Jhansi Fort: Bundela Origins, Rose’s Siege and the Rani’s Night Escape

Jhansi Fort is a hill fort on Bangra hill, in the middle of Jhansi city in Uttar Pradesh, built in 1613 by Raja Bir Singh Deo, the Bundela ruler of Orchha. It passed to the Marathas in the 18th century and was taken over by the East India Company in 1854 under the Doctrine of Lapse. Its place in the history books comes from 1858, when Rani Lakshmibai held Jhansi against Sir Hugh Rose’s army for about two weeks and then left the fort by night.

Two things about the fort are usually told wrong. The first is the builder: because it’s the Rani’s fort, many readers assume the Marathas built it, when a Bundela raja raised it more than a century before any Maratha governor arrived. The second is the escape. The leap on horseback from the wall is a tradition, while the record has the Rani riding out at night with a small escort to Kalpi.

A third mix-up is about place: the Rani Mahal, the palace most people picture as hers, is a separate building in the town. This note sets the story in order and marks where the legend begins.

What Jhansi Fort is and where it stands

Jhansi Fort is a stone fort on a granite rock, with a walled town around its foot. Britannica places the city in the Bundelkhand uplands along the Madhya Pradesh border, just west of the Betwa River, and says it grew around the fort.

Who built Jhansi Fort, and when?

Raja Bir Singh Deo of Orchha built it in 1613; the Jhansi district administration and Britannica agree on the year. The place was earlier called Balwant Nagar, which the district’s history page describes as an old Chandela stronghold that lost its importance in the 11th century and rose again only under Bir Singh Deo.

Bir Singh Deo belonged to the Bundelas, the Rajput clan that gave Bundelkhand its name, and he was Prince Salim’s man. Britannica records that in 1602 he ambushed and killed Abul Fazl, Emperor Akbar’s confidant, in collusion with Salim. Salim became Emperor Jahangir in 1605, and the district history notes Bir Singh Deo’s good relations with him. Jhansi Fort went up eight years into that reign.

So the fort is the work of a Mughal ally from Bundelkhand, not a Maratha building. Bir Singh Deo died in 1627, and the Marathas arrived about a century later to extend a fort that already stood.

How Jhansi passed from the Bundelas to the Marathas and the British

Most of Jhansi’s changes of owner happened on paper rather than on the battlefield. Only the two of 1857 and 1858 came through sieges, and the paper changes are what explain them.

The Maratha grant and Naroshankar’s Shankargarh

The Marathas came to Bundelkhand as allies. By the district’s account, Mohammed Khan Bangash attacked Maharaja Chhatrasal of Panna in 1729; Peshwa Baji Rao I of the Maratha Empire came to his help, and a grateful Chhatrasal gave the Peshwa a part of his state that included Jhansi. Britannica dates the area’s fall to the Marathas to 1732. The two dates most likely describe one process, the campaign and the handover after it, so “the 1730s” is the safe phrasing.

The first Maratha governor to change the fort was Naroshankar, subedar of Jhansi from 1742. A subedar was a provincial governor, here the Peshwa’s man on the spot. In his 15 years he extended the fort, and the district history records that the extension is called Shankargarh. The Peshwa recalled him in 1757.

The Newalkars and the treaty of 1817

The Newalkar family took charge after 1769, when Raghunath Rao (II) Newalkar followed Vishwas Rao Laxman as subedar. The district credits him with raising the state’s revenue and with three buildings in the city:

• the Mahalakshmi Temple;
• the Raghunath Temple;
• the Rani Mahal, which he built as his own residence.

In 1796 he passed the subedari to his brother, Shiv Rao Hari.

The next change was legal. When the Peshwa’s power collapsed in 1817, his rights in Bundelkhand passed to the British. Kaye and Malleson’s history of the revolt records the bargain: Jhansi’s subedar accepted British protection and paid a yearly tribute, and the British declared him hereditary ruler. Fifteen years later they raised the ruler’s title from subedar to raja.

Hold on to that promise of hereditary rule, because it’s the hinge of 1854.

After Raghunath Rao (III) died in 1838, a commission under Lord Auckland examined the rival claims, and the British accepted Gangadhar Rao as raja. He married Manikarnika, who took the name Lakshmibai, in 1842 by the district’s date; Britannica notes that some accounts give 1852.

The lapse of 1854

The Doctrine of Lapse was the policy under which the British annexed a princely state whose ruler died without a natural heir. Gangadhar Rao died in 1853, just after adopting a boy, a 5-year-old relative in Britannica’s account, who was renamed Damodar Rao. Lord Dalhousie refused to recognize the adoption, and Jhansi was annexed in 1854. The Rani’s petition to be recognized as regent was rejected.

