Siege of Cawnpore

Cawnpore was an important garrison town for the East India Company forces. Located on the Grand Trunk Road, it was connected directly to the Sindh (Sind), Punjab and Awadh (Oudh) regions. By June 1857 the Indian rebellion had spread to several areas near Cawnpore, namely Meerut, Agra, Mathura and Lucknow. However the Indian sepoys at Cawnpore initially remained loyal. The British General at Cawnpore, Hugh Wheeler, knew the local language, had adopted local customs and was married to an Indian woman. He was confident that the sepoys at Cawnpore would remain loyal to him and sent two British companies (one each of the 84th and 32nd Regiments) to besieged Lucknow. The British contingent in Cawnpore consisted of around nine hundred people, including around three hundred military men, around three hundred women and children and about one hundred and fifty merchants, business owners, drummers (salesman), engineers and others. The rest were the native servants, who left soon after the commencement of the siege. In the case of a rebellion by the sepoys in Cawnpore, the most suitable defensive location for the British was the magazine in the north of the city. It had thick walls, ample ammunition and stores and also hosted the local treasury. However General Wheeler decided to take refuge in the south of the city, in an entrenchment composed of two barracks surrounded by a mud wall. There was a military building site to the south of Cawnpore, where nine barracks were being constructed at the dragoon barracks. The British soldiers found it difficult to dig deep trenches, as it was the hot summer season. The area also lacked good sanitary facilities and there was only one well (which would be exposed to enemy fire in the event of an attack). In addition there were several buildings overlooking the entrenchment that would provide cover for the attackers, allowing them to shoot down on the defenders easily. General Wheeler's choice of this location to make a stand remains controversial given the availability of safer and more defensible places in Cawnpore. It is believed that he was expecting reinforcements to come from the southern part of the city. He also assumed that, in event of a rebellion, the Indian troops would probably collect their arms, ammunition and money and head to Delhi and therefore he did not expect a long siege. ==Rebellion at Fatehgarh==

The first sign of the rebellion at Cawnpore came in the form of a rebellion at Fatehgarh (or Futteghur), a military station on the banks of the Ganges. To disperse the Indian troops away from Cawnpore and lessen the chances of a rebellion, General Wheeler decided to send them on various "missions". On one such mission he sent the 2nd Oudh Irregulars to Fatehgarh. On the way to Fatehgarh, General Wheeler's forces under the command of Fletcher Hayes and Lieutenant Barbour met two more Englishmen, Mr Fayrer and Lieutenant T. Carey. On the night of 31 May 1857 Hayes and Carey departed to a nearby town to confer with the local magistrate. After their departure the Indian troops rebelled and decapitated Fayrer. Barbour was also killed as he tried to escape. When Hayes and Carey came back the next morning, an older Indian officer galloped towards them and advised them to run away. However, as the Indian officer explained the situation to them, the rebel Indian sowars (cavalry troopers) raced towards them. Hayes was killed as he tried to ride away while Carey escaped to safety. ==Outbreak of rebellion at Cawnpore==

There were four Indian regiments in Cawnpore: the 1st, 53rd and 56th Native Infantry, and the 2nd Bengal Cavalry. Although the sepoys in Cawnpore had not rebelled, the European families began to drift into the entrenchment as the news of rebellion in the nearby areas reached them. The entrenchment was fortified, and the Indian sepoys were asked to collect their pay one by one, so as to avoid an armed mob. The Indian soldiers considered the fortification, and the artillery being primed, as a threat. On the night of 2 June 1857, a British officer named Lieutenant Cox fired on his Indian guard while drunk. Cox missed his target, and was thrown into the jail for a night. The very next day, a hastily convened court acquitted him, which led to discontent among the Indian soldiers. There were also rumours that the Indian troops were to be summoned to a parade, where they were to be massacred. All these factors influenced them to rebel against the East India Company rule. The rebellion began at 1:30 AM on 5 June 1857, with three pistol shots from the rebel soldiers of the 2nd Bengal Cavalry. Elderly Risaldar-Major Bhowani Singh, who chose not to hand over the regimental colours and join the rebel sepoys, was subsequently cut down by his subordinates. The 53rd and 56th Native Infantry, which were apparently the most loyal units in the area, were awoken by the shootings. Some soldiers of the 56th attempted to leave. The European artillery assumed that they were also rebelling, and opened fire on them. The soldiers of the 53rd were also caught in the crossfire. The 1st N.I. rebelled and left in the early morning of 6 June 1857. On the same day, the 53rd N.I. also went off, taking with them the regimental treasure and as much ammunition as they could carry. Around 150 sepoys remained loyal to General Wheeler. After obtaining arms, ammunition and money, the rebel troops started marching towards Delhi to seek further orders from Bahadur Shah II, who had been proclaimed the Badshah-e-Hind ("Emperor of India"). The British officers were relieved, thinking that they would not face a long siege. ==Nana Sahib's involvement==

