Tantia Tope Was Seized Asleep in the Paron Jungle on the Night of 7 April 1859 by Man Singh of Narwar, a Chief He Trusted, and Hanged at Sipri on the 18th

On the night of 7 April 1859, Man Singh came to a hiding place in the Paron jungle with a party of sepoys a short way behind him. Tantia Tope was asleep. Malleson, whose history of the war was published in 1880, says he was seized, roughly woken and in Major Richard Meade’s camp by sunrise on the 8th.

Eleven days later, at five in the afternoon of 18 April, he was hanged at Sipri, now Shivpuri. The court-martial that condemned him heard one charge, that he had waged war against the British Government. British papers call him Tantia Topi, while Madhya Pradesh Tourism writes Tatya Tope. Between May 1857 and that April he had commanded a rebel army at Cawnpore, marched to relieve Jhansi, taken Gwalior alongside the Rani and outrun British columns for most of a year.

An aide-de-camp to a pensioner’s heir

The statement he signed on 10 April 1859 gives his name as Tantia Topi, his father’s as Pandurang and his home as Bithur. He put his age at about forty-five and his post with the Nana Sahib as “companion or aide-de-camp”.

The Nana was the adopted son of Baji Rao, the former Peshwa, whom the Company had pensioned. When the old man died, the Company refused to continue the pension. Holmes, who defends the Company’s reading of the original agreement, says the claim was rejected on those terms, and our piece on Dalhousie sets out the dispute. Tantia was raised in Baji Rao’s household and taught to regard the Nana as his lord, Malleson adds.

At Cawnpore in June 1857 his part is contested. Sepoys imprisoned the Nana and himself, his statement says, and on the day the Europeans left the entrenchment by river he got forty boats ready and put them aboard, after which the sepoys began the killing. Holmes places him at the riverbank to carry out the Nana’s orders and calls the claim that the Nana was a prisoner “unworthy of credit”. A witness at the Cawnpore inquiry, cited in Holmes’s appendix, said Tantia and an adviser called Baba Bhut gave the order for the killings of 15 July. At his court-martial Tantia said he had nothing to do with any murder, and he was not tried for one. What the British did at Cawnpore afterwards is in our account of the revenge for 1857.

Windham, November 1857

Earlier that autumn Tantia had gone to Morar, by his own account on the Nana’s orders, and brought the Gwalior Contingent back to Kalpi. Holmes calls the Contingent the most formidable part of the rebel army and says it had accepted Tantia’s offer to lead it against the English. By Holmes’s count he crossed the Jumna on 10 November with about 25,000 men, the Nana’s followers included.

Major-General Charles Windham, holding Cawnpore with Sir Colin Campbell away at Lucknow, had about 1,700 men and ten guns. He attacked on 26 November and took three guns. In the pullback toward the city Tantia saw a weakness he could use, Malleson says. At midday on the 27th a heavy cannonade opened on Windham’s right and the attack spread along his line. Sixty or seventy guns stood against him in Holmes’s count, though John Adye, whose account of the defence Holmes cites, counted fifty.

Windham fell back into his entrenchment and lost the town, his baggage and his stores. The entrenchment and the bridge over the Ganges held, and Campbell galloped across the bridge on the evening of 28 November. Campbell attacked on 6 December and overran the Contingent’s camp, with chapatis still heating on the fires, Holmes writes. Two lines in the statement sum up the fight: a battle of eleven days, then “we all ran away”.

Jhansi, Kunch and the fall of Kalpi

Back at Kalpi, by his own statement, Tantia attacked Charkhari for eleven days and took it, with twenty-four guns and three lakh rupees (₹300,000) from its raja. A note from the Rani of Jhansi then reached him, asking for help against the British. By his count the army that reached Jhansi numbered 22,000 men and 28 guns.

Sir Hugh Rose was besieging the city. A bonfire on the hills on the evening of 31 March 1858 told the besieged, and signal flags told Rose, that Tantia was coming. At half past four the next morning the two armies met by the Betwa river. Rose sent horse artillery and dragoons at one flank, charged the other himself and saw the first line break, according to Holmes. Under cover of his guns Tantia crossed the Betwa, and 28 of them were taken. The Rani’s story has the siege that followed.

Rose fought him again at Kunch in early May. The battle lasted till noon, Tantia’s statement says, and he went afterwards to his parents’ home near Jalaun. Soldiers in his own ranks abused him for running before the fight was over, in Holmes’s telling. By 25 May, Holmes says, Rose had taken Kalpi and sent a column after the rebels who fled it.

Gwalior, June 1858

The Rani, Rao Sahib (the Nana’s nephew) and Tantia regrouped at Gopalpur and reached Gwalior on 30 May. Sindhia, the ruler of Gwalior, marched out on 1 June, and after one round from his guns his army, except for the bodyguard, went over to them, Holmes says. In Tantia’s statement there was a day’s fight, Sindhia’s army joined three days later, and pay was issued from the Gwalior treasury through its treasurer. The rebels proclaimed the Nana Peshwa, adds Holmes.

Rose marched from Kalpi on 6 June. The Rani died in the fighting, and on 19 June the British retook the city. Tantia, “in accordance with his usual custom”, had long since left, Holmes writes. According to the statement, they were defeated and fled with twenty-five guns.

Brigadier Robert Napier caught the rebels on the 22nd at Jaora Alipur. The statement’s account of it is short: “We fired five shots, the English army fired four shots,” and then they ran, leaving all their guns. Between 300 and 400 rebels were killed, by Holmes’s count. Across the Chambal lay Rajputana, and Tantia and Rao Sahib crossed into it.