Here the 1817 promise comes back. Kaye and Malleson explain Dalhousie’s reading: the treaty guaranteed the throne to one family, and once that family had no male heir, it gave the widow no right to continue the line by adoption. That’s the whole legal case, and it’s why Jhansi is the textbook example of the doctrine.

Is it 1853 or 1854? Britannica’s entry on the city says the British acquired Jhansi in 1853, the year the raja died, while its entry on Lakshmi Bai and Kaye and Malleson date the annexation to 1854. Writing “the raja died in 1853 and Jhansi was annexed in 1854” is right on both counts. By 1857 the Rani was living in her palace in the town, not in the fort.

What happened at Jhansi Fort in 1857 and 1858

Jhansi Fort was fought over twice in ten months: by a small British party in June 1857, and by the Rani’s forces against Sir Hugh Rose in March and April 1858. Both episodes belong to the wider revolt of 1857.

June 1857: the Star Fort and the town fort

The rising at Jhansi began outside the fort. On the afternoon of 5 June 1857, by Kaye and Malleson’s account, a company of the 12th Native Infantry marched into the Star Fort, a small fort in the British cantonment that held the artillery and the treasure chest. The rising spread the next day, and the British officers and civilians shut themselves inside the town fort, the Jhansi Fort of this note. They surrendered on a promise of safe conduct and were killed on 8 June after leaving the walls.

Who was responsible is the most disputed question in the Rani’s story. Kaye and Malleson’s Victorian history held her responsible: in their account the offer of safe conduct came from her messengers, though the order to kill came from a rebel cavalry officer. Britannica says only that rebels captured the fort and killed the British residents, and that Lakshmibai was then proclaimed regent. An answer should record the dispute, not settle it. For the next ten months she governed Jhansi, and Britannica records that she took charge of the rebels in Bundelkhand. Her life is traced in the note on Rani Laxmibai.

The siege of 1858, in order

Rose’s siege is the part most people muddle, because three events get squeezed into one line about Jhansi falling in April. Kaye and Malleson give the sequence:

• 21 March 1858: Rose scouts the defenses and decides the city must fall before the fort.
• 22 March: his cavalry invests the city, ringing it so that nothing gets in or out, and the siege begins.
• 25 March: the siege batteries open fire.
• 31 March: word arrives that Tatya Tope is marching with an army to relieve Jhansi.
• 1 April: Rose meets that army with a covering force and defeats it, and Tatya Tope retreats across the Betwa.
• 3 April: before dawn the storming columns go in through a breach and over the town wall, then fight through to the Rani’s palace.
• Night of 4 April: the Rani leaves the fort with her remaining followers and rides for Kalpi.
• 5 April: Rose occupies the fort.

So the city fell on 3 April, the Rani left on the night of the 4th and the fort was occupied on the 5th. That’s the order to remember.

The escape: record and legend

The record is plainer than the poster. Kaye and Malleson write that on the night of 4 April the Rani left the fort with her remaining followers and rode straight for Kalpi. Britannica says she escaped with a small force of palace guards and headed east, and the Ministry of Tourism’s page names the Bhanderi Gate as her way out.

The leap is the legend. Britannica’s wording is careful: she “is believed to have leaped from the walls of the fort” on horseback, with her son Damodar tied to her back. The fort shows visitors a “jumping point”, which the Ministry of Tourism describes as the spot where she mounted her horse with her son on her back. That’s a marked spot, not a record of a jump.

Britannica adds that her aide Jhalkaribai may have covered the escape by acting as a decoy, and that “may have” belongs in any answer that uses it. From Kalpi the Rani and Tatya Tope went on to seize Gwalior, and she was killed in battle near Kotah-ki-Serai in June 1858; accounts differ between 17 and 18 June.

How Jhansi’s defenses work, from the town wall to the rock

Jhansi was a fort above a town, so an attacker met the town first and the rock last. Rose’s siege is the best guide to that order, because he had to fight through each stage.

The ten gates

The district administration and the Ministry of Tourism both count ten gates (darwaza) for Jhansi Fort:

• the Datia, Orchha and Sagar gates, named for towns of the region;
• the Laxmi Gate, outside which the Mahalakshmi Temple stands near the Laxmi Tal, a tank;
• the Bhanderi Gate, the Rani’s way out in 1858 by the Ministry of Tourism’s account;
• the Khanderao, Jharna, Unnao, Sainyar and Chand gates.

The first line an attacker met was the town wall. Rose’s engineers built their first battery near the Orchha road on the east side of it, and his scouting had already told him the city had to fall before the fort could be attacked.

Breach and escalade on 3 April

Rose attacked the town wall in two ways. One column stormed a breach, the gap his guns had battered in the wall. The other tried an escalade, climbing on ladders at a tower and the low curtain beside it; a curtain is the stretch of wall between two towers.