Nana Sahib was the adopted heir to Baji Rao II, the former peshwa of the Maratha Confederacy. The East India Company had decided that the pension and honours of the lineage would not be passed on to Nana Sahib, as he was not a natural born heir. Nana Sahib had sent his envoy Dewan Azimullah Khan to London, to petition the Queen against the company's decision, but failed to evoke a favourable response. In May 1857, Nana Sahib arrived in Cawnpore with 300 soldiers, stating that he intended to support the British: Wheeler asked him to take charge of the government treasury in the Nawabganj area. Amid the chaos in Cawnpore in 1857, Nana Sahib entered the British magazine with his contingent. The soldiers of the 53rd Native Infantry, who were guarding the magazine, were not fully aware of the situation in the rest of the city. They assumed that Nana Sahib had come to guard the magazine on behalf of the British, as he had earlier declared his loyalty to the British, and had even sent some volunteers to be at the disposal of General Wheeler. However, Nana Sahib joined the rebels. After taking possession of the treasury, Nana Sahib advanced up the Grand Trunk Road. His aim was to restore the Maratha Confederacy under Peshwa tradition, and he decided to attempt to capture Cawnpore. On his way, Nana Sahib met with rebel soldiers at Kalyanpur. The soldiers were on their way to Delhi, to meet Bahadur Shah II. Nana Sahib initially decided to march to Delhi and fight the British as a Mughal subordinate, but Azimullah Khan advised him that leading the rebels in Kanpur would increase his prestige more than serving a weak Muslim king. Nana Sahib asked the rebel soldiers to go back to Cawnpore, and help him in defeating the British. The rebels were reluctant at first, but decided to join Nana Sahib, when he promised to double their pay and reward them with gold, if they were to destroy the British entrenchment. ==Attack on Wheeler's entrenchment==

On 5 June 1857, Nana Sahib sent a polite note to General Wheeler, informing him that he intended to attack on the following morning, at 10 AM. On 6 June Nana Sahib's forces (including the rebel soldiers) attacked the British entrenchment at 10:30 AM. The British were not adequately prepared for the attack, but managed to defend themselves for a long time, as the attacking forces were reluctant to enter the entrenchment. Nana Sahib's forces had been led to falsely believe that the entrenchment had gunpowder-filled trenches that would explode if they approached. This prompted the rebel soldiers under Nana Sahib to launch a major attack on the British entrenchment on 23 June 1857. The rebel soldiers of the 2nd Bengal Cavalry led the charge but were repulsed with canister shot when they approached within 50 yards of the British entrenchment. After the cavalry assault, the soldiers of the 1st Native Infantry launched an attack on the British, advancing behind cotton bales and parapets. They lost their commanding officer, Radhay Singh, to the opening volley from the British. They had hoped to be protected by cotton bales; however the bales caught fire from the canister shot and became a hazard to them. On the other side of the entrenchment some of the rebel soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat against 17 British men led by Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson. By the end of the day the attackers were unable to gain entry into the entrenchment. The attack left more than 25 rebel soldiers dead, with very few casualties on the British side. ==Surrender of the British forces==

The British garrison had taken heavy losses as a result of successive bombardments, sniper fire and assaults. It was also suffering from disease and low supplies of food, water and medicine. General Wheeler's personal morale had been low after his son Lieutenant Gordon Wheeler had been decapitated by a roundshot. With approval of General Wheeler, a Eurasian civil servant called Jonah Shepherd slipped out of the entrenchment in disguise to ascertain the condition of Nana Sahib's forces. He was quickly imprisoned by the rebel soldiers. At the same time Nana Sahib's forces were wary of entering the entrenchment since they believed that it had gunpowder-filled trenches. Nana Sahib and his advisers came up with a plan to end the deadlock. On 24 June they sent a European prisoner, Mrs Rose Greenway, to the entrenchment with their message. In return for surrender, Nana Sahib promised the safe passage of the British to the Satichaura Ghat, a landing on the Ganges from which they could depart for Allahabad. General Wheeler rejected the offer because it had not been signed and there was no guarantee that the offer was made by Nana Sahib himself. The next day, 25 June, Nana Sahib sent a second note, signed by himself, through another elderly female prisoner, Mrs Jacobi. The British camp divided into two groups – one in favour of continuing the defence whilst the second group was willing to trust Nana Sahib. During the next 24 hours there was no bombardment by Nana Sahib's forces. Finally General Wheeler decided to surrender in return for a safe passage to Allahabad. After a day of preparation and burying their dead the British decided to leave for Allahabad on the morning of 27 June 1857. ==Satichaura Ghat massacre==

