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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 ad, free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
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B
Hello and welcome to Empire with me.
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Anita Anand, and me, William Durample.
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B
So today, this is part four of our series on the Great Indian Uprising of 1857. Some call it the mutiny here in Britain, in India, they like to call it the first war of Independence. And today we're going to look, will you how luck now became one of the most bitterly fought over cities in India. It might be really useful to just talk a little bit more about that, give us a bit more context of why Lucknow is front and center of this story.
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A
So Lucknow, I think, was a much bigger city in the 19th century than it is today. Today it's the provincial capital of Uttar Pradesh and it's an important provincial city, but it is, you know, not the center of things. In the mid 19th century, when the uprising breaks out, Lucknow is probably the richest Indian city of all. And the Nuabs of Avad have just been toppled and the British have toppled them with a view to getting their hands on, on the loot of Lucknow. And therefore, this is a place that rises up as one. It's the main center of resistance. And it's not just the sepoys like it is in Delhi where, you know, Ghalib and all the aristocracy are slightly wondering who these sort of, you know, rural peasantry turning up and. Ragamuffins.
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B
Ragamuffins. Who are these people? These upstarts?
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A
Yeah, these people are from Lucknow and they are defending their own city and the people join them. And it's a different situation from Delhi. It's a genuine people's uprising in a way that it isn't in many other cities. And therefore it's the most bitterly fought over place in the whole of 1857. There is more fighting within the city than in any other site in 1857.
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B
Look, what we're talking about is a really grim trajectory. And again, I should have warned you right at the top of this, but I'm warning you now, some of the things you're going to hear in this episode are going to be very difficult to hear. If you've missed the first part, second part of and part three of this series, let me just give you a quick idea. So we started by looking at the gathering storm, if you like, at second episode, we talked about that first Spark of resistance that happened at mirrored and the spread of this uprising like sort of almost like a gust of hot air drifting over the country, reaching Delhi. And last week in part three, we looked at three successive massacres at Karl Kanpur, Kornpur as it was. It was pronounced and written then C A W N P O R. Cawnpore. The British said Cawnpore, yes, at the Sechitora Gut, which is where the British were attacked under the flag of safe passage. Now this, this is important because it plays in Britain as a sign of the barbarity of the British. So just to remind you, this is a place where the British were promised with their women and children that they would be allowed to leave. They were not. The women and children are corralled after their men are slaughtered in front of their eyes in the Bibi Ghar or the home of the women. And they are killed not by the sepoys who refuse to shoot them after a while because they're so traumatized by what they're being asked to do, but by the city's butchers who are called in with their cleavers. And then it's the turn of vengeance. So Britain is incensed not just at the thought of losing control, but this affront of to women and children by savages and that revenge against sepoys, against civilians. As far as the British is concerned, they are all equally guilty as collective punishment. So what happens in Kanpur, it turns what is a. Was a colonial war, if you want to put it that way, into a crusade of vengeance. And today we're focusing eastwards on the. On, as Willie says, the kingdom of Avad or Oud, and its glittering capital.
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A
So two things. First of all, the thing that the British really minded was the fact that the rumor, which was never proven and was hotly contested and may well not be true, that there had been mass rapes of their women and children. And this story was put out by the newspapers and was widely believed in Britain. And therefore you get characters like Dickens who are normally known for their love of the underdog. Dickens even just writes delete Delhi. He thinks these people are savages and they no longer deserve the right to live. So there's this wave of bloodthirstiness in the press and among the commentators in Britain.
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B
I mean, it's a red miss and can I just tell you a quick story about Dickens? Because that just has reminded me of something, because it's not long after this that I don't know whether Dickens comes to his senses or whether he questions that Delete Delhi comment. But Maharaja Duleep Singh in the Punjab, who has his kingdom taken away and his Kona diamond and everything else. We've talked about him on this podcast. His mother is brought to Britain because she's more trouble if she's left in India.
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A
She's trouble wherever she is.
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B
I mean, she's an absolute thorn in the side of the British establishment. She's the one who's telling Dilly, they've taken everything from you. Queen Victoria is your enemy. She's not your mother. I'm your mother. You. You've got to fight them all of that kind of thing. But she dies in London and she's placed in the dissenter's chapel in this Kensal Rise, isn't it, the huge cemetery. And she's left in the dissenter's chapel because she's not a Christian, not a believer. One of the people who keeps vigil all night is the same Charles Dickens who said, delete Delhi.
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A
How interesting. That's really interesting. Yeah.
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B
People change their minds. But can you do me a favor? I mean, just. We talked a lot about what it was like in Delhi. Lucknow was a city of pleasure. I mean, it would. This. This was a golden age for Lucknow of music and, I mean, you do this so well. Just tell us a little bit about what it's like there.
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A
In the sort of half century before the great uprising, before 1857, Delhi is successively burnt and attacked by Afghans and Marathas from the south, and it becomes, you know, a sort of empty rubble, strew, ruin by the end of the 18th century. And what happens is that a lot of the artistic folk, the courtesans, the dancers, the painters, they leave Delhi because not only is it unsafe, but there's no patronage. And they go to Lucknow. And here, this new dynasty, the Nawabs of Ovad, found this city that is famous for its sophistication and its reputation is, as you say, a city of pleasure. One art historian said that it was like an Indian version of. Of pre revolutionary Tehran, Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, with just a touch of Glyndebourne for good measure.