Once over, the columns fought through streets of burning houses to a palace the defenders had prepared as a last stronghold. That was the Rani’s palace in the town, which the district administration identifies today as the Rani Mahal.

The rock and its three lines

Only then came the fort. Kaye and Malleson describe it as perched on a lofty granite rock and list what made it hard to attack:

• three lines of works, meaning three successive rings of defenses;
• flanking fire, from towers that jut out from the wall so that anyone at its foot is hit from the side as well as from above;
• thick, solid walls.

Rose never had to storm that rock. The Rani’s departure on the night of 4 April spared him the assault he was preparing, so the strongest part of the defense was never tested.

Water and stores

Water decided the fort’s first siege. In June 1857 the small British party inside gave up within days, and Kaye and Malleson name the reason: they were short of guns and supplies, including a steady supply of water. A garrison shut inside a hill fort without water and stores can’t wait out a siege.

What stands inside the fort

Inside the walls, the district and tourism pages name these sights:

• the Kadak Bijli gun (also Karak Bijli), a lion-headed cannon associated with the revolt, whose name means roughly “crashing lightning” and which made a thundering sound when fired;
• the Bhavani Shankar gun (Bhawani Shankar on UP Tourism’s page), listed with the Kadak Bijli as the queen’s cannon;
• temples of Shiva and Ganesha;
• the Rani Jhansi Garden;
• the mazar, or grave shrine, of Ghulam Gaus Khan, Moti Bai and Khuda Baksh;
• a sculpture museum on the history of Bundelkhand.

Visitor guides also point to the Panch Mahal, a palace building inside the fort, but none of the official descriptions covers it, so the uses credited to it on site are best left out of an answer.

Jhansi Fort today: ASI protection, not World Heritage

Jhansi Fort is a centrally protected monument: the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) looks after it under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958. It isn’t a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the ASI’s list of centrally protected monuments, it’s entry 62 in the Jhansi Circle, after the Rani Lakshmi Bai Mahal at entry 61.

The Jhansi Circle is new. The Ministry of Culture announced it on 26 August 2020, and the circle’s own page says it was carved out of the Lucknow Circle to cover the seven Bundelkhand districts of Uttar Pradesh. The ASI’s list puts 173 monuments in it, and three in Jhansi tell the Newalkar story:

• Jhansi Fort;
• the Rani Lakshmi Bai Mahal, the painted palace in the town, which now houses the ASI’s sculptures from the 9th to the 12th centuries;
• the chhatri, or domed memorial pavilion, of Raja Gangadhar Rao with its tank, which the district says Lakshmibai built after his death in 1853.

For scale, a PIB fact sheet of 18 April 2026 puts the ASI’s national count at 3,686 centrally protected monuments across about 38 circles.

The fort is also a public stage. UP Tourism runs a sound-and-light show there on Rani Lakshmibai and 1857, and on 19 November 2021, her birth anniversary, the Prime Minister dedicated a set of Ministry of Defence projects to the nation at the Rashtra Raksha Samarpan Parv, held in the fort’s precincts. The revolt came back into the news with its 169th anniversary in May 2026.

One UNESCO confusion is worth closing. Jhansi had a Maratha period, but it isn’t part of the Maratha Military Landscapes of India, inscribed in 2025, whose twelve forts are mostly in Maharashtra, with one in Tamil Nadu.

How to study Jhansi Fort for exams

Jhansi Fort sits in three parts of the syllabus:

• Modern history: the Doctrine of Lapse and the revolt of 1857, where Jhansi is the standard case study.
• Art and culture: fort design and the monuments the ASI protects.
• Medieval history: the Bundelas of Orchha and their tie to Jahangir.

Mains rarely asks about the fort as a building; it asks about 1857 and expects Jhansi as evidence. Mains 2016 GS Paper I asked candidates to “Explain how the Uprising of 1857 constitutes an important watershed in the evolution of British policies towards colonial India.” Jhansi gives that answer a concrete case of the annexations that fed the revolt.

History Optional 2024 Paper II went wider: “Why was the Great Revolt of 1857 confined only to North India? How did it change the character of British rule in the subcontinent? Explain.” On the Prelims side, 184 of the 1,403 questions in the site’s Prelims question bank are tagged History and 94 are tagged Art and Culture.

Revise these until they’re automatic:

• 1613: Raja Bir Singh Deo of Orchha, a Bundela, builds the fort on Bangra hill.
• 1729 to 1742: Jhansi passes to the Marathas, and Naroshankar, subedar from 1742, extends the fort as Shankargarh.
• 1817: the Newalkar subedar accepts British protection and a promise of hereditary rule.
• 1853 to 1854: Gangadhar Rao dies in 1853; Dalhousie refuses the adoption and annexes Jhansi in 1854.
• 5 to 8 June 1857: sepoys seize the Star Fort, and the British party in the town fort surrenders and is killed.
• 22 March to 5 April 1858: the siege, with the Betwa battle on 1 April, the storm on 3 April and the escape on the night of 4 April.
• 1861 and 1886: Jhansi goes to the Scindias, then back to the British in exchange for Gwalior.

