The sepoys had many grievances, from pay and service conditions to fears that the Company threatened their religion. The immediate spark was the new Enfield rifle, whose cartridges were rumoured to be greased with cow and pig fat. After 85 troopers were imprisoned for refusing them, their comrades freed them, killed officers and civilians and marched through the night to Delhi, where they proclaimed the elderly Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar their leader. The rebellion spread across northern India.
Tension had been building for months. In March a sepoy named Mangal Pandey attacked his officers at Barrackpore and was hanged. At Meerut, a large garrison town about 40 miles northeast of Delhi, 85 men of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry refused to use the new cartridges, which had to be bitten open. On May 9 they were stripped of their uniforms in front of the garrison, shackled and sentenced to long prison terms.
The next day was a Sunday, and in the early evening, as British soldiers prepared for church, the sepoys rose. They broke open the jail, freed the prisoners, killed dozens of British officers, women and children, and burned bungalows. Then most of them rode for Delhi. The British commanders in Meerut, caught off guard, did not pursue them.
In Delhi, the rebels persuaded the 82-year-old Bahadur Shah Zafar to put himself at their head. The rebellion spread to Kanpur, Lucknow and much of the Ganges plain and took more than a year to suppress, with great brutality on both sides. In 1858 the British Crown took over the government of India from the East India Company.
Key people: Mangal Pandey, Bahadur Shah Zafar