Rohilkhand's resistance runs in three strands that barely connect. In 1857 the region produced not a raid but an administration — Khan Bahadur Khan governed from Bareilly for eleven months with revenue officers, courts and a postal service — and it also supplied Delhi its most effective military commander, Bakht Khan of Bijnor, who reached the city with the Bareilly brigade on 1 July 1857. Rampur, the one surviving princely state, stayed with the British throughout, which is why it kept its library and its musicians while the rest of the region lost its landholding class. In the twentieth century the region's two contributions rarely met each other: the Khilafat and Non-cooperation leadership of the Ali brothers of Rampur, and the revolutionary group at Shahjahanpur that carried out the Kakori action of 1925 — Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and Roshan Singh were all Shahjahanpur men, though the trial was at Lucknow and they are usually counted to Awadh. The Tharu and Buksa communities of the terai were affected by forest and revenue policy rather than by any of this, and left almost nothing in the nationalist record.
The Bareilly administration31 May 1857 – May 1858
The 18th and 68th Native Infantry and the 8th Irregular Cavalry rose at Bareilly on 31 May 1857. Khan Bahadur Khan was proclaimed to govern Rohilkhand in the name of the Delhi court, appointed a chief revenue officer and civil judges, and the arrangement was extended to Shahjahanpur, Moradabad, Badaun, Bijnor and Pilibhit.
Outcome: A force under Colin Campbell defeated the Bareilly army on 5 May 1858 and held the city by 7 May. Khan Bahadur Khan reached Nepal, was handed over, and was hanged at Bareilly on 24 February 1860.
The Bareilly brigade at DelhiJuly – September 1857
Bakht Khan, a subedar of the Bengal horse artillery with forty years' service, marched the Bareilly troops to Delhi and reached the city on 1 July 1857. He was given the title Saheb-e-Alam Bahadur and was in practice the commander of the sepoy forces there, handling pay and supply through the siege.
Outcome: Delhi fell in September 1857. Bakht Khan withdrew towards Lucknow and Shahjahanpur and died in the terai in 1859.
The Shahjahanpur group and the Kakori action1924–1927
A revolutionary circle formed at Shahjahanpur around Ram Prasad Bismil joined the Hindustan Republican Association and took part in stopping a train at Kakori on 9 August 1925 to seize government treasury money.
Outcome: Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Nath Lahiri were executed in December 1927, the sentences carried out in four separate towns.