The death throes of rebellion were played out in central India by a cast of colourful characters that included Lakshmi Bai, the beautiful Rani of Jhansi.* Born in the holy city of Benares in 1828, the daughter of a senior Maratha official,† the Rani had grown up with Nana Sahib and Bala Rao at the Peshwa’s exiled court in Bithur. She attended their Sanskrit and (occasional) English lessons and – more unusual still for a well-born Indian lady – became skilled in the martial arts of riding, shooting and fencing. The Rani, it seems, was never in any doubt that she was destined to rule. On one occasion, when the Nana and Bala refused to let her ride on their elephant, she shouted: ‘I’ll show you! For your one elephant, I will have ten!’ And so she did, by marrying the elderly Maharaja of Jhansi in 1842.
Unfortunately the marriage was childless, and in 1854, soon after her husband’s death, the British annexed Jhansi as a ‘lapsed’ state. On hearing the heart-breaking news that Lord Dalhousie would not allow her five-year-old adopted son, Damodar Rao, to succeed his father, she vowed: ‘ Mera Jhansi nahin denge! [“I will not give up my Jhansi!”]’ But all her efforts to persuade the Company to reverse its decision were in vain. She was forced to relinquish both the government and Jhansi Fort to a British superintendent, Captain Skene. In return she was granted a pension of 5,000 rupees a month (the equivalent of £6,000 a year) and allowed to remain in the modest, two-storey royal palace. Henceforth, by leading a simple life devoted to religious worship and charity, she gave the impression of being resigned to her lot. She was anything but, and there is good reason to suspect that she was in contact with other disgruntled princes prior to the rebellion of 1857. According to one authority, when Nana Sahib arrived in nearby Kalpi in early 1857, ‘he was met by the Ranee’s men, though the British officials at Jhansi knew nothing of his visit’.
A week after the mutinies at Meerut and Delhi, Captain Skene told his superiors that he did ‘not think there is any cause for alarm about this neighbourhood’. During the latter part of May, however, Skene’s deputy is said to have received ‘private information… that the Ranee and the troops were one and that some treachery was intended’. The mutiny of the Jhansi garrison – a wing of the 12th Native Infantry and a squadron of the 14th Irregular Cavalry – took place on 5/6 June. According to a sepoy of the 12th, the rising was sparked by the ‘receipt’ of a letter from mutineers at Delhi stating that the Jhansi troops would be regarded as ‘outcastes’ unless they joined the rebellion. The same sepoy insisted that, prior to the mutiny, the plotters ‘did not consult the Ranee’.
At the first sign of trouble, Skene ordered all Christians in Jhansi to take refuge in the town fort. There they remained, under siege, until 8 June when the rebel leaders offered to guarantee their lives in return for the fort. Skene eventually agreed: his tiny garrison was low on ammunition and food, and he considered the fall of the fort to be only a matter of time. But first he wrote to the Rani, asking her ‘to tell the sepoys to take their oath and to sign her name on the letter’. This was apparently done, with the Hindu rebels swearing to eat beef and the Muslims pork if they broke their word, and the Rani’s name appearing ‘on the top of the letter’. But as at Cawnpore, the rebels had no intention of honouring their promise. Once in possession of the fort, they led the fifty-six Christian inhabitants* to the Jokhan Bagh, a large orchard beyond the city walls, and hacked them to death with swords. The only survivors were Mrs Mutlow, a pregnant Eurasian, and her young son, who were mistaken for Indians and allowed to escape.
The Rani’s personal responsibility for the massacre is still hotly debated. Thornton, the deputy collector of nearby Samthar, was not in any doubt, stating in a letter of 21 August 1857 that the ‘Ranee’s people’ carried out the brutal killings. But neither F. W. Pinkney, in his official narrative of the Jhansi rebellion, nor Sir John Kaye were able to come to a definite conclusion. ‘I have been informed on good authority,’ wrote Kaye, ‘that none of the Rani’s servants were present on the occasion of the massacre.’
The Rani’s own denial was contained in a letter of 12 June to Major Erskine, Commissioner for the Sagar and Nerbudda Territories, at Jabalpur. In it she expressed her regret at not being able to prevent the massacre because she ‘had only 100 or 50 people engaged in guarding her house’ and was not therefore in a position to intervene. She too had been at the mercy of the mutineers and was ‘in continual dread of her own life and that of the inhabitants’. Indian historians have tended to take this document at face value, arguing with some justification that the Rani was not in control of events. They have also been quick to devalue any evidence that seems to implicate the Rani in a plot to overthrow the British. Yet it cannot be denied that an end to British rule is exactly what the Rani must have hoped for. Given her forceful nature, it would have been quixotic in the extreme for her not to have at least sounded out the possibility of a rising. In true Maratha fashion, however, she would have been unwilling to commit herself publicly until the success of any rebellion had been guaranteed. For this reason – and this alone – she was probably not responsible for the massacre.
On 14 June, three days after the mutineers had left Jhansi for Delhi, the Rani wrote a second letter to Erskine. She told him that she had enlisted troops to protect Jhansi and its major towns, but Company troops and funds were urgently required to prevent the spread of anarchy. She therefore awaited the government’s orders ‘which she will see carried out’. Erskine’s response was to entrust the district to her keeping. He told her that if she collected the revenue, raised police and did everything in her power to restore order, she would be ‘liberally’ dealt with when the British returned. Erskine had been persuaded by her protestations of innocence, telling his superiors that her version of events – that ‘she in no way lent assistance to the mutineers’ and was herself ‘plundered and forced to take charge of the district’ – was corroborated by other reports. Lord Canning was not convinced. On 23 July one of his senior officials informed Erskine that the Governor-General did not blame him for accepting the Rani’s ‘account of her own proceedings’ and putting the district in her care, ‘yet this circumstance will not protect her if her account should turn out to be false’. Canning’s suspicions had been raised by a separate political officer’s account that insisted ‘the Ranee did lend assistance to the mutineers and rebels’.
Unaware of these misgivings, the Rani was delighted to receive Erskine’s endorsement of her rule. Mutinies had left all the British districts in Bundelkhand in a state of rebellion and she was anxious to join the scramble for territory. But in doing so she clashed with the female rulers of Orchha and Datia, two neighbouring princely states that had stayed loyal to the British. By early September, with Jhansi besieged by Orchha troops, the Rani appealed to Major Erskine for assistance. He replied on 19 October that Jhansi was not a priority for the British and loyal Indian troops that were beginning to concentrate in the Jabalpur and Sagar areas. When the British did return to Jhansi, he added ominously, they would examine the conduct of all, high or low, and deal with them accordingly.
