by V. A. Stuart
The first serious sign of trouble came on February 24th, when the 19th Bengal Infantry, stationed at Berhampur, just over one hundred miles from Calcutta, refused an order to exercise with blank cartridges or to accept cartridges of the type they had used with the old Brown Bess musket for years. An ugly situation was averted by the commanding officer, Colonel Mitchell, and the men returned to duty, but Lord Canning, having sent for the 84th Queen’s Regiment from Rangoon, decided to take the drastic step of disbanding the mutinous 19th, who were ordered to march to Barrackpore (near Calcutta) to hear their sentence.
Before they arrived, however, a still graver incident took place at Barrackpore itself, where the garrison consisted of the 34th, 43rd, and 70th Native Infantry and the 2nd Bengal Grenadiers, the only British regiment on the station being the 53rd Queen’s, which had a wing at Dum Dum. On March 29th, in front of the quarter-guard of the 34th—a regiment composed mainly of high caste Brahmins—one of its sepoys, by name Mangal Pandy, armed with a loaded musket and drunk with bhang (hashish) and religious fervor, called upon his comrades to mutiny, declaring that he would shoot the first Englishman he came across.
The adjutant, Lieutenant Baugh, summoned by a runner, hastily donned his uniform, loaded his pistol and, accompanied by the British sergeant-major, rode at once to the quarter-guard. Mangal Pandy fired at him, bringing his horse down. Baugh scrambled up and advanced on the sepoy, pistol in hand, as the man drew his tulwar, but his shot missed and Pandy savagely cut him down. Sergeant-Major Hewson, stout and middle-aged, ran up breathlessly, calling on the guard—a jemadar (native officer) and twenty men—to place the mutineer under arrest before he murdered the unfortunate Baugh. The jemadar forbade the guard to move and Hewson attempted to seize Pandy unaided, only to be set on in his turn and fall to his knees under a rain of blows from the tulwar. His life and that of the adjutant were saved by the courageous intervention of the latter’s Muslim orderly, Sheikh Pultoo, who held off the blood-crazed Pandy until both had dragged themselves to safety.
By this time most of the regiment had assembled in a state of considerable excitement and Mangal Pandy reloaded his musket, and marched up and down, reviling his comrades for their failure to join him to fight for their faith. The situation was getting out of hand when the district commander, Major-General Sir John Hearsey, rode on to the parade ground, flanked by his two sons, having been informed by a panic-stricken messenger that the whole regiment had mutinied. He rode straight for the quarter-guard and, when someone shouted a warning that Pandy’s musket was loaded, was heard to retort contemptuously, “Damn his musket!”
Hearsey was seventy years old but, as a young officer, he had won a reputation for courage which did not desert him now. Aware that the eyes of close to a thousand wildly excited sepoys were on him and that this was a battle for their allegiance, he did not hesitate. They were wavering and the old man knew that if he faltered, they would break and it would be beyond the power of anyone on the parade ground to control them. He said urgently to his elder son, “If I fall, John, rush in and put him to death,” and then, his pistol leveled at the jemadar, he called on the guard to do their duty or take the consequences.
Such was the respect they had for the fine old soldier that they obeyed him instantly, falling in behind him in response to his harsh command. The general, undeterred by his son’s anxious cry, “Father, he’s taking aim at you!” advanced on Mangal Pandy and, faced by the stern old veteran, the sepoy’s nerve broke. He turned his musket on himself, a bare toe feeling for the trigger and, wounded, was dragged away by the now obedient guard. General Hearsey promoted the loyal Moslem orderly to havildar (sergeant) on the spot. Next day, the 19th Native Infantry reported, and the 84th Queen’s and a wing of the 53rd marched in. The 19th were disbanded, in a curiously moving ceremony, in which Hearsey thanked them for their previous loyal service and the disgraced regiment cheered him as he rode off the parade ground.
A week later, Mangal Pandy and the jemadar commanding the guard were tried by court martial and both were sentenced to death. Pandy’s sentence was carried out within two days. He was hanged in the presence of his regiment, and the jemadar— whose name, by coincidence, was also Pandy—suffered a similar fate on April 21st, soon after which the 34th were also disbanded. Both men achieved ironic fame, for to the British in India the word “Pandy” came to symbolize the Mutiny and henceforth all mutineers were referred to as “Pandies.” They began what was to be a tragic and bloody chapter in British history, in which no quarter was given by either side and in which many innocents were to lose their lives in horrifying fashion, at the hands of bitter, vengeful men, both Indian and British.
The Mutiny fulfilled the prophecy, for it brought about the fall of the powerful John Company, but British India was saved by the fidelity of the Sikh chiefs in the Punjab, by those sepoys—even in the Bengal army—who remained true and fought against the mutineers, and by the fact that very few of India’s 180,000,000 people gave active support to the uprising. Had they, in fact, done so, not a European would have remained alive.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Sepoy Mutiny was that it could, so easily, have been averted. The sepoys’ fears were very real but no official attempt was made to set them at rest and neither was justice done to those whom Lord Dalhousie had dispossessed. Even at the eleventh hour in Meerut, a Hearsey in the place of the inept Hewitt might well have prevented disaster … but so often it is by human error that history is made.
* A humorous nickname, like that given to the Dutch East India Company—Jan Kompanie.
† Perpetrator of the Black Hole of Calcutta outrage, in which 146 British captives were imprisoned in an eighteen-foot-square strong-room and only 23 survived.
* Also called HM’s or Queen’s regiments.