The Enfield Rifle

The Enfield Rifle

The indian rebellion of 1857 was, literally, started over a gun. Sepoys throughout India were issued with a new rifle, the Pattern 1853 Enfield muskut,a more powerful and accurate weapon than the old 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. One thing did not change in this new weapon - the loading process, which did not improve significantly until the introduction of breech loaders and metallic, one-piece cartridges a few decades later.To load both the old musket and the new rifle, soldiers had to bite the catridges open and pour the gunpowder,it contained into the rifle's muzzle, then stuff the cartridge case, which was typically paper coated with some kind of grease to make it waterproof, into the musket as wadding, before loading it with a ball.

It was believed that the cartridges that were standard issue with this rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) which was regarded as unclean by Muslims, or tallow  (beef fat), regarded as sacred to Hindus. A Hindu who ate cows' flesh would lose caste, with dreadful consequences both in the present life and the next. The sepoys' British officers dismissed these claims as rumours, and suggested that the sepoys make a batch of fresh cartridges, and grease these with beeswax or mutton fat. This reinforced the belief that the original issue cartridges were indeed greased with lard and tallow.

Another suggestion they put forward was to introduce a new drill, in which the cartridge was not bitten with the teeth but torn open with the hand. The sepoys rejected this, pointing out that they might very well forget and bite the cartridge, not surprising given the extensive drilling that allowed 19th century British troops to fire three to four rounds per minute. An integral part of the loading procedure involved biting off the bullet from the cartridge so that one hand could hold the musket steady whilst the other hand poured the charge of powder into the barrel. This meant that biting a musket cartridge was second nature to the Sepoys, some of whom had decades of service in the Company's army, and who had been doing Musket drill for every day of their service.The commander in chief in india, General Goerge Anson reacted to this crisis by saying, "I'll never give in to their beastly prejudices", and despite the pleas of his junior officers he did not compromise.