Causes

The rebellion spread beyond the armed forces, but it did not result in a complete popular uprising as its leaders hoped. It was also largely limited to the area of Bengal and the North. Indeed, several areas actively supported the British. Sikh and Pathan units from the Punjab and North West Frontier were crucial to the eventual defeat of the rebellion, as were the Gurkhas from Nepal.

Indians were dissatisfied with the heavy-handed rule of the British East India Company who had embarked on a project of rather rapid westernization.

For example, they intended to replace native princes. The leader of the Marathas, Nana Sahib, was denied his titles in 1853 and his pension was stopped. The last of the Moghul emperors, Bahadur Shah II, was told that he would be the end of his dynasty. If a landowner did not leave a male heir, the land became the property of the Company via the Doctrine of Lapse carried out by Governor-General Dalhousie and his successor, Lord Canning.

The British also abolished child marriage, Sati, and hunted down the Thuggees.

Indians came to believe -- with some justification -- that the British intended to convert them to Christianity. Some began to spread the rumor of a prophecy that the Company's rule would end after 100 years. Their rule in India had begun with the Battle of Plassey in 1757.

 

Sepoys

Sepoys were native Indian soldiers serving in the army of the East India Company under British NCOs and officers trained in the company's own military school in England. The presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Bengal maintained their own army each with its own commander-in-chief. They fielded more troops than the official army of the British Empire. In 1857 there were 257,000 sepoys.

The sepoys were dissatisfied with various aspects of army life. Their pay was relatively low and after the British troops conquered Awadh and the Punjab, the soldiers no longer received extra pay for service there, because they were no longer considered "foreign missions".

In addition, the Company also recruited Indians of other castes than Brahmins and Rajputs; the latter is a traditional warrior caste in India. In 1856 sepoys were required to serve overseas which, to them, would have meant the loss of caste.

The most famous reason is the (rumored) use of cow and pig fat in Lee-Enfield rifle cartridges. Since soldiers had to break the cartridges with their teeth before they could load them into their rifles, this was offensive to Hindu and Muslim soldiers, who considered tasting beef and pork to be against their respective religious tenets. In February 1857 sepoys refused to use their new cartridges. The British claimed to have replaced the cartridges with new ones and tried to make sepoys make their own grease from beeswax and vegetable oils but the rumor persisted.

In March 1857 Mangal Pande of the 34th Native Infantry attacked his British sergeant, wounded an adjutant. General Hearsay, who says Pande was in some kind of "religious frenzy" ordered a jemadar to arrest him but the jemadar refused. Mangal Pande then turned the gun against himself and used his foot to try to pull the trigger to shoot himself. He failed, was captured and then hanged on April 7 along with the jemadar. The whole regiment was dismissed as a collective punishment. Other sepoys felt this was too harsh.

A couple of weeks later, on May 9 in Meerut, 85 troopers of the 3rd Light Cavalry refused to use their cartridges. They were imprisoned, sentenced to ten years of hard labor, and stripped of their uniforms in public.

 

Mutiny begins

Serious unrest began the next day, on May 10, 1857 when the XI Native Cavalry of the Bengal Army in Meerut mutinied. Supposedly, the town prostitutes made fun of their manhood and thus goaded, they went to the prison and released the chained sepoys. They then attacked the European cantonment where they killed all Europeans and any Indian Christians they could find. This included all women and children from master to the servant. Then they burned the houses and marched towards Delhi. Initially, British troops did not pursue them.

The next day in Delhi they were joined by other Indians from the local bazaar. They attacked the Red Fort, killed five British - including a British officer and two women - and demanded Bahadur Shah to reclaim his throne. He reluctantly agreed and became the nominal leader of the rebellion. The sepoys proceeded to kill every European and Christian in the city.

 

Supporters and non-supporters

The rebels did not agree in everything. Many Indians joined the rebels and attempted to restore both Moghul and Maratha emperors. Rani Lakshmi Bai, the female leader of Jhansi which had been claimed in 1853 by the British, led a strong rebellion. There were calls for jihad by some leaders, including the millennarian Ahmedullah Shah. Many Muslim artisans fought for religious reasons.

However, not all Indian peoples supported the rebellion. The Sikhs of Punjab did not cherish the idea of return of Moghul rule and fought in British ranks. In Awadh, Sunni Muslims did not want to see a return to Shiite rule, so they often refused to join what they perceived to be a Shia rebellion. Most of the south of the country remained passive.

 

Retaking Delhi

The British were slow to strike back at first but eventually two columns left Meerut and Simla. They proceeded slowly towards the Delhi and fought, killed, and hanged numerous Indians along the way. At the same time, the British moved regiments from the Crimean War, and diverted European regiments on their way to China to India.

After a march lasting two months, the British fought the main army of the rebels near Delhi in Badl-ke-Serai and drove them back to Delhi. The British established a base on the Delhi ridge to the north of the city and the siege began. However the encirclement was hardly complete—the rebels could easily receive resources and reinforcements. Later they were joined by the Punjab Movable Column of Sikh soldiers and elements of Gurkha Brigade.

Eagerly-awaited heavy siege guns did not guarantee an easy victory against numerical superiority of the sepoys. Eventually the British broke through Kashmiri gate and began a week of street fighting. Sikh troops left after the death of their commander. When the British reached the Red Fort, Bahadur Shah had already fled to Humayun's tomb. The British had retaken the city.

British arrested Bahadur Shah later and the next day British officer William Hodson shot his sons Mirza Moghul, Mirza Khizr Sultan, and Mirza Abu Bakr under his own authority.

 

Kanpur

In June, sepoys under General Wheeler in Kanpur rebelled - apparently with tacit approval of Nana Sahib - and besieged the European entrenchment. The British lasted three weeks of siege without water, suffering constant casualties. On June 25 Nana Sahib requested surrender and Wheeler had little choice but to accept. When British boarded riverboats, their pilots fled setting fire to the boats, and exchange of fire ensued. The Indians fired at the boats with grapeshot and filled the river with corpses. Only one boat with 4 men escaped.

The surviving women and children were led to Bibi-Ghar (the house of the women) in Cawnpore. On July 15, three men entered it and killed everyone with knives and hatchets and hacked them to pieces. Their bodies were thrown down a well.

The British were aghast and the pro-Indian proponents lost all their support. Cawnpore became a war cry for the British soldiers for the rest of the conflict. Nana Sahib disappeared.

When the British retook Cawnpore later, the soldiers took their sepoy prisoners to the Bibi-Ghar and forced them to lick the bloodstains from the walls and floor. Then they hanged them.

 

Lucknow

The state of Oudh (modern-day Uttar Pradesh) went into rebellion very soon after events in Meerut. British commander of Lucknow, Henry Lawrence, had enough time to fortify his position inside the Residency compound. He had 1700 men, including loyal sepoys. The rebels’ initial assaults were not successful and they begun a barrage of artillery and musket fire into the compound. Lawrence was one of the first casualties. The rebels tried to breach the walls with explosives and bypass them via underground tunnels that led to underground close combat. After 90 days of siege, numbers of British were reduced to 300 loyal sepoys, 350 British soldiers and 550 noncombatants.

On September 25 a thousand soldiers of the Highlanders under General Sir Henry Havelock joined them, in what was known as 'The First Relief of Lucknow'. In October another Highlander unit under Sir Colin Campbell came to relieve them and on November 18 they evacuated the compound—women and children first. They fled to now-retaken Cawnpore.

 

Retaliation

From the end of 1857, the British had begun to gain ground again. Lucknow was retaken in March 1858.

Due to the bloody start of the rebellion and especially after the apparent treachery of Nana Sahib and butchery in Cawnpore, the British believed that they were justified in using similar tactics. The British press and British government did not advocate clemency of any kind, though Governor General Canning tried to be sympathetic to native sensibilities, earning the scornful sobriquet "Clemency Canning". Soldiers took very few prisoners and often executed them later. Whole villages were wiped out for apparent pro-rebel sympathies. The Indians called it Devil’s Wind.

The last rebels were defeated in Gwalior on June 20 1858. Sporadic fighting continued to 1859 but most of the rebels were subdued. The British adopted the old Mughal punishment for mutiny and sentenced rebels were lashed to the mouth of cannons and blown to pieces. It was the crudest war India had seen in a long time, with both sides resorting to what can only be described as barbarism.

 

Reorganization