Chapter 5: The Opening Tragedy.

The city of Meerut stands on a grassy plain, to the northeast of Delhi, and distant some thirty two miles. At the date of the mutiny, its population was about forty thousand souls. The cantonments lie two miles to the north of the town, and contained accommodations for twenty thousand troops.

On the afternoon of Sunday, May 10, the native troops at Meerut mutinied, and the first massacre of the lurid series began. The slaughter of all the Europeans was determined on, and would have been carried out but for the lack of unanimity among the mutineers, though there is good reason for believing that the outbreak was not premeditated, but the result of a rumor that arrangements had been made to seize their arms.

The Third Cavalry and the Twentieth Regiment clamored to begin the massacre at once, but the Eleventh Native Infantry held back so persistently that the exasperated Twentieth fired a volley into them. This did what was wanted, and the Eleventh joined the other two bodies in a rush for the parade ground, with frenzied execrations against the “sahib loge.”

Colonel Finnis, commanding the Eleventh, spurred his horse on a run to the parade ground, where he made an impassioned appeal to the soldiers to stand by their colors and to refrain from entering into a useless revolt. In the midst of his fervid harangue, a sepoy of the Twentieth raised his musket and shot him in the back. A volley followed, and he tumbled from his saddle riddled with bullets.

Seeing him fall, the other officers knew it was death to stay, so they galloped to the Rifles and Sixth Dragoons. The less murderous Eleventh helped to get them away from their enemies.

Meanwhile a party of soldiers had ridden to the lockup, where a company of mutineers had been confined by the English officers for refusing to use the new cartridges. They numbered eighty five, and, in accordance with the sentence of the court martial, were in irons. These were quickly knocked off, and the men released. In addition, a thousand other prisoners undergoing sentence for various offenses were set at liberty. Then pandemonium was let loose.