More than nine months of marching

Rajputana and Malwa together cover some 161,700 square miles, Malleson says, and Tantia crossed them more than once. In Holmes’s account he took four guns at Tonk, levied money at Jhalrapatan and left in September 1858 with about 9,000 men. The raja there agreed to pay fifteen lakh and had paid five by the next day, according to Tantia’s statement.

Defeats kept thinning the army. Near Rajgarh in September, Holmes writes, 8,000 of his men fled from fewer than 1,300 and left thirty guns. He crossed the Narmada in the autumn, could not reach Nagpur and doubled back west. Brigadier Parke caught him at Chota Udaipur on the morning of 1 December after a march of about 240 miles in nine days. At Partabgarh on 25 December he attacked Major Rocke’s small force and broke through a pass, the one time Holmes credits him with taking the offensive. Together with Prince Firoz Shah’s men his force came to about 2,000 by January 1859, in Holmes’s count.

Malleson called the marches wonderful and credited him with a good eye for ground, but wrote that he never exposed himself in action and never used his superior cavalry to cripple his pursuers. Holmes put it that in Tantia’s eyes “to fight battles was no part of a general’s business”. Both wrote from the British side. The pursuers kept pace, with Brigadier Somerset marching 70 miles in 48 hours and later 230 miles in nine days.

Queen Victoria’s proclamation of 1 November 1858 offered pardon to rebels who had not taken part in murder. The chiefs with Tantia persuaded their men it was a delusion, Holmes says. Our piece on Hazrat Mahal covers her reply to it.

Man Singh and the night of 7 April

Man Singh was a feudatory of Sindhia who had lost his estates to his overlord and turned outlaw, in Holmes’s description. The quarrel was not a consequence of the mutiny, Malleson adds. After Barod, Tantia’s statement says, the Rao Sahib sent for Man Singh, and after Tantia split from the Rao Sahib he went to the Paron jungle and found Man Singh there. When Man Singh asked why he had left his force, he answered that he was “tired of running away”.

Napier had sent Major Richard Meade out with a small detachment, and in March Meade opened talks with Man Singh’s agent. Sir Robert Hamilton telegraphed on 27 March, Malleson says, that Man Singh’s life would be spared and his claims considered. On 2 April he gave himself up. Meade’s report of 8 April, printed by Malleson, says that on the forenoon of 7 April a man named Pribhu Lal told him Man Singh would probably help but wanted Shahabad, Pauri or another part of the old Narwar territory guaranteed in return for taking Tantia. All Meade could say was that any claim would be considered.

Sepoys of the 9th Bombay Native Infantry were told to obey Man Singh, and nobody gave them Tantia’s name. Before surrendering, Man Singh had consulted him and left a man with him, saying “Stop wherever this man takes you,” the statement records. He arrived on the third night after Tantia’s message. Tantia says he went to sleep, and “some of the Sipahis of the Government came and seized me”. Nothing in the statement says Man Singh brought them, though Malleson and Holmes do.

The court-martial and the gallows

Meade took the statement on 10 April and ended it with a note that Tantia made it freely and that no promise had been held out to him.

A warning from Man Singh that Tantia had tampered with the guards led Hamilton to order a quick trial, Holmes says. The court-martial sat on the morning of 15 April in an officer’s bungalow. Madhya Pradesh Tourism’s Shivpuri brochure places the trial in the front room of Kothi number 17. Malleson gives the charge as being in rebellion between June 1857 and December 1858, with no other count. In reply he said he had obeyed the Nana until Kalpi and then the Rao Sahib, and “had nothing to do with the murder of any European men, women, or children”. Guilty by evening, he was held in Sipri fort for three days.

On 18 April the troops formed a hollow square around the gallows, and Meade read the charge, the finding and the sentence. Tantia’s fetters were struck off and “of his own accord, he put his head into the noose”, Holmes writes.

The two historians disagree on whether the sentence was right. Holmes argues that Tantia had rebelled as a British subject and that “abundant evidence” showed he had lied about Cawnpore, though he was convicted on the lesser charge. For Malleson “the punishment was greater than the offence”. He compares Tantia to Hofer, whom Napoleon had shot, and wonders whether his name is not often spoken with respect and affection in the valleys of the Chambal, Narmada and Parbati.

Madhya Pradesh Tourism says the Tatya Tope Memorial Park in Shivpuri stands where he was hanged. India Post issued a 50 paise stamp on 10 May 1984. Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma released a 200 rupee commemorative coin and a 10 rupee circulation coin in New Delhi on 18 April 2016, GKToday reported.

The claim that he was never hanged

A descendant, Parag Tope, argues in Tatya Tope’s Operation Red Lotus that Tantia was killed in battle. The introduction to his interview with Deccan Herald’s Utpal Borpujari, reposted by Sanskriti Magazine, says the book holds that he “was killed in action a few months prior to that”. The biggest find, Parag Tope says, was an eyewitness account by a Major Paget of his death at Chhipa Barod at half past six on the morning of 1 January 1859. Neither that account nor the Urdu letters the family says it found are reproduced in the interview.

Published accounts of the book disagree about who was hanged instead. ThePrint (18 April 2023) reports Parag Tope as saying Man Singh was hanged in Tope’s place. A Setu reviewer (August 2017) summarises it differently, as “a much older look alike” handed over by Man Singh.

British accounts do put a fight at Barod in the days after Partabgarh. Somerset came upon Tantia there, in Malleson’s account, after Benson had caught him at Zirapur, and the rebels fled to Nahargarh, where the fort’s keeper fired on them. Tantia’s own statement lists the same places in the same order, and says the Rao Sahib then sent for Man Singh. Malleson gives no date for Barod. The British Library holds the statement and Tantia’s order book as file IOR/H/727a.