On the morning of 27 June, 500 British led by General Wheeler emerged from the entrenchment. Nana Sahib sent a number of carts, dolis and elephants to enable the women, the children and the sick to proceed to the river banks. The British officers and military men were allowed to take their arms and ammunition with them and were escorted by nearly the whole of the rebel army. On arrival at the river it was found that there were no planks laid out to enter the boats, forcing the British to wade through the water. The rains had yet to start so the Ganges was low at Satichaura Ghat, beaching the boats on mud making it hard to float the boats away. General Wheeler and his party were the first aboard and the first to manage to set their boat off. As soon as Major Vibart, the final person, was on the last boat and gave the signal "off!" all the boatmen jumped into the water in response after hearing bugles from the banks. The eyewitness testimony of Thomson Mowbray speaks of confusion as firing immediately started from the 15 sepoys who had been with Major Vibart, fires were found set in the thatch of the boats and the British firing at the same time. Controversy surrounds what exactly happened next at the Satichaura Ghat, whether the signal was a bugle or three shots RC Majumdar writes that Nana was not present and that the witnesses said it was Tatya Tope who gave the signal to begin, while others claim it was an order to start the boats. Nana had already said that the rebels did not obey him and there is no conclusive proof tying him to this massacre. Pramod Nayar writes that the Satichaura Ghat massacre could be the result of the tense situation and not of any plan. Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson, one of the four men who survived of the massacre, believed that the rank-and-file sepoys who spoke to him did not know of the killing to come. After the fighting began, Nana Sahib's general Tatya Tope allegedly ordered the 2nd Bengal Cavalry unit and some artillery units to open fire on the British. Around 120 women and children were taken prisoner and escorted to Savada House, Nana Sahib's headquarters during the siege. Three boats had been able to set off General Wheeler's boat, Major Vibarts and a third which was holed beneath the waterline by a round shot fired from the bank. Two boats drifted to the north bank and the occupants slaughtered. From the crowds being burned, shot and sliced to death some survivors set out to desperately swim to the boats. Mowbray recounts how Vibarts boat took on the survivors from the second, while severely damaged and still being shot at. On one such sandbank the pursuers struck again. The dying Major Vibart ordered Lieutenant Thomson and two other officers and 11 privates to make a defence while they tried to refloat the boat. After defeating the enemy, Thomson and his men returned to the boat but it had gone. The women and children were confined to Savada House, to be later moved with other survivors to the Bibighar, Thomson's party had to run barefoot to evade the rebel soldiers. The party took refuge in a small shrine, where Thomson led a last charge. Six of the British soldiers were killed whilst the rest managed to escape to the riverbank, where they tried to escape by jumping into the river and swimming to safety. However a group of rebels from the village started clubbing them as they reached the bank. One of the soldiers was killed whilst the other four, including Thomson, swam back to the centre of the river. After swimming downstream for a few hours they reached shore, where they were discovered by some Rajput matchlockmen who worked for Raja Dirigibijah Singh, a British loyalist. These carried the British soldiers to the Raja's palace. These four British soldiers were the only male survivors from the British side apart from Jonah Shepherd (who had been captured by Nana Sahib before the surrender). The four men included two privates named Murphey and Sullivan, Lieutenant Delafosse and Lieutenant (later Captain) Mowbray Thomson. The men spent several weeks recuperating, eventually making their way back to Cawnpore, which was by that time back under British control. Murphey and Sullivan both died shortly after from cholera, Delafosse went on to join the defending garrison during the siege of Lucknow and Thomson took part in rebuilding and defending the entrenchment a second time under General Windham, eventually writing a firsthand account of his experiences entitled The Story of Cawnpore (London, 1859). A handful of women were taken prisoner by individual captors, avoiding being placed in the Bibighar and therefore also avoiding the Bibighar massacre. Of these known survivors were Ulrica Wheeler, Amelia Horne, the drummers wives Eliza Bradshaw and Elizabeth Letts, and the twelve year old Eliza Fanthome. Amy Horne, a 17-year-old Anglo-Indian girl, had fallen from her boat and had been swept downstream during the riverside massacre. Soon after scrambling ashore she met Wheeler's youngest daughter, Margaret Frances Wheeler. The two girls hid in the undergrowth for a number of hours until they were discovered by a group of rebels. Margaret was taken away on horseback, never to be seen again. Amy was led to a nearby village, where she was taken under the protection of a Muslim rebel leader in exchange for converting to Islam. Just over six months later she was rescued by Highlanders from Sir Colin Campbell's column on their way to relieve Lucknow. ==Bibi Ghar massacre==

