Drawing on sources in Britain and India, including contemporary East India Company records, together with oral memories from India illustrated with a number of nineteenth century photographs, the book conveys vividly what it was like for different kinds of participants to live through these traumatic events, bringing to life the their anxiety and desperation, the grisly bloodshed, and the vast devastation - illustrating overall, as one Indian soldier who served in the East India Company's army put it, "the wind of madness".