Women of the Red Year

Two outstanding accounts of the Indian Mutiny written by women

This special Leonaur edition contains two accounts of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 as it was experienced by women whose lives were violently disrupted. Elizabeth Wagentreiber was the youngest daughter of Colonel James Skinner of the famous cavalry regiment ‘Skinner’s Horse’. She had originally married a Captain Radclyffe Haldane, an officer of Skinner’s Horse who was killed at the Battle of Chillianwallah during the Second Anglo-Sikh War. She subsequently married George Wagentreiber. And in the Spring of 1857 the couple were living in the civilian lines at Delhi when the Indian Mutiny broke out in the Bengal Army and reports arrived that the native cavalry was running amok in the city, slaughtering Europeans. Fearful for their lives the couple escaped with their children and the harrowing account of their time as fugitives makes compelling reading. Mrs Elizabeth McMullin Muter was married to a captain of the 1st Battalion 60th King’s Royal Rifles stationed in Meerut, a few hours travel east of Delhi, when the mutiny among the sepoys of the garrison broke out there on Sunday morning of May 10th, 1857. Elizabeth Muter graphically describes the horrors of those first days of the conflict from the perspective of the wives of officers who were set adrift in times of peril and uncertainty as their husbands left them to fight. This book also contains some campaign recollections by Captain Muter.

Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.