, 1860. Bibi Ghar was on the edge of Sir George Parker's ruined compound- a magistrate at Cawnpore. The name "Bibi Ghar" is coined from two words, "Bibi" and "Ghar" meaning wife or mistress and house. At the start Mutiny it was occupied by the magistrates Babu. It was 40 by 50 feet, divided into three parts. A small courtyard with rooms at either end with a verrandah surrounding it enclosed in compound walls. The 180 surviving British women and children were moved from Savada House to this small space of 2000 square feet in the July heat. Initially around 180 women and children were confined to Bibighar. A group of European women and children refugees who survived the Fatehgarh massacre and an others later joined them. In total there were four men and around 200 women and children in Bibighar. Nana Sahib placed these survivors under the care of the servant of his favourite concubine, earlier a concubine of his brother. Called Hussaini Khanum (or Hussaini Begum) she was highly abusive and made sure no servants could help them. Without soap, clean clothes or bandages for their wounds cholera and dysentery began to kill them. Without any material comforts they could only sing and pray. Fed one meal a day (by the lowest caste) they had no furniture of any kind (already emaciated from surviving the siege). It is said that orders from Delhi were received to improve treatment, a doctor was assigned and they were allowed to go out on the verandah. Havelock's initial forces were later joined by the forces under the command of Major Renaud and Colonel James Neill, which had arrived in Allahabad from Calcutta on 11 June. Nana Sahib demanded that the East India Company forces under General Havelock and Colonel Neill retreat to Allahabad. However the Company forces advanced relentlessly towards Cawnpore. Nana Sahib sent an army to check their advance. The two armies met at Fatehpur on 12 July, where General Havelock's forces emerged victorious and captured the town. Nana Sahib then sent another force under the command of his brother, Bala Rao. On 15 July the British forces under General Havelock defeated Bala Rao's army in the Battle of Aong, just outside the village of Aong. The earliest sources concur that Azimoolah persuaded Nana Sahib that the British were only marching to save the woman and children and that the massacre would so upset them that they would retreat and leave India. This is confirmed in other primary sources "When the resolution had been adopted, Teeka Singh asked whether the Nana had made up his mind as to what should be done with the prisoners; and hinted that, in case things went ill, it might be awkward for some then present should the Sahibs bud such a mass of evidence ready to their hands; nay more, that the chances of a reverse would be considerably lessened if the captives were once put out of the way. The British were approaching solely for the purpose of releasing their compatriots, and would not risk another battle for the satisfac¬ tion of burying them. They would be only too glad of an excuse to avoid meeting the Peishwa in the field. Some modern Indian writers have speculated that news of retributions on rebels elsewhere had prompted the massacre. "It is not far fetched to imagine that news of ...massacres reached the rebel stronghold. They wanted to counter this show of violence by their own exhibition of power". Mukherjee, using post colonial theory blames the British and sees the brutal massacre as justified. The Royal Widows (the step mothers of Nana by adoption) threatened to throw themselves out of upper windows to death if he committed the massacre of the women and had been on hunger strike to prove sincerity. To spare the complaints they decided to commit the crime quickly that same day - July 15. The guard sepoys were ordered to fall in. Half a dozen obeyed. They raised their muskets, but shot high at the ceiling of neighbouring apartments. It was the gloaming dusk and the 5 killers entered. In the gloom Survur Khan stepped out of the house, his sword broken, to fetch another, then another. By the time darkness fell the men left and locked up the house. The screams had stopped, but the groans continued until the morning. The next day the sweepers came to throw the bodies into the well. Of the 200 women and children hacked to death, or thown alive down the well, 98 were the wives and children of men from the 32nd Foot. Some of the children were physically torn in two by the sepoys. At first around twenty rebel soldiers opened fire from the outside of the Bibighar, firing through holes in the boarded windows. The soldiers of the squad that was supposed to fire the next round were sickened by the violence caused and discharged their shots into the air. Soon after, upon hearing the screams and groans inside, the rebel soldiers threw down their weapons and declared that they were not going to kill any more women and children. An angry Begum Hussaini Khanum denounced the sepoys' act as cowardice and asked her aide to finish the job of killing the captives. Her lover hired butchers, who murdered the captives with cleavers, leaving when it seemed that all the captives had been killed. However a few women and children had managed to survive by hiding under the dead bodies. It was agreed that the bodies of the victims would be thrown down a dry well by some sweepers. No one survived the massacre, 73 women and 124 children were killed. ==Recapture and retaliatory actions by the British==

