Some of these units belonged to states allied to the British or recently absorbed into British-administered territory, and of these, two large contingents from the states of Awadh and Gwalior readily joined the growing rebellion. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, sepoys tended to take great pride in their military prowess, and they exhibited enormous loyalty to their British officers. [15], The varying stances of the British government, the reduction of allowances, and harsh punishments, contributed to a feeling amongst the troops that the Company no longer cared for them. The whole episode falls into three periods: first came the summer of 1857, when the British, without reinforcements from home, fought with their backs to the wall; the second concerned the operations for the relief of Lucknow in the autumn; and the third was the successful campaign of Sir Colin Campbell (later Baron Clyde) and Sir Hugh Henry Rose (later Baron Strathnairn of Strathnairn and Jhansi) in the first half of 1858. Mason, Philip (1974), page 236 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857-58 against the rule of the British East India Company, . In fact, it was rather the last effort of traditional India. The Revolt of 1857 started as a Mutiny of the sepoys. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Another important source of discontent among the Indian rulers was that the British policies of conquest had created significant unrest. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Has data issue: true The system was subject to abuse, and the company used it to annex territories in a questionable manner. The rebels were . McNamara, Robert. The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010);Andrew Ward. The old aristocracy, both Muslim and Hindu, who were seeing their power steadily eroded by the EEIC, also rebelled against British rule. Vital though their Indian empire was to them, they controlled the subcontinent with a comparative handful of menabout 100,000 in all, less than half of whom were soldiers, ruling over a population of 250 millionand they were all too aware of just how inadequate these numbers would be in the event of any serious rebellion. Mason, Philip (1974), pages 305-306 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. The immediate cause of the Revolt was the issue of the greased cartridges. 'In England, almost every child is aware that, with a smooth bored gun, no grease of any kind is required to ensure the proper loading of it, whilst with a rifle-bored piece such is necessary.' So writes Mrs Peile, one of those who escaped from Delhi on 11 May 1857. Indian soldiers in the East India Company's armies believed they risked defilement because the new rounds were being issued greased with the fat of pigs and cowsuntrue, but sufficient to spark the most dangerous uprising against British imperial rule since the American Revolution. Immediate Cause The Revolt of 1857 eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. The cartridge was then rammed down the muzzle of the rifle.. In contrast to their Indian predecessors, the British considered such refusals at times to be outright "mutinies" and therefore to be suppressed brutally. [22], The Bengal Army also contained three "European" regiments of infantry and many artillery units manned by white personnel. The Great Mutiny: India 1857 (London: Penguin, 1978);House of Commons. Render date: 2023-03-01T21:49:14.745Z #Mangal Pandey #1857 Revolt #Cartridges #Sepoy Mutiny The spark for the 1857 Revolt was provided by Greased Cartridges.Why Greased Cartridges triggered the R. At other times however, the Company directly or indirectly conceded the legitimacy of the sepoy's demands, such as when troops of the Bengal and Madras armies refused to serve in Sindh without batta after its conquest. Mutiny Memoirs of an Old Officer (London: Folio Society, 1984);Troy Downs. @free.kindle.com emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. [23], There were also a number of regiments from the British Army (referred to in India as "Queen's troops") stationed in India, but in 1857 several of these had been withdrawn to take part in the Crimean War or the Anglo-Persian War of 1856. And the leaders were not united, because they sought to revive former Hindu and Muslim regimes, which in their heyday had bitterly clashed. In the Punjab were some 10,000 British troops, which made it possible to disarm the Indian regiments; and the recently defeated Sikhs were so hostile to the Muslims that they supported the British against the Mughal restoration in Delhi. In sum, this combination of factors produced, besides the normal tensions endemic in India, an uneasy, fearful, suspicious, and resentful frame of mind and a wind of unrest ready to fan the flame of any actual physical outbreak. The mysterious appearance of chapatisloaves of an Indian unleavened breadspooked the British administrators of the Raj shortly before the outbreak of rebellion in 1857. It is not known who first projected the plan. Its cartridges consisted of a .577 inch ball projectile and a charge of gun powder propellant wrapped in waterproofed cartridge paper. In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. All the people in the palace wondered what it could mean. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive. However, in those two years, they were not ordered to use them. For both Indians and British, the period was haunted with dark memories of the mutiny, and numerous measures were taken by the British raj to avoid another conflict. As further evidence, he observes that the Urdu sources of the pre- rebellion and post- rebellion periods usually refer to the British not as angrez (the English), goras (whites) or firangis (foreigners), but as kafir (disbeliever) and nasrani (Christians). The revolt was sparked by a number of reasons, including economic exploitation, cultural repression, and mistreatment of Indian soldiers. There was thus a suppressed tension in the countryside, ready to break out whenever governmental pressure might be reduced. Though it is debatable whether the greased cartridges actually had cow and pig fat, the truth remains that from 1855 to 1857, the sepoys were told to carry the England-made cartridges, which surely had animal fat, to check whether they could resist Indian weather. Famous For: Revolt of 1857. The particular reason, the greased cartridges for the Enfield rifles, was a mistake rectified as soon as it was discovered; but the fact that explanations and reissues could not quell the soldiers suspicions suggests that the troops were already disturbed by other causes. These changes caused widespread resentment not only among the landed aristocracy but also caused great havoc to a larger section of the middle-class people. [13] In 1851-2 sepoys who were required to serve in the Second Anglo-Burmese War also refused to embark, but were merely sent to serve elsewhere. The greased cartridges thus posed precisely the same threat to observant sepoys as would flour adulterated with the blood of pigs and cows, and though the British recognized the problem early on, and never issued a single greased cartridge to any Indian troops, fear that the Company was plotting to defile them took hold among the men of many Indian regiments and resulted in the outbreak of rebellion in the cantonment of Meerut in April 1857. 24 October 2009. [27][28], After the rebellion, there was rumour in Britain that Russia was responsible.[28]. More disturbing to traditional sensibilities were the interventions, in the name of humanity, in the realm of Hindu custome.g., the prohibition of suttee, the campaign against infanticide, the law legalizing remarriage of Hindu widows. Saul, David (2003), page 294 "The Indian Mutiny", Penguin Books. Few of these participated in the rebellion, and one contingent in particular (the recently raised Punjab Irregular Force) actively participated on the British side. Match the Country with Its Hemisphere Quiz, Baron Strathnairn of Strathnairn and Jhansi. He survived and was put on trial and hanged on April 8, 1857. History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857-58 (London, 3 vols. During the late eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century, the armies of the East India Company, in particular those of the Bengal Presidency, were victorious and indomitable the term "high noon of the sepoy army" has been used by a military historian. Loading the Enfield often required tearing open the greased cartridge with one's teeth, and many sepoys believed that the cartridges were greased with cow and pig fat. What was the issue of cartridges? There has been much controversy over its nature and causes. It was initiated by sepoys in the Bengal Presidency against the British officers. Sympathetic rulers, such as Lord William Bentinck were replaced by arrogant aristocrats, such as Lord Dalhousie, who despised the troops and the populace. Partly owing to this, Bengal sepoys were not subject to the penalty of flogging as were the European soldiers. When soldiers of the Bengal army mutinied in Meerut on May 10, 1857, tension had been growing for some time. McNamara, Robert. The Company had upgraded to the new Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle, which used greased paper cartridges. No one seems to know the meaning of it. It is not known where it originated, by whom or for what purpose, whether it is supposed to be connected to any religious ceremony or whether it has to do with some secret society. Order was restored by the firmness of Charles John Canning (later Earl Canning), first viceroy of India (governed 185862), whose title of Clemency was given in derision by angry British merchants in Calcutta, and of Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. One thing did not change in this new weapon the loading process, which did not improve significantly until the introduction of breech loaders and metallic, one-piece cartridges a few decades later. In 1877, outside Delhi, essentially in the spot where bloody fighting had