This letter was a major blow. It must have caused the Rani to suspect that she would be made to pay for the Jhansi massacre; there was also the possibility that she would be implicated – unfairly or otherwise – in the pre-mutiny plotting. Either way she would be forced to relinquish control of Jhansi if the British were victorious. She was not yet ready, however, to cast in her lot with the rebels. In late October, having helped to raise the siege of her capital, the Raja of Banpur* tried to persuade the Rani to join a confederation of rebel chiefs. She refused to commit herself and, in January 1858, Banpur left Jhansi for his own state to prepare to meet the advancing Central India Field Force under Major-General Sir Hugh Rose. The Rani, meanwhile, had made another attempt to sound out British opinion. On 1 January 1858, in a letter to Sir Robert Hamilton, the Governor-General’s Agent for Central India who had recently returned from leave, she accused the chiefs of Datia and Orchha of ‘taking advantage of the disturbed state of the country’ to attack her. As such ‘short-sighted individuals’ seemed ‘unmindful of the British supremacy’ and were doing their best to ruin her and the whole country, she begged for his support. Hamilton did not reply, possibly because the Rani’s collusion with the Raja of Banpur, and her conflict with the ‘loyalist’ Ranis of Datia and Orchha, had already marked her down as a rebel.
Still the Rani hesitated. A British intelligence report of 8 January 1858, compiled by a spy in Jhansi, noted that ‘Bukshish Ali, the Duroga of the Jhansee Jail asking the Ranee whether she would fight or not with the English forces, was informed by the Ranee that she would not’, and instead would ‘return all the districts under her to the British officers when they come to Jhansee’. On hearing this Bukshish Ali ‘did not take service with the Ranee’, preferring to join the Raja of Banpur. A second report of 26 January stated that she had resumed her fight with the Orchha troops in Mauranipur. She had also sent an envoy to Erskine and had let it be known that if she was treated ‘kindly’ she would ‘in no way oppose the British force’; if not she would ‘fight to the last’. In the meantime her warlike preparations – in the form of arms and ammunition manufacture – went on unabated.
As the Rani procrastinated, it was her particular misfortune that Sir Hugh Rose, the British general fast approaching Jhansi, was one of the most able of the conflict. Born in Berlin in 1801, the son of a Scottish diplomat, Rose had entered the British Army at the age of nineteen, though he did not see action until 1840 when he fought for the Turks against their Egyptian rebels in Syria. Despite being badly wounded in a hand-to-hand fight with Egyptian cavalry, Rose personally captured the enemy commander and was rewarded by the Sultan with a sword of honour and the Order of the Nishan Iftihar. Since then he had occupied a succession of diplomatic posts, including consul-general in Syria, first secretary (and later acting ambassador) at the embassy in Constantinople, and finally British liaison officer at French headquarters during the Crimean War.
But his relative lack of command experience and apparently frail constitution caused many observers in India to question his appointment. According to Dr Lowe, who accompanied his force, Rose was ‘laughed at and called a griff [ignorant newcomer] by a good many’. To another doctor he appeared ‘very effeminate, weak and I should think unable to rough it much’. For a time, Rose did nothing to dispel these doubts. Having left Sehore in central India with one of his two brigades on 16 January, he took eight days to cover the 120 or so miles of jungle and river that lay between it and the rebel hilltop fortress of Rathgarh. No sooner had he taken the town and laid siege to the fort than a large rebel force under the Raja of Banpur arrived to relieve it. This new threat was eventually repulsed, but few casualties were inflicted. That night, to add insult to injury, the garrison of the fort retired without hindrance. It was, noted one British officer, ‘a very badly managed affair’.
Sagar was relieved on 3 February, but a lack of supplies and carriage forced Rose to postpone his march north to Jhansi until early March. The alternative was to bypass Jhansi and continue his advance north-east to Kalpi on the River Jumna, where the remnants of the Gwalior Contingent, under Rao Sahib and Tatya Tope, had regrouped after the defeat at Cawnpore. Rose knew that Jhansi was bristling with rebels and that any assault on the walled town would incur heavy casualties; on the other hand, to leave such a sizeable rebel force astride his lines of communication was asking for trouble. Sir Robert Hamilton, Rose’s political adviser, was of the same opinion. Jhansi would have to be taken first and if its Rani chose to fight – then so be it.
Either way she was going to be the subject of an investigation. In his dispatch of 11 February the Governor-General had instructed Hamilton that if the Rani were captured ‘she must be tried, not by a Court Martial, but by a Commissioner appointed for that purpose’. Though the Rani was not aware of Hamilton’s instructions, she had been left in no doubt as to British intentions by the tone of Erskine’s letter in October. Even if she had been prepared to take her chance with British justice, she could not have carried the inhabitants of Jhansi with her, determined as they were to oppose the British. Far better to die fighting the accursed feringhis than to betray her people for the likely reward of a hangman’s noose. Her chief advisers were far from unanimous as to the best course of action. At a council meeting in early March, some advisers ‘proposed to make terms with the English’, while others (including the Rani’s father, Moropant Tambe) ‘were of the opinion that it was not proper to give up the state which was recovered after much difficulty without fighting’. The balance was tipped by the Rani’s troops, who threatened to leave her service and demand their arrears of pay if she did not agree to fight the British.
With the decision made, the Rani threw herself into preparing for the British assault with her customary vigour and determination. ‘She enlisted in her army as many men as volunteered to join and placed them in position,’ wrote a visitor to the town. ‘The bastions and turrets were now manned day and night… Hundreds of tons of rice and grain were roasted and stored for ready distribution to the poor. Large quantities of flour, ghee and sugar and other eatables were stocked for the troops and the citizens. The priests and holy men offered prayers and invoked victory for the Rani’s armies; special messengers were sent to Rao Sahib and Tatya Tope asking them for their help. In this way the brave woman, undaunted by the coming storm and with great calmness and forethought, went about organising the defence of the city.’
Meanwhile Rose’s army was drawing ever nearer. On 4 March, in another hard and some said poorly managed battle, he defeated the Raja of Shahgarh at Madanpur Pass and annexed his state. Banpur’s capital was also sacked, though the Raja had wisely withdrawn his troops to fight another day. Just a few miles from Jhansi, Rose received the news that Tatya Tope and the main rebel army had appeared before Chirkari, the capital of a small independent Bundela state that had hitherto remained loyal. Should he go to the raja’s relief or reduce Jhansi first? He decided upon the latter because there was a danger that Chirkari would fall before he could reach it, whereas an attack on Jhansi might cause Tatya to abandon Chirkari and come to its aid.
In the early morning of 21 March Rose’s troops appeared to the south of Jhansi. To their immediate front were the ruined buildings of the military cantonment: officers’ bungalows, the gaol, the Star Fort, even the sepoys’ huts. Nearer the granite walls of the town – 25 feet high, loopholed and bastioned – could be seen several large temples and small clusters of tamarind trees. Overlooking the town to the north, perched atop a high granite rock, was Jhansi Fort, the Rani’s standard fluttering from its highest tower. As his troops piled their arms on the right of the road, about a mile and a half from the fort, Rose and his staff rode off to reconnoitre the town and surrounding countryside, not returning until six that evening. They discovered that the Rani’s scorched earth policy had removed all possible cover and forage for miles around: trees had been cut down and walls dismantled. The rebel defences, on the other hand, were formidable. ‘They had built up the old bastions of the fort and mounted large guns upon them,’ noted Dr Thomas Lowe of the Bombay Engineers, ‘thrown up batteries in other commanding positions outside the fort, and mounted guns upon other works erected upon the town wall, so as to command every possible approach, and admirably to enfilade each other.’ Garrisoning the town and fort were about 10,000 Bundelas and vilayatis, and a further 1,500 sepoys. Rose, by contrast, had just 3,000 men at his disposal.