The Company forces retook Cawnpore on early in the morning of the 16th July. At first the inhabitants of Cawnpore welcomed the soldiers with great joy, bringing out provisions for the hungry soldiers, but soon they realised that something had changed in them. A young civilian called Jonah Shepherd had been held as a prisoner Putkapur (passing as Indian) with Nana's flight he secured release and joined the 56th & 53rd native Infantry to enter the city and find his family. Loyalists emerged from their hiding places in the nearly deserted city and they directed Lieutenant Ayton and Morsom along with the still shackled boy. He wrote "a strange indescribable something hovered round the place which impressed one with awe and the deepest melancholy. I could not prevail on myself to advance." They opened the doors to be hit by a swarm of flies. They came to the house at first expecting the captives to be alive, instead finding only blood. Jonah finally came in to look for his family. Some Highlanders followed the trail of blood towards the trees to find Bhudree Nath leaning against the well. Following his gaze they found the bodies. "..the whole of the bodies were naked and the limbs had been separated.." a "mangled heap" of bodies, limbs in various states of putrefaction. A Highlander vomited. In the courtyard, the tree nearest the well was smeared with the brains of numerous children and infants who had been dashed headfirst against the trunk and thrown down the well. Soon the people of Cawnpore were fleeing down the road to Delhi en masse, not waiting to think whether they could establish their innocence or not. As the army advanced into the city, quarter of the population, loyalists, hidden Europeans, Eurasians and spouses met them with joy. The street outside the police station was thronged with surviving babus desperate to let them know they were not rebels. The Fatehpur magistrate John Sherer set about signing letters of protection for the many Indians who offered sweets, slightly confused by their anxiety. As he approached the Bibighar the crowd fell away. It was he who reported the atrocity to General Havelock and called for workmen to fill in the well. The soldiers drove themselves mad in drink, rumour and tours of the massacre sites. Kaye wrote that the excesses " ''far greater' than any which are recorded, against them",'' that the victims were not Nana's people who had fled, but innocents. It was "indiscriminate retribution". The Sikhs in particular plundering widely. Soon General Havelock gave an order “The marauding in this camp exceeds the disorders which supervened on the short lived triumph of the miscreant Nana Sahib. A Provost-Marshal has been appointed, with special instructions to hang up, in their uniform, all British soldiers that plunder. This shall not, be an idle threat. Commanding officers have received the most distinct warnings on the subject.” Muslims were cremated and Hindus were buried. Most of the prisoners were hanged within direct view of the well at the Bibighar and buried in shallow ditches by the roadside. Others were shot or bayonetted, whilst some were also tied across cannons that were then fired, an execution method initially used by the rebels and the earlier Indian powers, such as the Marathas and the Mughals. It is unclear whether this method of execution was reserved for special prisoners or whether it was merely done in the retributive spirit of the moment. In one of the villages a detachment of Highlanders caught around 140 men, women and children. Ten men were hanged without any evidence or trial. Another sixty men were forced to build the gallows of wooden logs, whilst others were flogged and beaten. In another village, when around 2,000 villagers came out in protest brandishing lathis, the Highlanders surrounded them and set the village on fire. Villagers trying to escape were summarily executed by the Highlanders. ==Aftermath==

