#SEPOY MUTINY DEFINITION TRIAL#
#SEPOY MUTINY DEFINITION SERIES#

Imperial rule could only be maintained and reproduced by a show of terror and force: The fiction of civilising the Indians dissolved in the reality of the violence.Īny form of rebellion, from stealing to desertion and possessing money that could not be accounted for, was punished by death.Ĭolonel James Neill, who was one of the commanding officers of the troops that moved up the Gangetic plain to quell the uprising, gave the following orders to 'settle' the town and the country around Allahabad: 'All the men inhabiting them ( certain named villages) were to be slaughtered.'

#SEPOY MUTINY DEFINITION TRIAL#

A very summary trial is all that takes place.'īritish rule in North India had come perilously close to being destroyed and the British had no other instrument at their command except the deployment of terror on a grand scale to restore their dominance. One officer wrote to The Times: 'We have the power of life and death in our hands and I assure you we spare not. These various Acts gave Britons the power to judge and take the life of Indians without recourse to the due process of law.Īll restrictions on the use of power were removed.

#SEPOY MUTINY DEFINITION SERIES#

The British confronted the brutal rebellion with brutal tyranny.īritish measures to put an end to this rebellion were not slow in coming.Īnd these measures displayed unparalleled ferocity and vengeance.īy a series of Acts passed in May and June, the definition of martial law was enlarged. IMAGE: Blowing Mutinous Sepoys From the Guns, September 8th, 1857, a steel engraving from London Printing and Publishing Co, 1858.īy the beginning of June 1857, the Delhi, Meerut, Rohilkhand, Agra, Allahabad and Benares divisions had been placed under martial law. Ghalib who saw the scenes of destruction noted thus in his diary: 'Throughout the day, the rebels looted the city, and at night they slept in silken beds.The city of Delhi was emptied of its rulers and peopled instead by creatures of the Lord who accepted no lord.'īy May 12, Delhi was outside British control and Bahadur Shah had been forced by the sepoys to become the leader of the rebellion. They had come to him to make him their leader.Īnother group of sepoys had already entered Delhi and there, together with the sepoys stationed in Delhi, they destroyed and killed, their targets being government property and the White people.Ī handful of Britons escaped to take refuge in Metcalfe House. They declared to their Badshah that they had killed the firangi and had declared war on them in Meerut. The sepoys from Meerut were the source of the commotion. It was the month of Ramadan and the old and powerless Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah, heard a clamour outside his window in the Lal Qilla. Once the mayhem was over and dusk had fallen, a group of sepoys rode off towards Delhi where they arrived in the morning of May 11. What accompanied the destruction was the killing of the White population of Meerut, irrespective of gender and age.

The peasants of the surrounding villages participated in the destruction. It began with violence in the late afternoon of May 10 in Meerut with the sepoys destroying government buildings - the jail, record room, kachehri, telegraph office - and going on to destroy the bungalows in which the firangi lived. Photograph: Kind courtesy Wikimedia Commons The mutiny began with the destruction of government buildings in Meerut on May 10. IMAGE: The Sepoy Revolt at Meerut from the Illustrated London News, 1857.

Sepoy mutiny definition