Siege of Cawnpore

Background

Cawnpore was a major East India Company garrison town on the Grand Trunk Road. By June 1857 rebellion had spread from Meerut, Agra, Mathura and Lucknow, though sepoys at Cawnpore initially remained loyal to British commander General Hugh Wheeler. The British contingent numbered around 900 people, including roughly 300 military personnel and 300 women and children. Wheeler chose to defend an exposed entrenchment south of the city rather than a more defensible magazine building, a decision that has remained controversial among historians.

Outbreak and siege

Rebellion broke out at Cawnpore on 5–6 June 1857, beginning with the 2nd Bengal Cavalry and spreading to other native infantry regiments. Nana Sahib, adopted heir to the former Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II and previously professing loyalty to the British, joined the rebellion after taking control of the treasury and magazine. His forces besieged Wheeler's entrenchment from 6 June, subjecting the defenders to bombardment, sniper fire and repeated assaults over three weeks amid severe shortages of food, water and medicine, and outbreaks of disease. A major assault on 23 June — the centenary of the Battle of Plassey — failed to breach the entrenchment.

Surrender and Satichaura Ghat

With the garrison depleted by casualties and disease, General Wheeler agreed on 25–26 June to surrender in exchange for Nana Sahib's promise of safe passage to Allahabad. On the morning of 27 June, roughly 500 British people were escorted to boats at Satichaura Ghat. As boarding took place, firing broke out from rebel soldiers on the riverbank; the circumstances and responsibility for the initial shots remain disputed among historical accounts. Most men were killed; surviving women and children — around 120 — were taken prisoner and held at Nana Sahib's headquarters, Savada House. Only four British men are recorded as escaping this massacre by swimming downriver, later reaching the protection of a local loyalist raja.

Bibi Ghar massacre

Survivors, joined by other captured women and children including some from Fatehgarh, were confined at Bibi Ghar under harsh conditions. As a Company relief force under General Henry Havelock advanced on Cawnpore in mid-July after victories at Fatehpur and Aong, Nana Sahib's advisers decided to kill the captives on 15 July 1857. Sepoys initially assigned to shoot the prisoners largely refused or fired into the air; hired assailants then killed the captives with edged weapons. According to the source account, 73 women and 124 children were killed, with bodies thrown down a nearby well.

Recapture and retaliation

Company forces retook Cawnpore on 16 July 1857 and discovered the site of the massacre. Accounts describe extensive retaliatory violence by British soldiers against captured rebels and local civilians, including summary trials, forced acts of humiliation before hanging, and episodes of looting and burning attributed to breakdowns in discipline, which Havelock's own orders sought to curb.