The siege began on 22 March as Rose’s cavalry surrounded the town and his engineers constructed artillery sites. But mindful of the cost of storming such a formidable position, Rose allowed Hamilton to open secret negotiations for a surrender. A letter addressed to the Rani was delivered to one of the town gates by a rider under a flag of truce. It invited her and six of her ministers to a secret rendezvous with Hamilton. Suspecting treachery, the Rani refused to attend, though she did agree to send her Prime Minister with an armed escort. There is no record of such a meeting. If it actually took place, its outcome was unsatisfactory because the siege continued.
On 23 March the British camp was cheered by the appearance of a five-year-old boy named Francis Double who had been brought in from Datia. A refugee from the mutiny at Orai in Bundelkhand on 11 June 1857, Double had been saved by the faithfulness of his Indian ayah. At first she took him to Jhansi, realizing her error only after she had arrived. But while there she and Double were given assistance by Dowlah Ram, the Sagar banker who was also protecting Mrs Mutlow and her two boys of ten years and four months. Eventually another sympathetic Indian, Ganishi Lal, arranged for Double and his ayah to be taken in safety to Datia. Double’s family were not so lucky. ‘I regret to say,’ wrote Captain Pinckney, the newly appointed Superintendent of Jhansi, to the Indian government on 26 March, ‘that the child’s parents, his grandmother, and his sister were all killed or died of exhaustion, it is not clear which, at Oosergaon near Kalpee.’ Pinkney added that Mrs Mutlow and her two children were still in Jhansi and that Sir Robert Hamilton was doing everything in his power to rescue them.
Meanwhile, on 25 March, the first of Rose’s batteries had opened fire on the ‘mamelon’, a raised bastion whose five guns protected the centre of the town’s southern wall. A day later more batteries began to cannonade the ramparts of the fort. But, inspired by their Rani, who made regular tours of inspection, the rebels put up a fierce resistance. Rose would later remark: ‘The manner in which the Rebels served their guns, repaired their defences, and reopened fire from batteries and Guns repeatedly shot up, was remarkable. From some batteries they returned shot for shot. Even women could be seen working in the batteries and carrying ammunition.’
With their heads wrapped in cold towels, the British gunners kept up a constant bombardment through even the hottest hours of the day. Gradually their fire began to tell. ‘Every ten minutes in the twenty-four hours shell and shot fell in various parts of this doomed place,’ recorded Dr Lowe, ‘and fresh fires burst out among the different buildings – each fire greeted with loud hurrahs by the men in our batteries.’ By 29 March the parapets of the fort bastions had been torn down and their guns rendered useless. At the same time a breach was made in the town wall near the fort, but it was promptly stockaded. Then on 31 March, as Rose was making his final preparations for an assault, word reached him that Tatya Tope had crossed the Betwa River to the south-east of Jhansi with 22,000 men and twenty-eight guns, among them ‘the redoubtable Gwalior Contingent, who had recently destroyed the British camp at Cawnpore under General Wyndham’.
Having taken up a position to the right of the main British position, Tatya’s men lit an immense bonfire on a nearby hill to signal their arrival. Jhansi’s defenders welcomed it with raucous cheering and salutes from all their guns. Rose was now in a quandary: if he confronted Tatya with the whole of his 3,000-strong force, the Jhansi garrison might take him in the rear; but if he detached too small a force, Tatya might defeat it. He eventually decided that the siege was his main priority and took just 1,200 troops (only five hundred of whom were British) to oppose Tatya.
The Battle of Betwa began in the morning of 1 April. Tatya Tope had divided his army into two lines, sending the first one against the small British position and keeping the second one in reserve. So much broader was the rebel front that it seemed only a matter of time before the British line was enveloped. But Rose countered with accurate fire from his howitzers and field guns. He also sent two bodies of cavalry with light guns to take the rebels in the flank. This tactic worked, and the rebel attack began to founder. Tatya ‘was not in the first line’, noted Rose, ‘where he ought to have been, to remedy mistakes’. Furthermore his reserve, three miles further back and protected by a belt of jungle, was too far away to prevent ‘a retreat from becoming a flight’. The end result was that Tatya, in typical Maratha fashion, decided to cut his losses by ordering his second line to withdraw. To facilitate this the jungle was set on fire, but the pursuing British cavalry and horse artillery simply galloped through it. Little quarter was given to the fugitives, who were cut down in their hundreds. In total the rebels lost 1,500 men and eighteen guns. British casualties were fewer than a hundred.
The defeat at the Betwa sounded the death knell for Jhansi. On 2 April 1858, with the breach in the town wall big enough to justify an assault, General Rose gave orders for it to take place early the following morning: the right column would scale the walls while the left stormed the breach. In the event the right assault was detected on its approach to the wall and subjected to a ferocious bombardment. ‘For a time,’ recalled Lowe, ‘it appeared like a sheet of fire, out of which burst a storm of bullets, round-shot, and rockets, destined for our annihilation. We had upwards of 200 yards to march through this fiendish fire, and we did it, and the sappers planted the ladders against the wall in three places for the stormers to ascend.’ Inspired by the example of three officers of the Bombay Engineers – two of whom were killed* – the attackers scrambled up the ladders and gained a foothold on the walls. Almost at the same time men from the left column appeared, driving the enemy before them.
Hearing that the British had forced an entry at the south wall, the Rani led a counter-attack by her 1,500 Afghan troops in person. Its ferocity took the British by surprise, forcing many to take cover before returning fire. But the British were being steadily reinforced and ultimate victory was only a matter of time. Eventually a 75-year-old Bundela chief advised the Rani to save herself before it was too late. ‘Maharaj,’ he said, ‘all the city gates are thrown open and hundreds of whites are inside. They are shooting from behind the houses. To be killed by their bullets is as useless as dying an ignoble death… Take my advice and return to the fort and do whatever God wills you to do.’ She saw the sense of this advice and withdrew into the fort with a number of her men.
Before long the British had reached the Rani’s palace. ‘In the first moments of excitement,’ recalled Lowe, ‘our troops smashed and destroyed everything before them. Doors inlaid with plate-glass, mirrors, chandeliers, chairs and other native furniture… Every room was ransacked and covered with heaps of things broken and torn to atoms.’
