Hugh Rose
Hugh Rose commanded the column that retook central India in 1858, in the campaign that is generally judged the most competent of the rebellion, and wrote the sentence about his defeated opponent that has outlived everything else he said. He was a British officer of an unusual kind for the period: born in Berlin, educated in Berlin, fluent in German and French, and employed for years as a diplomat and military attaché in the Ottoman empire before he ever served in India. He had no Indian experience at all when he was given the Central India Field Force in December 1857. The campaign covered more than a thousand miles in the hot season. He relieved Saugor, forced the pass at Madanpur, besieged Jhansi in March, broke off to beat a relieving army under Tantia Tope on the Betwa with a fraction of his force, returned and stormed the city. He then took Kalpi and, when the rebels seized Gwalior, marched again in June and took that too. His troops suffered more from heat and cholera than from fighting, and he collapsed from sunstroke twice during the campaign without giving up command. He wrote of the Rani of Jhansi that she was the best and bravest of the rebel leaders, which is the judgement of an enemy and is quoted in Indian accounts more often than in British ones. He became commander-in-chief in India in 1860 and then in Ireland, and was made Baron Strathnairn. The sack of Jhansi, in which several thousand civilians were killed, is recorded in the Indian tradition and passed over in most of the British ones.
- Lived: 1801 CE – 1885 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: military
