<P> The civilian rebellion was more multifarious . The rebels consisted of three groups: the feudal nobility, rural landlords called taluqdars, and the peasants . The nobility, many of whom had lost titles and domains under the Doctrine of Lapse, which refused to recognise the adopted children of princes as legal heirs, felt that the Company had interfered with a traditional system of inheritance . Rebel leaders such as Nana Sahib and the Rani of Jhansi belonged to this group; the latter, for example, was prepared to accept East India Company supremacy if her adopted son was recognised as her late husband's heir . In other areas of central India, such as Indore and Saugar, where such loss of privilege had not occurred, the princes remained loyal to the Company, even in areas where the sepoys had rebelled . The second group, the taluqdars, had lost half their landed estates to peasant farmers as a result of the land reforms that came in the wake of annexation of Oudh . As the rebellion gained ground, the taluqdars quickly reoccupied the lands they had lost, and paradoxically, in part because of ties of kinship and feudal loyalty, did not experience significant opposition from the peasant farmers, many of whom joined the rebellion, to the great dismay of the British . It has also been suggested that heavy land - revenue assessment in some areas by the British resulted in many landowning families either losing their land or going into great debt to money lenders, and providing ultimately a reason to rebel; money lenders, in addition to the Company, were particular objects of the rebels' animosity . The civilian rebellion was also highly uneven in its geographic distribution, even in areas of north - central India that were no longer under British control . For example, the relatively prosperous Muzaffarnagar district, a beneficiary of a Company irrigation scheme, and next door to Meerut, where the upheaval began, stayed relatively calm throughout . </P> <Ul> <Li> <P> Charles Canning, the Governor - General of India during the rebellion . </P> </Li> <Li> <P> Lord Dalhousie, the Governor - General of India from 1848 to 1856, who devised the Doctrine of Lapse . </P> </Li> <Li> <P> Lakshmibai, the Rani of Maratha - ruled Jhansi, one of the principal leaders of the rebellion who earlier had lost her kingdom as a result of the Doctrine of Lapse . </P> </Li> <Li> <P> Bahadur Shah Zafar the last Mughal Emperor, crowned Emperor of India, by the Indian troops, he was deposed by the British, and died in exile in Burma </P> </Li> </Ul> <Li> <P> Charles Canning, the Governor - General of India during the rebellion . </P> </Li> <P> Charles Canning, the Governor - General of India during the rebellion . </P>

Who was the british governor general when the 1857 revolt broke out