Fifty of the Rani’s bodyguard were killed in the palace stables, though not before they had cut down some dozen Europeans. No mercy was expected or given. Lowe wrote: ‘Every house, almost, had its inmates of rebels, who fought to the death like tigers, so the bayoneting went on till after sunset.’ By nightfall most of the town was in British hands, though the north-east quarter and the fort were still held by the Rani. Possibly the only inhabitant of Jhansi who was actually pleased to see the British was Mrs Mutlow, the sole adult survivor of the June massacre, who had spent the previous ten months in daily fear of discovery. But for the courageous intervention of Dowlah Ram, she and her two boys would surely have perished. Dowlah’s reward from Sir Robert Hamilton: ‘a miserly 400 rupees’.
Rose’s thoughts now turned to the Rani. At dinner that evening he asked his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Lyster, if he could suggest any means of capturing her without the huge loss of life that storming the fort would inevitably entail. When Lyster failed to come up with anything feasible, Rose himself made a proposal: ‘Suppose I withdrew a picket from the cordon of troops surrounding the town and fort, she could then escape in the night, as, if I carried out my plan in the day, she will hear of it at once, and will escape with her women and followers in the night.’ The plan was agreed on and the following morning one of the pickets was duly removed, leaving a 400-yard gap in the perimeter. As Rose waited for the Rani to take the bait, the mopping-up operation continued. ‘No quarter was awarded them as a word of warning to others,’ wrote Lowe. ‘I exaggerate not when I say I saw the streets stained with blood… It was an awful sight to see [women and children] follow out of their houses some rebel husband, brother, or son, who was at once shot, and then to see them huddled together, pale and trembling, beneath the walls… But the soldier was as compassionate to these poor wretches as he was unrelenting to all male inhabitants found in arms. Many I saw dividing the contents of their haversacs among these half-starved women and children, and every woman was treated with kindness and respect.’ Lowe does not tell the whole story – for many non-combatants were deliberately killed. A Brahman by the name of Vishnu Godse saw temples filled with the dead bodies of priests and worshippers. He also claimed that women were killed, particularly in the weavers’ locality, where the death toll was at its highest.
Up in the fort, the Rani was so appalled by the suffering of her people that she threatened to commit a form of delayed suttee by blowing herself up with gunpowder. She was dissuaded by the old Bundela chief, who exhorted her to escape to Kalpi from whence she could continue the fight with Rao Sahib. To help her make up her mind, the Rani visited the small temple she had had built in one of the fort’s outer courtyards. After a moment of quiet contemplation, the Rani came to a decision: she would fight on. That night, having learnt of the gap in the perimeter, she made her bid for freedom. Wearing a breastplate, a sword and two revolvers, she rode out of the Bhanderi Gate of the fort, accompanied by her ailing father (who had been wounded in the leg during the siege), some armed retainers and an elephant with her baggage. Tied to her waist with a silken shawl was her adopted son, Damodar Rao, now eight years old.
According to Lieutenant Lyster, the Rani and her followers made straight for the gap between the pickets, where they were detected and fired upon. But it was a dark night and no one was hit. When Rose heard about the escape in the morning, he immediately sent a squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons in pursuit. The cavalry finally caught up with the Rani and her escort at a small village, about 20 miles from Jhansi, where they had stopped for food. Lieutenant Dowker ‘saw her on her famous chestnut horse, her little brother [sic] in her lap’, and was in the act of grabbing her petticoat ‘when he was knocked off his horse by a matchlock ball’. As Dowker’s men went to his assistance, the Rani and her bodyguard made their escape. Knocked up by their swift pursuit, the British horses were in no condition to follow; but the dragoons did manage to capture the Rani’s breakfast, her elephant and her baggage, including a ‘batterie de cuisine de voyage’ and a ‘beautiful parasol’. Rose’s mistake had been to assume that the Rani and her female attendants were not used to riding on horseback and could therefore be captured by his cavalry at their leisure.
After this narrow escape, the Rani pushed on with her remaining attendants and reached Rao Sahib’s headquarters at Kalpi before midnight on 5 April. She had covered more than a hundred miles of difficult country in just under twenty-four hours – an incredible feat of horsemanship and endurance. Her father, hampered by his leg wound, was not so lucky. He and Lalu Bukshi, the Rani’s paymaster, became separated from the main group, lost their way and were eventually captured by a pro-British zemindar 12 miles from Jhansi. Returned to Rose’s camp in a ‘miserable condition’, they were hanged from a tree in the Jokhan Bagh on 19 June.
Four days earlier the British had held a Christian burial service over the pit in which the massacre victims had been buried. The anger felt by individual soldiers towards this brutal murder of women and children had fuelled their vengeful actions during the taking of Jhansi. Lowe estimated that the British ‘burnt and buried upwards of a thousand bodies’ in Jhansi, and that the total number of rebels killed since the siege began was nearly 3,000. The British troops had good reason to suspect the Rani of complicity in the massacre. ‘Some relic or other of the unfortunate officers who perished’, wrote Lowe, was found in ‘most of the rooms’ of the Rani’s palace. Among them were ‘copies of Longfellow and Byron, and other books, and clothing and plate’, which ‘showed that the Ranee had not only participated in their murder, but had positively shared in the plunder of their property’.
Of course the presence of European property in the Rani’s palace is only evidence that she was willing to profit from the massacre, rather than absolute proof of her complicity. On the other hand, it would have been reckless – not to say immoral – for a wholly innocent party to have accepted such tainted booty. Rose, for one, was not in any doubt as to the Rani’s involvement. ‘Everything proves the Ranee’s guilt as to the massacre,’ he informed the Governor of Bombay on 10 April. ‘She gave the sepoys & irregular cavalry money not to leave Jhansee, but to attack the English. She lent two cannon with which the mutineers attacked them. Her own people and the Irregulars began the massacre. I am afraid she is very bad, & what makes her inexcusable is that she is very ugly.’ How Rose came to impugn the Rani’s looks is a mystery, given that he had never met her.* He was wrong in this assessment, and may have been in his belief that she was responsible for the massacre. How genuine her pro-British sentiments were during the early stages of the rebellion, however, is another matter.
In the early hours of 6 April 1858, shortly after her arrival in the rebel camp at Kalpi, the Rani of Jhansi strode into the tent of Rao Sahib, the 24-year-old son of Nana Sahib’s elder brother, Baba Bhutt. As the nephew and representative of the Peshwa – who was still fighting the British in Oudh – Rao Sahib was the titular head of the rebellion in Bundelkhand. He began by expressing regret that his field commander, Tatya Tope, had failed to relieve Jhansi – but the Rani would not be mollified. Unsheathing the sword that had been presented to her ancestor by a previous Peshwa, she placed it in front of the Rao with the words: ‘Now that we cannot have your support I beg to return it to you!’ The Rao’s reply was suitably disarming: ‘Our ideal of independence can only be attained by leaders who are brave soldiers of genius like yourself. I beg you to take back this sword and give me all your support in my struggle.’