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B
The lightest touch of Glyndebourne. I get what they mean. Okay. Something for every taste.
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A
Something for every taste?
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B
Every taste.
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A
Fun and games and high culture. And Lucknow's courtesans are particularly famous. They're admired as the most gorgeously accomplished. And the other thing that's very famous is its cuisine. And to this day, Avedi food is celebrated as the most sort of flamboyantly baroque. The king who's just been acting. Wajid Ali Shah famously had no teeth, so the cooks of Lucknow ground their meat so fine that even Wajid Ali Shah could eat the kebabs. And tunde kebabs, which they make still in the bazaars of the city, are my favorite of any kebab anywhere in the world.
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B
Can I just say, they melt. You talked about the Nawab Kabai. Yes. I wanted to ask you about the Nawab because he had quite a reputation. I mean, he wasn't lacking flamboyance himself, but it was an old flamboyance, wasn't it? Will he.
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Yes.
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Tell us how he liked to turn out.
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A
So the Nawab sometimes, you know, amazed visitors by appearing dressed as a British admiral, or even once as a clergyman of the Church of England, dressed to sort of, you know, be welcoming in British sort of dress. I'm nowhere to talk. I'm sitting here wearing my kutta at the moment. So I think I'd have fitted in very well to the whole Lucknow scene. And you see people of pictures that look quite like me, dressed in long avadi gowns, lying back on carpets, hookers in their mouths, watching the dancing girls dance before them. And at its peak, this was a very happy place of intermixture between the British and the Nawabs. Two British memsabs were persuaded to marry the Nawabs and join the harem. There's a mosque built for somebody called Ms. Walters who converted to Islam. It's still there. You can go see it. And then this whole world, which is such fun and everyone is making lots of money, and it's a place where people want to be posted because you can make a fortune very quickly and it's very prosperous. And these amazing architects are building extraordinary buildings that stamped out overnight. One year before the uprising breaks out, 1856, the Nawab Wajid Ali Shah is packed off to exile in Calcutta, where, famously, he brings his menagerie with him, and his tigers keep escaping and swimming across the Ganges to the Botanic Gardens where they eat the gardeners. But that's a different story for a different day. And so when the uprising breaks out, it is one of the sort of discarded wives, the women of Wadjad Ali Shah Harim, who've been left behind in Lucknow because he was only allowed to take a certain number of wives to Calcutta in exile. And it's one of the discarded wives who's this extraordinary woman and very much your sort of girl. Anita Begum Hazrat Mahal.
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B
Yes. That's why I'm Sort of getting all wiggly in my chair. Yes. Begum Hazrat Mahal as Wajid Ali Shah's abandoned wife. She's not just sitting there crocheting, she's not. She becomes the absolute focal point of all resentment from the people of Arvad. So just to give you a little bit of background about her, really interesting woman, a humble background she had. She was the daughter of an African slave, but became the star performer of the Pari Khana Music School. Now, Pari means fairy or otherworldly woman, and she's married to Vajad Ali Shah in the early 1850s and she gives birth to the Nawab's son in 1854. And then another boy comes. And because of this, because if you have a male heir, you move up the ladder, you know, no matter what your birth was, if you produce male heirs, you get promotion. Right. So she comes to be regarded as the most senior member of the court left in Lucknow. So when you've got the news of the outbreak of the mutiny in Meerut and Delhi, then reaching Lucknow, because there's not huge distances between these places, it is Begum Hazrat Mahal who is in the position to lead if she chooses a resistance to what she knows is coming her way.
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A
She is a very important figure. Incidentally, she has been very much re evaluated lately by a wonderful historian called Rudrangshu Mukherjee. He's written six books about different aspects of the uprising and his most recent one has been about Hazrat Mahal and the Rani of Jansi. These two extraordinary women.
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B
Kick ass women. Yeah.
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A
So we'll hear more about Hazrat Mahal later on, but I think we should move on to the British caste, because on one side, if you like, in the left corner is Begum Hazrat Mahal. Facing her on the right corner in the British residency is one of the great Victorian heroes. And he's someone who was, you know, arguably one of the two or three most famous Brits in India during the Victorian period. He was someone that, you know, that even when I was at school, you'd hear his name. Henry Lawrence. Henry Lawrence.
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B
We talked about his brother John before, haven't we?
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A
Exactly.
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B
He is one of that pair, John Lawrence of Punjab, who famously mislays the. Because he sticks it in his pocket and his munchy thinks it's a paperweight. I mean, all of that kind of nonsense. So the Lawrences are rock stars in.
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North India and actually they do, you know, a lot of these imperial heroes look like sort of war criminals today. And we're going to meet a fair number of war criminals in the course of this episode alone. But the Lawrences, both of them, Henry and Jon, come across as unusually humane and civilized and urbane figures. Henry, who is the one in Lucknow, who we'll be dealing with in this episode, spoke fluent Persian and Urdu. He had an Indian wife at the beginning of his career. And you get the impression from his letters that he genuinely believes that the companies behaved badly during the annexation of Ovad in 1856. So he's someone who is very patriotic and, you know, is also, I suppose, ambitious, but he's wracked with guilt too, and he's administering a policy that he hates anyway. He's also someone who is savvy, clever, forward looking and cautious. So when he hears about what's going on with all these sort of mysterious chapatis passing from contumement and strange noises of drums in the night, and he knows that there's going to be a reckoning. So unlike Puril Wheeler at Cawnpore, who we dealt with last time, who was blindsided by all this stuff, Lawrence sees the storm coming and makes preparations.
