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. The lack of planning after the outbreak rules out these two explanations, while the degree of popular support argues more than a purely military outbreak. The . A rumor spread that the cartridges of the new Enfield rifles were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. Rich people like the merchants and moneylenders were, therefore, able to speculate in British land sales and drive out the most vulnerable peasant farmers. Partly owing to this, Bengal sepoys were not subject to the penalty of flogging as were the European soldiers. The soldiers performed well on the field of battle in exchange for which they were rewarded with symbolic heraldic rewards such as battle honors in addition to the extra pay or "batta" (foreign pay) routinely disbursed for operations committed beyond the established borders of Company rule. His name has become synonymous with the revolt of 1857. The cartridges were wrapped in paper, which had been coated in grease which made the cartridges easier to load in rifle barrels. A hardcore corporate, he initially worked for Hindustan Unilever and was later Director of Brooke Bond, India. Destructive 'Super Pigs' From Canada Threaten the Northern U.S. Increasing numbers of Christian missionaries began arriving in India, and their presence gave credence to rumors of impending conversions. It is not known who first projected the plan. Another important source of discontent among the Indian rulers was that the British policies of conquest had created significant unrest. From the confidential physician to the King of Delhi: Nobody can tell what was the object of the distribution of the chupatties. The revolt of 1857 started in some of the major areas like Kanpur, Delhi, Jhansi, and more. Mason, Philip (1974), pages 226-228 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Lands were confiscated from the landlords and auctioned. Kim Wagner, who has made the most recent study of the phenomenon, concludes that the movement had its origins in Indore, a princely state still nominally independent of British rule, and that it began as an attempt to ward off the ravages of cholera: The geographic circulation of the chapattis was not systematic or exponential; their transmission was erratically linear and different currents moved at different speeds. The Revolt ended the rule of the English East India Company. The Bengal army of some 130,000 Indian troops may have contained as many as 40,000 Brahmans as well as many Rajputs. British officials were alarmed at the rapid distribution of mysterious Indian breads across much of the Raj, There is a most mysterious affair going on throughout the whole of India at present, Dr. Gilbert Hadow wrote in a letter to his sister in Britain in March 1857. Match the following: Answer: 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. Saul, David (2003), page 294 "The Indian Mutiny", Penguin Books. The transfer of the number 66th which was taken away from a regular Bengal Sepoy regiment of the line disbanded over refusal to serve without batta, and given to a Gurkha battalion, was considered by the Sepoy as a breach of faith by the company. 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 Indian Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or the Indian Revolt of 1857. on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. And yet its just as possible to see the bloody results of the mutual incomprehension between the British and native communities in India as a potent reminder that mistrust and panic can have serious consequences. Company officers became aware of the rumours through reports of an altercation between a high-caste sepoy and a low-caste labourer at Dum Dum. When the mood of the sepoys turned against their masters, they remembered Kabul and that the British were not invincible. Mike Dash is a contributing writer in history for Smithsonian.com. [6]. The old aristocracy, both Muslim and Hindu, who were seeing their power steadily eroded by the EEIC, also rebelled against British rule. Though the revolt was suppressed later, it shook the foundation of British rule in India. Outraged by events such as the massacre of women and children at Cawnpore, some British officers believed that hanging mutineers was too humane. Such measures were considered a valid negotiating tactic by the sepoys, likely to be repeated every time such issues arose. One common punishment was to tie mutineers to the mouth of a cannon and then fire the cannon, completely obliterating the victim. [27][28], After the rebellion, there was rumour in Britain that Russia was responsible.[28]. It is however also possible to enclose within the paper container the bullet as well as the powder and the cartridge then becomes a balled cartridge. The army so far had been quipped with the smooth-barrelled musket, which had a protracted loading procedure and was not accurate over long ranges. 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. 31, 2021, thoughtco.com/sepoy-mutiny-of-1857-1774014. Immediate Cause The Revolt of 1857 eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. The events of 1857 have been considered the first outbreak of an independence movement against British rule. Many sepoys believed that the victory was the destruction of cartridges that were standard issue with the new rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) which was regarded as unclean by Muslims and tallow (cow fat) which angered the Hindus as cows were equal to a goddess to them. [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. 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. No, it is not by any means a custom; I am 50 years old, and never heard of such a thing before. As mutineers were captured, they were often killed on the spot, and many were executed in dramatic fashion. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." . [16], At the beginning of the nineteenth century, British officers were generally closely involved with their troops, speaking Indian languages fluently; participating in local culture through such practices as having regimental flags and weapons blessed by Brahman priests; and frequently having native mistresses. Sepoy units in the south of India remained loyal, but in the north, many units of the Bengal Army turned on the British. He survived and was put on trial and hanged on April 8, 1857. In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." Pandey rebelled by shooting a British sergeant-major and a lieutenant. On the fourth side of the . "[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. But in the 1830s and 1840s, tensions began to emerge. I had no conversation with the King on the subject; but others talked in his presence about it, wondering what could be the object. @free.kindle.com emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. He also resumed the practice of tax-free lands in some areas. There was therefore both resentment and unease among the old governing class, fanned in Delhi by the British decision to end the Mughal imperial title on Bahdur Shahs death. Q. Some time in February 1857, a curious occurrence took place. The rebels were . Tall tales, panic and misapprehension spread readily in such a climate, and plenty of people felt a certain disquiet in the early months of 1857. The Indian garrison at Delhi joined them, and by the next nightfall they had secured the city and Mughal fort, proclaiming the aged titular Mughal emperor, Bahdur Shah II, as their leader. This book is essentially about the heroes - Tatya Tope, Nana. Some currents simply ran cold, while others moved in parallel, or paused before continuing. In one sense, this was not surprising; since India had a large and settled British population, there were more women and children around for the rebels to kill. In addition, the General Service Enlistment Act of 1856 required recruits to serve overseas if ordered, a challenge to the castes who composed so much of the Bengal army. I have the honour to inform you that a signal has passed through numbers of the villages in this district, the purport of which has not yet transpired. Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (London: John Murray, 2004). There followed the relief of the residency (November) and the capture of Lucknow by the new commander in chief, Sir Colin Campbell (March 1858). The resumption of tax-free land and confiscation of jagirs (the grant or right to locally control land revenue) caused discontent among the jagirdars and zamindars. 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. The traditional story of the Sepoy Mutiny is that the introduction of a new cartridge for the Enfield rifle provoked much of the trouble. Victoria added the title "Empress of India" to her royal title. There was rumor about an old prophecy that the company's rule would end after a hundred years. Robert J. McNamara is a history expert and former magazine journalist. Or it might have been an aristocratic plot, set off too soon by the Meerut outbreak. The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010);Andrew Ward. Revolt Of 1857 India Causes Eects History Facts N Info 1 . By a campaign in Avadh and Rohilkhand, Campbell cleared the countryside. It is no surprise, the historian Kim Wagner notes, that, faced with such a plethora of portents, the British regarded with deep suspicion, bordering on paranoia, any type of communication in India which they could not understand. The colonial administration well understood that rumors, however unfounded, could have serious consequences, and there were plenty of notably more dangerous urban legends about. To load both the old musket and the new rifle, soldiers had to bite the cartridge open and pour the gunpowder it contained into the rifle's muzzle, then stuff the paper cartridge (overlaid with a thin mixture of beeswax and mutton tallow for waterproofing) into the musket as wadding, the ball being secured to the top of the cartridge and guided into place for ramming down the muzzle. Greased Cartridges: The Revolt of 1857 was triggered by the use of new Enfield rifles whose cartridges were believed to be greased with cow and pig fat, leading to the refusal of both Hindu and Muslim sepoys to use them. ThoughtCo. This made them more accurate and gave them a longer range. The greased cartridges had to be opened by biting off the top with your teeth. In most accounts of the revolt, the greased cartridge has been referred to as the spark and tinder that lit the flames of rebellion. [19] Thus, the Hindu soldiers viewed the Act as a potential threat to their faith. 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. To "the cow reverencing Hindu and the pig paranoid Muslims" having to bite this was repellent, defiling and deadly to their religious prospects. ), Find out more about saving to your Kindle, Book: The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in 1857, Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511563386.003. 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. 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. The revolt of 1857, which the British call the Indian Mutiny but many Indians prefer to think of as the First War of Independence, was the defining event in British imperial history. 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. A cartridge for the new Enfield rifle. Down-country operations centred on the relief of Lucknow. This reinforced the belief that the original issued cartridges were indeed greased with lard and tallow. He was informed that they had been brought in by one of his Indian police officers, who had received them from a puzzled village chowkidar (watchman). Before loading these rifles the sepoys had to bite off the paper on the cartridges. But the only evidence for either of these was the circulation from village to village of chapatis, or cakes of unleavened bread, a practice that, though it also occurred on other occasions, was known to have taken place at any time of unrest. With the British recovery of Gwalior (June 20, 1858), the revolt was virtually over. The restoration of peace was hindered by British cries for vengeance, often leading to indiscriminate reprisals. The cartridge had to be bitten off before loading it into the gun. } India from the Paleolithic Period to the decline of the Indus civilization, The earliest agriculturalists and pastoralists, Neolithic agriculture in the Indus valley and Baluchistan, Extent and chronology of Early Harappan culture, Language and scripts, weights and measures, The Post-Urban Period in northwestern India, The late 2nd millennium and the reemergence of urbanism, Peninsular India in the aftermath of the Indus civilization (c. 20001000, The development of Indian civilization from c. 1500, Traditional approaches to Indian historiography, The beginning of the historical period, c. 500150, North India under Muslim hegemony, c. 12001526, Taxation and distribution of revenue resources, The Muslim states of southern India, c. 13501680, Extension and consolidation of the empire, Central, provincial, and local government, Organization of the nobility and the army, The emperor, the nobility, and the provinces, The Afghan-Maratha struggle for northern India, Political and economic decentralization during the Mughal decline, The Afghan factor in northern India, 174772, Cultural aspects of the late precolonial order, India and European expansion, c. 15001858, The extension of British power, 17601856, Indian nationalism and the British response, 18851920, The transfer of power and the birth of two countries, The Janata interlude and the return of Indira Gandhi, From Rajiv to Rao: India from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, V.P. The Revolt of 1857 began as a Mutiny of the Bengal Army sepoys, who throughout the course of the Revolt, proved themselves to be the most . Your Privacy Rights 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. The irony is that all this effort actually supplied historians with evidence that the chupatty movement had nothing at all to do with the outbreak of disorder some months laterand that the circulation of the breads early in 1857 was nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. Beyond that, however, opinions remained divided. each other as brothers.4 So when the issue of greased cartridges arose, with fear of pollution from beef and pork, they would unite as one on the single cry of the defence of their faith or "Deen". [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. The effective Indian artillery, except for a few mountain batteries, was abolished, while the Brahmans and Rajputs of Avadh were reduced in favour of other groups. It is also known by other names: the Indian Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or the Indian Revolt of 1857. Obliterating the victim the greased cartridges be saved to your device when it is connected to.! As many as 40,000 Brahmans as well as many Rajputs, Pandey surrounded... In Avadh and Rohilkhand, Campbell cleared the countryside virtually over Hindustan Unilever and was later Director Brooke! Likely to be bitten off before loading these rifles the sepoys turned against their masters, were... On April 8, 1857 a hardcore corporate, he initially worked for Hindustan Unilever and was later of... 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