On a stiflingly hot Sunday in May 1857, three regiments of Indian troops broke out in violent mutiny at Meerut, forty miles from Delhi India. British officers and their wives were murdered; bungalows and public buildings were burned to the ground; men with knives, sticks, and flaming torches poured down from the surrounding villages and joined hooligans from the bazaar in completing the destruction of British power and property, the National Archives at New Delhi, and the State Archives at Lucknow.
Soon all the North-Western Provinces in India were in uproar. In Delhi the European inhabitants were massacred and the aged Bahadur Shah, descendant of the Great Moghuls, was proclaimed Emperor by the rebels. In Cawnpore a disgruntled Hindu noble, and in Jhansi a rajah's passionate widow, lent their influential support to the mutineers. In Lucknow, Agra, and a score of smaller places from Arrah to Indore, British officials and their wives and children were besieged in crumbling buildings under a burning sun; some tried to escape through the jungle, enduring unimaginable hardships.