India's Historic Battles Lucknow, 1857

by Rosie Llewellyn Jones

The city of Lucknow was the epicentre of the uprising of 1857. In Lucknow, 1857 ― part of a new series of books on India’s historic battles ― historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones examines the conflict in detail, from the British annexation of Awadh to the Indian response and the subsequent revolt by sepoys. The defeat of a unit of the East India Company’s army at Chinhat led immediately to the siege of the extensive British Residency in the heart of the city. Here, nearly 3,000 people ― British, Indian and Anglo-Indian ― held out for four and a half months. The winter saw huge defensive barricades being built around Lucknow, but the British recapture was the inevitable outcome, with their superior firepower. This richly illustrated field guide draws on Llewellyn-Jones’s intimate knowledge of the city to paint a vivid picture of the events that unfolded in this historic urban battlefield.

Genres: History

176 pages, Paperback

Published May 10, 2022

Reviews

[Yatin Sethi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well this book took me time to complete as the book is very heavy on names, dates and numbers. The topic of the revolt is well researched with lot of images of the places. The book is informative, though I have mixed feeling for the same. Read it if you would like to know more about the history of Lucknow the book describes it pretty well.

[Siddhant Agarwal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout the fight for independence, there have been uprisings across the country and there are some stories that only a handful of people know. This series explores all those stories and bring them to the forefront. Lucknow 1857 explores the series of events that took place from the Battle of Chinhat in June of 1857 to the recapture of Lucknow on March 1858. What I loved about the book is that it is a non-fiction history book, but it reads like a novel. The book is structured in a wonderful manner with the background, the commanders who were involved, the chronology of the events, and how everything unfolded during that period. The text is wonderfully supported with maps and photographs, both past and present which help you realise how things changed and places lost their essence as the fight went on. The research in the book is wonderfully done and I loved the small snippets of facts that make their way into the text which make the read even more intriguing.

[Anshul · Rating 5 out of 5]

What began as an army mutiny, when Indian soldiers turned on their British officers, quickly became a revolt against British rule, which spread across northern India.

A richly illustrative series of India's Historic Battles, Rosie Llewellyn Jones brings to life the events that occurred between 1857 and 1858 in the city of Lucknow.

This is a narrative that bears a strong objectivity, reflection of a brilliant historian supported by the facts and accounts from the following months of uprising, siege that took place at the Residency and the subsequent battle that engulfed many lives and turned the fate of a kingdom.

(I am glad I picked this as my 60th read of the year which quite tidied my tally for 2025)