| First outbreak at Meerut | 10th | May | 1857. |
| Outbreak at Lucknow | 30th | „ | „ |
| „ „ Cawnpore | 7th | June | „ |
| Siege of Delhi opened | 8th | „ | „ |
| Cawnpore massacre | 26th | „ | „ |
| Capture of Cawnpore by Havelock | 18th | July | „ |
| Fall of Delhi | 20th | Sept. | „ |
| First relief of Lucknow | 25th | „ | „ |
| Second „ „ | 17th | Nov. | „ |
In those days, when there was neither submarine cable nor Suez Canal, news from India took some time to reach England. Reinforcements destined for China were intercepted and sent to India on their way, and thus arrived early; but it was October 1857 before the reinforcements from England began fairly to pour into Calcutta. The Seventeenth was not of these first reinforcements; and did not receive its orders for embarkation before 2nd September. On the 7th of that month its establishment was raised from six to ten troops; and volunteers, to the number of 132, were received from other regiments, namely the 3rd, 4th, and 13th Light Dragoons, the 11th Hussars, and the 16th Lancers. It will be noticed at once that this list includes three regiments out of the five which had composed the Light Brigade in the Crimea. The other regiment of that Brigade, the 8th Hussars, sailed with the Seventeenth to India.
1857.
On the 1st October the depôt was formed, and on the 6th the regiment moved by rail from Dublin to Cork and embarked on board the steamship Great Britain, wherein the 8th Hussars had already been embarked on the previous day. The strength of the Seventeenth was as follows:—
| Field Officers. | 3 |
| Captains. | 4 |
| Subalterns. | 9 |
| Staff. | 5 |
| Sergeants. | 37 |
| Trumpeters. | 6 |
| Farriers. | 8 |
| Corporals. | 23 |
| Privates. | 409 |
We may note among the officers the names of Captains White and Sir W. Gordon, whom we knew at Balaclava, and of Captain Drury Lowe and Lieutenant Evelyn Wood, whom we are in future to know better.
On the 8th October the Great Britain sailed, and after touching at the Cape de Verdes and the Cape of Good Hope to coal, reached Bombay on the 17th December. A single casualty, the death of a private from heart disease, alone occurred on the seventy days’ voyage. The Colonel, who with one captain, the riding-master, the veterinary surgeon, and four rough-riders, had been sent out by the overland route, of course reached India earlier than the rest of the regiment. The Seventeenth disembarked in two divisions on the 19th and 21st December, and on landing were moved up first to Campoolee, at the foot of the Bhore Ghauts, and thence to Kirkee cantonments, where it arrived on the 24th and 26th.
1858.
Then came a weary period of waiting until horses could be procured from the remount establishment in Bombay. Meanwhile, on the 6th January 1858, Sir Hugh Rose opened the extraordinary campaign wherein he marched from Indore, and fought his way without a check to the Jumna. But when he had closed this campaign, first at Calpee on the 24th May, and finally at Gwalior on the 20th June, the most strenuous of his enemies were still at large, and, as the event proved, not to be captured for another nine months. These were Tantia Topee and the Rao Sahib; the latter Nana Sahib’s nephew, the former his right-hand man. Of the two Tantia was incomparably the more formidable. After being present at the first siege of Cawnpore, and the subsequent defeat of the Nana’s troops by Havelock, he had been entrusted with the command of the Nana’s “Gwalior contingent.” With this he had beaten General Wyndham before Cawnpore (26th and 27th November 1857), and though immediately after defeated in his turn by Sir Colin Campbell, had by no means abandoned the struggle. Turning north from Cawnpore he first captured Chirkaree. He then tried to relieve Jhansi, at that time besieged by Sir Hugh Rose, and was defeated (1st April 1858); and meeting Sir Hugh Rose once more at Kunch, was again defeated. Still unquelled, he turned against Gwalior, routed Scindia’s troops, and captured the fortress. There he was for the third time defeated by Sir Hugh Rose, and his force still further dispersed by Sir R. Napier at Jowra Alipore (22nd June). He then tried to make his way northward, but was headed back by General Showers. Still undismayed, he broke away westward to Tonk; from which point begins the final act of the drama of the Mutiny. In this act, which may be called the hunting of Tantia Topee, the Seventeenth had its part, and played it on the old stage of the Pindari war—Malwa.
While Sir Hugh Rose was fighting, horses began to arrive at Kirkee—Arab, Syrian, Australian, and Cape horses for the most part; and as each squadron of the Seventeenth was mounted, it was hurried up to the front to join in the chase of Tantia. The first squadron was despatched from Kirkee on the 27th May, under the command of Captain Sir William Gordon, to join Major-General Michel’s force at Mhow. This squadron, in spite of many obstacles, lost no time upon the road. The first difficulty was the desertion, after two or three days’ march, of the baboo who was in charge of the Commissariat arrangements. 1858. His place was taken by the only officer who could speak Hindustani, Lieutenant Evelyn Wood; and the squadron marched on without a day’s halt for the whole of the five hundred miles to its destination, learning much on the way, and arriving in perfect condition. At whatever hour of the day or night the march might close, Sir William Gordon, with or without the help of a candle, inspected every horse’s back, and if the hair appeared to be in the least degree ruffled, shifted the stuffing of the saddle from the tender place with a homely but effective instrument, a two-pronged steel fork. If the back were actually sore the trooper could look forward to the pleasure of tramping with the rear-guard on his own feet until it was healed; for this was the “golden rule” from which the Captain never departed. And such a tramp was not altogether enjoyable at that season. On the day before the squadron ascended the table-land whereon Mhow stands, the heat was so intense that the backs came off the brushes, and the combs contorted themselves into serpentine shapes. But there was not a sore back in the squadron when, at the end of June, it reached its destination, nor through the whole of the arduous service that subsequently fell upon it.