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Centres, leaders, suppression and results

The Revolt of 1857 · Part 2 / 2 · Fact-checked on 26 October 2026 · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

The main centres of the Revolt of 1857 and their leaders (Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Jhansi, Bihar, Bareilly), the British commanders and the suppression, the regions and rulers that stayed loyal, why the revolt failed, how historians have described it, the Government of India Act 1858, Queen Victoria's Proclamation and the reorganisation of the army.

Part 1 traced why the Revolt of 1857 broke out and how it reached Delhi on 11 May 1857. This part follows what happened next. The rising had several centres, each with its own leaders and its own course, and the British had to recover them one by one between the summer of 1857 and the spring of 1859. We look first at the main centres, Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Jhansi, Bihar and Rohilkhand, then at the regions that stayed quiet and the reasons the revolt failed. Finally we turn to its results: how historians have described it, the end of East India Company rule, the Queen's Proclamation and the remaking of the army.

Delhi was the symbolic heart of the revolt. Bahadur Shah II lent his name to the rising and orders went out under his seal, but real military power lay with the soldiers. In July 1857 Bakht Khan, an artillery officer who had marched in from Bareilly with his men, was given command of the rebel forces, yet quarrels among the commanders and the Mughal princes weakened the defence. A British force had camped on the Ridge outside the walls since June. Once reinforcements arrived from Punjab, it stormed the city in mid-September 1857; John Nicholson, who led the assault, was mortally wounded. William Hodson captured the emperor near Humayun's Tomb and shot three Mughal princes. Bahadur Shah was tried in 1858 and exiled to Rangoon, where he died in 1862, and the Mughal dynasty ended with him.

At Kanpur the leader was Nana Saheb, the adopted son of the last Peshwa, Baji Rao II, whose pension the Company had refused to continue. When the regiments of the station rose in June 1857 he placed himself at their head and was proclaimed Peshwa. The small British garrison under General Hugh Wheeler held out behind a weak entrenchment for about three weeks and then surrendered on a promise of safe passage down the river. At the Satichaura Ghat the boats came under fire, and the women and children taken prisoner were later killed at the Bibighar. These killings provoked savage British reprisals across the region. Henry Havelock recaptured Kanpur in July 1857. Nana Saheb's cause was carried on by his commander Tantia Tope and his adviser Azimullah Khan; Nana Saheb himself later withdrew into Nepal, and his final fate is uncertain.

Awadh saw the widest rising of all, because soldiers, Taluqdars and peasants rose together against a government that had arrived only a year earlier. At Lucknow, Begum Hazrat Mahal, a wife of the deposed Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, took the lead and had her young son Birjis Qadr proclaimed Nawab. The British residents and the sepoys who stayed loyal shut themselves inside the Residency, where the Chief Commissioner, Sir Henry Lawrence, was killed early in the siege. Havelock and James Outram fought their way in during September 1857 but were themselves hemmed in; Sir Colin Campbell, the new Commander-in-Chief, brought out the garrison in November, and Lucknow was finally retaken in March 1858. The Begum rejected British offers and withdrew to Nepal. In Faizabad, Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah was another leading figure of the Awadh rising until he was killed in 1858.

In central India the outstanding leader was Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, whose adopted son had been denied the throne under the Doctrine of lapse. She seems to have hesitated at first, but once the British treated her as an enemy she defended Jhansi with great courage. Sir Hugh Rose, commanding the Central India Field Force, besieged the town and took it in April 1858. The Rani escaped and joined Tantia Tope, and together they seized Gwalior, whose ruler, Scindia, stayed loyal to the British even though many of his soldiers went over to the rebels. She died fighting near Gwalior in June 1858, and Rose recovered the town soon after. Tantia Tope then kept up a long guerrilla campaign across central India, moving fast and avoiding pitched battles, until he was betrayed, captured and hanged in April 1859.