taken place 20 years earlier, an event called the Imperial Assemblage was held. Thousands of entirely blameless Indians who found themselves caught up in the hysterical aftermath of the rebellion were flogged, or blown from cannon, or forced to clean bloodied paving stones using only their tongues before being summarily hanged. The surrender of Kanpur, after a relatively brief siege, was followed by a massacre of virtually all British citizens and loyal Indian soldiers at Kanpur. Under a British policy called the "doctrine of lapse," the East India Company would take control of Indian states in which a local ruler had died without an heir. Ferocity led to grave excesses on both sides, distinguishing this war in horror from other wars of the 19th century. The Revolt of 1857-58 was the biggest and bloodiest conflict against any European colonial power during the nineteenth century. Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (London: John Murray, 2004). When Muslim and Hindu troops learned that the tip of the Enfield cartridge had to be bitten off to prepare it for firing, a number of troops refused, for religious reasons, to accept the ammunition. He was Amazon.com's first-ever history editor and has bylines in New York, the Chicago Tribune, and other national outlets. [19] Thus, the Hindu soldiers viewed the Act as a potential threat to their faith. [11] If the caste of high-caste sepoys was considered to be "polluted", they would have to expend considerable sums of money on ritual purification before being accepted back into society. His name has become synonymous with the revolt of 1857. Mason, Philip (1974), pages 291-292 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Mason, Philip (1974), page 225 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. [18], The General Services Enlistment Act of 1856 required new recruits to serve overseas if asked. To be loaded, this cartridge had to be torn open so that the powder it contained could be poured down the barrel of the muzzle-loading gun; because the soldiers hands were full, this was done with the teeth. Leader of the British Conservative Party and future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli argued these objects were signs to rebel and evidence of a conspiracy, and the press echoed this belief. (See Barrackpore Mutiny.). The rifle's cartridges contained 68 grains of FF black powder, and the ball was typically a 530-grain Pritchett or a Burton-Mini ball. Author Pramod Nayar points out that by 1851 there were nineteen Protestant religious societies operating in India whose goal was the conversion of Indians to Christianity. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service. "[4] Those European men and women who had previously converted to Islam such as Sergeant-Major Gordon, and Abdullah Beg, a former Company soldier, were spared. The sepoys' British officers dismissed these claims as rumors and suggested that the sepoys make a batch of fresh cartridges, using a religiously acceptable greasing agent such as ghee or vegetable oil. ThoughtCo, Jul. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. By origin, a cartridge is a container, usually of paper, designed to hold enough powder for one discharge of the weapon. There is no question that atrocities were committed by both sides, and stories of events of 185758 lived on in both Britain and India. The traditional story of the Sepoy Mutiny is that the introduction of a new cartridge for the Enfield rifle provoked much of the trouble. The Indian papers are full of surmises as to what it means. Proceedings of the Trial of Badahur Shah. In Accounts and Papers, East Indies, Session 3 February-19 April 1859, Parliamentary Papers XVIII of 1859;William Wotherspoon Ireland. That, combined with a declining number of British officers who understood India, spoke Indian languages fluently or had any real sympathy for the people whom they ruled, meant that the colonial hierarchy remained perpetually jittery. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." Some Indians were upset with the draconian rule of the Company who had embarked on a project of territorial expansion and westernization that was imposed without any regard for historical subtleties in Indian society. Later, the attitudes of British officers changed with increased intolerance, lack of involvement and unconcern of the welfare of troops becoming manifest more and more. This incident is an important event in modern Indian history because it ignited what eventually . Feature Flags: { In the illustration, a mutineer was depicted chained to the front of a British cannon, awaiting his imminent execution, as others were gathered to watch the grisly spectacle. All of the Bengal Native Cavalry regiments and 45 of the infantry units rebelled at some point. To facilitate its passage, the cartridges were greased with tallow, which, in the U.K., was made of beef and pork fat. Their educational policy was a Westernizing one, with English instead of Persian as the official language; the old