The British were driven back into their forts, where they were besieged. There were numerous massacres of British troops, most notoriously in 1857 at Kanpur, which inflamed public opinion back home and fuelled a wave of revenge as British forces regained the initiative. They began punishing the rebels, shooting and hanging them in huge numbers, or using the traditional Mughal punishment of firing them from the mouths of cannon. Blamed for the uprising, the military and administrative role of the British East India Company was removed in 1858 and replaced by direct government control.
