Empire: World History - 324. Indian Uprising 1857: Massacre and Revenge in Kanpur (Part 3)

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

In one of the darkest chapters of the 1857 uprising, brutal massacres are met with revenge brutal massacres as the rebellion reaches the East India Company garrison town of Kanpur or “Cawnpore”. Who was General Wheeler and why was the entrenchment he built so fragile? How were the atrocities at Kanpur used to justify gruesome violence against Indians?  In Episode 3 of the series, Anita and William discuss the gruesome history of the Kanpur massacre which lived on in Victorian memory for the decades that followed. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com  For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Editor: Bruno Di Castri Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. And today we're going to confront the darkest chapter of the great uprising of 1857. in India as the First War of Independence, remembered in Britain as the Indian mutiny. And the darkest chapter is the terrible massacre at Satichara Gat and then later at the Bibigar in Cornpour.

Cornpour as it was then, Kanpur as it is now, was then home to one of the largest European communities in India. And it suddenly found itself at the centre of the mutiny. Fear, rumours of rebellion are sweeping down the Ganges towards it. And in the middle of all, all of that stands a man called Sir Hugh Wheeler, who is really trapped in a fragile entrenchment and he's got hundreds of civilians, women and children, around him. And on June the 5th, the mutiny finally hits his city. Now, I should warn you, this is an episode that contains some really graphic descriptions of violence that some of you may find distressing. To the Victorians, the events that took place in Kanpur were the most shameful and embarrassing

of their entire imperial history. In early 1857, Kanpur, or Cornpur, as it was known to the British, boasted the second largest European community in the entire subcontinent, second only, of course, to Calcutta. By the end of that year, only five men and two women were still alive. The mutiny of whole regiments of previously loyal sepoys and the final indignity of the slaughter of defenceless women and children in the Bibigar, the Angels of Albans,

as the British papers called them. All of these images haunted British nightmares for generations. A known new army squadie or ICS officer arrived in the subcontinent without being first warned, remember Kornpaw. The Kahnpur massacres were the dark heart of the 1857 uprising. So, I mean, if you haven't listened to the first two episodes, I mean, do try and go back and listen to them because they set the scene well. But in a nutshell, what you've missed is that humiliation of Indian sepoys in Mirate, which starts this rumbling discontent and a belief that the British are not now to be obeyed. And we covered in the next episode how this storm of discontent gets momentum, led by the sepoys who are saying they're not going to take orders from the British

anymore. Why should the British be in charge? They don't have to be. We outnumber them. And discontent from those who are often without means, you know, so the lower socioeconomic groups, joining in behind and falling in behind the sepoys as they make their way to Delhi, where Zuffer, the emperor, sits. And they are going to demand of him that he takes a stand. Who's he going to choose? Is he going to choose to stand with the British, who they are hell-bent on kicking out and murdering, because there is terrible bloodshed along the way, or is he going to back the rebels. And that's where we left you in the last episode. So the fate of Delhi is the key matter. You can see this ripple of risings as the news of the violence in Delhi

travels from town to town, from contunement to contumment down the ganges as different groups of sepoys raise the revolt. And everyone is watching to see how the commander-in-chief, General Anson reacts and will he be able to just quickly recapture Delhi and snuff this whole thing out? And Henry Lawrence, who is in charge of luck now, writes a letter at this time saying tranquility cannot be much longer maintained unless Delhi is speedily captured. Now, as we saw at the end of the last episode, Anson does not speedily recapture Delhi. He hesitates and humbugs away and doesn't think it's very serious. And the revolt does spread down the Ganges.

Alighar, Etowah, and eventually on the 30th of May it hits Lucknow where Henry Lawrence is going to be besieged in the residency. Now, the next station after Lucknow is Kanpur or Kornpaw, as the British called it. And that has the largest British civilian community. It's a major business centre and remained up until the end of the 19th century, the centre where all the box swallows lived, as they were called, the businessman. And in Kanpur, there are two people who have a particular interest in making sure that tranquility is. not restored. They want an uprising. They want to seize the moment. Who are those two people, Anita? They're really interesting and particularly I find Asamullah Khan really fascinating. So he's known

as a charity boy because he's sort of been growing up on the largesse of missionaries largely. His father dies during a famine. And this is a story that often happens in India. And, you know, the men of God come in with a Bible in one hand and food in the other and they save him. They do, no doubt about it. So he's brought up by evangelical English missionaries. He learns to hate with a peculiar intensity. Well, wait for it. Wait for it. I mean, you know, and again, this is not a unique story either because some of those people who went through those sort of mission schools didn't have the best recollections of the way they were treated or the way they were looked down on or the way they had to eject everything that they'd ever

believed in before. But undoubtedly, the missionaries, when they do come in after a famine, do save lives of the destitute children who are left behind. So he does eventually, when he's slightly older, enter the service of Maharaja Nana Sahib. Now, Nana Sahib's a really important figure in the Indian Mutiny story. He's a crucial figure, yeah. The adopted son of the last Peshwa of the Maratars. So the Peshua is like the Prime Minister of the Marathas.

