The Indian Rebellion of 1857: The Revolt Spreads

Rumours that the cartridges of the new Enfield rifle were greased with cow and pig fat — which a soldier had to tear open with his teeth — had spread through the Bengal Army. At Meerut, 85 troopers who refused the cartridges were court-martialled on 9 May 1857 and sentenced to years of hard labour. The next evening, while many British officers were getting ready for church, their comrades broke out, freed them from jail and killed officers and civilians. That night the rebels rode for Delhi, forty miles away.

Location precision: The outbreak spread across the cantonment; the pin marks St John's, the garrison church of Meerut.

Visitor guidance: St John's Church, built in 1819–1822, is the oldest garrison church in northern India; its old cemetery lies beside it.

On 11 May the Meerut troopers reached Delhi and called up to the windows of the Red Fort for the 81-year-old Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, to lead them. He held his first formal court in years and was proclaimed emperor of Hindustan, giving the revolt a figurehead. British forces besieged the city from the ridge all summer, stormed it through the Kashmiri Gate on 14 September and fought street by street for a week. The emperor was captured at Humayun's tomb and exiled to Rangoon, where he died in 1862.

Visitor guidance: The Red Fort is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and open to visitors except Mondays; the Kashmiri Gate still stands about 2 km north.

At Cawnpore (Kanpur) General Wheeler's small garrison, with many women and children, held a weak entrenchment for three weeks of June. Nana Sahib, the rebels' leader here, offered safe passage by river, but on 27 June, as they boarded boats at the Satichaura Ghat, firing broke out and most of the men were killed. About 200 surviving women and children were held at a house called the Bibighar and killed there on 15 July as a British relief force approached. British troops then took savage revenge on prisoners and villages.

Visitor guidance: The ghat on the Ganges is now marked by a temple built in 1966; All Souls' Memorial Church, with Marochetti's carved angel for the Bibighar victims, is across the city.

In Awadh, annexed by the Company only a year before, the revolt was widespread. The chief commissioner, Sir Henry Lawrence, fortified the Residency compound and was among the first to die when the siege began on 1 July. British soldiers, loyal sepoys and civilians held out through months of mining and bombardment. An earlier relief force fought its way in but could not get them out; only in November did Sir Colin Campbell break through and evacuate the garrison, women and children first. The city was retaken in March 1858.

Visitor guidance: The Residency ruins, still scarred by cannon shot, are kept as they were in 1857, with a small museum and the cemetery where Lawrence is buried.

When the raja of Jhansi died in 1853, the Company refused to recognise his adopted son and annexed the state; his widow, Rani Lakshmibai, protested in vain. In 1857 she took over the government and defended it against neighbouring rajas. The British treated her as an enemy, and in March 1858 Sir Hugh Rose besieged the fort. The town was stormed at dawn on 3 April. The Rani escaped on horseback with about 300 followers, her adopted son tied to her waist, and rode through the night towards Kalpi.

Visitor guidance: Jhansi Fort, on a rocky hill in the city centre, is open to visitors.

Kalpi, a fortress town on the Yamuna, was the headquarters of Rao Sahib, nephew of Nana Sahib. The Rani reached it around midnight on 5 April, after a ride of some 160 kilometres from Jhansi. With Tatya Tope, the rebels' best-known general, the leaders prepared lines of defence around the fort and the ravines, and on 22 May attacked Rose's besieging force under a smoke screen. The attack failed, and that night the rebel leaders slipped away westward.

Location precision: The defences spread through the ravines around the town; the pin marks Kalpi.

In a bold stroke, the rebels marched on Gwalior, whose maharaja sided with the British. On 1 June 1858 his army went over to them and he fled, leaving them the great hill fort. Rose arrived ten days later. On 17 or 18 June — accounts differ — the Rani was killed fighting near Kotah-ki-Serai, and Gwalior fell on 19 June. Tatya Tope fought on as a guerrilla until he was captured and hanged in 1859. In November 1858 Queen Victoria's government took over from the Company.

Location precision: The Rani fell on open ground south-east of the city; the pin marks Gwalior Fort, the rebels' stronghold.

Visitor guidance: Gwalior Fort is open daily; a bronze statue of the Rani stands at her cremation site in the city.