The Secundra Bagh, Showing the Breach and Gateway

A long, low wall pocked with shot, a gateway, and a ragged hole knocked through near the corner. A palm and a domed pavilion rise behind. A few men stand in the empty ground in front, small and still.

Sikandar Bagh in Lucknow is a walled garden laid out around 1800 and later made a summer villa by Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh. On 16 November 1857, during the uprising, British troops stormed it through that breach and the gate, and all of the roughly 2,200 sepoys inside were killed.

Felice Beato arrived in Calcutta in February 1858 and spent months photographing the aftermath across northern India. Another of his Sikandar Bagh views, taken inside the walls, shows human bones across the courtyard; he is believed to have had the remains dug up or rearranged for it. This view is the quieter one. The damage is to the building, and the people in it are only there to show the scale.