And the Marathas themselves, the great Marathas, if they're referred to in India even now, are the ones who sort of stand up and, you know, They push back against the Mughals, they push back against the British, and they're sort of known as, you know, the figureheads of any kind of rebellious spirit are the Maratas. And he is taken in by Nana Sahib, who is one of these Marathas. And it is during that time that he's sent to London for his education. And he's kind of an exotic creature in London. He's a beautiful boy also.

He's very attractive, yeah, a very lovely looking chap. And he's introduced at that time to a, you know, a list of some of the most famous celebs. that London has to offer. And I'm talking about people like Dickens, Tennyson, Thackeray, Carlisle. And they are sort of enamoured by him, but he leaves their company with an almost genocidal hatred of the British. He really doesn't like being the pet. We should say that he also has an affair while he's in London with its thought. This is not 100% certain, but there's a strong indications that he manages to go out with Lucy Duff Gordon, who's a great sort of bohemian traveller, and they have a thing, it seems to be. But that just leaves him all the more sort of determined not to become a second-class citizen

when he returns to India. Yeah, I mean, too, you know, sort of exotic enough to have an affair with, but to Brown to Marry, which is another story that we heard when we did the Duleep Singh episodes. So he returns to India and he gives this very skewed impression to his master, Nanasai, who's paid for him to go to London and get an education. One thing we should say is he stops on the way, and this is a crucial bit of the story, in the Crimea, and he sees the British being defeated.

Yes, we did that in episode one. You're right. Exactly right. And you're right to remind me. Because it's the first time that he comes away with this impression that they can be fought and they can be beaten and that they bleed the same as anybody else. But when he comes back to Nanasa,

not only does he come back with that impression from the Crimea, of, you know, they are beatable. These guys are not supermen. They can be fought and pushed back. But he also has this weird impression that he gives to his boss about what people are like in London. He says, you know, they're very scantily populated. That's England, he says. And what fools we natives have made ourselves so quietly to surrender our country to a handful of tyrannical foreigners who are trying in many ways to deprive us of our religion and our privileges. So he says, you know, they're nothing. What are we doing? Why are we listening to them? And he tells us, Has Nana Sahib to annihilate his enemies. He fills him with this fire. He says, wipe them out root and branch is the way he puts it from the face of all India. Let not a soul escape. And tell us more about Nana Saab. Do you remember he figured in our Irish episode when I read you the lament? Did he turn out there? Yes, it was the ballad of Paddy. You know, Paddy must emigrate. Right. I remember that. Yeah. The Irishman who had to go over during the famine. And, you know, you know, he was the ballad of Paddy. You know, Paddy must emigrate. Right, I remember that. You know, the Irishman who had to go over during the famine. And, you know, one of the refrains was, we fought that demon Nanasib for you. And now we're starving and we have to emigrate.

So England, what the hell do you think you're doing with this Irishman? So his name is front and center in that ballad. So Nanasab is regarded as a demon because of what obviously happens in this episode in Kampur. And Nanasab was originally born Dondu Punt. Nanasab is a title. And he was adopted by the last Marata Prime Minister or Peshua, Barji Rao the second, the last ruler of the Marata Empire. And the British introduced this thing called the Doctrine of Laps,

whereby they basically didn't accept this tradition of adoption. Adoption says Dalhousie. Dalhousie is the man who says this is a way of gaining land, just outlaw the adoption, the recognition of adoption, and we can take great swathes of land without firing a bullet. So Narnasab, who should have inherited, you know, great swathes of the Deccan because the marathes in the late 18th and early 19th century

were massively powerful and massively rich and they made all the other military powers fear them and it was their defeat by Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, that started his career. But instead, Nanosab gets almost nothing. He inherits nothing because the British have taken his land and taken his privileges.

And he's left with this. slightly sort of crummy house in Kanpur, where he's sort of in exile. And the British go and visit him and they laugh at him. They say he's someone who'd serve his visitors a breakfast of Yorkshire pie, game pie, mutton chop, steak, sardines and fortnam and his marmalade on mismatch China with bedroom towels for napkins. So he's, you know, he's very keen to be hospitable and he suffers the snobbery of the British who laugh at him for trying to take on Western ways and not quite getting it right by serving bedroom towels rather than napkins and Fortnham and Mason Marmalade which you'd have thought they'd be very grateful for but at lunchtime

along with game pie so in all these ways he's got his nose put out of joint too and these two men Azimullah Khan and Narnasab are in some people's accounts of of the 1857 uprising, the actual masterminds. Some people think that there's a, you know, a central plan and that these guys are stoking the fires. I personally am less convinced by that. I think they're important. And they definitely are the crucial people in Kanpur.

