About 4,500 sipahis (soldiers) had gathered at Nawabganj, some 30 km from Lucknow. It was June 30, 1857. In the group was Raja Jailal Singh of Azamgarh. He was an expert in war strategy. Rana Beni Madho, Raja Udai Pratap Narain Singh, Raja Jalim Singh and his queen Talash Kuvari of Amroha had also cast in their lot. About 3,000 to 3,500 infantry, 600 cavalry and 150 men of artillery had gathered. At the other end were 300 European troops and an equal number of Indian soldiers, under the command of the British Resident of Lucknow – Henry Lawrence. Gubbins, the chief commissioner was in favour of an advance policy. Though Lawrence did not desire to meet the enemy at an advance position, and was supported by Dalhousie’s man Major Banks (then Lucknow commissioner), somehow on D-day of June 30, he toed Gubbins’ line.
At Ismaelganj, a hamlet close to Chinhat, with a small force, Barkat Ahmad and Shahabuddin lured Lawrence into combat. Lawrence thought that the rest of the Indian rebel soldiers had fallen back on Nawabganj. So he moved ahead, accepting the challenge. The showdown at Nawabganj-Ismaelganj-Chinhat on June 30 surely was not a spontaneous act of belligerence by the Indians. It was an outburst of grievance and animosity that had built up at least since February 9, 1856, if not since the last 100 years of the Company Raj after the Battle of Plassey on June 23, 1757.
100 Years of Plassey (Palashi)
Incidentally, on June 23, 1857, to mark the 100th anniversary of Plassey and to co-align with the prophecy of some astrologers and maulvis that the anthropomorphic Company Bahadur (English East India Company) will supposedly come to an end after 100 years of Plassey, the Indian rebels had challenged the Company authority at the Battle of Subzi Mandi, near Delhi. However, as Amarpal Singh writes that most rebel attacks on the British position near Delhi ‘were not pursued with sufficient vigour…..many of the mutineers opted to let new arrivals do the fighting… while others were simply more interested in their loot.’
Interestingly, the Indian rebels also tried their best to persuade the Gurkhas and other non-European troops to desert the British force, but to no avail. On one such instance, on June 10, Indian rebel sipahis told the Gurkhas:
“Come on, we want to speak to you, we want you to join us.”
“We are coming…”, a Gurkha soldier replied.
However, once the two parties were within 20 steps, informs Amarpal Singh, the Gurkhas started firing at the Indian rebels and in the process, 30 sipahis perished. The proposed friendship was terminated by the fiendishness of the Gurkhas. And in fact, the perceived holy alliance of Gurkha-Sikh-Purbiya (Awadhi) axis never materialised during the historic Uprising of 1857, which if had been effected, could have turned the course of history in a different direction altogether.
Nevertheless, on June 12, the rebels cashed in on their numerical superiority as well as with a Coup de Main, closed in on the British camp ensconced on the ridge overlooking the city of Delhi. However, additional reinforcements aided the British to repel the rebel attack. Furthermore, on June 15, around 5,000 rebel sipahis – both infantry as well as cavalry, along with two 9-pounder guns – reached within 100 steps of the ridge. Again, the Britishers could push back the rebels. After a series of fierce fighting on June 19 and 20, the Indian rebels were estimated to have lost around 300 soldiers, whereas the British were with 80 men killed and wounded.
Around 5 am on the historic day of June 23, as Singh describes, close to 6,000 Indian rebels took on the Gurkhas and the British forces. Fighting went on till 4 pm in the evening, with the rebels still holding their ground. The area of Subzi Mandi, which the rebels were holding, pre-empted the history to come – turned somewhat into World War II’s Battle of Stalingrad – with the rebel soldiers fighting to their last breath, perched atop rooftops, inside the houses, and behind the barricades. And as Singh informs, the Sikh Infantry and the European Fusiliers managed to push the rebels behind the apparently safe walls of Delhi. The British camp lost 39 soldiers, including one officer and 121 men were wounded. The rebels’ loss on the other hand was substantially large, with 1,000 dead or wounded. The 100th anniversary of Plassey was a repeat of history – albeit in a different manner – this time not a ruse or treachery but a proper military defeat in the battlefield.
