Cawnpore: Massacre at The Bibighar
by Trouble had been brewing in British India for sometime. It was run, in theory at least, by the East India Company, which governed through graft and corruption, co-opting local officials and dignitaries, and through its private army of 40,000 British and more than 200,000 Indian Sepoy troops.
Nana Sahib, wanted to use the women and children as a bargaining chip, for he knew that a relieving force had been dispatched to Lucknow under the command of General Henry Havelock. But Havelock would neither negotiate nor bargain. Forces sent out by Nana Sahib to oppose him were defeated time and again and as he swept through the villages en-route to Cawnpore his treatment of the natives was brutal as farms were razed to the ground, crops destroyed and hundreds indiscriminately hanged.
Nana Sahib and Tatya Tope, now made the decision to kill the prisoners. The reasons for doing so remain unclear, perhaps it was an act of vengeance, maybe it was to hide the events at Satichaura Ghat. Whatever the reason, the Sepoys refused to carry out the order, they would not murder women and children they insisted. Tatya Tope threatened to execute any who disobeyed the order but still they refused. Hussaini Khanum furiously berated the Sepoys as cowards. Under pressure, some of the Sepoys agreed to fetch the women from the house but they refused to leave barricading themselves in and tying the door handles so they could not be opened. The Sepoys now fired into the house through the windows but hearing the screams of the women who had huddled together for their own protection they ceased. When ordered to fire at the women again they discharged their rifles into the air.
Site of the Bibighar House
Hussaini Khanum, despairing of the soldiers, hired some local butchers to do the job. They battered down the doors and slaughtered the surviving women and children with meat cleavers. Nana Sahib had earlier excused himself so as not to witness the scene. The following morning the bodies were collected up, some still alive, and disposed of down a dry well.
The massacre at Cawnpore was to have a profound effect on the British response to the mutiny. All those Indians who were unfortunate enough to be in the path of the British advance would be made to pay a high price regardless of whether they had been involved in the mutiny or not. Those Sepoys who were taken in battle were made to strip and smear their bodies in beef or pork fat before being tied to the front of cannons and blown apart. Those taken in Cawnpore were made to lick the blood from the walls of the Bibighar House and then hanged. Whenever a British soldier might demur at such treatment of a fellow human being the cry of “Remember Cawnpore” would go up.
Tatya Tope, would go onto lead a brilliant guerrilla campaign against British forces that was to win him the admiration of his opponents before he was finally captured by troops of General Napier, and hanged on 18 April, 1859. Nana Sahib, disappeared and was never seen again.
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