Angels of Albion

This study is about the Indian Mutiny of 1857, told mainly from the womens point of view. It is a narrative history of the various sieges, massacres, triumphs and debacles of the mutiny based on these passive eye-witness accounts, dealing not so much with the military action as with the immediate consequences of it on the women involved. The mutiny is a particularly interesting campaign to explore in this way, since many blamed the memsahibs' behaviour for exacerbating it in the first place, while once the uprising was underway and some of the massacres of British women and children grew apparent, it became a sort of crusade to avenge the daughters of Albion. This book is not a public history, narrated by the professional fighters, but a very personal one, witnessed by the memsahibs, the British women who found themselves swept into the melee by default, and who were able to chronicle the whole campaign.