Four confusions cost marks:

• Fort and Star Fort. The Star Fort was the Company’s small cantonment fort, seized on 5 June 1857; Jhansi Fort is the old fort above the town.
• Fort and Rani Mahal. The Rani Mahal is the palace in the town, protected by the ASI as a separate monument.
• Bundela and Maratha. A Bundela raja built the fort; Maratha governors and the Newalkars extended it and held it.
• Storm and capture. The city fell on 3 April 1858, but the fort was occupied only on 5 April, after the Rani had gone.

It also helps to set Jhansi beside three forts it’s often grouped with:

Jhansi Fort rewards the aspirant who keeps its layers apart, from the Bundela builder to the Maratha governors and Dalhousie’s reading of a treaty. Get that order right and the fort becomes a ready example for any answer on the Doctrine of Lapse or the revolt of 1857. The leap from the wall makes a good story, but the treaty of 1817 makes a better answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Practice Questions

Prelims

1. Consider the following statements about Jhansi Fort: 1. It was built by Raja Bir Singh Deo of Orchha. 2. Its extension known as Shankargarh was added by the Maratha subedar Naroshankar. 3. It is one of the components of the Maratha Military Landscapes of India. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) 1 only
• (b) 1 and 2 only
• (c) 2 and 3 only
• (d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: (b) The fort is Bundela work of 1613 that Naroshankar extended; the 2025 Maratha serial property covers twelve forts in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, not Jhansi.

2. Consider the following statements about the annexation of Jhansi: 1. It was carried out under the Doctrine of Lapse during Lord Dalhousie’s tenure. 2. The British rejected Damodar Rao’s claim because Raja Gangadhar Rao had never adopted him. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) 1 only
• (b) 2 only
• (c) Both 1 and 2
• (d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: (a) The raja did adopt Damodar Rao before he died; Dalhousie refused to recognize the adoption, reading the 1817 treaty as giving no right of adoption.

3. Arrange the following events of 1858 in chronological order: 1. Tatya Tope’s relief army is defeated near the Betwa 2. Sir Hugh Rose’s columns storm the city of Jhansi 3. Rose occupies Jhansi Fort 4. The Rani leaves the fort by night for Kalpi. Select the correct answer using the code given below.

• (a) 1-2-4-3
• (b) 2-1-4-3
• (c) 1-4-2-3
• (d) 2-4-1-3

Answer: (a) The Betwa battle came on 1 April, the storm on 3 April, the escape on the night of 4 April and the occupation of the fort on 5 April.

4. During the events of June 1857 at Jhansi, the Star Fort was:

• (a) the extension of Jhansi Fort added by Naroshankar
• (b) a small fort in the British cantonment that held the artillery and the treasure chest
• (c) the palace of Rani Lakshmibai in the town
• (d) the Bundela fort at Orchha

Answer: (b) Sepoys of the 12th Native Infantry seized the Star Fort on 5 June 1857, and the British party then took refuge in the old town fort.

5. Consider the following pairs of monument and status: 1. Jhansi Fort: centrally protected by the ASI 2. Rani Mahal, Jhansi: centrally protected by the ASI 3. Red Fort Complex, Delhi: UNESCO World Heritage Site. How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

• (a) Only one
• (b) Only two
• (c) All three
• (d) None

Answer: (c) The ASI lists both Jhansi Fort and the Rani Lakshmi Bai Mahal in its Jhansi Circle, and the Red Fort Complex was inscribed in 2007.

Mains

1. The 1857 Uprising was the culmination of the recurrent big and small local rebellions that had occurred in the preceding hundred years of British rule. Elucidate. (10 marks, 150 words) Previous year: Mains 2019, GS Paper I.
2. The annexation of Jhansi turned on how the treaty of 1817 was read. Examine the Doctrine of Lapse with reference to Jhansi and assess its part in the revolt of 1857. (15 marks, 250 words)
3. Jhansi Fort was built by a Bundela ruler, extended by Maratha governors and made famous by a Newalkar queen. Trace the fort’s history as a record of changing power in Bundelkhand. (15 marks, 250 words)
4. Distinguish the documented record from the legend in the escape of Rani Lakshmibai from Jhansi in April 1858. Why does the distinction matter for writing history? (10 marks, 150 words)
5. How did the layout of Jhansi, a fort above a walled town, shape Sir Hugh Rose’s siege of 1858? (10 marks, 150 words)