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B
I was just gonna say, I mean, Wheeler just ignored the signs. I mean, he was told, he just chose not to pay any attention.
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A
He believed his sepoys were loyal, as many of them did, and he refused to accept that they could possibly want to raise up against his army.
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B
He was willing to wager his life on it. Just one quick observation about Henry Lawrence. Cause I know there's a lot of hagiography written about him more recently. And indeed, you know, he took the trouble to learn about the, the culture and the language. And in a bunch that was often very sneering about the barbaric Indians. He still is the man who, when Duleep Singh's mother was arrested, put it about that she was a whore. He coined the phrase the Messalina of Punjab. So he's moved from Punjab now to Lucknow. I mean, we live and learn. Maybe he's softened up a bit since his Punjab days. Anyway, look, that's a by the by. So, you know, Lawrence, though, is, is smart. So whereas Wheeler completely, you know, in denial or oblivious to the kind of threat that was coming to his own city. Lawrence saw the signs and he knew that the greased cartridge rumors were gonna be bad, bad, bad, bad, and that it would be an uncontainable situation. So as Delhi fell, Lawrence with an enormous amount of foresight says, okay, I think, I think we're next. I think Lucknow is next. So he said, set about turning the British Residency compound into almost, you know, the Alamo, if you like, somewhere that he could make his last stand.
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A
Good comparison.
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Yeah. Oh, good. He didn't want to hold the whole city because the city's too big. You can't protect it. So instead, you know, have a certain part where you have good vantage points where you can shore up, where you can have water and access to, you know, some. Some protection as well as food and sustenance.
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Lawrence chooses the entire residency compound, 33 acres of bungalows and gardens rising from the Gobten. It's still there. You can go and see it today because the British after this, preserve it unconserved. They don't rebuild it, they leave it as a ruin to remind themselves of this time. And you go there, it's absolutely peppered with shell holes and bullet holes, and it looks like Beirut after the Civil War. War or something. And it's still there. So you can get.
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You.
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A
You can go. And it is one place where you can really recapture what it must have felt like to have been in the middle of this. It is the Lucknow Residency.
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B
It's one of those places like Jaliyala Bagh, where they leave the pockmarks in so that you can almost hear the bullets. I mean, it's. It's. It's an eerie place. And actually, people who go there, I mean, when I went there many years ago, it's respectful. It's quite a respectful, you know, from Indians who go there to see, you know, what's. What went on here. There is a sense of, God, they were brave, the people who were trapped here. Anyway, look, we're in May now, and the news is getting worse and worse, and Lawrence is fortifying his Residency. And what I mean by fortifying the Residency is you dig ditches so horses fall in or people fall in. It's not easy to climb up. You know, you pile up. You make walls higher with sandbags. You drag in every cannon you can possibly find, and you start putting away food and food that won't perish because you don't know how long you're going to be there. And Henry had all of this foresight, you know, that we'll need grain, we'll need ghee to cook in. That's a clarified butter that Indians use. But we will need ammo more than anything. We'll need ammo because if we run out, we are setting ducks here. So he is stocking in May as if he's stocking for the long winter that you Know, normally people have to be prepared for. And he buries nearly. This is amazing. £200,000 worth. I mean, that's money in those times, Willie. So I don't know how much that's worth today. But treasure that he amasses, like, you know, the dragon. But he buries it in the Residency gardens to save it from looters, which is, you know, again, someone really thinking ahead here.
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A
And he also buries grain. He's not just stockpiling stuff, he's hiding some of it. So halfway through the siege, which is coming long after he's gone, a whole store of grain, just as they're running out and beginning to go on rations, a whole store of grain that he's very early on gathered, buried and hidden is discovered and giving them, you know, months more time to hold out.
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B
So don't blow that ending again. Wait for it. That's a good fact. Somebody cannot keep anything to himself. Okay, all right, so. So who. Who's in the compound? We should talk about that. Look, it. It's basically every European, every Eurasian. This is, you know, the product of those mixed relationships that we talked about.
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A
Of which there was an enormous number at this time.
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B
Yeah, you've got soldiers, you've got civil servants, you've got merchants, you've got wives, you've got children, you've got pets. I mean, what we're talking about is nearly 3,000 people packed into a tiny area of 33 acres. You know, considering how many people are trying to. To shove in here, half of them, or just over half of them are combatants, but half of them are just civilians who probably haven't ever had cause to pick up a gun. And are there sepoys who are loyal at this time? Because, you know, that's the problem.
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A
That's right. Now, this is unique, and it's a tribute to Henry Lawrence that this is the case, because this is not the case in Delhi. There are no. Other than a few Gurkhas, I think, from Nepal. There are no loyal sepoys at all in the Delhi mutiny. And one of the extraordinary features of the great uprising is that this is figures from when I wrote the last Mogul 20 years ago. But I think it is that there's 169,000 sepoys in the Bengal army and 130,000 mutiny. So there's very, very few that don't. And a lot of those are now. And the reason that they don't mutiny is that Lawrence treats them with respect to and is tactful and doesn't force them to, you know, bite the cartridges and do all the other things that the kind of foolish old farts. That's exactly the word I was looking the foolish old farts done in mirror.
