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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon.

And me, William Durimple.

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 Satichara Gat and then later at the

BBGar in Cornpour.

Cornpour as it was then, Kanpur 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, rumours 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

...