Following the punishment of 85 men of the 3rd Bengal Cavalry at Meerut for refusing to use new ammunition cartridges which were rumoured - falsely - to be greased with cow and pig fat, the garrison mutinied and murdered the Europeans in the town. Civilians joined in plundering British property, and the mutiny spread to other disaffected units of the Bengal Army.

The 1850s had seen a deterioration in relations between the British officers and the Indian other ranks in the East India Company’s Bengal Army. Many Indians believed that the British were seeking to destroy traditional Indian social, religious and cultural customs, a view shared by the sepoys of the Bengal Army, a substantial number of whom were high-caste Brahmins.

Discipline, administration and command in the Bengal Army had for some time been inferior to that in the Company’s other two armies and matters were brought to a head by the introduction of the Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle.

First produced by the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield in 1853, it was the first of a long line of famous Enfield rifles. The model had the percussion lock and the 3 groove rifled barrel , with a pitch of one turn in 78 inches. It was an excellent weapon in its day, capable of grouping into 4 inches at 100 yards and 27 inches at 500 yards. A good marksman could expect to hit a man at 600 yards and fire at a rate of three shots a minute. Indeed, the rifle was capable of driving a 500 grain soft lead bullet through 4 inches of timber at a range of 1000 yards and kill even beyond this distance.

The rumour spread that its cartridges were greased with pig and cow fat, thus offending both Muslims and Hindus. In February 1857 the 19th (Bengal Native) Infantry refused to use the cartridges. They were quickly disbanded but their actions were to spark a chain of similar events through central and northern India.

The Mutiny began in earnest at Meerut and the following day Delhi fell to the mutineers. News of these events spread rapidly, leading to further mutinies elsewhere. Eventually all ten Bengal Light Cavalry Regiments and most of the 74 Bengal Native Infantry Regiments were affected. Some regiments were disarmed before they had the chance to mutiny while in other cases British officers simply refused to doubt the loyalty of their men until it was too late.

Many local rulers supported the mutineers, having been alienated by the East India Company’s annexation of native states. There were only 35,000 British soldiers in the whole sub-continent and these were widely scattered. Furthermore, reinforcements took months to arrive.

Fortunately for the British the Mutiny was almost exclusively confined to the Bengal Army. The Company’s Madras and Bombay Armies were relatively unaffected and other units, including Sikhs, Punjabi Muslims and Gurkhas, remained loyal.