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B
Always here to help.
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A
Thank you. Raise the tone as well, every time. So there's a. There is this large number of sepoys as well, packed into the Residency, loyal and fighting on the British side. And this is important because it's often, you know, in Victorian melodrama it's whites against browns. And this is not the case in war as in peace. Lucknow is a very mixed and cosmopolitan city. So there are in fact three entire regiments of sepoys who remain loyal. They are the 13th, the 48th and the 71st Native Infantry. And without them the Residency would have fallen in a day. So this whole story hinges on the fact that these guys did not join the mutiny. Anyway, tell us what happens when the mutiny actually breaks out.
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B
Yeah, I mean, actually just thinking about it, every image I've ever seen is white men on white charges who are, you know, fighting. They're never talking about these three regiments. Anyway, on the night of May 30, 1857, everything Henry Lawrence has been fearing and preparing for happens. So the sepoys at Marion Cantonment, a few miles north of the city, they mutiny. Lawrence is having dinner when this is happening and he hears the sound of gunshots. And normally that would fill a roomid panic, but not Henry Lawrence because he's prepped for this. So he calmly, we're told, remarks to his staff, it is begun.
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A
It's a great line, I love it.
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B
It's unworthy of a movie, isn't it?
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A
Carry on up the Kyber. Absolutely. It has begun.
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B
It is begun. So he himself, and again, I think this does speak highly of him, he leads the, you know, the charge and this drive against the mutineers to push them back into open country. Because now, I mean, just imagine the city of Lucknow is like an island of British authority being tossed around in a sea of rebellions. He just has to push them out. We should talk about the disaster at Chinhas though, because that is coming up.
- [21:14]
A
So this is the one occasion when Lawrence gets overruled and it doesn't go well. So among the people in the Residency are several characters including someone called Martin Gubbins who is in your nomenclature, a fart. He's definitely not one of the kind of forward thinking liberals. And Gubbins is urging Lawrence to go out and fight. And so although they are a very small force and although they're aware that there's now quite a lot of mutineers milling around in Lucknow. Lawrence is overruled and they do indeed march out. And I think it's the morning of 30 June, and 700 men, which is hardly an enormous army, march out of Lucknow to meet the rebels at this place called Chinhut. And of course it's a trap.
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B
Yeah, it's not, it's not a huge army, but it's almost half of their defense. I mean, we just said it was about 1,500, 1700, depending on who you listen to.
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A
Exactly.
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B
That's always half their fighting force protecting that Residency.
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A
So they go out and the trap is sprung. They walk straight into it. The rebels are waiting. They've got their cannon, they've got their grape shot and the 6,000 men waiting for them, dug in, in position. The intelligence of the British hasn't warned them that all this stuff is waiting for them. So it's a rout. The survivors stagger back to the Residency under withering fire. The rebels are shooting at their backs. And these are all, you know, individuals they can't replace. This is a disaster.
- [22:45]
B
Is this a deliberate trap that's been set that they know that someone stupid enough is going to come try and chase them out if they show them, you know, what seems like a weak flank. Okay, so they are ready and they, and they basically, they out. They outmaneuver, they out. Think.
- [22:58]
A
Exactly. There are two things I think to say before we go to the break. One is that in Lucknow from the beginning, it isn't just the sepoys. The whole of the town, the whole of the province is entirely on their side. Everyone is furious about the annexation of the other. And everyone is united against the Brits except for these three regiments that we've talked about. And the other thing is that the rebel leadership led by Begum Hazrat Mahal from the beginning shows more good sense and more strategic thinking and more bravery and better planning than any other mutineer force. So this is, you know, you've got the best of the Brits against the best of the rebels. The Brits have prepared for this, but the rebels are much better prepared, much better armed, much more strategically planned. And so what we are limbering up to, I suppose, is, you know, the fight of 1857. This is the moment when the best of both sides are facing each other and no one knows how it's going to turn out.
- [24:11]
B
Welcome back. So just before the break, Willy described this as the best of both sides facing off against each other. And sadly, at Chinhood, you have a woman who seems to have checked if this is a chess game, the British forces. And that defeat at Chinha changes everything. So July 1857, you can say that is the date that the siege of Lucknow, the thing that Henry Lawrence has most been fearing, is about to begin. And he already begins it with depleted forces. Almost half of his fighting force that were meant to be protecting that compound had been led out into an ambush set up by this strategically thinking woman. And it's. It's because of some sort of eegit, not Lawrence himself, but an eejit with a brilliant name, Gubbins, that, you know, he loses half of his fighting force. Do you wonder, actually, Willi, is that where gubbins come from? In sort of slang British parlance? All that gubbins is all that rubbish. Or if you've got gubbins around you, yeah. Is that where it comes from?
- [25:05]
A
I think it's very possible. Because what you must remember is that this story, which I suspect will be new to about 80% or 90% of our listeners, they will not know the details. This story, this was a story which every Brit knew backwards 100 years ago. It was one of the most famous stories about. About the imperial. Well, is it the right thing to call it the imperial adventures? That's how the British looked on it and kids were brought up on this stuff. This was very, very familiar names, Henry Lawrence, Gubbins. These people were types of virtue and vice or of brilliance and hopelessness. Yeah.