Keen to continue the fight, the Rani picked up her sword and reaffirmed her allegiance. ‘Nothing will give me greater happiness than to die on the battlefield, serving the Maratha standard,’ she told him. ‘Give me men and I will go and fight the enemy!’ Whereupon Rao Sahib made her one of his generals under the overall command of the beaten but unbowed Tatya Tope, whom she had known since childhood. The Rani’s greatest contribution to the rebel cause at this stage was to attempt to instil some courage and discipline into the Peshwa’s rag-tag army. However, her suggestions for putting the men through daily drill and exercise were only partially put into practice by Tatya, who probably resented her interference.
Meanwhile the British continued to gain ground in Bundelkhand with General Whitlock’s defeat of the rebel Nawab of Banda at Bhowragarh on 19 April. Banda arrived in Kalpi with his remaining 4,000 troops a couple of days later. But the chief threat was still posed by Rose’s army, which left Jhansi on the 26th. To block its advance, Tatya Tope and the Rani took an advance guard of 10,000 soldiers and twelve guns to the town of Kunch, 23 miles south-west of Kalpi. According to one source, the Rani urged Tatya to protect his flanks. It was just such neglect that had cost him the Betwa battle. Yet Tatya would not listen: he put his faith in the strong western defences of the town and was convinced that the woods, gardens and temples that skirted the city would prevent any flanking manoeuvre. He was wrong. Informed by scouts that the north-western side of the town was unfortified, Rose ordered a long night march in that direction. The following morning – 7 May – he attacked the rebels from the rear and was soon in possession of the fort. With their position turned, the rebels began to retreat across the immense plain that led to Kalpi, pursued by British cavalry and horse artillery, until the effects of the fierce sun caused the latter to halt. Rose was particularly impressed with the sepoy skirmishers who covered the retreat by ‘facing about, kneeling and firing with great coolness’. The rebels still lost 600 men and 15 guns.
Once safely back at Kalpi, the rebel recriminations began. The infantry accused the cavalry of abandoning them – with some justice – and the Rani’s Afghans came in for particular criticism. But the rebel cause was not yet hopeless. Situated on a high rocky plateau on the banks of the Jumna River, surrounded by ravines, Kalpi was a natural stronghold that had been made even more formidable by the construction of elaborate defence works on the roads that led to Kunch. Moreover its fort had an underground magazine full of stores and ammunition, as well as four foundries for making cannon, and it was defended by a rebel army that Rose described later as ‘unusually strong’. He added:
They were under three leaders of considerable influence, Rao Sahib, a nephew of Nana Sahib, the Nawab of Banda, and the Ranee of Jhansie. The high descent of the Ranee, her unbounded liberality to her Troops and retainers, and her fortitude which no reverses could shake, rendered her an influential and dangerous adversary. The Rebel Army was composed of the Gwalior Contingent, the finest men, best drilled and organized Native Troops of all arms in India; other mutinous Bengal Infantry Regiments… All the Sepoy Regiments kept up, carefully, their English equipment and organization; the words of command for drill, grand rounds etc., were given, as we could hear, in English.
Faced with such a formidable task, Rose decided to sidestep the main rebel defences by linking up with Brigadier Maxwell at Gulauli, six miles to the east of Kalpi, on 19 May. His plan was for Maxwell to bombard the fort from the northern bank while he fought his way through the ravines that protected the east of the city. But the rebels struck first. Having sworn on the sacred waters of the Jumna that they would either drive the British into the river or die, they attacked Rose’s camp at Gulauli on the morning of 22 May.
At an earlier council of war the Rani had warned Rao Sahib not to send his men through ground that would make it difficult for them to reply to the British guns. Yet that is exactly what happened on the 22nd and before long the attack on the centre and left of Rose’s line was being driven back by accurate British artillery fire. ‘We had been upwards of two hours pounding at the enemy,’ recalled Dr Lowe, ‘then the general saw the moment for advance, and with the horse artillery, field batteries and cavalry dashed off towards them; they then turned round quickly and fled, vast masses of their infantry making for the villages and the ravines towards Calpee, others flying south.’
At this point Rao Sahib lost his nerve and was about to leave the field when the Rani convinced him that all was not yet lost. As if to emphasize the point, she mounted her horse and galloped off with a force of cavalry to reinforce the infantry attack on the right of the British line. Led by the Rani, the troops fought with such desperation and fury that the defenders began to give ground. She and her men were within 20 feet of a light field battery when Rose himself appeared on the scene with reinforcements. ‘As we mounted the crest of the hill,’ he recalled, ‘the sepoys were sending out skirmishers towards our two guns, and the Brigadier so hard pressed that he was ordering the Artillerymen to draw their swords and defend the guns. The sepoys were in great numbers and running forward & at the same time keeping up a very hot fire. Three of my staff… had their horses killed or wounded at the same time. I ordered the Rifles to charge the sepoys with the bayonet, which they did most gallantly, driving them back into the ravines, and bayoneting numbers of them.’ Thus did the two opposing commanders come within a few yards of each other during the battle, though Rose was not aware of – or had never acknowledged – the Rani’s presence. Nevertheless his arrival turned the course of the battle and the rebel retreat soon became general.
That night, convinced that Kalpi could not be saved, the Rani and Rao Sahib left for Gopalpur, where they met up with Tatya Tope, the Nawab of Banda and the remnants of their army on 26 May. At a council of war on the 27th it was decided to march west towards Gwalior in the hope of persuading the pro-British Maharaja Scindia, the most powerful Maratha ruler in central India, to join the rebellion. Exactly how that decision was reached is not known. Colonel Malleson was convinced that the Rani was responsible. Of the four rebel leaders, wrote Malleson, only she ‘possessed the genius, the daring, the despair necessary for the conception of great deeds’. But most circumstantial evidence points to Tatya Tope as the architect of the scheme. He had travelled in secret to Gwalior before the fall of Kalpi to assess the mood of Scindia’s armed forces. There he probably received assurances from senior officers that Gwalior troops would not oppose a rebel invasion.
On 28 May the 4,500-strong rebel army crossed the Sind River and entered the maharaja’s territory. Unaware of the level of anti-British feeling within his army, Scindia instructed the rebels to leave ‘on pain of immediate attack by his troops’. When Rao Sahib refused, adding that his men required ‘supplies, clothing and a little money’, Scindia appealed to the British for assistance. He also prepared his 8,000 troops for action. The collision occurred on 31 May at Baragaon, eight miles from Gwalior, when Scindia’s artillery opened fire on the advancing rebels. This alarmed the rebel troops, who were not expecting any opposition, and some began to withdraw. They were rallied by the Rani, who led two hundred of her cavalrymen in a skirmish with the Gwalior cavalry. But it was a half-hearted affair, and the Gwalior troops soon revealed their true colours by repeating the rebels’ loud cry of ‘Deen!’ As the two sides began to fraternize, Scindia fled to Agra with the loyal remnants of his Maratha bodyguard. His Prime Minister and his wives joined him on the road.