The revolt also had leaders far from these better-known centres. In Bihar, Kunwar Singh, an elderly Zamindar of Jagdishpur near Arrah whose estates were sinking under debt, took command of the rebel soldiers. He fought a long campaign well beyond his home district and returned to Jagdishpur, where he died of his wounds in April 1858. In Rohilkhand, Khan Bahadur Khan, a descendant of the Rohilla chief Hafiz Rahmat Khan, set up a government at Bareilly in the name of the Mughal emperor. Suppose the collector and the troops have fled a district: a local landholder takes the treasury and collects revenue in the emperor's name, with little contact with other centres. Repeated across the north, that picture shows how broad the revolt was and how little a single command held it together.

Large parts of India stayed quiet. Punjab, conquered less than a decade earlier, was held by its Chief Commissioner, John Lawrence, who disarmed suspect regiments and raised new Sikh and Punjabi units that marched to the siege of Delhi. The Madras and Bombay armies remained largely loyal, and the south and the west saw only scattered unrest. Most princes held back or actively helped the British: the rulers of Patiala, Nabha and Jind sent troops, Scindia of Gwalior and Holkar of Indore stayed loyal even when their own soldiers rebelled, and the Nizam of Hyderabad, guided by his minister Salar Jung, kept the Deccan quiet. Jung Bahadur of Nepal brought Gurkha troops to help retake Lucknow. Many big Zamindars, merchants, moneylenders and the new English-educated class also kept aloof, seeing their future with British rule.

Why did a rising so wide and so determined fail? First, it had no common leadership or plan. Each centre fought largely on its own, leaders were often rivals, and Bahadur Shah was an old man who could lend a name but not direct a war. Second, beyond restoring lost rulers and rights, the rebels offered no clear picture of the future. Third, the revolt stayed confined to the north and centre, so the British could draw men, money and supplies from Punjab, the south, the west and Bengal. Fourth, the British had the advantage in organisation and equipment: the telegraph carried orders quickly, the Enfield rifle outranged the older muskets of many rebels, and troops arrived by sea, including regiments on their way to China that were diverted to India.

Historians have long debated what kind of event 1857 was. British officials at the time called it a sepoy mutiny, stressing its army origins. Others have seen it as a feudal reaction, an attempt by princes and Taluqdars to win back what they had lost. A third view stresses how peasants, artisans and townspeople joined in, especially in Awadh, and calls it a popular uprising. V. D. Savarkar, in his book The Indian War of Independence of 1857, published in 1909, described it as a planned national war of independence. At the centenary in 1957, historians such as S. N. Sen and R. C. Majumdar questioned whether it could be called national in the modern sense. Most scholars now see it as much more than a mutiny but not yet a nationalist movement: Hindus and Muslims fought side by side under the Mughal emperor's name, and later nationalists drew inspiration from its memory.

The first lasting result was the end of Company rule. The Government of India Act of 2 August 1858 transferred the government of India from the East India Company to the British Crown. The Court of Directors and the Board of Control were abolished, ending the double system of control set up by Pitt's India Act of 1784. In their place came the Secretary of State for India, a member of the British cabinet answerable to Parliament, assisted by a Council of India of fifteen members whose role was advisory. In India the Governor-General now also carried the title of Viceroy, as the direct representative of the Crown, and Canning became the first Viceroy. The machinery of administration in India changed little at first; what changed was where final authority lay, which was now in London, in a minister and in Parliament rather than in a trading company.

The new policy was announced in the Queen's Proclamation, read out by Canning at a durbar at Allahabad on 1 November 1858. It declared that the Crown had taken over the government of India and that no further extension of territory was sought. It promised to respect the rights, dignity and honour of the Indian princes and to honour the treaties made with them, not to interfere in the religious beliefs of Indians, to give all equal and impartial protection of the law, and to admit Indians of any race or creed to offices for which their education, ability and integrity qualified them. It also offered pardon to rebels, except those directly involved in the murder of British subjects. The Doctrine of lapse was given up and the right of princes to adopt heirs was recognised. So a ruler without a son could now adopt an heir and be sure the state would pass to him, the opposite of what had happened at Jhansi in 1853.