- [25:43]
B
So you would have. You would have loved to get a Henry Lawrence action figure, but not so much a Gubbins. Anyway, look, let's talk about how this, this siege begins. And many times sieges, you know, begin with a gradual strangulation. You cut off things and slowly make life as unbearable as you can until people give up. But not this one. This one is a violent slam into the gates of the Residency. So they are barred on the evening of June 30th. But the very next day, on July 1st, Lawrence signaled that the garrison at the Much Ibhavan should blow up the fort and retreat to the Residency. At midnight, the Machibhavan garrison, they make a silent, perilous march. And it is so dangerous because it's a city that is entirely held by the rebels. So they have to do this sort of silently in the shadows, not making a sound, not letting anything clank, sticking to the side of walls, surrounded by people who want to kill them, and they slip into the Residency. But that lights a fuse, quite literally. Because the massive fort explodes behind them, signaling the end of British control over the city. And also, Willy, it is the soundtrack for the next 87 days because not a single hour, and this is right, isn't it? Not a single hour is not punctuated by the sound of explosions or gunfire.
- [27:00]
A
This is the hardest fought of all the different sieges or extended conflicts of 1857. And it's a nightmare scenario because the Residency compound wasn't an isolated fort. You know, it was this rambling set of bungalows on the side of a river. And it's surrounded by the dense urban fabric of Lucknow, and there are many houses overlooking it. So these immediately find themselves turned into sniper's nests. There are snipers on the roofs, and if the Brits want to cross a courtyard or go from a outlying bungalow to the main Residency building for dinner, they're likely to get shot. It's totally perilous. And as we said, the rebels are incredibly efficient. The snipers hit people accurately. And we're going to see in a second that they also have great skills as sappers, of which more later. Anyway, the siege, which begins in the end of June and now it's early July, is marked very early on by a catastrophe for the besiegers, because in the very early days on 2 June, the ultimate disaster takes place for the British. Anita, tell me what happens.
- [28:17]
B
Well, look, it is a disaster, and it involves a man we've been talking about a lot, and that's Henry Lawrence, who is, you know, not only a really smart, a tactician and somebody who understands the people, but he's also, you know, this. This shining beacon that as long as we've got Lawrence, we'll be okay. So he's in his room in the Residency building and he's trying to figure out with his top men how they're going to ration the food because, you know, they are not going to starve. That's his vow. They are not going to let a single person starve. This is not going to be carnpal all over again. And suddenly a how it's a shell which is fired by a rebel battery, smashes through the wall, not through the window, through the wall, and explodes right in the room. And you can imagine these things, you know, they are designed to let loose an absolute fountain of shrapnel. And one of these pieces of shrapnel goes right through his thigh and shatters the bone. It is an agonizing injury that is going to leave him will he in how much pain for how long?
- [29:21]
A
So he only lasts two days. But being Lawrence, he doesn't just sort of retire to his hospital bed. He sits there giving orders, making plans between doses of laudanum to try and still the pain. And he gives his final instructions to his slightly unimaginative successor, who's called Brigadier John Inglis. And one of the last things he does is to famously dictate his own epitaph, a very Victorian epitaph. Here, but lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty. And the following day, after dictating that, he dies on July 4th. And his last words are, never surrender. Let every man die at his post, but never surrender. It's such Victorian melodrama.
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B
It is. Honestly, it is such a Victorian thing. But you can also. You can also. I mean, whether he said it or not, and let's just say, oh, no.
- [30:08]
A
I think we have good records for this. This is one of the things. Yeah, no, you did actually say it.
- [30:12]
B
Well, what a guy. What a guy. But, you know, those words are going to be the thing that is in every newspaper, you know, right when they get back. This man, total hero. But, you know, right at the moment of his death, it is a crushing, absolutely appalling psychological blow for the people who are inside this enclave that he created to, you know, protect them. So the garrison loses their leader, you know, their man on top. They lose with him, prestige. It's like, you know, the king is almost, if we go back to that chess analogy, have they won? Have they taken the king? So the true ordeal, though, this is not just gone when Lawrence goes, because now everybody who's left has to work out how they're going to survive. So we've got lots of diary entries from inside the Residency that tell us how bad it was. It's not just when you are under siege, the fear of shrapnel taking your leg or killing you or a sniper in the night. It is the fetid squalor of not having hygiene, of not having clean food, of having, you know, mealworms wriggling around in. In the sacks that you've put away. And on top of that, we just remember we're talking about July to August, which in India is baking hot as Hades. It's awful. And you've got the monsoon rains, which are, you know, fast approaching or have even started. And you've got this. This packed, packed compound. And it doesn't take long, of course, for the sanitation system to collapse. There are animals rotting, so, you know, horses and camels, because they don't get fed, if humans need to be fed first. And the stench of all of this. And back that up with the incessant bang, bang, bang pound every day for 87 days. And you know, this, this sort of sitting in the smell of gunpowder and rot and misery and flies. Of course, it's a breeding ground of cholera, dysentery, smallpox. And you know that the children are going to go first of all, I mean, the first person. And you've done more than most people on this. Looking at those first person testimonies, it's heartbreaking, right? They know, they know that this is not something that they might survive.