But whether they've actually laid a sort of trail of gunpowder across India is less certain in my view. Well, I mean, I agree with you. I think I agree with you because actually, you know, there are two weeks of tension and, you know, completely unpredictable violence which precede what happens in Kanpur. You know, and people are not sure who's going to side with which, you know, area. You know, some sepoys will want to remain loyal, some will want to join the uprising.

And what about the civilian population? You need them on the side. And they're also dividing in all sorts of different directions. But let's talk about what happens in Kanpur and talk about another person who's very important to this story, the station commandant, a man called General Sir Hugh Massey, Wheeler commanded the Kanpur division. He's kind of, should I put it, the last of a dying breed of men. Born in Ireland, as so many people who served the East India Company were in June 1789,

he's the son of an East India Company officer who had married the daughter of the First Lord Massey. And, you know, he had boy to man been in the Indian Army. You know, he'd served a seapoy regiment at the age of only, just 16, just a little kid. And he'd been in India virtually continuously ever since. that time, he had acquired this ferocious reputation as a soldier and a fighter. His one regret always remained that he'd never served as a staff officer, a circumstance that he put down to the fact in his words that he had no friends and had nothing from government that it could withhold from me. But, I mean, more likely, I don't know, it's the fact that he was Irish, because we know

that the Irish could get so far and no further. There were episodes that we've done with Jane Olmeyer. We'll tell you that. And also that he has... had a long-term relationship with the Eurasian wife of a fellow brother officer. Now, this is... This is a double, yeah, this is a double no-no, exactly. Yes, I mean, it's sort of mixing blood, you know, miscegenation at this point. As we said, you know, the Octoloni period where actually, you know, sort of mixing up and becoming part of the fabric of India was not a big deal.

And then suddenly that changes and you're not to mix. So they're sort of, you know, Harry Potter parlance, mudbloods, if you like, mixing with magical people. But it's also the fact that she's attached to a fellow officer, which again is a kind of military no-no. She's also, yeah, he's having an affair. You know, he's a dirty dog for doing it. So Francis Marsden, the woman who's at the apex of this love triangle is the daughter of an Irish major and his Muslim wife. She was just 15 and she was already eight months pregnant when she married a guy called Thomas Oliver, who is a Bengal officer himself of mixed descent. And within four years, she had had an illegitimate child by Wheeler.

And she's then pretty much continually pregnant after that. She has another six children, six babies. So Wheeler is at the head of this sort of mish-mash family, and therefore is not going to get much preferment. Yeah, by this stage, it had become a kind of social no-no to do any of this. I mean, yeah, it's kind of just, and the other thing that is kind of snarled upon, because she's 47 years old at the time of the mutiny.

and she's six months pregnant. So, you know, they are also, so the whole S-E-C-K-S, sex, they're still doing it. God, they should be old enough to know better. That kind of thing. You know, they get an awful lot of snobbery about that. But what she does have, her only shield, and it's not much, is a marriage certificate. But that doesn't give her any respectability. Mrs. later Lady Wheeler is never welcome in other Brit households because of who she is

and what her background story is. But Wheeler, remember his name, he's going to be very important. He's very important. And we've seen all sorts of slightly dodgy old food. Wheeler is old, but he's quite together. And he realizes how precarious his position is. Because he has this tiny European galluson, only 70 invalids from the 32nd foot,

outnumbered by a large Indian contingent. And so as this all heats up, he's frantically telegramming for reinforcements. he wants white troops to balance the enormous cantoomment in Kanpur, which is full of Indian sepoys. But he realizes he needs to take action himself. And there's this very delicate balance between sort of a blowing an alarm bell by sort of abitting vulnerability and taking some sort of form to protect himself. So eventually, in response to a telegram from Calcutta to begin immediate and obvious preparations on the 20th of May, which is now, I suppose, two. weeks after Meirut has gone up, he starts digging an enormous trench around the barracks,

using the earth thrown up on the outside to form a parapet. So he's fortifying himself. He realizes that the thing is going about to blow, and he wants to have a proper, uh, defensible area where he can retreat with the British community. Trumbly is, it's all completely flat. It's not like it's on a hill, you know, it's not a castle that he can defend easily. Delhi has its ridge. But Kampur is completely. pancake flat. So his only defence is what he can do with a ditch and a little parapet. And there's not much, I mean, it's not much of a parapet either, is it, Willie? Because it's only sort of at three feet high, which somebody could just fall over, you know,

just tumble over. It's not much of a protection. And eventually on the evening of the 20th, there's a fire in the lines of infantry and the Europeans think this is a sign of the revolt is going to take place. And the following day, Wheeler orders all the women and children. He blows the alarm bell. He presses the red button. And he orders them all to leave their houses in the town and move into this new fortified contunement. Actually, nothing blows. The next couple of days, there is no uprising. So a few of them kind of move back to their bungalows, hoping for the best. But already now, there's this sort of slightly panic community. Someone called Captain Hayes writes that people of every kind,

