The Capture of Lucknow (
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
: लखनऊ का क़ब्ज़ा, ) was a battle of
Indian rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against Company rule in India, the rule of the East India Company, British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the The Crown, British ...
. The British recaptured the city of
Lucknow
Lucknow () is the List of state and union territory capitals in India, capital and the largest city of the List of state and union territory capitals in India, Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is the administrative headquarters of the epon ...
which they had abandoned in the previous winter after the relief of a besieged garrison in the Residency, and destroyed the organised resistance by the rebels in the Kingdom of
Awadh
Awadh (), known in British Raj historical texts as Avadh or Oudh, is a historical region in northern India and southern Nepal, now constituting the North-central portion of Uttar Pradesh. It is roughly synonymous with the ancient Kosala Regio ...
(or ''Oudh'', as it was referred to in most contemporary accounts).
Background
Oudh had been annexed by the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
only a year before a general mutiny broke out in the Company's
Bengal Army
The Bengal Army was the army of the Bengal Presidency, one of the three presidencies of British India within the British Empire.
The presidency armies, like the presidencies themselves, belonged to the East India Company (EIC) until the Gover ...
. The annexation had been accompanied by several instances of expropriation of royal and landholders' estates on sometimes flimsy grounds of non-payment of taxes, or difficulties in proving title to lands. Many
sepoy
''Sepoy'' () is a term related to ''sipahi'', denoting professional Indian infantrymen, traditionally armed with a musket, in the armies of the Mughal Empire and the Maratha.
In the 18th century, the French East India Company and its Euro ...
s (native soldiers) of the Company's Bengal Army had been recruited from high-caste and landowning communities in Oudh. There was increasing unrest in the Bengal Army, as privileges and customary allowances they had previously enjoyed were withdrawn. With uncertainty over their rights to property in Oudh, they felt that their status both as soldiers and citizens was under threat.
When the rebellion broke out in May 1857, it threatened British authority in several areas of India, but most particularly in Oudh, where the resentful dispossessed rulers and landowners joined with the mutinied regiments (Bengal Native troops, and Oudh Irregular units formerly belonging to the Kingdom of Oudh) in what became a national rebellion.
From 1 July to 26 November 1857, the British had withstood the
siege of the Residency to the north of the city. When the besieged garrison was finally relieved by the British commander-in-chief,
Sir Colin Campbell, the Residency was evacuated, as Campbell's communications were threatened. He returned to
Cawnpore (Kanpur) from where the relief expedition had been mounted, with all the civilians evacuated from the Residency and the sick and wounded. However, he left a division of 4,000 men under
Sir James Outram to hold the
Alambagh, a walled park two miles south of the city.
During the following winter campaigning season, Campbell re-established his communications with
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...
and with
Calcutta
Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...
. He also received fresh reinforcements from Britain and built up a substantial transport and supply column. After capturing
Fatehgarh on 1 January 1858, which allowed him to establish control over the countryside between Cawnpore and Delhi, Campbell suggested leaving Oudh alone during 1858, concentrating instead on recapturing the state of
Rohilkhand
Rohilkhand (today Bareilly, Moradabad, Badaun and Rampur; ) is a region in the northwestern part of Uttar Pradesh, India, that is centered on the Bareilly and Moradabad divisions. It is part of the upper Ganges Plain, and is named after the ...
, which was also in rebel hands. However, the Governor General,
Lord Canning, insisted that Oudh be recaptured, so as to discourage other potential rebels. Canning wrote
Oudh is not only the rallying point of the sepoys, the place to which they all look, and by the doings in which their own hopes and prospects rise and fall; but it represents a dynasty; there is a King of Oudh "seeking his own".
Campbell's advance
Campbell's army consisted of seventeen infantry battalions, twenty-eight cavalry squadrons and 134 guns and mortars,
[Hibbert, p.356] with a large and unwieldy baggage train and large numbers of Indian
camp followers. The army crossed the
Ganges River
The Ganges ( ; in India: Ganga, ; in Bangladesh: Padma, ). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international which goes through India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China." is a trans-boundary rive ...
in late February, and advanced to rendezvous with Outram at the Alambagh on 1 March. The army was then reorganised into three infantry
divisions under Outram,
Brigadier Walpole and
Brigadier Lugard, and a cavalry division under
James Hope Grant. A force of 9,000 Nepalis (not to be confused with the regular
Gurkha
The Gurkhas or Gorkhas (), with the endonym Gorkhali ( Nepali: गोर्खाली ), are soldiers native to the Indian subcontinent, chiefly residing within Nepal and some parts of North India.
The Gurkha units consist of Nepali and ...
units of the Bengal Army) was approaching Lucknow from the north, commanded by Brigadier Franks.
