It was mutiny that made George Welch leave the British
Isles, the Indian Mutiny in 1857. My theory that George had spent all of his
time in England while in the army had been proved wrong when he was sent to
Ireland, but India, that was a whole different world!
Up until 1857 vast areas of India were under the control of
the East India Company, a British company whose reason d’être
was commerce. To keep control of its trade empire, the East India Company had
its own huge army. Things can be complicated if you are searching for records
of a man who served as a soldier in India. He could have been in the armies of
the East India Company or in the British Army. British men were also accepted
into the Indian Army where a lot of them being officers. Being a British
officer in the Indian Army in charge of Indian soldiers would have been
perilous when the mutiny broke out.
In The Autobiography
of a British Soldier, there is a description given by a British officer in
charge of a Sepoy regiment who barely escaped with his life. One of the
soldiers took a shot at him but missed. Then another soldier aiming at the
officer was bayoneted by a Sepoy. The officer took to his heels through a hail
of bullets, luckily they only struck his clothing – three times.* Other British
in India were not so lucky. It was not only officers and fighting men who were killed
but women and children too.
So many lives lost and the cause? The histories of the
mutiny agree the reason the mutiny began was because of the introduction
of a new rifle, the Enfield. To load the rifle, the soldier was required to
bite the cartridge as well as lubricate it with his saliva. A rumour started
that the cartridges were greased with pig and cow fat, thus offending both Muslims
and Hindus.
Sources:
Lewis-Stempel, John. The
Autobiography of the British Soldier: From Agincourt to Basra, in His Own
Words. Headline Publishing Group, London, 2007*
Ralby, Dr. Aaron. Atlas
of Military History: An Illustrated Global Survey of Warfare from Antiquity to
the Present Day. Parragon Books Ltd., Bath, UK, 2013
Spencer, William. Army Records: A Guide for Family Historians.
The National Archives, Kew, 2008
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