The year 1857 saw the commencement of the Indian Mutiny, a terrible
outbreak of cruelty and fanaticism which, while it inflicted unspeakable
anguish upon hundreds of our defenceless countrywomen and their
children, desolated many an English home, and evoked the horror and
compassion of the civilised world, was also the occasion of numberless
acts of heroism and devotion, not only on the part of British soldiers
and their native allies, but of all classes of civilians.
Among other causes which led to the rising of so many of the natives,
was no doubt the impression made by the Crimean war, under the influence
of which certain ambitious Mohammedan chiefs, combining with some Hindoo
rulers, misled by false accounts of the result of the war with Russia,
formed the idea that the time had arrived for destroying the power of
Great Britain in India.
For this purpose they made use of the prejudices and superstitions of
the Hindoo soldiery, and the avarice and worst passions of the
Mohammedans; and a story that the new cartridges issued to the troops
were made with pig's or bullock's fat--the one being an abomination to
the Mohammedans, the other to the Hindoos, who eating it would lose
caste--was believed by the more ignorant and fanatical, who saw in it a
design to destroy their religion.
The first serious outbreak took place at Meerut, when 85 out of 90 men
of the 3rd Light Cavalry refused to use the cartridges. They were
condemned to a long imprisonment, and their sentence was read out on
parade. The next day, Sunday, 10th May, while the Europeans were at
church, news was brought that the 11th and 20th Regiments of Native
Infantry were assembling tumultuously on the parade-ground. Colonel
Finnis, who immediately rode out to quell the disturbance, was shot by a
sepoy while addressing the 20th Regiment, and cut to pieces; thirty
other Europeans were speedily slaughtered, and the cantonments given to
the flames. Mr Greathead, the commissioner, and his wife, were saved
by the fidelity of their servants. The British troops in the place were
not called out till the mutineers had time to escape to Delhi; where, on
their arrival, an outbreak took place, and the greater number of the
British residing there were butchered with the most horrible barbarity.