- [32:25]
A
What is so wonderful about being a historian working on this is there are these very rich sources. They've always been the very rich British sources, but it turns out there are actually pretty good sources for the Indian side too. Delhi has the best because the British gather them scrupulously with a view to hanging anyone mentioned inside them. So it's a sort of an archive for execution, if you like. But Rajrunshu Mukherjee has found all sorts of stuff from the rebels in Latnao too. So we know individual characters on both sides in a way that we don't for most of colonial history. And so this is one of those periods when suddenly the light turns on, you can see everything. You know, the individuals, you know the different families, the different, the sepoys, the rebel leaders, Begum Hazrat Mahal, her rivals. She has a whole face off with the Mulveys because a lot of the mulvees think they should be leading this as a sort of jihad, which is interesting.
- [33:20]
B
Well, it's interesting a similar thing happened in Delhi, didn't they? They wanted to turn it into a jihad and everyone ignored them. It was like they chance it every time. Everyone just says, oh, shut up, we got more problems than you can.
- [33:30]
A
Well, there were enough of them though, to be a major force. And we'll come across the Delhi jihadis who were something. I was writing this book immediately after 9 11. So when I started finding the word jihad in the Persian sources and the Urdu sources, you know, it was something which immediately screamed out in a way that wouldn't have perhaps to earlier generations of historians. But anyway, what happens in the residency in Latin now to return focus onto that is that following the vulnerability of the buildings that we've seen Lawrence himself being killed in only day two of the siege, the children and the women are sent down to these underground chambers called ticanas, which were built by the British, not for defensive purposes, but to escape the heat, they discovered what the Persians knew before them and the Mughals knew before them, that if you want to survive the Delhi heat, you build underground chambers, often quite luxuriously, that aren't just cellars, they're places to live in high summer. If you can't get up to the hills, if you can't escape, go underground. And when the women and children go down there, suddenly one day someone hears the sound of the mining, and they become aware that the rebels, as well as fighting from the rooftops, as well as sniping from snipers nests and pelting artillery into every inch of the Residency, they are also using their sappers to mine underneath the Residency. And they're about to explode a charge. So the British respond to this by countermining. So the next phase of this extraordinary conflict, which is one of the great dramas, this is why the Victorian British love this story so much, because it is just like a movie. And the British go down and build their own tunnels, and they've got an engineer. The chief engineer of luck now is a man called Captain George Fulton, and he's soon known as the wizard of the Residency. And they play these games of cat and mouse, of mining and undermining, and there's this web of underground galleries where the next phase of the conflict takes place.
- [35:37]
B
Can I just. I mean, just trying to put myself in the. In the heads of those women and children who are there underground. I mean, you talked about some of these fabulous accounts that we have from people who are there. One is. One is Maria Gamon, or German. I'm not sure how you pronounce her name. She. She writes that, you know, we are ma. A mass of filth, vermin and putridity. But on top of that, you've got crying children who are hungry. You've got the. The sound of the gunfire that we've talked about, the endless booming. But you've also got this tink, tink, tink, tink of an enemy pickaxe that is coming closer. You've got your own men sweating hot, panicking, because they know that if Fulton's plan doesn't work, these guys are going to break through. And they are also sort of firing off charges and tink, tink. It is an unending soundtrack of stress and tension. I mean, I just. I often try and imagine what it's like and the psychological impact on those poor people in those underground chambers. Appalling.
- [36:39]
A
And I think one of the things that's also playing on them is that they know by now what happened to the women and children in Cawnpore who did surrender and were offered safe passage. And they know that they were all killed. And the rumors is that they were all raped and they. And then killed.
- [36:57]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:58]
A
So they know there's no alternative but to bear this.
- [37:02]
B
I mean, they do see that they've got loyal sepoys because again, let's just remind you that, you know, what didn't happen in those other cities was that the sepoys stayed with the people. But you've still got, as Willie pointed out before, the 13th, the 48th, the 71st Native infantry, and they are dying and falling alongside their British comrades. But they are also there, you know, sort of protecting these women. So, I mean, that women and children. And that is such a horrifying, confusing picture. But some solace at least that, you know, you've got. At least these guys are not, you know, leading us out into slaughter. So there is also that. So the residency is fighting, playing this cat and mouse underground game while also rotting in their own filth at the same time. And they don't know this, but there is a relief force on its way. Now, this road is really important and anyone's from north India, you know this road, it is the main arterial still road in the north, the GT Road, we all call it, but it's the Grand Trunk Road. Who is on their way, Willi?
- [38:08]
A
None other than Major General Henry Havelock. Again, one of these names that, you know, everyone knew, which half the kind of suburbs of Britain named after. And indeed a statue in Trafalgar Square.
- [38:19]
B
I mean, I literally just walked past it last night. We went out to look at the Christmassy lights and things and there was Havelok. Yeah, yeah.
- [38:27]
A
So Havelock is your classic sort of Victorian, dour, Bible reading Puritan. But he's just the man you need in this spot because he, although he's a Baptist, who you wouldn't really want at your fantasy dinner party, he absolutely is the person you want leading the relief column, saving you in this particular situation. And he has recaptured Cawnpore, or Cawnpore, as he would call it. And I think that the British have heard this. I can't remember there's a pigeon postal system or something. But the news, they know that this guy's on their way.
- [39:01]
B
He's on his way to.