of every colour, sex profession, were crowding into the barracks. When I was there, buggies and pulky garries, that's all sorts of carriages and palanquins, vehicles of all sorts drove up and discharged cargoes of writers, tradesmen, a miscellaneous mob of every complexion from white to tawny, all in terror of what seemed still to be an imaginary foe, ladies sitting down rough at the mess table in the barracks, women suckling infants, nannies, ire's, children in all directions, and officers too. I saw quite enough to convince me that if any insurrection took place or takes place,

we shall have no one to thank but ourselves, as we've now shown the natives how very easily we can be frightened, and when frightened, utterly helpless. You know, Muehler, in many ways, is better than many of his compatriots because he does see the threat coming. He does try to build this three-foot wall to defend against the chaos that's coming his way. But also, what's contained within the wall is going to be really problematic, because water, water, if you're going to be stuck behind this wall, even if you can defend this three-foot wall, There's only one well to give you water. There's also, you know, sort of the hygiene situation isn't great because there aren't that many toilets.

And for all of these people, they're different tawny coloured hues and white coming in and, you know, begging to be saved. Where are they going to go to the loo? Where are they going to wash? How are they going to keep clean? What are they going to eat? All of this is, you know, but they don't have time because at 1.30 in the morning of the 5th of June, three cracks of a pistol signal what Wheeler has been waiting for the start of the long. awaited immunity in the lines of the second cavalry. Now, at this point, a man called Colonel

John Ewitt appears on a charger, having ridden all alone from this entrenchment, shouting, my children, this is not your way, do not do this, thinking that, you know what, they will listen to me. I have grown up with seapoys, they have respected me, I just have to ask, and they won't do it. In fact, that's what he promised Wheeler. He said, you know, His men would never mutiny. They would mutiny over his dead body, is what he tells Wheeler. I mean, he's kind of right, because the men don't hack him to pieces. They run around him, though.

They don't listen to a word he says. So Ewart, in complete shock, because he's wrong, gallops back to the entrenchment and says to Wheeler, I was wrong. Get ready. They're coming. And no sooner had arrived at the camping ground. Horns start blaring, kettle drums start thumping, and Nana Sahib himself commandeers a house next to the theatre and starts issuing orders.

And this lends itself, Willie, doesn't it, to this idea that Nanasab is the nerve centre and the planning and all of this was planned. I mean, pick it up from there. So, I mean, what is he doing? The historiography of this is complicated as ever in India with sort of Hindu-Musim rivalry. A lot of the nationalist historians have bigged up Nanasab as the crucial player in all this. and slightly sort of downgraded the moguls, who in Savarka's account don't appear at all. But Narnasam is an important character, and he is sitting there in the centre of all this, and he is trying to proclaim himself Peshawar.

He said, you know, we've overthrown the British now, this is now a new regime, I am restoring the Marathas to power, and he appoints Azimullah Khan as his collector. He takes on the job of tax collecting. And his number one priority is obviously to destroy Wheeler's nose. trench before they get reinforcements or anything else happens. And the story always is that the regiments, like so many other places, were all set to leave Kanpur and march off to Delhi and join the main body of the mutiny in and around the red fort. And this was going to be the nerve center of the revolt. But Nanosab says, no, no, no, don't go off to the moguls. Stay here. We're going to

start the, restore the marathes, and we need you guys. So these guys have to wheel around, and he directs them to destroy Wheeler's entrenchment. And this is complicated because these are people he's lived cheek by jail with. Nanosab has been living in the same town as Wheeler. They've all been at the same dinners and lunches. They all know each other. His orders are obeyed. The army turns around.

And he sends rather sort of courteously a formal letter to General Wheeler, notifying him that an attack will commence in 10 minutes on the 6th of June. So Wheeler was shocked and at once ordered all his officers who got off back to their homes to come to the entrenchment that the whole thing is about to blow. With such expedition was the summons obeyed, records one of his officers, that we were compelled to leave all our goods and chattels, which fell prey to the ravages of the sepoys. And after they had appropriated all our movables, they set fire to our bungalows. And then shortly after that, the first shot is fired. It comes from a massive nine-pounder cannon on the northwest. It strikes the crest of the mud wall and glides over the barracks roofs.

This is about 10 a.m. in the morning. There's a large party of ladies and children on the outside of the barracks. Immediately a bugle call goes to say that fighting is beginning. And then they hear for the first time a noise that they're going to hear a great deal over the next three weeks, which is the peculiar whizzing of roundshot. And the fire grows hotter and by the middle of the morning, the first casualties occurred.