The army was rebuilt on the lessons the British drew from 1857. Following the Peel Commission (1859), the proportion of European soldiers to Indian soldiers was raised, the artillery was kept almost entirely in European hands, and recruitment moved away from Awadh and Bihar towards Punjab, Nepal and the north-west, among groups the British now judged loyal; units were also organised so that men of different communities served side by side and could not easily combine. In policy the princes became allies to be preserved rather than states to be annexed, and the government grew cautious about social reform. Taken together, the Revolt of 1857 was crushed, yet it ended Company rule, the Mughal dynasty and the policy of annexation, reshaped the army and the treatment of the princes, and left a memory of common resistance that later nationalists would draw on.

Exam traps

• Bahadur Shah II was the symbolic head at Delhi; the military command of the rebel forces there went to Bakht Khan, who came from Bareilly, in July 1857.
• Begum Hazrat Mahal led at Lucknow and had her son Birjis Qadr proclaimed Nawab; Kunwar Singh led in Bihar (Jagdishpur), Khan Bahadur Khan at Bareilly, Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah at Faizabad.
• Henry Lawrence was killed defending the Lucknow Residency; his brother John Lawrence held Punjab. Do not mix up the two.
• Hugh Rose fought Rani Lakshmibai in central India; Havelock retook Kanpur; Colin Campbell relieved and later retook Lucknow; Nicholson was mortally wounded storming Delhi.
• Rani Lakshmibai died fighting near Gwalior in June 1858; Tantia Tope was captured and hanged in April 1859; Bahadur Shah II died in exile in Rangoon in 1862.
• The Government of India Act was passed in August 1858; it created the Secretary of State for India with a 15-member Council of India and abolished the Court of Directors and the Board of Control.
• The Queen's Proclamation was read by Canning at Allahabad on 1 November 1858, not at Delhi or Calcutta; it gave up annexation and recognised the princes' right to adopt heirs.
• Calling 1857 a war of independence comes from V. D. Savarkar's book of 1909, not from the rebels or officials of 1857.

Recap

• Delhi: Bahadur Shah II the symbolic head, Bakht Khan the commander; stormed by the British in September 1857 (Nicholson killed, Hodson captured the emperor).
• Kanpur: Nana Saheb proclaimed Peshwa, with Tantia Tope and Azimullah Khan; Wheeler surrendered; Havelock retook Kanpur in July 1857.
• Lucknow: Begum Hazrat Mahal and Birjis Qadr; siege of the Residency (Henry Lawrence killed); retaken by Colin Campbell in March 1858.
• Central India: Rani Lakshmibai against Hugh Rose; Jhansi fell April 1858; she died near Gwalior June 1858; Tantia Tope hanged April 1859.
• Bihar: Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur; Bareilly: Khan Bahadur Khan; Faizabad: Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah.
• Stayed quiet or helped the British: Punjab (John Lawrence), the Madras and Bombay armies, Patiala, Nabha, Jind, Scindia, Holkar, the Nizam (Salar Jung), Nepal (Jung Bahadur).
• Failure: no common leadership or programme, limited spread, British telegraph, arms and resources.
• Nature: sepoy mutiny, feudal reaction, popular uprising, or war of independence (Savarkar, 1909).
• Government of India Act 1858: rule passed to the Crown; Secretary of State for India and Council of India; Viceroy (Canning the first).
• Queen's Proclamation (Allahabad, 1 November 1858): no more annexation, respect for princes and religions, equal law, office open to all; Peel Commission (1859) remade the army.

Practice questions

Sources

• The Government of India Act, 1858 (21 & 22 Vict. c. 106); Queen Victoria's Proclamation to the Princes, Chiefs and People of India, 1 November 1858 — https://www.abhilekh-patal.in
• The Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. II (The Indian Empire: Historical) and Vol. IV (Administrative), Government of India, 1908–09 — https://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/gazetteer/
• Records of the Foreign, Political and Military Departments, 1857–1859 (the course of the revolt, the trial of Bahadur Shah II, army reorganisation); National Archives of India, Abhilekh Patal — https://www.abhilekh-patal.in