. This prevented the British troops from taking the city in a pincer motion. Rather, they were forced to march directly through parts of the rebellious city towards the residence.

The troops met fierce resistance; the Scottish regiment even lost its way, but was able to take an artillery position of the insurgents near the Qaisarbag Palace. When it got dark, James Outram wanted to interrupt the attack first. Henry Havelock - who arrived in Kanpur a day late to prevent the Bibighar massacre - allowed the attack to continue because he feared that the forces of the besieged were so thinned that an attack by the insurgents could result. that they took the residence. The advance on the residence, which now mainly led through narrow streets, was from the British point of view the most lossy part of the relief of the Lucknow residence. The victims included the controversial British officer James Neill, who had taken cruel revenge on the Indian population in Benares and Kanpur.

Second siege

The original aim of the advance to Lucknow was to evacuate those besieged there. However, the heavy losses that had been made during the advance made it impossible to get the besieged out of the city safely. James Outram, Major Inglis and Henry Havelock each took over part of the besieged residence. The decision to hold out in Lucknow until further British reinforcements arrived was also due to the fact that a large store of food was found on the site, with the help of which the besieged could hold out for another two months. The camp had been set up by Henry Lawrence, who had not informed any of the surviving subordinates about it.

James Outram had also hoped that the reinforcement of the troops in Lucknow would demoralize the insurgents. However, this did not happen. Over the next six weeks, the insurgents continued their attacks on the besieged residence and tried several times to undermine the ramparts. The besieged responded with failures and dug counter mines. Lucknow had long been able to keep in touch with other British stations by sending messages through the lines to loyal Indians. However, this became increasingly difficult.

Preparing for the Lucknow Relief

The crackdown on the rebels by the British was essentially concentrated in three locations: The Grand Trunk Road , which led through Kanpur and Lucknow to the south of Avadh, central India and the region around Delhi. Delhi had a special symbolic meaning as the center of the uprising, as Bahadur Shah Zafar II. The nominal head of the uprising resided here and most of the rebellious troops had gathered here. At the beginning of August 1857 there were between 30,000 and 40,000 insurgent sepoys in the city. The British Delhi Field Force had entrenched itself on the ridge opposite the north-western city wall. Although this only had 7,000 men, more than a quarter of whom were unable to operate due to illness, injury and exhaustion, the British managed to maintain their position. The insurgent sepoys had worn down their opponents with artillery fire and a series of courageous attacks, inflicting heavy losses on them. However, the British position was never conquered - according to many modern historians only because the Indian rebels lacked suitable and universally accepted military leaders. The perseverance of the British caused increasing unrest in the rebellious Delhi, as it was foreseeable that British troops would soon reinforce those entrenched on the ridge. More than 10,000 of the insurgent troops left the city between August 21 and 25. British reinforcements arrived on September 4th and on September 14th the retaking of Delhi began, which continued until September 20th. The hiding place of Bahadur Shah Zafar II on the area of ​​the Humayun mausoleum was betrayed by his son-in-law and the Mughal Mughal was captured by the British officer William Hodson . Two of his sons and one of his grandsons were shot dead immediately after William Hodson was captured.

After the troops under James Outram and Henry Havelock had been reinforced in Lucknow, an immediate conquest by the insurgents was not to be feared. From the point of view of Sir Colin Campbell, the new Commander-in-Chief in India, the liberation of Lucknow was of such strategic and symbolic value that he concentrated his military forces on it after the reconquest of Delhi. Sir Colin Campbell reached Kanpur on November 3, 1857. British civil servant Thomas Henry Kavanagh managed to sneak through the Indian lines on the night of November 9th and deliver a map to Sir Campbell showing the positions of the Indian troops. He received the Victoria Cross for this .

Second conquest of Lucknow

Soldiers from Madras who retook Lucknow under Colin Campbell in November 1857
Sikandar Bag from the outside, photo by Felice Beato from 1858. The walls show the heavy bombardment

On the basis of the information from Kavanagh, Sir Campbell initially bypassed Lakhnau in a wide arc and then attacked from the east, where the insurgent troops were less concentrated. The capture of Lucknow succeeded, so that on November 18 the besieged could be evacuated from Lucknow. However, the British forces were too weak to hold the city and Lucknow was again left to the insurgents.

