Nana Saheb Peshwa II, born as Dhondu Pant, was an Indian aristocrat and fighter, who led the rebellion in Cawnpore (Kanpur) during the 1857 rebellion against the East India Company. As the adopted son of the exiled Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II, Nana Saheb believed that he was entitled to a pension from the Company, but as he was denied recognition under Lord Dalhousie's doctrine of lapse, he initiated a rebellion. He forced the British garrison in Kanpur to surrender, then murdered the survivors, gaining control of the city for a few days. After a British force recaptured Kanpur, Nana Saheb disappeared, with multiple conflicting accounts existing of his further life and death.

The siege of Cawnpore was a key episode in the Indian rebellion of 1857. The besieged East India Company forces and civilians in Cawnpore were duped into a false assurance of a safe passage to Allahabad by the rebel forces under Nana Sahib. Their evacuation from Cawnpore thus turned into a massacre, and most of the men were killed and women and children taken to a nearby dwelling known as Bibighur. As an East India Company rescue force from Allahabad approached Cawnpore, 120 British women and children captured by the rebels were butchered in what came to be known as the Bibighar Massacre, their remains then thrown down a nearby well. Following the recapture of Cawnpore and the discovery of the massacre, the angry Company forces engaged in widespread retaliation against captured rebel soldiers and local civilians. The murders greatly enraged the British rank-and-file against the Sepoy rebels and inspired the war cry "Remember Cawnpore!".