A Diary Kept By Mrs. R. C. Germon, At Lucknow, Between The Months Of May And December, 1857. [Illustrated Edition]

by Maria Germon

[Illustrated with over one hundred maps, photos and portraits, of the battles, individuals and places involved in the Indian Mutiny]

Maria Vincent Germon, wife of an officer of the 13th Bengal Native Infantry, survived the siege of Lucknow where 3000 people in the Residency held out against a force of 20,000 Indian soldiers and irregulars in 1857. Mrs. Germon makes the reader live alongside her through the siege and the dirt, overcrowding, boils, lice and death of friends.

Genres: History

170 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1870

About the author

Mrs. Maria Vincent Germon, d.1898, was the wife of one of the commanders of the outpost at Lucknow during the Siege of Lucknow in 1857. She had married Col. Richard Charles Germon in 1851 whilst in Calcutta.

Mrs. R.C. Germon

Reviews

[Sonal Panse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but, unsurprisingly, not very introspective.

This woman says of Nana Sahib, "This Rajah is a Mahratta, a notedly treacherous race", but she is not insightful enough to wonder at her own presence in his country and come to the conclusion that she herself might be of the decidedly larcenous ilk.

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[Christiane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a first-hand account of the siege of Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny in 1857.

For three months military personnel, women and children lived under ever more difficult conditions in the residency compound, surrounded by the mutineers and desperately awaiting reinforcements, all the while looking death in the face, either of starvation or because “everyone agrees that the only plan is to blow ourselves up, if the reinforcements do not come in time.”

While they were trying to hang on news reached them of atrocities committed in other parts of the country, worst of all the bloody Cawnpore massacre.

In an almost matter-of-fact way Mrs. Germon who surprised herself by her ability to cope, describes the overcrowded conditions, the ever growing shortage of food and the almost constant enemy fire they had to endure.
Trapped in the compound they suffered under the extreme heat, rats, mosquitoes, flies, centipedes and scorpions. They died of bullet wounds, sunstroke, smallpox, dysentery and cholera and were buried in mass graves.

The diary ends with the chaotic evacuation of the residency in Lucknow and the escape via Allahabad to Calcutta.

[Avis Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

Available at Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47814