Rebels’ Military Prowess
Sahib, hum log larai mein bahut tez hain magar jang ka bandobast nahin jaante
– An old rebel Indian officer to Field Marshal Lord Roberts after the British victory at Delhi in 1857 [Roy, p150]
Construction of an effective command apparatus has always been an issue for the traditional Indian armies, opines Roy, and not without a reason. The managerial limitations of the rebels in their command-control-communication and intelligence network was visible, stresses Roy with confidence. The sepoy (sipahi) regiments elected commanders from among themselves. Quick promotions were awarded to some, without following the standard norms of seniority and experience. In fact, neither did the rebel sepoys have the luxury of time to that effect. For instance, Nana Sahib promoted a resaldar – junior cavalry officer – named Jwala Pershad, to the rank of a brigadier (Roy, p. 152)
Moreover, the Indian sepoys did not have training in staff duties and lacked experience to lead brigade sized formations, writes Roy (p 152). In the past, most of the Indian officers had at best commanded companies – about 100 men each – under the supervision of British officers, whereas regiments meant commanding over 1,000 soldiers. Brigades were a step higher – to man several regiments. Some of the oldest Indian officials were aged between 55 and 60 years, and only had reached up to the posts of subehdar major and resaldar major – much below the rank of a Lieutenant, let alone Colonel or Brigadier. Furthermore, for managing war, map reading, gun laying and staff duties, technical education was needed. Most of the Indian rebels were villagers, while their counterpart British reinforcements were literate (Roy, pp 152-3). On a more fundamental level, it could be pointed out that the Indian rebels lacked any institutional training for military warfare and that was one of the major reasons for their final undoing.
Disciplined infantry was the core of European 18th century warfare model, which was not the culture in subcontinent. Desertion was also a major impediment. For example, at Bareilly, just after the uprising, about 25 rebel troops deserted after plunder and loot, on a daily basis (Roy, p 153). Moreover, the electrical telegraph of 4,000 miles connecting Calcutta with Peshawar and Agra enabled the British to intrude into the rebels’ decision-making time cycle. Robert Montgomery, the Commissioner of Lahore, for instance, knew about the mutiny in north India through the telegraph and he then immediately disarmed the Bengal Army’s 6,000 Purbiyas – Rajput and Brahmin soldiers from Bihar and Awadh – before they could learn about the mutiny of their fellow soldiers and rise up in revolutionary consciousness.
In addition, the Ganga and its tributaries were navigable and the British had access to steam boats. These boats came to Kanpur from Calcutta, carrying British troops and logistics. The 84th infantry regiment moved up from Calcutta to Allahabad by railroad up to Raniganj and thereafter by steamers. Also, Havelock at Kanpur received continuous reinforcements of manpower and food from Benaras through the steamers. In this context, it is needless to emphasise the significance of communication and logistics in the battlefield. Furthermore, there was a shortage of horses in Awadh during that period. And the rebels could not procure horses from Central Asia because Punjab remained loyal to the British. On the other hand, the ‘Company Bahadur’ could import large number of horses from Persia and the Cape because of their command over the seas. (Roy, p 156)
However, about 50 per cent of the Indian soldiers enlisted in the Company army had revolted. The number was sizable. Dalhousie had been suspicious of the Purbiyas. They were also called Pandeys by the British due to the presence of a large number of Pandey Brahmins in that group. Dalhousie ordered the enlistment of a larger number of Gurkhas, Sikhs and Punjabi Muslims so as to offset the Purbiya/Pandeys. The British continued to recruit Gurkhas at their depot at Gorakhpur. John Nicholson even put forth the idea of enlisting Pathans from Multan. Afridi tribesmen too were recruited. The Company also raised a light cavalry for reconnaissance and skirmishing (Roy, p 157).
Nonetheless, a fact of the matter not to be downplayed is that the Company enjoyed a technological edge over the rebels both in small arms as well as artillery. The rebels’ cavalry had no carbines and their militia used matchlocks – which couldn’t be used during rainfall. The rebels used Brown Bess rifles whereas the Company’s infantry had grooved-barrel Enfield rifles – which in turn imparted spin to the 0.577 inch diameter bullet – and brought in greater accuracy of impact.