elites, schooled in the traditional pattern, felt themselves slighted. Mason, Philip (1974), pages 186 and 313 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. And, historically, much the same thing had happened before in times of trouble. The Muslims had lost the large state of Avadh; the Marathas had lost Nagpur, Satara, and Jhansi. From the interrogation of an official at the King of Delhis court: I did hear of the circumstance. Although the armies of many Rajas or states which rebelled contained large numbers of guns, the British superiority in artillery was to be decisive in the siege of Delhi after the arrival of a siege train of thirty-two howitzers and mortars. Mason, Philip (1974), page 226 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Further, the British were becoming increasingly hostile toward traditional survivals and contemptuous of most things Indian. There was also a general feeling that English officers were losing touch with the Indian troops under them. Furthermore, legal changes introduced by the British were accompanied by prohibitions on Indian religious customs and were seen as steps towards forced conversion to Christianity. The sepoys were generally under the command of British officers. One common punishment was to tie mutineers to the mouth of a cannon and then fire the cannon, completely obliterating the victim. The ratio of British to Indian troops was fixed at roughly 1:2 instead of 1:5one British and two Indian battalions were formed into brigades so that no sizable station should be without British troops. [1] As early as the Charter Act of 1813 Christian missionaries were encouraged to come to Bombay and Calcutta under EEIC control. Several events happened that led to the Sepoys revolting and was called the Indian Revolt of 1857. It was alluded to , and it was supposed to portend some coming disturbance, and was, moreover, understood as implying an invitation to the whole population of the country to unite for some secret objective afterwards to be disclosed. This book is essentially about the heroes - Tatya Tope, Nana. Narasimha Rao, The BJP becomes the largest party in the Lok Sabha, BJP reelection bids and tensions in Kashmir, Addressing COVID-19 and its economic impact. Both Hindu and Muslim sepoys refused to use them. The Revolt of 1857 in India eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. The British military commander Sir James Outram thought it was a Muslim conspiracy, exploiting Hindu grievances. Mason, Philip (1974), page 263 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, Last edited on 28 September 2022, at 04:39, Details of the rifle issued as a result of the mutiny, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Causes_of_the_Indian_Rebellion_of_1857&oldid=1112793629, This page was last edited on 28 September 2022, at 04:39. [14], The pay of the sepoy was relatively low and after Awadh and the Punjab were annexed, the soldiers no longer received extra pay (batta or bhatta) if posted there, because this was no longer considered "foreign service". [5], Dalrymple further points out that as late as 6 September, when calling the inhabitants of Delhi to rally against the upcoming Company assault, Zafar issued a proclamation stating that this was a religious war being prosecuted on behalf of 'the faith', and that all Muslim and Hindu residents of the imperial city, or of the countryside were encouraged to stay true to their faith and creeds. Sepoys were forced to watch such displays as it was believed it set an example of the horrific death that awaited mutineers. Or it might have been an aristocratic plot, set off too soon by the Meerut outbreak. A cartridge for the new Enfield rifle. There was rumor about an old prophecy that the company's rule would end after a hundred years. A small British army was improvised, which held the ridge before Delhi against greatly superior forces until Sir John Lawrence was able to send a siege train under John Nicholson. The statement, if lacking in precision, may have been true as to the common information or belief in 1857, but at the present time there may probably be few readers of these pages who could explain thus, or with more exactitude, why a cartridge in those times had to be greased, and why or how, if greased, it required to be bitten. Underlying grievances over British taxation and recent land annexations by the English East India Company (EEIC) also contributed to the anger of the sepoy mutineers, and within weeks, dozens of units of the Indian army joined peasant armies in widespread rebellion. They shot the British officers and made for Delhi, 40 miles (65 km) distant, where there were no British troops. Once defiled, the theory went, men who had consumed the forbidden meal would be shunned by their co-religionists and would be easier to bring into the Christian fold, or could be sent as soldiers overseas (crossing the black water being forbidden to Hindus of high caste). The revolt is known by several names. 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