Person · queen & rebel leader · India
Lakshmibai of Jhansi
The 1857 uprising military leader Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi (1828-1858), one of the central figures of the First War of Indian Independence. Born as Manikarnika Tambe to a Marathi Brahmin family at Varanasi in 1828, she was married to Raja Gangadhar Rao of Jhansi in 1842 at age 14. After her husband's 1853 death and the British East India Company's refusal to recognise her adopted son Damodar Rao under Dalhousie's Doctrine of Lapse, Lakshmibai joined the 1857 uprising. She defended Jhansi Fort against Sir Hugh Rose's British siege from 23 March to 4 April 1858, escaped on horseback with her adopted son on her back, joined Tatya Tope and Rao Sahib at Gwalior, and died fighting in cavalry combat at Gwalior on 17 June 1858, aged 29. Her death became the symbolic apex of the uprising. The 1952 Indian government stamp, the 1988 Lakshmibai Memorial at Gwalior.
- Date
- 1853–1858
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Patron dynasty
- Jhansi Maratha state
- Condition
- historical person
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered — established; later nationalist legend layered onto archive
- Location
- 25.450, 78.570
About the place
Placed at Jhansi, the state she ruled as regent and whose annexation under the doctrine of lapse she contested. She died fighting near Gwalior in June 1858.
Connections (1)
- CampaignThe Residency, Lucknow
Awadh was annexed in 1856 and its ruler deposed, and Jhansi was annexed in 1854 when Lakshmibai's adopted heir was refused recognition — two applications of the same doctrine that produced two of the fiercest theatres of 1857. Begum Hazrat Mahal ran the rebel government of Awadh from Lucknow and never surrendered, withdrawing to Nepal in 1859; Lakshmibai died in the field at Gwalior. Neither was fighting for a restoration of the Mughals.
Sources
1857 archival records; modern histories of Jhansi and the rebellion.
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