On 19 July, General Havelock resumed operations at Bithoor. Major Stevenson led a group of Madras Fusiliers and Sikh soldiers to Bithoor and occupied Nana Sahib's palace without any resistance. The British troops seized guns, elephants and camels, and set Nana Sahib's palace on fire. In November 1857, Tatya Tope gathered an army, mainly consisting of the rebel soldiers from the Gwalior contingent, to recapture Cawnpore. By 19 November, his 6,000-strong force had taken control of all the routes west and north-west of Cawnpore. However, his forces were defeated by the Company forces under Colin Campbell in the Second Battle of Cawnpore, marking the end of the rebellion in the Cawnpore area. Tatya Tope then joined Rani Lakshmibai. Nana Sahib disappeared and, by 1859, he had reportedly fled to Nepal. His ultimate fate was never determined. Up until 1888, there were rumours and reports that he had been captured and a number of individuals turned themselves in to the British claiming to be the aged Nana. As the majority of these reports turned out to be untrue, further attempts at apprehending him were abandoned. British civil servant Jonah Shepherd, who had been rescued by Havelock's army, spent the next few years after the rebellion attempting to put together a list of those killed in the entrenchment. He had lost his entire family during the siege. He eventually retired to a small estate north of Cawnpore in the late 1860s. ==Memorials==

After the revolt was suppressed, the British dismantled Bibighar. They raised a memorial railing and cross at the site of the well in which the bodies of the British women and children had been dumped. Meanwhile, the British conducted a retaliatory action under the command of Sir James Outram, 1st Baronet by demolishing Nana Sahib's palace in Bithoor with cannon-fire. In addition, the inhabitants of Cawnpore were forced to pay £30,000 for the creation of the memorial as a 'punishment' for not coming to the aid of the British women and children in Bibighar. . After India's independence, the memorial was moved to the Memorial Church in Kanpur. Albumen silver print by Samuel Bourne, 1860. The Angel of the Resurrection was created by Baron Carlo Marochetti and completed in 1865. It has been called by various names throughout the centuries and came to be the most visited statue of British India. The chief proponent and private funder was Charlotte, Countess Canning, wife of the first Viceroy of India, Earl Canning. She approached her childhood friend, Marochetti, for models. In turn, Marochetti suggested that other sculptors be invited. Following the Countess's death, Earl Canning took over the commission. Canning rejected a number of designs accepting, in the end, a version of Marochetti's Crimean War memorial at Scutari, Turkey. The understated figure is an angel holding two branches of palm fronds across her chest. Despite assurances, 'The Angel' had some damage during the Independence celebrations of 1947 and she was later moved from her original site over the Bibi Ghar well to a garden at the side of All Soul's Church, Kanpore (Kanpur Memorial Church). The remains of a circular ridge of the well can still be seen at the Nana Rao Park, built after Indian independence. The British also erected the All Souls Memorial Church, in memory of the victims. An enclosed pavement outside the church marks the graves of over 70 British men captured and executed on 1 July 1857, four days after the Satichaura Ghat massacre. The marble Gothic screen with "mournful seraph" was transferred to the churchyard of the All Souls Church after Indian independence in 1947. There were originally plans to replace the memorial to the British victims with a bust of Tatya Tope but the local British community objected strongly to the plans, and the bust was eventually installed some distance away from the site. An additional memorial detailing the losses suffered by the 32nd Cornwall Regiment Light Infantry is located inside the west entrance to Exeter Cathedral. ==Literary references==

Many references to the event were made in later novels and films. Julian Rathbone describes the brutality of both British and Indian forces during the siege of Cawnpore in his novel The Mutiny. In the novel, the Indian nurse Lavanya rescues an English child, Stephen, during the Satichaura Ghat massacre. In Massacre at Cawnpore, V. A. Stuart describes the siege and the British defence through the eyes of the characters Sheridan, and his wife Emmy. George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman in the Great Game also contains lengthy scenes set in the entrenchment during the siege and also during the ensuing escape. Tom Williams' novel, Cawnpore, is also set against the background of the siege and massacre, which is seen from both the European and the Indian perspective. The contemporary Indian report by Kalpi devi in the local journal Hindupanch covered the incident of the punitive action by the British and burning down of Nana Sahib's palace along with his young daughter, Mainavati. The British press used it to describe the brutality involved in the public feeding of reptiles at the London zoological garden. In 1876, the editor of the Animal World drew Dr. Philip Sclater's attention to this and the press charged the Zoological Society of London with encouraging cruelty, "pandering to public brutality", while one writer in the Whitehall Review (27 April 1878) protested against "the Cawnpore Massacre enacted diurnally" and headed his article "Sepoyism at the Zoo." ==See also==