With these reasons, the strategic advantage remained with the Company. To add to the woes, only 500 Indian gunners out of 4,300 joined the rebels. Moreover, the Company had about 7,700 British gunners. And as already stated, gunners and artillery officers required specialised technical training along with knowledge of mathematics. Like at Lucknow, the rebels were mostly armed with obsolete brass guns, used mostly for ceremonial purposes (Roy, p 165). It can be summed up that the Company won due to superior technology, engineering techniques and superior logistical knowhow, at least insofar as siege warfare was concerned – both in Delhi as well in the Residency at Lucknow, but not before Chinhat happened.
To Lucknow
In 1768, the Company pressured the Nawab of Awadh to not build more than 35,000 columns of army (ASI, p 17). Between 1800 and 1801, Nawab Saadat Ali Khan had to give up all his western territories and fertile land in the Doab to the Company. He also had to agree to Article 6 of the 1801 treaty so as to create an administrative system benefiting his subjects “by the advice of and acting in conformity to the counsel of the officers of the Honourable Company” (ASI, p 26). In the process, Saadat Ali Khan’s army was reduced to 10% of its original size.
In 1819, Awadh became a kingdom when Saadat Ali’s son and successor Ghazi-ud-din Haidar was bestowed with the title of king. Perhaps, the Company wished to create a fissure between Awadh and the Mughal Emperor. Wajid Ali Shah, who ascended the throne in 1847, was a patron of art and a lover of Lucknow (ASI, p 27). He was called Jaan-e-Alam by his subjects. He wrote in Awadhi, Braj, Marwari, Punjabi, Bengali, English, Deccani, Urdu, Hindi and Persian (ASI, p 28). However, the Company was hatching a malicious plot. Between 1849 and 1850, Colonel W.H. Sleeman travelled all over Awadh to collect evidence of Wajid Ali Shah’s misgovernance. His report was published as ‘Journey through Kingdom of Oude’ (ASI, p 28). In 1856, however, R.W. Bird, an assistant of Sleeman, wrote ‘The Spoilation of Awadh’ – in which he brought out the evil designs of the Company to bring down the reputation of Wajid Ali – who in fact started morning military drills – and kept names of regiments as Banka and Akhtari (ASI, p 28).
Prelude to the Battle
In the siege of Delhi, though the Company forces had an upper hand, things were quite to the contrary in Awadh (Ayodhya) – Meerut, Kanpur, Bareilly, Sitapur, Benaras, Prayagraj, and most specially Lucknow. After the 3rd cavalry’s outburst on May 10 at Meerut, Henry Lawrence had sought the support of the power elite in Lucknow, not with much success though. By the middle of May, Lawrence had started digging trenches around the Residency. He had shifted his headquarters to the Residency and work began on an emergency basis to fortify it with barriers in the north and south. The building in which Lawrence resided along with his entourage, was a regal three-storied colonial style building on the banks of the river Gomti. The Residency was positioned on a higher plane and offered an ‘unparalleled view’ of Lucknow (ASI).
Two kings, nonetheless, had two completely different stories to narrate. The octogenarian poet-cum-emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar in Delhi on May 11, 1857 was taken aback when he heard the clamour of a group of warlike sipahis barging into Delhi through the toll gate and on a murderous spree. While about a year ago, on February 9, 1856, not just immersed in poetry and subsumed in the dancing hall of Parikhana, the corpulent Biryani lover in his mid-thirties Wajid Ali Shah was told by then Lucknow’s British Resident Outram that the Company was assuming charge of the civil and military administration of the region. Wajid Ali looked with equanimity, delved deep into poems and philosophy, took shelter in gourmet, couture and dancing – somehow bypassing the path of confrontation with the Company. And not that the King of Lucknow was not acquainted with the military – and even if we pay less attention to the inflationary assessment of Roshan Taqui that Wajid Ali was a ‘military genius’, yet there was no doubt that Wajid had raised new columns of regiments. As per Outram’s records, the King’s employees in the army were about 87,000 and total yearly expenditure on the army was close to 83 lakh rupees.
