The Revolt of 1857-58 was the biggest and bloodiest conflict against any European colonial power during the nineteenth century. In the event, the chapattis were not harbingers of a coming storm. They were what people made them into, and the significance attributed to them was a symptom of the pervasive distrust and general consternation amongst the Indian population during the early months of 1857. 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. 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. This allowed different meanings an interpretations to be attributed to them, and the chapattis became an index of peoples thoughts and worries. The immediate cause of the Revolt was the issue of the greased cartridges. hasContentIssue true, THE FIRING PARADE OF 24 APRIL AND ITS SEQUEL, THE OUTBREAK: (a) The Native Infantry Lines, THE OUTBREAK: (b) The Native Cavalry Lines, THE OUTBREAK: (d) The European Troop Movements and the European Lines, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511563386.003, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. The Revolt of 1857-58 was the biggest and bloodiest conflict against any European colonial power during the nineteenth century. Advertising Notice The British, who had nothing to do with the mysterious transmission, guessed the breads were a piece of mischief-making on the part of the Indians, though opinion was divided as to whether the breads came from the east, near Calcutta (Kolkata), from the north, in the province of Oude (Avadh) or from Indore, in the center of the country. The musketry books also recommended that, "Whenever the grease around the bullet appears to be melted away, or otherwise removed from the cartridge, the sides of the bullet should be wetted in the mouth before putting it into the barrel; the saliva will serve the purpose of grease for the time being" This meant that biting a musket cartridge was second nature to the Sepoys, some of whom had decades of service in the company's army, and who had been doing musket drill for every day of their service. Feature Flags: { It was no secret that the Companys armies had been making preparations for the introduction of a new sort of ammunition for a new model of Enfield rifle. Sepoys were forced to watch such displays as it was believed it set an example of the horrific death that awaited mutineers. 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. The cartridge had to be bitten off before loading it into the gun. Increasing numbers of Christian missionaries began arriving in India, and their presence gave credence to rumors of impending conversions. A man had come out of the jungle with them, and given them to the watchman with instructions to make four like them and to take these to the watchman in the next village, who was to be told to do the same.. 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". 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). Many Indians felt that the company was asking for heavy tax from the locals. [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. On 29 March 1857, Mangal Pandey, a sepoy of the 34 th Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) mutinied against his commanding officers of the East India Company. He ordered his fellow-official to make ten more, and give two to each of the five nearest village Chowkeydars with the same instructions. They shot the British officers and made for Delhi, 40 miles (65 km) distant, where there were no British troops. please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. A. In India, it has been viewed quite differently. Then came the Western innovations of the now overconfident British. Revolt Of 1857 India Causes Eects History Facts N Info 1 . Pandey, it should be noted, is considered a hero in India, and has been portrayed as a freedom fighter in films and even on an Indian postage stamp. Cookie Settings. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. @free.kindle.com emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. But the spark was interestingly not so much of religious clashes, but the grease used in the new Enfield rifle. Sepoy units in the south of India remained loyal, but in the north, many units of the Bengal Army turned on the British. 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. The . The rani found a soldiers death, and Tantia Topi became a fugitive. To facilitate its passage, the cartridges were greased with tallow, which, in the U.K., was made of beef and pork fat. [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 surrender of Kanpur, after a relatively brief siege, was followed by a massacre of virtually all British citizens and loyal Indian soldiers at Kanpur. 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. Mike Dash | READ MORE. Privacy Statement And the uprising became extremely violent. The old aristocracy, both Muslim and Hindu, who were seeing their power steadily eroded by the EEIC, also rebelled against British rule. 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 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. Is the sending of such articles about the country a custom among the Hindoos or Mussulmans; and would the meaning be at once understood without any accompanying explanation? Hostname: page-component-7f44ffd566-7cttp 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. Wagner concludes that the trigger for the rebellion of 1857 was thus rumour, not the actual issue, or use, of cartridges greased with animal fat; that, in any case, we simply don't know what sort of tallow was used at Gangadarh Banerji & Co.; and that - remarkable as it now seems - the truth of the matter never was established, even by the This included an increase in the taxation on land. The army became an efficient professional body, drawn largely from the northwest and aloof from the national life. The Indian papers are full of surmises as to what it means. In contrast to their Indian predecessors, the British considered such refusals at times to be outright "mutinies" and therefore to be suppressed brutally. Seven Years' War: Major General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, Biography of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, 20 Facts About the Life of Mahatma Gandhi, independence movement against British rule. Before loading these rifles the sepoys had to bite off the paper on the cartridges. The military cause was both particular and general. Along with the previously mentioned illustration in Ballou's Pictorial, numerous American newspapers published accounts of the violence in India. That rate was particularly disconcerting because it was vastly swifter than the fastest British mails, and urgent inquiries were made as to the source and meaning of the movement. They yielded the information that the breads were being distributed far more widely than anyone in Agra had yet realized, and that the Indians who received them generally took them as some sort of a sign. There was rumor about an old prophecy that the company's rule would end after a hundred years. The immediate cause of military disaffection was the deployment of the new breech-loading Enfield rifle, the cartridge of which was purportedly greased with pork and beef fat. . . Christian organisations from Britain had additionally created 222 "unattached" mission stations across India in the decade preceding the rebellion. Your Privacy Rights Britain, of course, would rule India well into the 20th century. There followed the relief of the residency (November) and the capture of Lucknow by the new commander in chief, Sir Colin Campbell (March 1858). 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. Before Smithsonian.com, Dash authored the award-winning blog A Blast From the Past. All the people in the palace wondered what it could mean. In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. What was the issue of cartridges? The mutineers, on the other hand, lacked good leadership until nearly the end, and they had no confidence in themselves and suffered the guilt feelings of rebels without a cause, making them frantic and fearful by turns. The greased cartridge - what was it all about? Saul, David (2003), page 294 "The Indian Mutiny", Penguin Books. Economically and socially, there had been much dislocation in the landholding class all over northern and western India as a result of British land-revenue settlements, setting group against group. 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. B. Western inventions such as the telegraph and railways aroused the prejudice of a conservative society (though Indians crowded the trains when they had them). Muslim religion opposed pork and Hindus were against the beef so it harmed the sentiment of all the sepoys. 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. The uprising was officially declared over on July 8, 1859. However, nearly every sepoy was either Muslima religion that forbids eating the fat or any other part of a pig, or Hinduwhere the same rule applies to cows. Any British plans to reform Indian society, which had been one of the underlying causes of the revolt, were essentially set aside, and religious conversion of the Indian population was no longer viewed as a practical goal. 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. It is not known who first projected the plan. 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. The mutiny and great revolt of 1857-59. [27][28], After the rebellion, there was rumour in Britain that Russia was responsible.[28]. Politically, many princes of India had retired into seclusion after their final defeat in 1818. 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. 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