That same day the rebels entered Gwalior in triumph. Rao Sahib occupied Scindia’s palace and on 3 June, at a grand durbar, was formally recognized as the Peshwa’s viceroy. Hundreds of guests gathered under a huge canopy decorated with Maratha flags, festoons and green mango branches. The Rao entered wearing his family’s royal robes, pearl earrings and necklaces of diamonds and pearls. As he ascended the makeshift throne, Brahman priests chanted Vedic prayers and a royal salute of one hundred and one guns was fired from the fort to herald the restoration of the Maratha Confederacy. The Rani refused to attend the durbar. In her opinion the Rao was indulging in hollow ceremony when he should have been preparing his army for battle. She confronted him two days later, pointing out that the capture of Scindia’s army and treasury was a ‘golden opportunity’ for him ‘to prepare for the coming struggle by putting in order the defences of the city’, paying the soldiers and ‘putting them under capable commanders who will maintain discipline’. Suitably chastened, the Rao agreed to attend to these matters: pay arrears were cleared, new levies were raised, and troops were posted on all the main routes into Gwalior.
Meanwhile Sir Hugh Rose, having resigned his command after the capture of Kalpi on the grounds of ill health,* had been induced by the news from Gwalior to undertake one last campaign. He left Kalpi on 6 June and ‘after a rapid march of unparalleled hardships’ came within sight of the Morar cantonment, four miles east of Gwalior city, on the 16th. That same day, as his troops were driving the rebel covering force out of the cantonment and into the heights beyond, two other columns under Brigadier Smith and Major Orr joined forces to the south of the city.
The rebel battle plans, according to The Times war correspondent, ‘were effected mainly under the direction and personal supervision of the Ranee, who, clad in military attire and attended by a picked and well-armed escort, was constantly in the saddle, ubiquitous and untiring’. Her main position was a line of entrenchments along the base of the hills that separated the Kotah-ki-Serai plain from that of Gwalior, about four miles south-east of the city. During the morning of 17 June these field works were approached by a cavalry troop from Brigadier Smith’s column. It went rather too close, and Smith, who had accompanied it, had a horse shot from under him. So he ordered his infantry to advance and, after a hard fight, they managed to drive the rebels out of their trenches and into the hills beyond. But, owing to a false report that rebel cavalry were attacking their baggage party about a mile and a half to the rear, Smith ordered his men to retreat. By the time the error was discovered, the Rani’s men had reoccupied their old positions. ‘So there was a second advance of Infantry and guns which sent them back again,’ wrote Major Robert Poore of the 8th Hussars. As the 95th Foot struggled up the heights, a squadron of Poore’s regiment burst through the narrow pass that led to the Gwalior plain. ‘When we got clear,’ he recalled, ‘we front formed and went at them, the Brigadier leading for a short way. The enemy cut when we came up and we pursued for a mile or perhaps half, and then turned, and came back and got in among a lot of very deep nullahs during which time it was precious lucky the enemy did not come down on us. We got back with few casualties.’
The Rani was on horseback, watching the bombardment from a nearby battery, when the British cavalry made their surprise appearance, causing her escort to scatter in all directions. According to one eyewitness account, she boldy ‘attacked one of the 8th in their advance, was unhorsed and wounded’, possibly by a sabre cut. A short while later, as the British retired with the captured guns, she recognized her former assailant as she sat bleeding by the roadside and fired at him with her pistol. Unfortunately she missed and he ‘dispatched the young lady with his carbine’. But because she was ‘dressed as a sowar’, the trooper never realized ‘that he had cut off one of the mainstays of the mutiny, that there was a reward of a lac [lakh] on his victim’s head, or that at that moment she was wearing jewels worth a crore of rupees’.
At the time of her death, so General Rose told the Duke of Cambridge, the Rani was ‘dressed in a red jacket, red trousers and white puggary’. She was also wearing ‘the celebrated pearl necklace of Scindia, which she had taken from his Treasury, and heavy gold anklets’. Rose added: ‘As she lay mortally wounded in her Tent she ordered these ornaments to be distributed amongst her Troops; it is said that Tantia Topee intercepted the necklace. The whole rebel army mourned for her; her body was burned with great ceremony under a tamarind tree under the Rock of Gwalior, where I saw her bones and ashes.’
The British reaction to news of the Rani’s death ranged from quiet satisfaction to fierce exultation. ‘The Ranee of Jhansee is killed,’ stated the brief telegram sent by Sir Robert Hamilton to the Governor-General on 18 June. Lieutenant-Colonel Bingham of the 64th Foot, who had taken part in Havelock’s epic relief of Lucknow the previous year, was almost disappointed. ‘The Ranee was the beast who ordered all our people at Jhansie to be cruelly murdered after they placed their faith in her,’ he noted in his diary on 20 June. ‘She has had too easy a death.’ Other Britons, while pleased to hear of the Rani’s demise, could not hide their regard for a worthy opponent. ‘The Ranee was remarkable for her beauty, cleverness and perseverance,’ wrote General Rose, ‘her generosity to her subordinates was unbounded. These qualities, combined with her rank, rendered her the most dangerous of all the rebel leaders.’ Dr Lowe, normally one of the Rani’s fiercest critics, noted that she was the rebels’ ‘most determined, spirited, and influential head’. She and her ‘sister’,* who died with her on the 17th, had ‘fought like bricks’, recorded Major Poore. ‘But now that she is dead the whole thing seems disorganised.’
There were even some who were prepared to acquit the Rani of her alleged crimes. ‘The cruelties attributed to her at Jhansie have since been officially contradicted,’ wrote John Latimer of the Central India Field Force on 9 July.
Our unhappy countrymen and countrywomen may have been, it is true, killed with her sanction, but it is generally believed that she could not have saved them had she wished it… She seems to have animated and encouraged her men in every stand they made, and it was mainly through her exhortations and promises of reward that the rebels made their determined assault on our little army before Calpee on the 22nd of May. Seeing her army broken and defeated, with rage in her heart and tears in her eyes, she mounted her horse and made her course towards Gwalior. Here the last stand was made, she disdained further flight, and died, with a heroism worthy of a better cause. Her courage shines pre-eminent and can only be equalled but not eclipsed by that of Joan of Arc.
Latimer’s assessment of the Rani is uncannily accurate. She had every reason to resent the British – both for the confiscation of her realm and their insensitive treatment of her thereafter – and may well have been involved in the pre-mutiny plotting at Jhansi. Her responsibility for the actual massacre, however, is unproven, and Latimer is surely right to point out that she could not have prevented it even if she had wanted to. The most likely scenario is that events at Jhansi in June 1857 were beyond her control, though their end result – the expulsion of the British – was exactly what she had been praying for (and possibly working towards) for years. She may even have believed at that time, as many others did, that the British Raj in India was at an end. This might explain why some of the possessions of the murdered British officers were found in her palace. She was, nevertheless, far too canny a diplomatist not to cover herself by making contact with the British and professing her allegiance. Only when it became clear that the British intended to hold her personally responsible for the atrocities at Jhansi did she consider casting in her lot with the rebels. And only as the British approached the very walls of her town did she actually do so.
