Echoes of history as besieged England face India in Lucknow

LUCKNOW: Besieged on foreign soil and menaced by a triumphant foe, England’s war-weary cricket World Cup campaign next faces India at the site of one of the most significant armed battles between their forces.

The past and present cricket powerhouses meet Sunday in Lucknow not far from the ruins of the Residency, an imposing Victorian compound blockaded by mutinous Indian troops for six months during the British colonial era.

What remains of its colonnades and sun-bleached pink brick walls are still pockmarked with cannon shot from the Siege of Lucknow in 1857, now seen as part of the opening salvo of India’s efforts to free itself from the colonial yoke.

“That was the first significant revolution against the British,” university lecturer Ranjit Bahadur, 47, told AFP on one of the compound’s manicured lawns.

Bahadur said he had travelled to Lucknow with his family from their home near Kolkata -- back then Calcutta and the seat of British rule over the subcontinent -- to show his two young children the history recounted in their textbooks.

Simmering grievances against British rule boiled over weeks before the siege began, when Indian soldiers near Delhi revolted and killed their British commanders, triggering the thwarted uprising once known in Britain as the Sepoy Mutiny.

Lucknow’s British population retreated behind the fortified walls of the Residency -- the colonial authorities’ administrative headquarters in the city -- in May and spent half a year beating back assaults while waiting for rescue.

Around 2,500 of them were killed or wounded, their actions under fire immortalised by their own side in poetry and military honours.

Indian casualties are unknown. But some estimates suggest around 100,000 civilians were killed in the region around Lucknow as the revolt was suppressed, in gruesome reprisal attacks cheered on by the British press.

The siege holds the record for the most Victoria Cross medals won on a single day, with Britain’s highest military honour awarded 24 times during efforts to relieve the garrison on November 16.