The goal of the advance was initially La Martiniere, a school in Lucknow. From there, Sikandar Bag was to be taken, a large park with a villa surrounded by high walls. Sikandar Bag, which was in the immediate vicinity of the residence, was vigorously defended by the insurgents. Heavy fighting broke out in the garden and courtyard of the villa, in which more than 3,000 insurgents died. The capture of Sikandar Bag by the British was the signal for Henry Havelock and James Outram to blow up parts of their defensive walls in order to allow British troops to march into the residence.

Evacuation of the besieged

Although James Outram and Henry Havelock suggested to Sir Colin Campbell to storm the palace in the Qaisarbag nearby in order to bring Lucknow completely into the hands of the British, Colin Campbell did not follow this suggestion. He saw both Kanpur and other cities that the British had previously retaken as too endangered to tie up forces in Lucknow. The withdrawal from Lucknow began on November 18, 1857. While Campbell's artillery bombed the Qaisarbag Palace to prevent the insurgent troops from attacking again, the residence was withdrawn. Colin Campbell had fabric walls stretched along the path that the wounded, women and children had to take to prevent insurgent snipers from shooting at the people to be evacuated. Behind this screen, those to be evacuated were led into Dilkusha Park. Henry Havelock succumbed to a sudden dysentery attack while still in Dilkusha Park. Campbell accompanied the evacuees with a force of 3,000 men to Kanpur. Sir James Outram brought up the rear and remained in Alambag with a force of 4,000 men to hold this town against the insurgents.

The civilians who survived the siege of Lucknow were first brought to Allahabad. A month later she was taken to Kolkata. The representatives of the British East India Company had asked the residents of Calcutta not to give the survivors a special welcome. One didn't stick to that. When the Allahabad fleet arrived in Calcutta, hundreds were standing at Prinseps Ghat and cannons were firing salutes from Fort William. However, Andrew Ward, in his detailed story of the Kanpur massacre, reports that the assembled crowd fell silent as the first women in mourning clothes emerged from the boats with their children by the hand.

Single receipts

  1. ^ Ward, p. 243
  2. ↑ Dalrymple, p. 10
  3. ↑ Hibbert, p. 47
  4. ↑ a b David (2006), p. 295
  5. ^ Wilson, p. 203
  6. ↑ a b c Ward, p. 449
  7. ^ Ward, p. 450
  8. ↑ James, p. 248
  9. ^ Wilson, p. 216
  10. ^ Ward, 243
  11. ↑ David (2006), p. 317
  12. ↑ a b David (2006), p. 334
  13. ↑ James, p. 258
  14. ↑ see for example James, pp. 258 to 259 or - for a very detailed description of the events in Delhi - Dalrymple, pp. 264 to 364
  15. ↑ James, p. 259
  16. ↑ James, p. 260
  17. ↑ David (2006), pp. 334 to 341
  18. ^ Ward, p. 488

literature

  • Sashi Bhusan Chaudhuri: English Historical Writings on The Indian Mutiny 1857-1859. Calcutta 1979.
  • William Dalrymple : The Last Mughal - The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857. Bloomsbury Publishing, London 2006, ISBN 978-0-7475-8726-2 .
  • Saul David: The Indian Mutiny: 1857 , Penguin Books, 2003.
  • Saul David: Victoria's Wars , Penguin Books, London 2006, ISBN 978-0-14-100555-3 .
  • Astrid Erll: Premediation - Remediation. Representations of the Indian uprising in imperial and post-colonial media cultures (from 1857 to the present). Trier 2007.
  • Niall Ferguson : Empire. The Rise and Demise of the British World Order. 2003, ISBN 0-465-02328-2 .
  • Christopher Herbert: War of no pity. The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2008, ISBN 978-0-691-13332-4 .
  • Christopher Hibbert: The great mutiny: India 1857. Penguin Books, London [u. a.] 1988.
  • Lawrence James: Raj - The Making of British India. Abacus, London 1997, ISBN 978-0-349-11012-7 .
  • Dennis Judd: The Lion and the Tiger. The Rise and Fall of the British Raj, 1600-1947. Oxford 2004.
  • Julian Spilsbury: The Indian Mutiny. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-297-84651-2 .
  • PJO Taylor: What really happened during the mutiny: A day-by-day account of the major events of 1857-1859 in India. Oxford Univ. Press, New Delhi [et al.] 1999.
  • Andrew Ward: Our bones are scattered - The cawnpore massacres and the indian mutiny of 1857. John Murray Publishers, London 2004, ISBN 0-7195-6410-7 .
  • AN Wilson: The Victorians. Arrow Books, London 2003, ISBN 0-09-945186-7 .