- [39:02]
A
He's on his way. They don't know where he is. They don't know the details, but they know there is a relief force coming with Henry Havelock in the lead. And he is there with a small but hard bitten force of Scotch Highlanders again, exactly the kind of figures you need in a tricky spot. The 78 Ross Buffs they're called, terrifying men in kilts and pipes. And Havelock crosses the Ganges into Avord on July 25, but his force is tiny. He's barely got 1,500 men. Remember, 700 men at the beginning of this story got defeated at Chinhut. So this is not a force to reckon with. Despite the fact that Havelock is in charge of it. And he begins this impossible march to Cawnporn. Remember, this is territory which has risen up to a man against the British.
- [39:53]
B
Right. And so just to give you geography of this as well, I mean, so Cawnpore is about 45 miles away from Lucknow, but it's through rebel territory where everybody hates you and wants to kill you. And it's in the middle of a monsoon where the roads are turning to sludge swamps where you get stuck wheels can't go any further. The thing that Havelock does have is the rocket fuel of vengeance. Because he is the man, after all, who's, you know, the first into Kanpur. He's seen the bbq, he's seen what has happened. They are stirred to a man that they will not let this happen to the women and children of Lucknow again. Yeah, not on their watch. Is, you know, that is the thing that keeps them trudging through this relentless sludge on and on to Lucknow. The sun is unforgiving. You know, there are bullets, of course, sure, but then there is sunstroke, then there is cholera in the puddles of water that are being left behind. But Havelok, still remember Kanpur. Keep on it, men. Keep going, men. You know, that is the thing that kind of pushes them through. And he wins some significant victories on the way. I mean now, and tell us about, you know, is it Bachitra Ganj as well is another place where, you know, Havelock has some success?
- [41:09]
A
No, he, he wins the battles, but each one of these victories sees his force shrink. Of course he has casualties each time. So though he keeps on going, he realizes that, you know, even if he loses 50 men here and 50 men there, that this is a major blow. And eventually by mid August, when he's virtually on the outskirts of Lucknow, he realizes he can't do it. He just doesn't have enough men that the monsoon and the casualties have meant that even if he makes it to the Residency, he's gonna make no difference. So he makes this very difficult decision in mid August to fall back To Cawnpore. And inside the Residency, the hopes are dashed. They hear. They get close enough to hear the.
- [41:50]
B
Guns, they're so close. And then they go back.
- [41:53]
A
Yeah.
- [41:53]
B
Ah, imagine. Imagine. So what, what do you do if you're in the Residency? You know, they were just here. They just are here, you know, Fulton and all of the men who are digging underground. It's okay. It's okay. If we can just hold out a little bit. And then they retreat. So what, what can they do? They have to cut their rations, right, because they don't know when they're going to come back. One of the really interesting little tidbits you get, you know, is that one of the first things to run out is the tobacco. So the men, you know, they resort to smoking dry leaves just to keep their spirits up. The walls are crumbling around them. Fulton, the engineering genius in September is killed by a round shot. Now imagine losing, you know, the genius of the tunnels, right? You've already lost, you know, the king, if you like, but now you've also lost, you know, the most effective knight on the board. I mean, it's the wrong way around for chess. Forgive me, but you know what I mean. You know, sort of Henry Lawrence going was a huge blow, but Fulton going, you must feel entirely unprotected. So you've got spirits sinking in that sludge of the monsoon people, emaciated sick, cholera, no idea if anybody is going to save you. Just each day can you eke out the rations, enough just to wake up the next morning? That's what it feels like. And then we can introduce another major figure in this story. Willi said, James Outram. Now tell us aboutram.
- [43:20]
A
So what the British have on their side, of course, is they've got the coast. Bengal has not gone up. The mutiny has spread as far as Bihar, it's gone as far as Patna, but it doesn't go further. And so the British can be reinforced from the sea and a regiment arrives from, I think they've been on the China coast or sailing off to Shanghai or Hong Kong, one of these places. So quite early on, by September, new British troops are arriving in Calcutta and heading up through the Grand Trunk Road, along the road towards Cawnpore. And they're under the command of this, another of these sort of dour, Bible bashing Victorian heroes as they are remembered. Sir James Outram is in charge. So he arrives in Cawnpore to find that Havelok has returned, having given up. And Havelock says, this is what happened at the Bibi Ga. We cannot Let that happen again. So no sooner has Havelok's force got back to Kanpur than they turn around. But this time they've got Utrom with him. And there's another of these sort of classic moments of Victorian drama, because in this very Victorian way, Utrm says, no, Havelok has done the hard work. To him should go the glory of relieving luck. Now I will accompany the force merely as a volunteer, serving under him till we are inside the walls. So Havelock's back in charge.
- [44:45]
B
What a guy. What a guy. I mean, you can imagine he's full.
- [44:50]
A
Of this sort of stuff, this story.
- [44:52]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so they marched. How many of them this time, Willy? Because numbers matter, so there's a lot more.
- [44:58]
A
Now, I can't remember the exact figure, but Utram's brought a proper army, and this time there's no stopping them. They smash through the rebel lines and on the morning of September 25, the final push begins. They're inside the city of Lut. Now. It's a maze of narrow lanes, fortified palaces and canals. Now, Anita, tell us what the rebels had expected and why they're taken by surprise.
