150th anniversary of the Sepoy Revolt (Indian Mutiny)
August 19, 2007
From August 18, 2007
Recollections of the Indian Mutiny
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny (the Sepoy Revolt) at Meerut, 40 miles northeast of Delhi on May 10, 1857. The revolt arose out of real or imaginary grievances among troops of the East India Company, such as the issue of greased cartridges that offended both Hindu and Muslim religious sentiments, but was seized on by dispossessed Mogul and Maratha ruling families as an opportunity to recover their authority and drive the British out of India.
Among the celebrated actions by British troops was the relief of the besieged British Residency at Lucknow by the 32nd (Cornwall) Light Infantry, today incorporated into The Rifles. The relief of Delhi by a force under Major-General Archdale Wilson and the defeat of Tatya Tope at Gwalior in June 1858 effectively ended the mutiny.
The relief of Delhi, while not then capital of British India, (this was until 1911 Calcutta), had symbolic significance for the rebels. The city was stormed on September 14, 1857, by five columns including elements of the 52nd Light Infantry, the 1st/60th Rifles and the 61st (South Gloucestershire) Regiment, all now incorporated into The Rifles, the Sirmoor Battalion of Goorkhas, an antecedent regiment of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, the Kemaoon Battalion, later the 3rd Gurkha Rifles and the Guides Infantry, now part of the Indian and Pakistan Armies respectively.
The 3rd Column blew open the Kashmir Gate but a rebel force prevented the 4th from reaching the Lahore Gate. Six days of street fighting followed the assault on the city, in which the British force sustained 1,170 killed and wounded, but on September 20 the Red Fort and the main mosque were captured and the relief completed.
Before the assault, the deserted house of a Maratha merchant, Hindu Rao, on the ridge overlooking Delhi was occupied by the Sirmoor Battalion to observe the mutineers’ sorties from the city. During the fighting before the assault, surgeons (it is said) used the house’s dining table for operating on casualties, and after the relief its three sections were purloined by the 1st/60th Rifles, the Sirmoor Battalion and the Guides Infantry.
The exhibition Rifles and Kukris — Delhi 1857, organised by the Royal Green Jackets and Gurkha Museums, will display two sections of Hindu Rao’s table, weapons used by both sides in the battle for Delhi, including examples of the controversial cartridges that contributed to the Sepoy Revolt, diaries and letters from the period, maps, medals and a series of drawings and paintings by the modern South African artist Jason Askew, who has based his work on contemporary accounts and sketches.
The exhibition in the Macdonald Gallery of the Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Road, Winchester, will be open weekdays and Saturdays 10am to 4.30pm and Sundays 12 noon to 4pm from August 18 to September 16. Admission: £5, including The Rifles and Gurkha Museums, servicemen and accompanied children, free. The book Rifles and Kukris: Delhi 1857 by Sir Christopher Wallace, £20, will be on sale.
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A Passion for Building: the Amateur Architect in England 1650-1850 at the Soane Museum until September 1. A companion catalogue is available at £12.95
See Times Online article …
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The Pleiades
The seven Pleiads which also include Alcyone, Merope and Sterope were the daughters of Atlas and Pleione who are also represented in the cluster. The Pleiades are commonly known as the Seven Sisters although only six stars are most easily seen. The whole cluster contains many more and in a dark sky a good, young eye may see a dozen or so. There has been much written about the missing Pleiad being Celaeno the faintest of the seven, but there is no direct evidence that it has faded in historical time. This galactic or open cluster of stars, which would have formed as a group close together about 80 million years ago, is some 400 light years from us. The stars are hot and blue and involved in much nebulosity that shows on long-exposure photographs. The cluster of a hundred or more stars covers an area about twice the Moon’s diameter and is a splendid sight in binoculars or a wide-field telescope.
from Times Online article …