The Rani of Jhansi’s death, wrote Sir Robert Hamilton, ‘quite upset the chiefs, and caused the greatest consternation’ among the rebel troops. Certainly it weakened the spirit of resistance at Gwalior and on 19 June, ‘after a general action which lasted for 5 and a half hours’, Rose entered the city in triumph and restored the maharaja to his throne. Rao Sahib and Tatya Tope, meanwhile, had fled across the Chambal River into Rajputana with 5,000 troops and ten guns. For almost seven months, Tatya Tope remained at large in central India, living off the land and using guerrilla tactics to evade the clutches of countless British columns sent to destroy him. When he did stand and fight, as he did at Rajgarh in September 1858, he was badly defeated and lost all his guns. But he managed to escape with a hard core of adherents and, the following month, met up again with Rao Sahib. Together they decided to march south to Nagpur, the recently annexed Maratha state, in the hope that its people would rise up and join them. At the end of October, having lost half their men en route, they crossed the Nerbudda into Nagpur territory. ‘Thus in the dying agony of the mutiny,’ wrote a contemporary historian, ‘was accomplished a movement which, carried out twelve months earlier, would have produced an effect fatal for the time to British supremacy; a movement which would have roused the whole of the western Presidency, have kindled revolt in the dominions of the Nizam, and have, in its working, penetrated to southern India.’
But it was too late: the fate of British rule was no longer in the balance and, unlike their counterparts further north, the Nagpur peasantry were not sympathetic to the rebel cause. Harried by British columns, the pair recrossed the Nerbudda and, in January 1859, linked up with Prince Firoz Shah* at Indragarh in Rajputana. But British troops were closing in and, after yet another defeat at Sikar on the 21st, the three rebel leaders parted company. Accompanied by just two cooks and a groom, Tatya Tope made his way to the jungles of Narwar, where he was betrayed to the authorities by Raja Man Singh, a Gwalior rebel, who received an amnesty in return. Seized on 7 April, Tatya was taken to Sipri and charged with rebellion. His defence has modern echoes. ‘I only obeyed, in all things that I did, my master’s orders, i.e., the Nana’s orders, up to the capture of Kalpi, and, afterwards, those of Rao Sahib. I have nothing to state, except that I have had nothing to do with the murder of any European men, women, or children.’ The court did not believe him and he was hanged on 18 April.
Rao Sahib evaded capture until 1862 when he too was betrayed. At his trial the Indian jury was unconvinced by the evidence and would find him guilty only of ‘modified rebellion’. But the judge overruled them and sentenced him to death. He was hanged at Satichaura Ghat on 20 August 1862. Even Damadar Rao, the Rani of Jhansi’s ten-year-old adopted son, could not escape British retribution. On account of his mother’s rebellion, the private possessions of the Jhansi Raj were confiscated and he was deprived of the 600,000 rupees that the government of India had held in trust for him since the death of his father. A monthly allowance of 150 rupees, later raised to 200, was considered more than adequate.
Firoz Shah escaped from India and died in poverty in Mecca in 1877.
What of the other leading rebels? Kunwar Singh, after his defeat near Arrah in August 1857, had led the Dinapore mutineers west to Kalpi, where, for a time, he joined forces with Tatya Tope and the Gwalior Contingent. But he eventually returned east and, in March 1858, took Azimgarh and repulsed two British attempts to recapture it. Only when a strong British force was sent from Allahabad, under Lord Mark Kerr, did Kunwar Singh withdraw to his homeland. On 21 April, while crossing the Ganges at Sheopur Ghat, he was badly wounded by British artillery fire. He lived long enough to oversee one last victory: over Captain Le Grand’s pursuing column at Jagdispur on the 23rd. Three days later he died of his wounds.
He was succeeded by his brother, Amar Singh, who kept up a dogged resistance in the hills around Shahabad until November.
The Maulvi of Faizabad, having escaped from Lucknow, was defeated by Hope Grant at Bari in April. Undeterred he led the remnants of his force to Rohilkhand, where, in concert with the rebel Raja of Mithauli, he took advantage of Campbell’s advance on Bareilly to capture the town of Shahjahanpur on 3 May. Despite being reinforced by troops under Firoz Shah and Begum Hazrat Mahal, he could not reduce the British entrenchment and was eventually driven back into Oudh by Campbell. In early June he re-entered Rohilkhand with the intention of persuading a border chieftain, the Raja of Powayun,* to join the rebel cause. He approached the raja’s fort on an elephant and asked for the gates to be opened. When the raja refused, he told his mahout to break them down. Before he could do so, the Maulvi was shot and killed by the raja’s brother. The following day his severed head was delivered to the British magistrate at Shahjahanpur in exchange for a reward of 50,000 rupees.
An opportunity to heal some of the wounds of the previous twelve months was provided in early August by the passing of an Act that transferred the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown. The Court of Directors and the Board of Control were abolished and replaced by a Secretary of State and an advisory council of fifteen members: eight to be nominated by the Crown and seven by the outgoing Court. The Governor-General was henceforth known as the Viceroy, the Queen’s representative in India, though he would continue to be assisted by a Supreme Council. On 1 September the Court of Directors held its last meeting in Leadenhall Street. The East India Company retained a shadowy legal existence until 1874 as it wound up its financial commitments.
The formal announcement of the transfer of authority from Company to Crown was made on 1 November 1858, when Queen Victoria’s ‘Proclamation’ was read out across India. It confirmed all offices held under the East India Company and guaranteed all existing treaties with the princes of India. It also denied any further territorial ambitions and promised religious freedom. ‘We declare it our Royal will and pleasure that none be in anywise favoured, none molested or disquieted, by reason of their religious faith or observances, but that all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law… And it is our further will that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified, by their education, ability, and integrity, duly to discharge.’ But, most importantly, it offered an unconditional pardon to all rebels who were prepared to return peacefully to their homes. The only exceptions were those who had ‘taken part in the murder of British subjects’ and those who had knowingly harboured murderers or ‘acted as leaders or instigators in revolt’. Those in the final category were guaranteed their lives but not immunity from lesser punishment.
The amnesty, which lasted until 1 January 1859, was designed to separate the more notorious rebels from their foot-soldiers. Aware of this, Begum Hazrat Mahal issued a counter-proclamation in the name of her son, urging the rebels not to place their faith in the offer of pardon, ‘for it is the unvarying custom of the English never to forgive a fault be it great or small’. The document then proceeded to attack the various promises made by the Queen’s Proclamation by pointing out that treaties in the past had been ignored, territory stolen and religion interfered with. ‘The rebellion began with religion,’ it stated, ‘and for it millions of men have been killed. Let not our subjects be deceived.’