A guy called Maguire, a gunner is killed from a round shot. People say that they could see it heading towards him, but he evidently was almost sort of fascinated by the sight and it strikes him bodily and it kills him. So with that first casualty, we are going to take a break now and come back after the break

to the siege of Wheeler's entrenchment. Welcome back. So the storm has now broken upon Garnpour and Wheeler has to deal with what comes with it. The entrenchment, just who's inside it, it's a really strange collection of people. We described it just before the break, but it really is a rag-tag assembly of sahibs and Mem-Sahabes, you know, the sort of crinolin ladies and civilians not serving,

you know, who are in there who've been running, things like banks and telegraph offices and other things like that post offices. And they are now expected to defend against this oncoming storm. And there's some really, I mean, extraordinary characters in this. Bridget Widowson is one such, a stout, muscular sergeant major of a woman who stands in front of all the cowering women and children with a sword drawn in front of them, like, they shall not pass kind of aspect to her. And you've also got a man called Der Russet, who's a barber who'd made a fortune catering to the peculiar winds of the cross-dressing king Nasiriddin of Oud, who's also a barber, a hairdresser, sort of wielding his scissors and God knows what else,

to try and protect people from men who are so heavily armed with muskets and cannon. The siege is now fully in swing. The rebels are tightening their noose around the entrenchment, and it doesn't take long if you've got such a swelled number of people, and you haven't really made provision for them for food to start running out. And the daily ration is quickly limited to a handful of split peas and a handful of flour, which is certainly not, writes one account, more than half a pint together. Now, that is not much.

So predictably, people are desperately trying to supplement, and they look at the horses. And so horses start being shot for their meat. Old cavalry horses boiled up the heads put into pots to make soup or stew, Not one morsel to be wasted. But do you remember I was talking about what was within this three-foot wall that Wheeler quickly erects to protect his people? There's not enough water. And that's decisive.

You know, you can go without food for days at a time, but water you can't live without for very long. There's just one well inside this entrenchment. And the rebels quickly realize that if they want to take this, they've got to make sure no one can get to the well. No one can get water. So they are basically stationed pointing at the well that anyone who's brave enough to, stupid enough to try and lower a bucket to try and get water is going to get shot at. And so there are, there's, you know, crackles and whizzing all around that well almost constantly. You get the framework around this well, you know, the bit where you put the rope and pull stuff up. That's blown to bits almost immediately.

And then it means that anybody who wants to get water out of this 60-foot well has to drop the bucket in and, pull it up 60 foot by hand. It is such a difficult thing to do. Not only is that just you have to be physically very strong to do this. How are you going to get the water from the well to the people? How are you going to get to the well without getting shot? It's a nightmare. So water is going to be so scarce for the people within the siege. I think the situation is that the main buildings inside this entrenchment are these very substantial barrack blocks. So people are well sheltered, even, not just by the parapet, but by the walls of the barracks, but the well is outside that. And you have to cross this no man's land in order to get even a tiny bit of water.

And one by one, the boys who are volunteering to go and get it are being shot down. And they try doing it at night and they're still being shot. And soon the scarcity of water is such that some people say that they're drinking water by mixing it with human blood, which had fallen into our vessel from the wounds of a nanny and ire who was close by it when a shell burst over her. And so desperate for water to some of the children become. Because this is remember May. It's the hottest month of the year in North India. The sun is baking down.

And those poor children sheltering in the barracks have to start sucking pieces of old water bags, putting scraps of canvas and leather straps. And the men could scarcely endure the cries for drink, which were in all. almost perpetual from the poor little babies. And the artillery of the rebels is beginning to get more and more accurate. This round shot is rolling in. They've got plenty of practice, the gunners, and they're getting their range absolutely perfect. So every day, round shots are pouring through the windows or into the roofs that have been knocked off, and the casualties are growing very, very quickly.

Yeah, I mean, look, you can't really survive for very long under those conditions. on the evening in the 24th of June, there's a woman coming across, and a member of the picket, you know, those protecting this compound, suspects that she's a spy, is about to shoot her when another one of his fellow officers knocks the gun aside, because this is a woman who has a child at her breast, but was so imperfectly clothed as to be without shoes and stockings, rights and eyewitness. I lifted her over the barricade in a fating condition when I recognised her as Mrs. Greenaway, a member of a wealthy merchant family. When she had recovered, she handed Thompson a letter addressed to the subjects of her most gracious majesty Queen Victoria.

And the letter is from Narnasa, proclaiming that he is now the new Peshua, he is going to restore the maratas to power. And it's taken to General Wheeler. And in English, it says a very short message, all those who are in no way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie, the man responsible for the doctrine of laps, which has led to the fact that Nana Saab, has nothing and is mocked by people who come to visit, and are willing to lay down their arms, shall receive a safe passage to al-habab, which is not far away.

So, I mean, really, this letter with this poor woman who's gone through, God knows what, with the baby at her breast, says, give up, if you have nothing to do with Dalhousie, I promise you, you will be safe. Doesn't go that way, though, does it, Willie? It doesn't. So, we are having little option.