The soldiers were faithful to Wajid Ali. One of the subehdars of the Akhtari regiment even reprimanded a certain Captain Grey ‘not to allure them’. Since they have eaten the namak (salt) of the King, they cannot serve any person against the king. However, it is also important and at times crucial how the king is fed by his/her advisors and that determines his policy making abilities, at least at that point in time. Amaresh Misra squarely blames it on Ali Naqi Khan – Awadh’s wazir at that juncture – who purportedly dissuaded Wajid Ali from thinking along military lines by completely discouraging him. Past failures from Palashi (Plassey) to Baksar (Buxar) to that of the Sikhs were invoked by Khan so that the king in no way felt any level of confidence on the military prowess of his soldiers and kingdom.
Similar situation arose in case of Bahadur Shah Zafar when the militant rebels goaded him to lead them. Zafar’s son Mirza Mughal rather encouraged him and the former finding no way of respite, to a large extent reluctantly accepted the leadership – which the rebels badly needed to erect a façade of legitimacy for their rebellion aka Uprising. Nonetheless, Amaresh Misra notes that as Jaan-e-Alam (beloved of the world) of Lucknow – as Wajid Ali was lovingly known to his people – trudged along the path to London via Calcutta (Kolkata), the people echoed:
Hazrat jaate hain London
Hum par kripa karo Raghunandan
(Our ruler is departing for London,
Now we have only your care left O’ Lord Rama)
Such wails shouldn’t have been the order of the day and Calcutta perhaps wouldn’t have been privy to the potato in the Biryani, if Wajid Ali had stayed back in Lucknow and resisted the Company’s exploitations and spoilations. Certainly more could have been thought and done by Wajid Ali instead of leaving the battlefield for obscure reasons, which leaves both the historian as well as the reader searching frantically for rationale on the part of a king to not even bring out the sword from its sheath, a king who was as close to his military as to his inner chambers, this act of his was paradoxical to say the least. And as Misra has written so poetically:
When the Parikhana was resounding with the vibrations of the ghungroo and the jhanjhar, his (Wajid Ali’s) harem reverberated with the clang of weapons being made by the female platoons whose Hindu and Muslim members were drawn from the bylanes of Lucknow, practised an army drill with perfect discipline in Persian dress.
Before moving to Calcutta, Wajid Ali made it amply clear that though he did not fight the British, he had left the fate of Lucknow to its awaam (people) [Misra, p 111]. During my visit to Lucknow in December 2021, when I was being amazed at the three-dimensional paintings of the Awadhi kings, I was told by an exuberant ‘guide’ that Wajid Ali did not fight because he was wary of the casualties that his awaam might have to undergo. My young ‘guide’ did not have any reference to substantiate his submission, and neither did I poke him further knowing fully well that he might not have the theoretical or empirical wherewithal to defend his statement.
The awaam of Lucknow and Awadh, however, did act with bravery and in unison. In a petition dated March 28, 1857, just a day prior to the solitary act of defiance by one of Awadh’s brethren – Mangal Pandey at Barrackpore – residents of Lucknow complained to the governor general about one Muslim contractor who was quadrupling taxes, incarcerating people and creating an ambience of bribe. Thefts and dacoities had also increased along the Kanpur-Lucknow road (Misra, p 113). Lucknowites warned the British administration that if adequate measures of amelioration were not taken, then a great rebellion was likely to occur.
Civil engineer turned historian Roshan Taqui tells us that many religious leaders flocked into Lucknow in order to denounce the annexation of Awadh by the Company on the pretext of maladministration. A sufi saint Qadir Ali Shah had fixed the 11th day of September 1856 as the day of uprising against the Company. He had amassed a force of 12,000 trained men. Supposedly, he wrote a letter to the Shah of Kabul seeking help, writes Misra. Qadir Ali’s secret organisation had enrolled many people from the lower economic strata of the society. Nonetheless, the planned insurgency was foiled and many maulvis were hanged near the Machhi Bhawan area of Lucknow.
Interestingly, almost a year after Wajid Ali’s departure, a Lucknow newspaper called Central Star wrote that ex-army officers and soldiers had started recruiting new sipahis. The training of the ‘rebel’ soldiers was being carried out somewhere in the far west of the city. On February 26, 1857, Central Star further reported the circulation of suspicious chapatis from one village to another.
