Capture of Lucknow

Capture of Lucknow
Part of Indian rebellion of 1857
Date 1 March – 21 March, 1858 Location Lucknow, Awadh, India Result East India Company victory
Belligerents
East India Company	Oudh rebels supported by rebel Company sepoys
Commanders and leaders
Sir Colin Campbell	Begum Hazrat Mahal
Strength
31,000 104 guns	100,000 (?) unknown number of guns
Casualties and losses
127 killed 595 wounded	Unknown

The Capture of Lucknow (Hindi: लखनऊ का क़ब्ज़ा, Urdu: لکھنؤ کا قبضہ‎) was a battle of Indian rebellion of 1857. The British recaptured the city of Lucknow which they had abandoned in the previous winter after the relief of a besieged garrison in the Residency, and destroyed the organised resistance by the rebels in the Kingdom of Awadh (or Oudh, as it was referred to in most contemporary accounts).

Oudh had been annexed by the East India Company only a year before a general mutiny broke out in the Company's Bengal Army. The annexation had been accompanied by several instances of expropriation of royal and landholders' estates on sometimes flimsy grounds of non-payment of taxes, or difficulties in proving title to lands. Many sepoys (native soldiers) of the Company's Bengal Army had been recruited from high-caste and landowning communities in Oudh. There was increasing unrest in the Bengal Army, as privileges and customary allowances they had previously enjoyed were withdrawn. With uncertainty over their rights to property in Oudh, they felt that their status both as soldiers and citizens was under threat.

When the rebellion broke out in May 1857, it threatened British authority in several areas of India, but most particularly in Oudh, where the resentful dispossessed rulers and landowners joined with the mutinied regiments (Bengal Native troops, and Oudh Irregular units formerly belonging to the Kingdom of Oudh) in what became a national rebellion.

From 1 July to 26 November, 1857, the British had withstood the siege of the Residency to the north of the city. When the besieged garrison was finally relieved by the British commander-in-chief, Sir Colin Campbell, the Residency was evacuated, as Campbell's communications were threatened. He returned to Cawnpore from where the relief expedition had been mounted, with all the civilians evacuated from the Residency and the sick and wounded. However, he left a division of 4,000 men under Sir James Outram to hold the Alambagh, a walled park two miles south of the city.

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