1800-1859 | Battlefield butchery | Civilians slaughtered | India | Looting and plunder | Massacres | Prisoners murdered

8,000 killed and hundreds burned alive as Redcoats sack the Indian city of Jhansi

ByAlisdare Hickson

3 April 1858 On 3 April 1858, redcoats, under the command of General Sir Hugh Rose, stormed the Indian city of Jhansi, where the 22 year old Rani Lakshmibai, the legendary warrior-queen, was leading a rebellion against British rule.  Rose later proudly acknowledged that he had avenged an earlier massacre of British officers and their families…

1940-1949 | Civilians slaughtered | Egypt

British troops in Cairo shoot dead twenty demonstrators with machine guns.

ByAlisdare Hickson

21 February 1946 On Thursday 21 February 1946, British troops opened fire, with machine guns, on protesters in Midan Ismailiya (now better known as Tahrir Square) in central Cairo, killing twenty and injuring about 300.1  According to a report in the Scotsman the following day: ‘The Square outside the Kasr El Nil Barracks was a smoke-filled battleground…

1860-1899 | Massacres | Prisoners murdered | South Africa | Wounded killed

Battle of Kambula – ‘terrible execution’ as ‘no quarter was shown.’

ByAlisdare Hickson

29 March 1879 On 29 March 1879, British cavalry and troops massacred hundreds of fleeing and wounded Zulu warriors after the Battle of Kambula, after an officer reminded his troops – ‘No Quarter Boys !’ A soldier from Devon confessed in a letter – ‘I can tell you some murdering went on,’ while a Liverpool…

Uncategorized | 1800-1859 | Massacres | Pakistan

Massacre at Multan as redcoats shoot the elderly and rape the women

ByAlisdare Hickson

THE SACKING OF MULTAN – 2 JANUARY 1849 On 2 January 1849, British redcoats, under the command of Brigadier-General the Honourable Henry Dundas, raped, pillaged and murdered hundreds of civilians, after fighting their way into the city of Multan, located in what is today the province of Punjab in Pakistan. Historian Saul David comments that…

1920-1939 | Civilians slaughtered | Massacres | Pakistan | Uncategorized

Machine guns turned on unarmed Peshawar crowd killing up to 400

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 23 April 1930 ] On 23 April 1930, British and Gurkha troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd in Peshawar killing at least 20, according to the official estimate, and as many as 400, according to Indian sources.1 A large crowd had gathered at the Qissa Khwani Bazaar to protest the arrest that morning of…

1900-1919 | China | Civilians slaughtered | Looting and plunder | Massacres

British and allied troops sack Tientsin slaughtering civilians

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 14 July 1900 ] British and Allied troops sent to crush an alliance of Boxer rebels and Chinese imperial forces, seized the northern port city of Tientsin (Tianjin) in the early hours of 14 July 1900. The Dundee Courier noted that ‘after the city was entered, there was at first indiscriminate slaughter, and it is alleged…

1800-1859 | Afghanistan | Burning towns and cities | Civilians slaughtered | Demolishing urban areas | Looting and plunder | Massacres | Punitive operations

Kabul sacked in an orgy of fire, looting and ‘wholesale butchery’

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 10 October 1842 ] On 10 October 1842, British troops used explosives and fire to destroy much of the Afghan capital of Kabul, including the Great Bazar and an adjacent mosque. They also burned down an unknown number of domestic dwellings, slaughtering their owners. Only two neighbourhoods, deemed ‘friendly’, were left untouched and the…

1500-1799 | Battlefield butchery | Burning towns and cities | Massacres | Prisoners murdered | United States | Wounded killed

REDCOATS SLAUGHTER AMERICAN TROOPS AFTER THEY SURRENDER

ByAlisdare Hickson

28 September 1778 During the American Revolutionary War, many British officers did not consider those ‘damn’d American rebels’, as they called recruits of George Washington’s Continental Army, to be entitled to the rights normally accorded to combatants in conflict. Major General Charles Grey was among those more committed to unforgiving cutthroat tactics, leading operations in…

1500-1799 | Civilians slaughtered | Massacres | Prisoners murdered

HUNDREDS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN SLAUGHTERED ON RATHLIN ISLAND

ByAlisdare Hickson

26 July 1575 Rathlin Island forms a rugged rocky L-shape six miles long, lying just off the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland. By the mid 1570s, Walter Devereux, the first Earl of Essex and a rising star in the Elizbethan court, was increasingly frustrated by Scottish sailors and soldiers using Rathlin as a base from…

1500-1799 | Battlefield butchery | Civilians slaughtered | Looting and plunder

Cromwell’s troops massacre all but ‘a very few’ of the inhabitants of Wexford

ByAlisdare Hickson

11 October 1649 Today in 1649, the inhabitants of Wexford were massacred by British troops. One month earlier [ 11 September 1649 ] Oliver Cromwell, commanding British parliamentary forces in Ireland, had ordered his soldiers to offer no quarter to the royalist garrison at Drogheda, and had slaughtered almost all those who had surrendered, along…