Day of the Battle
Taqui informs that the Britishers holed up in the Residency were petrified of the repercussions of an attack on Lucknow and the consequent siege of the Residency. Not to be branded as a coward though, Henry Lawrence decided to take up a forward position at Chinhat, with around 600-700 men, both European and Indian included.
An advance force of the rebels led by Shahabuddin and Barkat Ahmad crossed swords with the 600 odd troops of Lawrence. Lawrence and his men were flummoxed by the rebels. They found themselves completely outflanked by the rebel troops. The rebel cavalry charge was perhaps led by a Russian – an Asiatic European soldier who had defected from the Company side (ASI). Taqui, however, says that the Indian cavalry commander was ‘a handsome looking European, about 25 years of age, named Schimidt, a German and a former cavalry officer in ex-Awadh king’s army. The so called great army of Henry Lawrence, writes Amaresh Misra, hurried back to Lucknow. The Company forces blew up the Machhi Bhawan and took refuge in the Residency.
The significance of the victory at the First Battle of Lucknow was paramount. The perceived invincibility of the British forces turned out to be a myth. The gates of Lucknow – and in the process Awadh – lay open to the rebels. The victory was a momentous occasion for the rebels since in Delhi they were on the backfoot – under siege. But in Lucknow, it was the British forces that were under siege. Misra points out that after Crimea, Chinhat/Lucknow ‘was the first instance of the defeat of the British army anywhere in the world in a land combat’. The series of defeats suffered by Indian forces from Adyar (1746) onwards, exemplifying the better engineering, metallurgical and training quotients of the European forces, finally took a beating in Lucknow.
Taqui quotes Michiel Edwards’ justification about their defeat in the First Battle of Lucknow. Edwards put forth the alibi of the British forces being on empty stomach and the scorching heat of the sun for their defeat. He also referred to the apparent insubordination of Indian gunners employed under the Company. However, the real reason lay somewhere else. It was the better tactical planning and operational manoeuvres which won the day for the Indians. The rebels spread out in order to surround the British. Once the British forces were sucked into the vortex, regiment after regiment of Indian troops overwhelmed the British columns.
Native infantry formed the British right flank. While rebel guns hit their targets effectively, British round shots were unable to cover the distance (Misra II, p 396). Indian guns could achieve the desired effect due to their better diagonal positioning vis-à-vis the British guns. Lawrence ordered a cavalry charge, but it was blunted by Indian infantry. Heathcote writes that the British came under heavy musketry fire from the Indians and the British commanding officer Colonel Case was eliminated. As a matter of last straw when Lawrence asked the howitzer to be used, the elephant pulling it panicked (Misra II, p 397).
As per British records, 112 European soldiers were killed and 44 wounded. Along with Colonel Case, Captain Macline was killed, whereas Colonel Inns and Major Banks were wounded. Interestingly, no records of Indian soldiers killed or wounded is available (Taqui, p 82). According to some sources (Taqui, p 83), rebels lost only 11 persons and Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah was injured in the foot. This was a perfect revenge of not just Subzi Mandi, but all the defeats since Adyar and Plassey. Indian forces led by Dilip Singh, Barkat Ahmad and Shahabuddin entered Lucknow on a victorious note, while Lawrence and his beleaguered troops took shelter in the Residency.
References
[ASI]: Archaeological Survey of India, The Residency, Lucknow
[Heathcote]: T.A. Heathcote, Mutiny and Insurgency in India, 1857-58
[Misra]: Amaresh Misra, Lucknow : Fire of Grace
[Misra II]: Amaresh Misra, War of Civilisations, Vol I
[Roy]: Kaushik Roy, From Hydaspes to Kargil: A History of Warfare in India
[Singh]: Amarpal Singh, The Siege of Delhi, Harper Collins, 2021
[Taqi]: Roshan Taqui, Lucknow 1857
-The author is a Joint Director in India’s Central Civil Service. He is a prolific writer on insurgency, counterinsurgency, history and foreign policy. Any opinion expressed here is that of the author’s own.
