Sepoy Rebellion of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was both a military mutiny and a rural civilian rebellion against the British East India Company.  Confined mainly to north-central India (present-day Uttar Pradesh, northern Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi), it began in Meerut on 10 May 1857 and largely ended with the fall of Gwalior on 20 June 1858.

The rebellion is also known as the First War of Independence (the official and popular name in India), Indian Mutiny, Sepoy Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857. The rebellion was notable in several ways: although the fighting was marked by great violence on the part of both warring parties, the rebel soldiers, both Hindu and Muslim, as well as their rural supporters displayed unusual religious amity towards each other; although the rebel leaders, especially the Rani of Jhansi, became folk heroes in the burgeoning nationalist movement half a century later, they themselves "generated no coherent ideology or programme on which to build a new order;" the rebellion ended the East India Company's rule, and led the British to rethink their enterprise in India. Company rule was replaced in 1858 with direct rule by the British Crown in the new British Raj, a system of governance which was to last the next 90 years, until 1947.

Source: Wikipedia