There's barely any food left. anyone that goes out to get water is shot has no option but to accept this offer of safe passage. And if he doubts Narnasab's veracity, he doesn't show it. He signs the surrender document and the idea is that they will ride down to the banks of the ganges to Satichura Gat. And there, says Nana Sab, a whole set of boats will be waiting for you, which will carry you to al-Hab. It'll all be over if you just leave this place. leave us to get on with it. This is our land. You guys leave and we will take over. So on dawn on the 27th of June, people can see vultures tearing at the corpses and animal carcasses, littering

the plains. In just three weeks, this has become a bit like the sort of First World War. There are pictures of this. And it's a kind of nightmare of shell holes and destroyed buildings. The barracks, which had been sort of brand new and spanking at the beginning of this, and now just a sort of a load of smoking ruins. And in these pre-dawn glimmer, people are packing up their boxes, taking their money and their jewels, whatever they can save of their life's possessions, stuffing their pockets with whatever their precious things are, while the soldiers are stuffing their pockets with as many cartridges as they can carry.

And they're all in a terrible state. They look dreadful. None of them have washed. None of them have had a change of clothes. And most of them are looking like sort of rancers. There were women who had been beautiful, wrote one of the survivors, now stripped of every personal charm. Some without gowns, fragments of finery that was no longer available for decoration. Officers in tarnished uniforms, rent and wretched, with nondescript mixtures of apparel, more or less insufficient of all.

There were a few shoes, fewer stockings scarcely any shirts. These are all gone for bandages for the wounded. So they take their bullet carts and their palanquins, and they are given 16 elephants by Nanasab, and this sort of broken, defeated force limp off towards Satichara Gat. And at the front is Wheeler, and eventually they make it down to Satichara Gat, although there's all sorts of incidents on the way with sepoys mocking the wounded Brits and molesting some of the women. and there's even a murder of some of the loyal sepoids that had fought on the British side.

And there ahead of them are the boats, but there's not enough of them. Yeah, and they're also, and they're far out. I mean, the boats aren't very close to the shoreline either. I mean, there's one account by one of the survivors, a woman called Amy Horn, who says, you know, they weren't close in shore. We had to wade through the waters as well as we could. It was really painful to witness the exertions of the aged and the sick and the wounded, who got on board with no little.

difficulty and all this time the enemy were looking on like so many fiends exulting over our distressing situation taunting and mocking us. So Wheeler eventually gets his own family into the lead boat and social class, you know, the Brits and their social class. The boats are filled according to social and professional hierarchy, which is, you know, Titanic all over again, senior Europeans and the foremost craft, but all had at least two European soldiers, you know, to defend them and help the boatmen maneuver them in the current. It looks like they're going to get out. It looks like they're going to get out.

Willie, just tell us what happens next. Well, if they thought they were going to get out, a number of things quickly become apparent. First of all, there simply aren't enough boats. And those that are there are in a pretty crummy state. And by the time that they've begun piling in, the boats are kind of, you know, half-sinking, and they're clearly not going to make it.

But then the first sign of something really bad happening is that some of the boats begin to burn. And it turns out that the boatmen, before they'd left the boats, had placed burning embers in the thatch of the roofs. And these now suddenly burst into flame. And this is like a symbol. At this moment, suddenly tarpaulins are ripped off and guns are seen to be overlooking the gut. The gut is in a river basin. and there are banks overlooking it on top of the banks, it turns out, are the guns of the rebels that have been moved from facing the barracks to facing the boats.

And suddenly a crescendo of fire rains down on these people, just as they think they're about to get away. And those that are not disabled try to jump in the boats and move them off the side, but there's smoke pouring off the thatch of many of them. There are women and children and wounded soldiers screaming. Many of the boats are on fire now, and the grape shot from the guns are raking over. General Wheeler is one of the first to die. He's said to being killed by a single sword shot as the sepoys rush across the shallows and start attacking by hand.

Next up is the vicar, the Reverend Moncrief, who's trying to protect his family. It's just a massacre. It is the famous massacre of Satichara Gat, and hundreds of... these civilians are just murdered in the water despite being promised safe passage. I mean, some of them almost, almost, you know, plead for their lives with success. There's Colonel Williams's youngest daughter who says to the seapoy who's about to bayonet and my father was always kind to seapoys, please don't. So she's spared by one only to be killed by another because, you know, the blood is up,

red mist everywhere. And the accounts, you can understand why these accounts will later fire up. the devil's wind, the revenge for all of this. Because you have accounts like this, Eliza Bradshaw, she's got two sons who are musicians. They are hacked to pieces in front of her. She's allowed to escape with her two-year-old granddaughter. And suddenly, I mean, she reports that there's a shout after a period of this kind of awful bloodletting of men, women and children, right?

All the people who were behind that encampment. that Narnasab has ordered the firing to cease and that the sepoys and those on horseback are no longer allowed to kill any more women and children so the men still won't be spared but women and children. And there's an amazing account. I strongly recommend a wonderful book which is one of my favourite books of Indian history in fact

our bones are scattered by Andrew Ward. It's called the Corn Pole Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857. And in this account he tells an incredible adventure story of these British officers, because a few of these boats do get off. Do get away. Four or five of the boats do manage to get off down the stream, but they're pursued down the banks by the sowers, by the cavalry.

