The causes of this rising are traced to distrust and hatred of the British rulers—feelings that caused a ferment among the Hindus and Mahometans of India, who suspected a design for suppressing their religions. The natives also became alarmed at the introduction of Western ideas and improvements—new methods of education, the steam-engine, the telegraph, etc.—portending to the Indian peoples the substitution of a foreign civilization for their own. The truth is that in attempting to abolish suttee and other ancient native customs, and to introduce more enlightened practices, the British Government was acting in the interest of general humanity.
The immediate provocation of the great mutiny among the sepoys or native troops in the British East-Indian service is well shown, and the entire story of the revolt is equally well told, by Mr. Wheeler. This author, while a secretary to the Government of India in the latter part of the nineteenth century, enjoyed peculiar advantages for study and research. These advantages he turned to account by writing an authoritative and interesting history of the land of his official residence.
Early in the year 1857, it is said, there were rumors of a coming danger to British rule in India. In some parts of the country chupatties, or cakes, were circulated in a mysterious manner from village to village. [Footnote: The form of the cake conveyed information that an insurrection was in preparation—an old custom—understood by the natives.—ED.] Prophecies were also rife that in 1857 the East India Company's raj [rule] would come to an end. Lord Canning has been blamed for not taking alarm at these proceedings; but something of the kind always had been going on in India. Cakes of cocoanuts are given away in solemn fashion; and as the villagers were afraid to keep them or eat them, the circulation went on to the end of the chapter. Then, again, holy men and prophets have always been common in India. They foretell pestilence and famine: the downfall of British rule, or the destruction of the whole world. They are often supposed to be endowed with supernatural powers and to be impervious to bullets; but these phenomena invariably disappear whenever they come in contact with Europeans, especially as all such characters are liable to be treated as vagrants without visible means of subsistence.
One dangerous story, however, got abroad in the early part of 1857, which ought to have been stopped at once, and for which the military authorities were wholly and solely to blame. The Enfield rifle was being introduced; it required new cartridges, which in England were greased with the fat of beef or pork. The military authorities in India, with strange indifference to the prejudices of sepoys, ordered the cartridges to be prepared at Calcutta in like manner; forgetting that the fat of pigs was hateful to the Mahometans, while the fat of cows was still more horrible in the eyes of the Hindus.
The excitement began at Barrackpur, sixteen miles from Calcutta. At this station there were four regiments of sepoys, and no Europeans except the regimental officers. One day a low-caste native, known as a lascar, asked a Brahmin sepoy for a drink of water from his brass pot. The Brahmin refused, as it would defile his pot. The lascar retorted that the Brahmin was already defiled by biting cartridges which had been greased with cow's fat. This vindictive taunt was based on truth. Lascars had been employed at Calcutta in preparing the new cartridges, and the man was possibly one of them. The taunt created a wild panic at Barrackpur. Strange to say, however, none of the new cartridges had been issued to the sepoys; and had this been promptly explained to the men, and the sepoys left to grease their own cartridges, the alarm might have died out. But the explanation was delayed until the whole of the Bengal army was smitten with the groundless fear; and then, when it was too late, the authorities protested too much, and the terror-stricken sepoys refused to believe them.
The sepoys had proved themselves brave under fire, and loyal to their salt in sharp extremities; but they are the most credulous and excitable soldiery in the world. They regarded steam and electricity as so much magic; and they fully believed that the British Government was binding India with chains, when it was only laying down railway lines and telegraph wires. The Enfield rifle was a new mystery; and the busy brains of the sepoys were soon at work to divine the motive of the English in greasing cartridges with cow's fat. They had always taken to themselves the sole credit of having conquered India for the company; and they now imagined that the English wanted them to conquer Persia and China. Accordingly, they suspected that Lord Canning was going to make them as strong as Europeans by destroying caste, forcing them to become Christians, and making them eat beef and drink beer.
The story of the greased cartridges, with all its absurd embellishments, ran up the Ganges and Jumna to Benares, Allahabad, Agra, Delhi, and the great cantonment at Meerut; while another current of lies ran back again from Meerut to Barrackpur. It was noised abroad that the bones of cows and pigs had been ground into powder, and thrown into wells and mingled with flour and butter, in order to destroy the caste of the masses and convert them to Christianity.
For a brief interval it was hoped that the disaffection was suppressed. Excitement manifested itself in various ways at different stations throughout the length of Hindustan and the Punjab—at Benares, Lucknow, Agra, Ambala, and Sealkote. In some stations there were incendiary fires; in others the sepoys were wanting in their usual respect to their European officers. But it was believed that the storm was spending itself, and that the dark clouds were passing away.
Suddenly on May 3d there was an explosion at Lucknow. A regiment of Oudh Irregular Infantry, previously in the service of the Mogul, broke out in mutiny and began to threaten their European officers. Sir Henry Lawrence, the new Chief Commissioner, had a European regiment at his disposal, namely the Thirty-second Foot. That same evening he ordered out the regiment, and a battery of eight guns manned by Europeans, together with four sepoy regiments, three of infantry and one of cavalry. With this force he proceeded to the lines of the mutineers, about seven miles off. The Oudh Irregulars were taken by surprise; they saw infantry and cavalry on either side, and the European guns in front. They were ordered to lay down their arms, and they obeyed. At this moment the artillery lighted their port fires. The mutineers were seized with a panic, and rushed away in the darkness; but the leaders and most of their followers were pursued and arrested by the native infantry and cavalry, and confined pending trial. Subsequently it transpired that the native regiments sympathized with the mutineers, and would have shown it but for their dread of Sir Henry Lawrence and the Europeans. The energetic action of Lawrence sufficed to maintain order for another month in Oudh. Meanwhile the Thirty-fourth Native Infantry was disbanded at Barrackpur, and again it was hoped that the disaffection was stayed.
The demon of mutiny was only scotched. Within a week of the outbreak at Lucknow, the great military station of Meerut was in a blaze. Meerut was only forty miles from Delhi, and the largest cantonment in India. There were three regiments of sepoys, two of infantry and one of cavalry; but there were enough Europeans to scatter four times the number; namely, a battalion of the Sixtieth Rifles, a regiment of Dragoon Guards known as the "Carabineers," two troops of horse-artillery, and a light field-battery.