Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Following the formation of the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes) in 1719, companies of Indian sepoys were raised to augment the French regulars and Swiss mercenary troops available. By 1720 the sepoys in French service numbered about 10,000. [ 9 ]
The sepoys were Indian soldiers who were recruited into the company's army. Just before the rebellion, there were over 300,000 sepoys in the army, compared to about 50,000 British. The East India Company's forces were divided into three presidency armies: Bombay, Madras, and Bengal.
Sepoys throughout India were issued with a new rifle, the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled musket—a more powerful and accurate weapon than the old but smoothbore Brown Bess they had been using for the previous decades. The rifling inside the musket barrel ensured accuracy at much greater distances than was possible with old muskets.
The Enfield rifle-musket was a contributing cause of the Indian rebellion of 1857. Sepoys in the British East India Company's armies in India were issued with the new rifle in 1857, and rumours were spread that the cartridges (referring here to paper-wrapped powder and projectile, not to metallic cartridges) were greased with beef tallow, pig ...
A timeline of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on the tenth of May 1857 in the town of Meerut, and soon erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the Upper Gangetic plain and Central India.
Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, "blowing from a gun" was a method the British used to execute rebels [6] as well as for Indian sepoys who were found guilty of desertion. [7] Using the methods previously practised by the Mughals, the British began implementing blowing from guns in the latter half of the 18th century. [8]
The siege of Arrah (27 July – 3 August 1857) took place during the Indian Mutiny (also known as the Indian Rebellion of 1857). It was the eight-day defence of a fortified outbuilding, occupied by a combination of 18 civilians and 50 members of the Bengal Military Police Battalion, against 2,500 to 3,000 mutinying Bengal Native Infantry sepoys from three regiments and an estimated 8,000 men ...
Mangal Pandey (died 8 April 1857) was an Indian soldier who played a key role in the events that led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which resulted in the dissolution of the East India Company and the beginning of the British Raj through the Government of India Act 1858.