And one by one, they're picked off and killed. And I think one makes it for a whole day down the Ganges before they're finally killed. And I think one boat gets through with this guy Thompson, who's written the account of which we've used so much of here. But it's an absolutely gripping book. Our Bones are scattered because Kampo was such a massive thing for the Victorians. There are many, many versions of this. And he's drawn on all sorts of accounts that had been missed before him.

I mean, he talks about the one that comes up, and I've seen Jeremy Paxman in a documentary go back to this, the BB girl. Which is one of the greatest atrocities, which will fire up the imagination of, you know, know, the British response. Tell us about the BBGur, what it was and why things went the way they did there. As we saw Nanasab in the middle of this slaughter, he's very happy for the soldiers and the men to be killed, and that's what happens to General Wheeler and all his sepoys, those that don't make it down the river. But the women and children are to be spared. So 200 are taken out and is a measure of the scale of this massacre. There's 200 survivors. And And they are taken and put in the BB gun.

Now, the BB guard is something you find all over India. It's from that period of the white moguls when many British men had a BB. In other words, a lover or a wife. It's basically translated House of the Wiflet. I mean, if you're Mark, it was a Baithing, a House of the Wiflet. Yeah. House of the Wiflet. And this House of the Wiflet is where all 200 of the survivors are placed.

And Nanasau can't quite make up his mind what he wants to do. that he doesn't want to be the man responsible for killing all these women and children. So he puts them under the charge of a woman called Begham Hussein Hachanam, who is a former toi for courtesan, which is not what the Victorian Memsav's fancy being looked after. They would regard her just as a prostitute. But she's a favourite of Nanas. She's put in charge of all these. And initially it looks like they're going to be treated okay.

They're not molested, but there's not much food, cholera. Typhoid. I mean, they're sitting in there in filth. Yeah, I mean, there's no hygiene, there's no water, there's no way for them to relieve themselves without spreading these horrible, waterborne diseases. So they just suffer. But their fate is sealed by the fact that the British in Calcutta have not sat on their hands like General Anson did in Simler. And they've put one of the great sort of British patriotic heroes of the 1857 uprising. He was a guy called Henry Havelock, who I think is still on a plinth in,

Trafalgar Square. Yeah, no, I think you're right. But it's also, I'll tell you, one of the names that every town has a Havelock road or Havelok Street. That's right. He's very well represented in town planning, wherever you may live in Britain. And so Havelok is moving up the Ganges to try and save the situation for the Brits. And as he goes, he commits atrocity after atrocity.

Any Indian sepoys that are discovered, often completely innocent villages also are lined up and shot. And as news of these atrocities reaches Kanpur, Nanasaab decides that, as he will clearly not be spared, he might as well just go with it and massacre the women. So there is this terrible Kanpur massacre, the massacre of the Bibigar, which is something which the British never forgive and never forget. And you know what? Actually, the details are truly, truly horrific. So at first, you know, it is thought that these women and children be dragged from the house and, and, put in a nearby shed and dealt with. But they're screaming, they're fighting.

They can't, the women are hysterical. They're trying to protect the children with their own bodies. They can't do it. They can't separate them from the kids. So it's just then decided that they're going to shoot through the shutters of the BB girl, you know, just fire indiscriminately. One volley gets fired into the packed room. But you've got, again, people trying to hide the people that they love.

And actually, the sepoys themselves who are doing this. And remember, you know, these are men who until a week ago, living entirely normal lives, you know, with their own wives and children. They get kind of sickened by this task of shooting fish in a barrel and little children being part of this. So they say, right, we're not doing this anymore. So instead, and this willie is one of the most horrific things that happens, they summon the butchers from the city of Kanpur, the men who chop meat for a living.

And these details, again are the ones that make the Beebego massacre. a thing of nightmares for, you know, decades after 1857. So they're led by this guy called Sarver, who is a member of Nana's personal bodyguard. And he, again, is part of this complicated world, which is coming to an end in 1857 of these mixed race. This whole, I mean, so many of the Brits had had Indian wives or lovers. and by the 1840s, these are being very badly treated. So Sava is one of these.

