greased cartridges revolt of 1857
The Revolt of 1857, an anti-colonial movement which fought against the imperialist policies of the British East India Company, is an important event that took place in Indian history. Before the rebellion, there were reports that "holy men" were mysteriously circulating chapatis and lotus flowers among the sepoys. The Bengal army of some 130,000 Indian troops may have contained as many as 40,000 Brahmans as well as many Rajputs. The cartridge was then rammed down the muzzle of the rifle.. [7] Several years before the sepoys' mutiny, Lord William Bentinck had attacked several jagirs in western Bengal. The dramatic capture of Delhi turned mutiny into full-scale revolt. 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. : WH Allen, 1864);Tapti Roy. '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. The Indian Mutiny of 1857-59 was a widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against the rule of British East India Company in India which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British crown. is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings To facilitate its passage, the cartridges were greased with tallow, which, in the U.K., was made of beef and pork fat. Such measures were considered a valid negotiating tactic by the sepoys, likely to be repeated every time such issues arose. on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." And where had the chowkidar got them? the Indian Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or the Indian Revolt of 1857. 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. However, in those two years, they were not ordered to use them. In most accounts of the revolt, the greased cartridge has been referred to as the spark and tinder that lit the flames of rebellion. Victoria added the title "Empress of India" to her royal title. Total loading time: 0 Illustrations of events tended to reinforce Victorian notions of honor and bravery. Many Animals, Including the Platypus, Lost Their Stomachs. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service. Centers and leaders of the revolt of 1857. To save content items to your account, Your Privacy Rights On May 9, 1857, some 4,000 British soldiers and sepoysnative Indian troopsformed a three-sided hollow square on the parade ground at the Meerut military cantonment, 40 miles northeast of Delhi, to witness punishment. 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 rapid spread of disorder in 1857when regiment after regiment had mutinied, and revolts against British rule had sprung up throughout most of northern and central Indiamade it almost impossible to believe that the rebellion could have been spontaneous (as most modern historians concede it was), and considerable effort was made to chronicle the movement and trace the spread of the anomalous chapatis. These are deep waters that we trawl in, and dangerous ones, too. There followed the relief of the residency (November) and the capture of Lucknow by the new commander in chief, Sir Colin Campbell (March 1858). From the confidential physician to the King of Delhi: Nobody can tell what was the object of the distribution of the chupatties. Beyond that, however, opinions remained divided. The Sepoy Mutiny was a violent and very bloody uprising against British rule in India in 1857. Ans: In Jan 1857 British introduced a new cartridge of En-field rifle greased with pig and cow fats, soldiers had to chew it before use. Before loading these rifles the sepoys had to bite off the paper on the cartridges. The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994);Mark Thornhill. From Delhi the revolt spread in June to Kanpur (Cawnpore) and Lucknow. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. A keen cricketer and tennis player, he now lives in Delhi and serves as director of a few companies. | READ MORE. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. He ordered his fellow-official to make ten more, and give two to each of the five nearest village Chowkeydars with the same instructions. 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. In the 1870s the British government formalized its role as an imperial power. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. was the rumour that the newly issued rie cartridges would be greased either with tallow, derived from beef and thereby oensive to Hindus, or lard, derived from pork and thereby oensive to Muslims. Find out more about saving to your Kindle. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/sepoy-mutiny-of-1857-1774014. Post this, India was directly ruled by the British government through representatives known as Governor-General. 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. There is no question that atrocities were committed by both sides, and stories of events of 185758 lived on in both Britain and India. What are the major holidays and festivals of India? The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India - Biswamoy Pati 2010-01 The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India was much more than a e~sepoy mutinye(tm). However much of this sense of the invincibility of the British was lost in the First Anglo-Afghan War where poor political judgment and inept British leadership led to the massacre of Elphinstone's army (which included three Bengal regiments) while retreating from Kabul. In the decade prior to the rebellion, the EEIC had imposed a "doctrine of lapse" (of Indian leadership succession), and the policy of "subsidiary alliance", both of which deprived many Indian rulers of their customary powers and privileges. Large numbers of native soldiers, known as sepoys, were employed by the company to maintain order and defend trading centers. ThoughtCo, Jul. In another, however, the appalling atrocities visited by the Companys armies on the people of northern India were far from justified, since the British proved to be just as prone to rumors and panics as their Indian subjects. There was thus a suppressed tension in the countryside, ready to break out whenever governmental pressure might be reduced. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. 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. Thornhill came into his office one morning to find four dirty little cakes of the coarsest flour, about the size and thickness of a biscuit lying on his desk. 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. But the wars against the Afghans and the Sikhs and then the annexations of Dalhousie alarmed and outraged them. 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. An uprising in several sepoy companies of the Bengal army was sparked by the issue of new gunpowder cartridges for the Enfield rifle in February 1857. The Indian papers are full of surmises as to what it means. 