- [45:20]
B
Yeah, so, I mean, again, if you're talking about strategy, I mean, you just get it all. In this siege, the rebels had quite sanely expected the British to attack via the open roads, because, you know, if that's what they used to. The British march on open roads. That's how they do it. They're in formation, you know, they're very disciplined. And they'd set up batteries to mow them down as they approached. But Havelock and Utrem instead skirt the city to the Charbagh Canal. So through this maze, you know, they navigate their way to the Charbagh Canal. And the fighting that then takes place at the Chabarg Bridge becomes absolutely desperate. The bridge is. Is swept away by rebel grapeshot. It's then stormed by the Madras Fusiliers, who are led by Havelock's own son. I mean, there's sort of the weight of this pressure and the family dynasty legend that gets born here at Lucknow, once across, the column has to navigate an absolutely death trap city. So these narrow streets, this maze and William, excellent word, it's like a complete labyrinth to get to the Residency, so they need to know where they're going. They need to get through these tiny narrow gullies with sniper sites just everywhere, because there's all buildings sort of butting against each other. And it does seem as if it's a suicide mission, doesn't it, Willy? I mean it's just a nightmare for them.
- [46:44]
A
But again, very important to get the whole feeling of the avenging angels. The Highlanders see themselves as these guys believe that they are saving the angels of Albion from, from molestation and they just going berserk. They're storming houses, banditting everyone inside. The casualties for the British are horrific, but the casualties among the rebels are also unbelievable. And as the day turns to dusk on September the the 25th, the relief column becomes separated. The heavy guns and the baggage train get left at the Moti Mahal. But Havelok utrem with the Highlanders and the Sikhs, because they've got Sikhs with them too. The Sikhs again remaining loyal, run a gauntlet of fire through the narrow streets. One of the most ruthless of the British commanders, General Neill, another Scotsman, is shot dead from an archway in the chesp of bazaar. And this exhausted, blood soaked column finally sees the gateway. The Bailey guard of the Residency ahead of them. And inside the Residency can hear the Highlanders coming. The sound of the bagpipes cutting through the roar of the cannons. I mean it's such a movie, it's cinematic, isn't it?
- [48:02]
B
I mean if you were a director that's how you would, you would do it. But this is actually what happens because there is a wonderful, wonderful diary entry from a staff officer who is inside the Residency who describes the exact moment when they see that vanguard break through the smoke, right? So you can hear them coming and then through this cloud of smoke you see them for the first time. And this is what he wrote. Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm. The Highlanders stopped everyone they met and with repeated hurrahs and squeezes of the hand, began to ask, are the bairns still alive? It's got Scots term, bairns for children. And again you can see that question. Willy means that Kanpur very much on their mind.
- [48:44]
A
Are the barons all alive? Exactly, yeah.
- [48:46]
B
It's finding the one child's shoe we remember. You know what that was such a moment in Kanpur for, you know, British troops just finding a tiny, tiny shoe in the road. So that has driven them all the way. So Dusk Falls on September 25th. Have a look. An utrem covered in dust, covered in blood, clamber through a breach in the Residency wall. And what do they see?
- [49:08]
A
This is literally they go through a breach in the wall.
- [49:11]
B
Yes, a breach. So they squeeze themselves through what's inside, what meets their eyes.
- [49:16]
A
Captain Wilson has left his account of this. He's one of the defenders and he describes the scene, he says big, rough, bearded soldiers were Seizing the little children out of our arms, kissing them with tears rolling down their cheeks and thanking God that they had come in time to save them from the fate of those in Kaanpur. But, but, but, but they make it there. They've, they've, they've broken through the siege. But the following morning, a terrible realization dawns on them all.
- [49:46]
B
Well, so getting there is one thing, but what shape are you in when you've got there? So they've lost, in this absolutely daring mission, they have lost over 500 men just to get to this point, you know, to the children and the, the kissing and the, the biscuits. And they are so depleted. Their baggage train, just remember, has most of their supplies. Most of the cannons and heavy artillery has been left there and that's completely cut off. And they're looking around at the wounded and the depleted and the women and the children and they realize, how the hell do we get them out of here? Because we Almost, we lost 500 people trying to get into this rebel held city. How the hell are we going to get these people out? And something even worse. They hadn't brought food. No. So, you know, you've got these starving people looking at them going, did you bring anything? You know, we've been starving to death. Do you have anything? But they haven't. And not only that, but there are now two and a half thousand more mouths to feed here in this enclave. So what do you do in that situation, Willy? What can you do?
- [50:50]
A
So they've got no transport to evacuate the women and children out. They don't have the strength to fight their way out now. They've got in. And the 3,000 men of the relief force are now trapped alongside the relief original garrison. So the firing starts again, the flies return and the first relief of Lucknow is over. And what is known in the Victorian history books as the second siege of Lucknow begins.
- [51:15]
B
From this point till the next time we meet though, it's goodbye from me.
- [51:18]
A
Anita Arnan and goodbye from me, William Dalrymple.
- [51:30]
C
The Volkswagen Beetle started out as Hitler's dream car. It wound up as a beloved hippie icon and the best selling car of all time.
- [51:38]
A
How did that happen?
- [51:39]
C
I'm Jacob Goldstein. And I'm Robert Smith. On business history, we tell the surprising stories behind the inventions and entrepreneurs that shaped our economy. And the story of the Beetle is truly surprising. It has so much in it. He says you should be able to mount machine guns on it. Sure, not for the family vacation, but, you know, for other things, other plans. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts and for full video episodes, search Business history podcast on YouTube.