CAWNI'ORE or Cawnpur, a large cantonment and town in the Allahabad division, situated on the right bank of the Ganges, in lat. 26° 28' 15" N., and long. 80° 23' 45" E., and 580 feet above the sea. Its civil population is about 112,000, and is 685 miles from Calcutta by rail. It gives its name to the district of Cawnpur in the N.1Y. Provinces of India, in the Doab, a great alluvial plain between the Ganges and the Jumna. The district is bounded on the N.E. by the Ganges, on the S.W. by the Jumna, on the N.W. by Etawa and Farrakhabad, and on the S.E. by Futtehpur, and extends between lat. 25° 55' and 27° N., and long. 34' and 80° 37' E. A small colony of Chinese settled in Cawnpur, and introduced a manufacture of leather, for which the town was long famous. During the mutiny of the Bengal army, on the 26th June 1857 Cawnpur capitulated to the rebels under Dandhu Punt Nana Rao, under promise of safe escort, but the garrison, under General Wheeler, were all destroyed ; and on the 15th and 16th July, all their wives and children were destroyed and thrown into a dry well. In and above the well at the entrenchment, and in the well of the slaughter-house, lay the bones of no less than 420 civilians, military officers, and their wives, 400 private soldiers and their wives, and musicians, besides infants. If to these be addedthe Futtehghur partyand those who perished outside the entrenchments, there were not less than a thousand Christians, the majority of whom were murdered in cold blood by order of Nana Rao.
Seven Christian men, including Delafosse and Thomson, twelve women and six faithful natives, who entered the entrenchment, alone ultimately escaped. Nineteen Christians and five children, who remained in Cawnpur, escaped by aid of the natives, besides a few drummers. Nana Rao seems to have died in the forests of Nepal. Cawnpur was retaken by General Havelock on the 17th July 1857. On the 15th July General Ilavelock fought the battles of Aung and Pandu Nadi ; on the next day took Cawnpur by storm ; ou the 17th and 18th recovered the city ; and on the 19th took and destroyed Nana Rao's palace at Bit'hur. On the 27th November the Gwalior mutineers and others took possession, but Lord Clyde retook it next evening, and on the 6th December he routed them with great loss. The district was pacified after the fall of Kalpi in May 1858. The district is essentially Hindu. Of the total population, 1,156,055 in 1872, the Brah mans, Rajputs, and Banyas numbered 313,278 souls ; the Kayasth, 15,169 ; the Ahir, 113,053 ; the Kurmi, 58,359 ; the Chamar, 122,932 ; the Mahomcdans of the Sunni sect being only 64,797 Gaz.