|
|
|
Wajid Ali Shah Akhtar on Lucknow
|
|
"Not Rome, not Athens, not Constantinople, not any city I have ever seen appears to me so striking and beautiful as this, and the more I gaze the more its beauty grows upon me." |
|
|
|
Sir William Howard Russel World's First War Correspondent reporting for London Times 1857 |
|
Oudh
Lucknow
The defence of a city - Lucknow 1857
|
The defence and strong resistance displayed by the residents of Lucknow and the people of Oudh, speaks volume of their love, loyalty and patriotism to their former ruler Wajid Ali Shah and their new crowned king Birjis Qadr. The masses especially the womenfolk resolved to resist british rule. Thanks to the unbiased coverage of the international media one finds an identical situation but a reverse scenario in the modern day U.S.-U.K. led invasion on Baghdad with no shred of resistance by its citizens.
Website Co-ordinator
|
|
For the defence of Lucknow in 1857 by the freedom fighters
|
The attackers (british soldiers) themselves recollected that :
|
|
"For practically every inch of land there was heavy fighting, and important places like Begum Kothi, Sikandar Bagh, Moti Mahal, Shah Najaf, Qaiserbagh, etc. could be captured only after stepping on the dead bodies of the soldiers."
|
|
At one place in Sikandar Bagh, the macabre dump of the dead and critically wounded "measured more than one yard in height".
The English Commander-in-Chief Sir Colin Campbell conceded :
|
|
"Greater display of valour was never seen before."
|
On the War for Freedom from British Rule
in Oudh Lord Canning Acknowledged :
|
"elsewhere it may be different, but in Oudh our Government really faced a popular revolt."
|