Many minor rebels were tired of fighting and gladly accepted the amnesty. Those who did not, the hard core, were targeted by Sir Colin Campbell, now Lord Clyde,* in his final Oudh campaign, which began in early November. His plan was to herd the rebels towards the Nepal border, where they could either be destroyed in toto or, if they crossed over, left to die of starvation and disease in the fever-infested forests of the Nepal Terai. By the turn of the year most of the leading rebels had entered the Terai. They included Hazrat Mahal, her son Birjis Qadr, Mammu Khan, Khan Bahadur Khan, Nana Sahib, Bala Rao and Jwala Prasad. Hazrat Mahal, in particular, was hopeful that Jung Bahadur would give the rebels refuge. But on 15 January 1859 he formally notified her that she could expect no help from the state of Nepal. He also gave permission for British troops to enter Nepal in pursuit.
In the event, pursuit was unnecessary because the privations of the Terai quickly reduced the rebels to a beleaguered rabble. Some died of disease; others were captured by Jung Bahadur’s troops and handed over to the British. Among the latter were Amar Singh, Khan Bahadur Khan and Jwala Prasad, all seized in December 1859. Amar Singh died in Gorakhpur Gaol, awaiting trial; Khan Bahadur Khan and Jwala Prasad were both hanged in the spring of 1860 at Bareilly and Cawnpore respectively. Mammu Khan, having been dismissed by the Begum for want of ‘courage and devotion’, gave himself up to the British and was also hanged in 1860. The Begum refused to surrender and Jung Bahadur eventually gave her permission to remain in Nepal with her son. She died there in 1879.
Nana Sahib’s fate is unclear. He was still alive in April 1859 when he and his brother Bala sent letters to the nearest British camp, petitioning the Indian government for clemency. Bala blamed his brother for their predicament and insisted he was not guilty of murder. The Nana also protested his innocence. ‘You have forgiven the crimes of all Hindoostan,’ he wrote, ‘and murderers have been pardoned… It is surprising that I who have joined the rebels from helplessness have not been forgiven. I have committed no murder.’ The people responsible for the massacres at Cawnpore, he added, were sepoys and hooligans. He ended on a note of defiance: ‘You have drawn all to your side, and I alone am left but you will see what the soldiers I have been preserving for two years can do. We will meet, and then I will shed your blood and it will flow knee deep. I am prepared to die.’
The reply, from a major named Richardson, referred him to the Queen’s amnesty that had been extended beyond 1 January 1859. ‘Those terms are open to you and all those who may wish to surrender,’ wrote Richardson. ‘In writing as you do that you have not murdered women and children, it becomes you to come in without fear.’ Nana Sahib’s response was that he would surrender only if the Queen herself wrote to him. When Canning learnt about this exchange, he censured Richardson for even suggesting that Nana Sahib might escape the hangman’s noose. Public opinion would not stand for it. ‘Whether he surrenders or be taken,’ Richardson was told, ‘he will be tried for the crimes of which he stands charged.’ Nothing more was heard from the ‘arch fiend’ of the rebellion.
Later that year Bala is said to have died from fever. Nana Sahib’s death was reported soon after. ‘There can be no doubt that Nana is dead,’ insisted a mutineer who gave himself up in October 1859. ‘His death was communicated to me by Sirdar Allie, a Naick of the 68th Regiment N.I. who not only saw the dead body, but was present when it was burned.’ Confirmation was provided by Jwala Prasad, the Nana’s brigadier, as he awaited his execution in Cawnpore Gaol. ‘He knew his sentence did not depend on me,’ wrote the Magistrate of Cawnpore, ‘so he was not afraid, and answered readily when I spoke to him. He told me, if I remember his words rightly, that he was not present when the Nana died, but that he attended when the body was burned. He spoke apparently without intention to deceive, and I fully believed him.’ According to a mutineer of the 22nd Native Infantry, Jwala Prasad ‘assumed the command of the Nana’s forces on the death of the latter’. But others were not so sure, including a spy who reported that ‘Nana Rao was ill, but not dead’. Over the years countless ‘sightings’ were made of Nana Sahib. The last was in 1895, at a rural station in Gujerat, when an old sadhu told a young British officer that he was the notorious rebel. ‘Have arrested the Nana Sahib,’ the officer excitedly informed Calcutta. ‘Wire instructions.’ The reply was dismissive: ‘Release at once.’
Baba Bhutt, Nana Sahib’s older brother, was last seen travelling in secret towards Calcutta with an ailing Azimullah Khan. One account has Azimullah dying of smallpox en route; another says he managed to escape the country with a ‘Miss Clayton’ and eventually settled in Constantinople as an emissary of the Sherif of Mecca. He was murdered, so the story goes, after Miss Clayton died of old age.
Two other notorious rebels were caught in bizarre circumstances. In February 1859 Sergeant William Forbes-Mitchell of the 93rd Highlanders was sitting in his tent at Cawnpore when a ‘very good looking, light-coloured native in the prime of his life’ appeared selling cakes. He said that his name was Green and that he had been mess khansaman for a regiment of native infantry. Forbes-Mitchell admired his front, though not the look of his assistant, a ‘villainous-looking’ Eurasian named Mickey. The pair left but were arrested the following day: Green for spying and ‘Mickey’ for having been recognized as Sarvur Khan, leader of the Bibighar murder squad. As they awaited execution, Forbes-Mitchell prevented his Scottish comrades from stuffing pork down the throats of the condemned men; he also provided them with a last meal and a hookah. In gratitude, Green told him that he was none other than Mohamed Ali Khan, the Rohilkhand nobleman who had accompanied Azimullah to London and Constantinople where they had ‘formed the resolution of attempting to overthrow the Company’s Government’. Mohamed Ali added: ‘Thank God we have succeeded in doing that, for from the newspapers which you lent me, I see that the Company’s rule has gone, and that their charter for robbery and confiscation will not be renewed.’ He and Sarvur Khan were hanged the following morning.
One of the few rebel leaders to avoid a judicial execution was the Nawab of Farrukhabad. He gave himself up in early 1859 after Major Barrow, a special commissioner, guaranteed his life. The court ignored this unauthorized offer and sentenced him to death. But, on reflection, the authorities decided to give him the option of exile to Mecca and he took it. In the event he was put ashore at the Red Sea port of Aden and died within a few years.
Liaqat Ali, the Maulvi of Allahabad, was the last rebel to be brought to justice. He remained on the run for fourteen years, visiting Baroda, Bombay and even Baghdad, it was said, in the guise of a respectable Muslim gentleman. He was finally captured at Byculla railway station, clutching a hollow cane filled with 2,000 rupees worth of gold ingots, and sent to Allahabad for trial. He pleaded guilty but said, in mitigation, that he had saved the life of Amy Horne at Cawnpore. This plea may have saved his neck because his sentence was transportation for life to the penal colony of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands.