Paper cartridges for a new rifle, rumoured to be greased with the fat of cows and pigs (1857)
The drill required biting the cartridge open, offending Hindu and Muslim soldiers alike.
History · Revolutions & empires
The Indian Rebellion of 1857
1857–58
Sepoy revolt that ended Company rule and began the British Raj
A mutiny among the Bengal Army's sepoys at Meerut in May 1857 spread across the Gangetic plain, drawing in dispossessed princes, peasants and townspeople. Delhi fell to the rebels, who proclaimed the last Mughal their emperor; Kanpur and Lucknow endured sieges and massacres that scarred both sides. Once reinforcements arrived, the reconquest was ferocious. Parliament's answer was to abolish the East India Company's rule and govern India directly from the Crown.
How to spot them
- ▸A new rifle whose paper cartridges had to be bitten, and a rumour about beef and pork fat
- ▸A soldier at Barrackpore who fired on his officers in March 1857 and was hanged in April
- ▸A rani who died in the saddle at Gwalior; a queen of Awadh and a nana at Bithur
- ▸Ends with a proclamation by Queen Victoria and the abolition of a trading company's rule
What happened
A sepoy at Barrackpore who attacked his officers in March 1857 and was hanged on the 8th of April
His name became British army slang for a mutineer, and he is now a national hero in India.
The garrison town north-east of Delhi where troopers broke open the jail on 10 May 1857
The mutineers rode overnight to Delhi, eighty kilometres away.
A blind eighty-two-year-old poet proclaimed emperor and later exiled to Rangoon
The last Mughal emperor was tried in 1858 and died in Burma in 1862.
A surrender at Satichaura Ghat followed by the killing of women and children at the Bibighar (June–July 1857)
The atrocity became the byword 'Remember Cawnpore' and a licence for reprisals.
A Residency besieged for months, relieved twice, whose ruins still fly a flag
Sir Henry Lawrence was killed early in the siege; Havelock and Outram broke in, and Colin Campbell evacuated it.
A queen who rode out of her fort in Bundelkhand and was killed in action near Gwalior in June 1858
Lakshmibai had been deprived of her adopted heir's succession under the doctrine of lapse.
The 1858 Act that transferred the government of India from a chartered company to the Crown (1858)
It created the office of Secretary of State for India and a viceroy in Calcutta.
Key ideas
- Grievances ran wider than the cartridges: annexations under Dalhousie's doctrine of lapse, the taking of Awadh in 1856, loss of allowances and prestige for sepoys, and fears of forced conversion
Quick-fire facts
- •The rising began at Meerut on 10 May 1857 and Delhi was seized the next day
- •It has been called the Sepoy Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, and the First War of Indian Independence, a name popularised by V. D. Savarkar in 1909
- •The Bengal Army mutinied most widely; the Bombay and Madras armies largely stayed loyal, as did the Sikhs and Gurkhas
- •Delhi was retaken in September 1857 after a siege; the assault on the Kashmiri Gate cost John Nicholson his life
- •Twenty-four Victoria Crosses were won on a single day, 16 November 1857, during the second relief of Lucknow — the most ever
- •Bahadur Shah Zafar was exiled to Rangoon, where he died in 1862, ending the Mughal dynasty
- •The East India Company's rule ended under the Government of India Act 1858, and Victoria's proclamation was read at Allahabad on 1 November 1858
- •Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876 under Disraeli's Royal Titles Act
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- National Army Museum — Explore the collection: the British in India
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Indian Mutiny Consulted for chronology, sieges and the 1858 transfer of power; cited without URL as the site blocks automated access.