324. Indian Uprising 1857: Massacre and Revenge in Kanpur (Part 3)

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William DeRimple. And today we're going to confront the darkest chapter of the Great Uprising of 1857, remembered in India as the First War of Independence, remembered in Britain as the Indian Mutiny. And the darkest chapter is the terrible massacre at Saticharagat and then later at the Bibigar in Kornpur. Kornpur as it was then, Khanpur 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, rumors of rebellion are sweeping down the Ganges towards it. And in the middle of 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 Kornpur 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 defenseless women and children in the Biblegard, the angels of Albion, as the British papers called them, all of these images haunted British nightmares for generations, and no new army squaddy or ICS officer arrived in the subcontinent without being first warned, remember cornpour. The Kanpur 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 do try and go back and listen to them because they set the scene well.

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