More on the Mutiny

The one question that always puzzled me about the Indian Mutiny is how often the mutineers lost in battles against the English. In most cases, the Indians were something like ten times the strength of the British troops and they seemed to have had a much greater motivation to fight than the Indians (Sikhs, Madrasis) fighting on the side of the British. Still, battle after battle ended with thousands of Indians dead for a couple of hundred British troops.

Forbes-Mitchell (The Relief of Lucknow by Williams Forbes-Mitchell, The Folio Society, London 1962) provides some answers. Forbes-Mitchell was a young NCO in the 93rd Highlanders and he took part in the British rescue of the beseiged English men and women in the Lucknow Residency during the mutiny. Here he makes fun of the Pandies:

... in addition to the regular army, there was a large body of archers on the walls, armed with bows and arrows which they discharged with great force and precision, .... Looking at the arrow, 'My conscience!' said White, 'bows and arrows! bows and arrows! My conscience, the sight has not been seen in a civilised war for nearly two hundred years. Bows and arrows! And why not weavers' beams as in the days of Goliath? Ah! that Daniel White should be able to tell in the Saut Market of Glasgow that he had seen men fight with bows and arrows in the days of Enfield rifles! (Page 53.)

Enfield rifles are, of course, the infamous grease coated bullet using rifles that were the trigger for the mutiny. New to the army and not in the hands of the rebels, they were a great weapen for the British. In this next extract, Forbes-Mitchell talks about the superior range of the Enfield rifle. The rebels had brought their big guns outside the Padshahbagh to shorten the distance across the Gomti river assuming that they would be out of range of the British rifles:

They evidently as yet did not understand the range of the Enfield rifle, as they now came within about a thousand to twelve hundred yards of the wall of the Shah Najaf next to the river. Some twenty of the best shots in the company, with carefully cleaned and loaded rifles, watched till they saw a good number of the enemy near their guns, then, raising sights to the full height and carefully aiming high, they fired a volley by word of command slowly given ... and about half a dozen of the enemy were knocked over. (Page 66.)

What chance did the poor mutineers have with their bows and arrows against Enfield rifles and the heavy naval canons that the British used to level defensive walls! Interestingly, from the description above, even the British were new to the longer range of the rifles and presumably that's why the author describes the process, including raising the sights and aiming high, so carefully!