He is the son of a Patani prostitute and a soldier of the 87th foot. And he has been rejected by his father. And he has a deep hatred of the British as a result. He is illegitimate. He has been refused any sort of recognition by his dad. And he is out for revenge. So the son is almost setting when Sava appears wearing his red, bodyguard's uniform and he rives with the four butchers. Two of them are Muslims and they're

wearing white aprons about 40 years of old. The other two are Hindus in Nana's employ and all five are carrying swords. As they move into the room out of sight, fearful shrieks can be heard coming from the building. There is a terrible massacre. One of the Hindus later boasted that some had tried to save themselves by clinging to his feet and pleading for mercy but he had showed no pity. Some had even offered resistance. At one point during the killings, Sava broke his sword and had to replace it with another from a nearby hotel. This two broke in a few minutes and he had to fetch a third. So this is butchery of an unbelievably vile nature. The butchers leave and not everyone's dead. There's more horrors as these sort of half-dead women and children are left weeping

in the remains of the Bibigar. Or to bleed out. I mean, it just takes a lot. long time to die. Well, to bleed out, except that the next day, the kind of the scavengers come and they just take the bodies alive and dead and throw them down a well. So that's the other great atrocity. And I think it's only, is it five or six days later that the relief forces arrive in Kampo? They just miss this. And these are the Highland Regiments under Havelock and also under Colin Campbell. And the revenge that the British take for the massacre of the Bibigar is every bit as barbarous as the behaviour of the mutineers before it. Even before he's arrived in Kanpur, General Neil, who's another of the commanding officers, has already slaughtered 6,000 Indians

in al-Haband, which is where the boats were meant to go to, declaring that the word of God gives no authority for the modern tenderness for human life. His approach. His approach is a atrocities in Kanpur are even more horrific still. There, the Indians guilty or innocent, sepoys or otherwise, are simply rounded up and made to lick the blood off the Bibi Gar floor before having their mouths stuffed with pork if they are Muslim or beef, if they are Hindu. The idea is to take away their cast, destroy any chance of a good rebirth or a voyaged paradise. Others, particularly the sepoys, are taken and they are tied to cannons, having first been told that to ensure their eternal damnation, the Brahmins among them would be buried and the Muslims burned. So there is this sort of horror fest.

This is the lowest moment, arguably in the whole history of the British and India. It's absolutely vile. But what's interesting is that when the British papers hear this, they don't in any way, skimp on the details. The British papers publish all the stuff about the sepoys being made to lick up the blood and being blown from cannons and sewed up and pigskins. And there are letters to the time saying that if our soldiers knock down every filthy idol they see and lay every mosque level with the ground and if they pollute every shrine and plunder everyone worth plundering, I shall not be sorry. These bloodthirsty fiends have placed themselves in the same relation

to their fellow men as a rabid dog. Yeah. It's so, So they kind of revel in the detail because they know that, you know, the details of what happened to the BB go has kind of put the fire up the general public. And they are hungry for revenge just as the men who are out there in person are hungry for revenge. There is another side to this which doesn't make the newspapers. And actually nobody gets to hear about it for years and years. And that is the fate of Charlotte Wheeler, who's the youngest daughter of General Wheeler. Remember, we left him and his family being massacred there on the guards. She survives, both the bombardment and the massacre.

She's rescued by a seapoy who, it appears, marries her later after she converts to Islam. Now, she doesn't make herself known to the British after the recapture of the city. She lives in the full Muslim burqa, and she will spend her life in the bazaars of Garnpour. Until some 50 years after the rebellion, there's an old lady summoned to, you know, a missionary doctor is summoned. and a Roman Catholic priest is summoned to her deathbed. And in cultured English, she then reveals only as she lies dying that she was General Wheeler's long-lost daughter. But for years in the same city where she undoubtedly watched her entire family massacred,

she lived another different life. It's just, you know, it's trauma, God, that poor woman, what she must have gone through. But that is how she ended her days. And we also saw at the beginning how the fact, family was not accepted by the British, that they were because they were Anglo-Indian, because they had an Anglo-Indian mother, that they were not received in British society. So these kids are welcomed by no side. And so this one seapoy that takes pity on her, saves her life, she

stays with them. Which also, actually, can I just say, which is also, I don't find it a love story either, because, you know, one of the sepoys, and she's watched sepoys murder everyone she loves in front of her eyes. I mean, it's just horrific. And the psychological trauma that poor woman has gone through. I don't find it to be a love story. I find it to be kind of a life sentence. And it's only when she's dying. She finally says who she is. I think it's sort of the guilt of survivor. Survivor's guilt. It's all very complicated. We will never know because we can't talk to her. But I, you know, I know some people sort of present this as a love story of, you know, love conquering, well and saving life. I don't think so myself. But anyway, look, where are we

going in the next episode, Willie? Just to remind us where this is taking us. So we met very briefly in this episode, Sir Henry Lawrence, who was the commander in Lucknow. Now, the great sort of other set piece of the 1857 uprising, as far as the British were concerned, is the siege of the residency. The great governor's house at the centre of Lucknow is besieged in Lucknow, and there is this long and gruesome siege which is turned by the British into a great story of heroism and endurance. And in that way that the British like somehow to celebrate their, their sort of defeats and their darkest moments,

whether it's, you know, sort of Dunkirk, this is the equivalent from 1857. So in the next episode, we're going to be going to Sir Henry Lawrence and the Siege of the Lucknow residency. If you want to hear it right now, you can't wait. I don't blame you. Just on our club, you get early access to all of our episodes. EmpirePod UK.com, EmpirePod, UK.

com. Until the next time we meet though, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Durunpool.