1. Write a Note on The Struggle before 1857.
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New Delhi: Although overshadowed by the First War of Independence in 1857, the Vellore mutiny of 10 July, 1806, was among the first uprisings against British rule in India.
The one-day mutiny, mainly confined to the ramparts of the Vellore fort, saw native troops kill close to 130 British officers and soldiers, while losing close to 100 mutineers in the fighting.
According to historian Manu S. Pillai, the mutiny had a deep impact on the psyche of the British. “Vellore was proof of the fact that they could never be complacent in India, and until 1857, we often find Vellore being cited by officers as evidence that British might in India was less sturdy than it looked,” he told ThePrint
An early morning raid
The mutiny began in the early hours of the morning, taking the British troops by surprise. In his book Tiger of Mysore: The Life and Death of Tipu Sultan, Denys Forrest notes that the armed Indian sepoys attacked the small European garrison of four companies of the H.M.’s 69th and their own English officers. “The colonels of the 69th and of the 23rd Native Infantry were murdered, along with eleven other officers and eighty-two NCOs and privates,” Forrest wrote.
Among the first to be shot dead was Col. Fancourt, the commander of the fort and garrison. “Informed that the troops were in mutiny, the British commander went out of his door in his dressing gown, confident he could get them to fall back into order. Instead, he was shot. It was a wholesale massacre; few British officers and civilians survived (and some did by playing dead). Finally, British troops from Arcot blasted their way into Vellore and hundreds of sepoys lost their lives in retribution. There was no trial or court-martial at the time, just immediate execution,” Pillai said.
The British troops from Arcot were led by Colonel Robert Rollo Gillespie, who played a key role in quelling the mutiny. For his actions, Gillespie was immortalised by British poet Sir Henry Newbolt in his poem, Gillespie:
‘The Devil’s abroad in false Vellore,
The Devil that stabs by night,’ he said,
‘Women and children, rank and file,
Dying and dead, dying and dead.’
Without a word, without a groan,
Sudden and swift Gillespie turned,
The blood roared in his ears like fire,
Like fire the road beneath him