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fort. The British wanted someone to blame, and Rani Lakshmibai was a convenient scapegoat.
    By winter 1858, the unorganized rebellion was dying in the face of British counterinsurgency; most of northern India was back under colonial rule. At the end of February, British forces were moving to take back Jhansi, and they intended to do so with force. After months of pleading for aid and declaring herself their loyal friend, Lakshmibai came to realize that if she were caught by the British, she would likely be tried as a rebel and hanged. But if she sided with the rebels, at least she could die fighting. So as the army marched ever closer, Rani Lakshmibai finally became what the British claimed she was.
R EBEL WITH A C AUSE
    On March 23, the British siege of Jhansi began. Lakshmibai oversaw the defense of her city against cannon fire; when walls crumbled, she directed that they be rebuilt. On March 30, another rebel leader (and childhood friend of the rani) came to her defense with 20,000 troops. Hope was extinguished, however, when the army of raw recruits was defeated and the British broke through city walls. Contemporary accounts say the streets “ran with blood” as the Jhansi forces fought in hand-to-hand combat. The palace was captured, but as the British readied their final assault, their general received word that Lakshmibai had escaped. And with a contingent of soldiers, to boot.
    The British assault devastated Jhansi’s defenses, but more problematically, the fort’s water supply had gone dry. Flight was Lakshmibai’s only option. Dressed as a soldier and with her adopted son in tow (either strapped to her back or tucked in her lap), she took off on horseback into the night. The British cavalry was hot on her heels. An officer came within snatching distance, but Lakshmibai succeeded in striking him down withher sword. (This is probably the genesis of the folk-art images of Lakshmibai plunging into battle with her son strapped to her back, which, were it true, would be a very questionable parenting decision.)
    Lakshmibai now had a price on her head. She joined the other rebels at Kalpi, a city some 90 miles east of Jhansi, but to her great chagrin and the everlasting lament of the people in the region, she was not given command of the rebel army. That honor went to the childhood friend who’d failed to save Jhansi even when his army outnumbered the British five to one.
    The city of Kunch fell to the British, and then Kalpi capitulated, with Rani Lakshmibai barely escaping. The rebels decided to make one last stand at Gwalior, traditionally a region that supported the British but whose troops had been won over to the rebel cause. Confident that Gwalior would be the site of victory, rebel leaders started celebrating before the battle had even begun. But not Rani Lakshmibai. While her compatriots ate and prayed and sang, she inspected the troops from horseback, armed with sword and pistol.
    When the British arrived on June 17, 1858, Lakshmibai and her forces were waiting for them at the gates. Dressed in full battle gear, with sword drawn, the rani of Jhansi plunged into battle and, all accounts agree, faced death bravely.
    The exact circumstances of her demise are unclear. One story says that when she was cut down, she was fighting with two swords, one in each hand, the reins of her horse gripped in her teeth. Another says she was shot in the back, turned to fire on her assassin, and was run through with a sword. Still other accounts claim she was fatally wounded but managed to stay alive long enough to instruct her soldiers to build her funeral pyre; before she dragged herself to it to be burned alive, she distributed her gold jewelry among her troops. However it happened, Rani Lakshmibai’s death signaled the end of the rebellion. The road to Gwalior was taken by the British, and the city itself soon fell. The revolt was over.
    Despite defeat, the rebellion could claim one important victory—the end of rule by the