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. [6]. He also passed decrees allowing Hindus who had converted to Christianity to be able to inherit property, which had previously been denied by local practice. This meant that when they came to be threatened by modernizing regimes in Calcutta, from the 1840s onwards, the sepoys had become accustomed to very high ritual status, and were extremely sensitive to suggestions that their caste might be polluted. Mason, Philip (1974), page 225 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. The signal spread in all directions with wonderful celerity. [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. In spite of their apparently desperate situation, the British possessed long-term advantages: they could and did receive reinforcements from Britain; they had, thanks to the resolution of Sir John Lawrence, a firm base in the Punjab, and they had another base in Bengal, where the people were quiet; they had virtually no anxiety in the south and only a little in the west; and they had an immense belief in themselves and their civilization, which gave resolution to their initial desperation. 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. The greased cartridges had to be opened by biting off the top with your teeth. Extensive inquiries into the meaning of the breads produced plenty of theories but few facts; even the runners and watchmen who baked them and carried them from village to village did not know why they had to run through the night with chupatties in their turbans, though they took them just the same. British and Indian military drills of the time required soldiers to bite off the end of the Beeswax paper cartridge, pour the gunpowder contained within down the barrel, stuff the remaining paper cartridge into the barrel, ram the paper cartridge (which included the ball wrapped and tied in place) down the barrel, remove the ram-rod, return the ram-rod, bring the rifle to the ready, set the sights, add a percussion cap, present the rifle, and fire. A chowkidaran Indian village watchman. The rifling inside the musket barrel ensured accuracy at much greater distances than was possible with old muskets. [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. What are the oldest known civilizations of India? Immediate Cause The Revolt of 1857 eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. Pandey rebelled by shooting a British sergeant-major and a lieutenant. The revolt began on May 10, 1857, at Meerut as a sepoy mutiny. Most Indians thought they were the work of the British, whothrough the East India Companyhad ruled over large portions of the country for almost a century (and were, according to one well-known prophecy, due to be unseated at that centurys end). Another suggestion they put forward was to introduce a new drill, in which the cartridge was not bitten with the teeth but torn open with the hand. Pandey rebelled by shooting a British sergeant-major and a lieutenant. For instance, once the rebellion was underway, Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar met the sepoys on 11 May 1857, he was told: "We have joined hands to protect our religion and our faith." In contrast, foreign Christians such as Revd Midgeley, John Jennings, and Indian converts to Christianity such as one of Zafar's personal physicians, Dr. Chaman Lal, were killed. Mason, Philip (1974), page 226 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Render date: 2023-03-01T21:49:14.745Z The cartridge had to be bitten off before loading it into the gun. All of the Bengal Native Cavalry regiments and 45 of the infantry units rebelled at some point. 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. All in all, the British were extremely spooked by the spread of the chapatis. The British officer Richard Barter wrote: Lotus flowers and bits of goats flesh, so it was rumoured, were being passed from hand to hand, as well as chupatties. [22], The Bengal Army also contained three "European" regiments of infantry and many artillery units manned by white personnel. 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. To these points may be added the fact that the British garrison in Bengal had been reduced at this time to 23,000 men because of troop withdrawals for the Crimean and Persian wars. Small-arms at that time were all muzzle-loaders, which were loaded by pouring a charge of powder down the barrel into the powder chamber and then, with the ramrod, ramming a bullet down the barrel till it rested upon the powder. 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. The campaign then settled down to British attempts to take Delhi and relieve Lucknow. Sepoys throughout India were issued with a new rifle, the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled musketa more powerful and accurate weapon than the old but smoothbore Brown Bess they had been using for the previous decades. Mason, Philip (1974), pages 226-228 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Most worryingly of all, some very similar rumors had once been recorded far to the south, in the Madras Presidency in 1806, at the time of a serious outbreak of mutiny among Indian soldiers stationed at Vellore. Indian sepoys believed that the cartridge was greased with either pig fat or made from cow fat. Then came the Western innovations of the now overconfident British. Historians have identified diverse political, economic, military, religious and social causes of the Revolt of 1857 (First War of Indian Independence 1857). Jaiwant Paul "The Greased Cartridge: The Heroes and Villains of 1857-58" In most accounts of the revolt, the greased cartridge has been referred to as the spark and tinder that lit the flames o. The Revolt of 1857 in India eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. The East India Company had been active in India for nearly 250 years, but the violence of the 1857 uprising led to the British government dissolving the company and taking direct control of India. The treatment of the aged Bahdur Shah, who was sent into exile, was a disgrace to a civilized country; also, the whole population of Delhi was driven out into the open, and thousands were killed after perfunctory trials or no trials at all. Further, the British were becoming increasingly hostile toward traditional survivals and contemptuous of most things Indian. [21], The Bengal Army also administered, sometimes loosely, 29 regiments of irregular horses and 42 of irregular infantry. The mutiny and great revolt of 1857-59. The Great Mutiny: India 1857 (London: Penguin, 1978);House of Commons. of your Kindle email address below. Loading it into the gun as many Rajputs as Governor-General to Kanpur ( Cawnpore ) Lucknow... ), pages 226-228 `` a Matter of Honour '', London: Holt Rhinehart! 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