The defenders of Lucknow were said to number 100,000. This suspiciously large and round figure reflects the fact that the defenders lacked coordinated leadership, and were largely the personal retinues of landowners, or loosely organised bodies of fighters, whose motives, dedication and equipment varied widely. The British were not able to gain any reliable reports of their numbers. The rebels were nevertheless equipped with large numbers of cannon and had heavily fortified the Charbagh Canal, the city and the palaces and
mosque
A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard.
Originally, mosques were si ...
s adjoining the Residency to the north of the city. They had however not fortified the northern approaches to the city on the north bank of the
Gumti River, which had not seen fighting previously. (During the British relief moves in 1857, the ground had been flooded by
monsoon
A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in Atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annu ...
rains.)
Campbell began by repeating his moves of the relief of the Residency the previous year. He moved to the east of the city and Charbagh Canal to occupy a walled park, the
Dilkusha Park, although this time he suffered from rebel artillery fire until his own guns could be brought up.
On 5 March, Campbell's engineers constructed two
pontoon bridge
A pontoon bridge (or ponton bridge), also known as a floating bridge, is a bridge that uses float (nautical), floats or shallow-draft (hull), draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the support ...
s across the Gumti. Outram's division crossed to the north bank, and by 9 March, they were established north of the city. Under covering fire from his siege guns, his division captured the grandstand of the King of Oudh's racecourse (known as the Chakar Kothi). Meanwhile, Campbell's main body captured
La Martiniere (formerly a school for the children of British civilians) and forced their way across the Charbagh Canal with few casualties.
Capture of the main defences
By 11 March, Outram captured two bridges across the Gumti near the Residency (an iron bridge and a nearby stone bridge) although heavy rebel artillery fire forced him to abandon the stone bridge. Meanwhile, Campbell occupied an enclosed palace (the ''
Secundrabagh'') and a mosque (the ''Shah Najaf'') with little opposition; these two positions had been the scene of heavy fighting the previous November. In front of him was a block of palace buildings, collectively known as the ''Begum Kothi''. There was severe fighting for these on 11 March, in which 600 or 700 rebels died.
Over the next three days, Campbell's engineers and gunners blasted and tunnelled their way through the buildings between the Begum Kothi and the main rebel position in the
King of Oudh
The Nawab of Awadh or Nawab of Oudh was the title of the rulers of Kingdom of Awadh (anglicised as Oudh) in northern Company rule in India, India during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Nawabs of Awadh belonged to an Iranian peoples, Iranian dy ...
's palace, the
Kaisarbagh. Meanwhile, Outram's guns bombarded the Kaisarbagh from the north. The main assault on the Kaisarbagh took place on 14 March. Campbell's and Frank's forces attacked from the east, but Campbell surprisingly refused Outram permission to cross the Gumti and take the Kaisarbagh between two fires. As a result, although the Kaisarbagh was easily captured, its defenders were able to retreat without difficulty.
Final capture of Lucknow
Most of the rebels were abandoning Lucknow and scattering into the countryside. Campbell failed to stop most of them, by sending his cavalry after some rebels who had left earlier. Operations temporarily halted while the British reorganised and most regiments fell to looting the captured palaces.
On 16 March, Outram finally recrossed the Gumti, and his division advanced on and stormed the Residency. There were disjointed rebel counter-attacks on the Alambagh and the British positions north of the Gumti, which failed. A rebel force which was supposed to contain
Begum Hazrat Mahal, the wife of the dispossessed
Nawab of Oudh
The Nawab of Awadh or Nawab of Oudh was the title of the rulers of Kingdom of Awadh (anglicised as Oudh) in northern India during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Nawabs of Awadh belonged to an Iranian dynasty''Encyclopædia Iranica'', R. B. B ...
, and her son
Birjis Qadr whom the rebels had proclaimed Nawab, were driven from the
Musabagh, yet another walled palace four miles northwest of Lucknow.
The last rebels, 1,200 men under a noted leader,
Ahmadullah Shah, also known as the Maulvi of Faizabad, were driven from a fortified house in the centre of the city on 21 March. The city was declared cleared on this date.
Outcome
Campbell had advanced cautiously and had captured Lucknow with few casualties, but by failing to prevent the rebels escaping, he was forced to spend much of the following summer and monsoon season clearing the rebels from the countryside of Oudh. As a result, his army suffered heavy casualties from heatstroke and other diseases.
Outram had also failed to protest his orders not to advance on 14 March, which had allowed most rebels to escape. Outram was Civil Commissioner for Oudh in addition to his military command, and may have allowed his hopes for pacification and reconciliation to override his soldier's instincts.
Rebel casualties were hard to estimate. British troops usually executed any prisoners they captured, whether armed or not. One of the prominent British casualties was
William Hodson, who led an irregular cavalry unit and also served as an Intelligence officer, killed during the capture of the Begum Kothi on 11 March.
Notes
References
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capture Of Lucknow
Lucknow, Capture of
History of Lucknow
History of Uttar Pradesh
1858 in India
March 1858