MUTINY has occurred amongst the British Indian army on several occasions. In January 1766, double batta was abolished. It had been granted to the E. I. Company's army by Mir Jafar, in gratitude for their services. But on its abolition both officers and men mutinied, and it was only put down in fifteen days by the severe measures which Clive adopted.
In May 1764, Major (afterwards Sir Hector) Munro, on joining the army at Patna, found the European and Native soldiers extremely mutinous, ' and, on part of them deserting to the enemy, they were overtaken and brought back, and 24 of them blown away from guns. On that occasion four of the grenadiers stepped forward, and begged, as they had always had the post of honour, to be allowed to be first blown away.
In 1795, the European officers of the Bengal .army broke out into open rebellion. Its cause was Lord Cornwallis' abolition of all offices of gain in the military branch of the service. The revolt was settled:by the concession which Sir John Shore made to them.
Disaffection sprang up amongst the Euro pean officers of the Madras army, in the early part of the 19th century, with whom a few regi ments of sepoys sympathized, but it was quickly subdued.
In 180G, the native soldiers in the garrison of l'elion: mutinied and massacred all their officers and the other Europeans, but in the earlypart of the samo day, Colonel Gillespie galloped from Arent and suppressed the rising. After the fall of Seringapatam in 1799, the family of Tipn Sultan were detained at \Vlore, but, as they were supposed to have instigated the revolt, they were removed to Bengal.
On the 1st November 1824, a mutiny oc curred at Barrackpur in the 47th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry, part of the 26th and 62d Regiments, when ordered to Burma. The commander-in-chief ordered them to be fired upon by artillery, attacked by the cavalry of the body-guard and British troops, and 440 of them were destroyed. Their ostensible grievance was that they could not obtain cattle for carriage, and that they ought to receive double batta when proceeding to Burma.
In 1857 the greater part of the native army of Bengal and several regiments of the Bombay army revolted. The first signs occurred near Calcutta, but the revolt continued by the out break of time native cavalry at Meerut on the 10th May 1857, and before the end of 1858 nearly all the Bengal army was swept away ; but before this could be done, many of the predatory tribes and numbers of the civil population engaged in the rising, and a rebellion of nearly all Upper India was the result.
This revolt has been described by many writers, but chiefly by Sir John Kaye, who wrote a History of the Sepoy War, also by Colonel Malleson in his History of the Indian Mutiny, and by Mr. T. R. C. Holmes in his History of the Indian Mutiny, and of the disturbances which accompanied it among the civil population. The first overt acts were shown at Barrackpur, where the native soldiery planned to burn the houses, and then proceed to Calcutta to seize the fortress there, and take possession of the treasury.
The 19th Regiment sepoys refused to take the percussion-caps that were served out to them, and they were at once disbanded. The disgraced soldiers brought their colours to the front, piled their arms, stripped off their accoutrements, and, retaining their uniforms and taking their pay, marched off under an escort to Chinsurah, cheer ing as they went. A few days after, a sepoy of the 34th Bengal Native army, named Mungal l'andy, cut down his officer in the presence of the guard, without a finger being uplifted to prevent him.
At Meerut, on the 10th May, the sepoys broke into open mutiny. They threw open the jail, rushed through the cantonment, cutting down every European whom they met, and streamed off to stir up the native soldiery at Dehli. A rallying centre was given to the revolt by the possession of this historical city, and all that the Europeans could do before leaving Dehli was to blow up the arsenal. Throughout the cantonments of the N.W. Provinces of British India the sepoys revolted, usually without warning, sometimes after protestations of fidelity. The Europeans were massacred, occasionally also the women and children. The jails were broken open, and the mutineers marched to the centres of the revolt. In the Panjab, Sir John (Lord) Lawroice and his civil and military officers, Montgomery, Macleod, Edwards, Nicholson, repressed and disarmed the sepoys serving there, but the Sikhs and Afghans remained loyal, and furnished an army for the recovery of Dehli.