The Great Cat Massacre (10 page)

There was therefore a lot of discontent among the Indians. The British got wind of something a bit rum with the sepoys, but they had other things on their mind – specifically a series of disasters in the Crimean War. At the same time, professional agitators employed by the Russians and local princes were, in fact, feeding the sepoys hugely exaggerated accounts of British losses in the Crimean conflict, undermining their reputation.

The Indians were also told a few other tall tales. Apparently, there were only 100,000 Britons in the world and they just kept moving about a lot so it seemed there were more of them. And most of them had died in the Crimea. So to anger was added the belief that a revolt might just succeed.

The dum-dum bullet, the type that flattens on impact for increased wounding, is actually named after the Dum Dum factory in India, and this factory plays a central role in our tale. One day in 1857 a low-caste labourer at the factory asked a sepoy for a drink from his water bottle. The sepoy was a high-caste Brahmin, who told him in the strongest
terms that there was no chance. The labourer angrily replied: ‘You will soon lose your caste altogether because the Europeans are going to make you bite cartridges soaked in cow and pork fat.’

This was an explosive claim. The Indians hadn’t minded so much when the British were just there to plunder the natural resources but now they were planning to grab everyone they could and sit them in church to listen to four hours of Victorian hellfire and damnation. And secretly poisoning them with meat forbidden under religious edicts was clearly the first step on the path.

Soon rumours were flying about the beef-fat-laced cartridges, and the sepoys at the factory asked their British officers for reassurance that they would never have to bite the forbidden bullets. Unfortunately for the British, the man who gave them the answer was Colonel Mitchell, commander of the 19th Native Infantry, who told them that, unless they did so, he would take them all to Burma ‘where, through hardship, you will all die’.

Naked threats were not the answer the locals were looking for and a quiet rebellion spread as sepoys across northern India refused to bite open the cartridges. Luckily, Lord Canning, one of Britain’s most capable politicians and then Governor-General of India, issued orders that the men could tear them open instead of biting them, if they preferred. Unluckily, this instruction was given to the Military Secretary to the Governor-General, Colonel Richard Birch, who threw it in the bin on the grounds that he didn’t fancy giving in to revolting soldiers. He was aided in his incompetence by General George Anson, the
Commander-in-Chief of India, who ordered no compromise be offered, stating: ‘I’ll never give in to their beastly prejudices.’ The first interesting thing about this statement is the indication of how the British saw their role as partly one of modernising and rationalising the beliefs of the locals, pulling them out of the quagmire of religious prejudice and into the nineteenth century, a time of reason. The other thing to note is that he sounds a bit hurt by it all – although not nearly so hurt as the many British officers and men who were about to be killed.

Really putting the boot in was left to Colonel George Carmichael-Smyth of the 3rd Indian Light Cavalry. On 23 April 1857, in Meerut, he decided enough was enough, and just to make the point he ordered his men to parade, telling them beforehand that they would be required to bite their cartridges. When they turned out, of 90 men, 85 refused to bite the bullets and he dismissed them before reporting the outcome to his commander, General Hewitt – a man so fat no horse could carry him so he instead travelled about by buggy. Hewitt wasn’t slim, but he wasn’t stupid either. ‘Oh, why did you have to parade?’ he cried when he heard. ‘If you had only waited another month or so all would have blown over.’ He knew that he now had no choice but to court-martial the refusers.

Courts-martial in nineteenth-century India were not known for their liberal values. It was no surprise, then, when all the sepoys who had refused to bite the cartridges were found guilty and sentenced to between five and ten years’ hard labour. In fact, a number of the tribunal voted for the death sentence, so in a sense the soldiers got off lightly.
Those who had voted for execution grumbled a bit afterwards, saying it wouldn’t have hurt to shoot at least one or two of them.

Adding insult to injury, the guilty men were paraded in shackles in front of their compatriot comrades-in-arms before being taken to prison. Still, it must not be thought that all the British officers were unfeeling towards their sepoys – a number of them visited their men in prison and complained about their treatment and conditions. One Lieutenant Hugh Gough wrote: ‘Old soldiers with many medals gained in desperate fought battles for their English masters wept bitterly, lamenting their sad fate and imploring us to save them from their future.’

It was also Gough who, on 10 May, told Carmichael-Smyth that there were fires burning in the natives’ quarter of the town. The fires were not homely bonfires, but widespread arson and the beginning of the revolt. It turned out that the sepoys who had not rebelled had been mocked by the prostitutes in the bazaar for abandoning their colleagues. In response, they had got drunk and stoned on hashish and were up for a fight. When a British colonel rode through their part of the town and told them all to return to their barracks, they responded by shooting him. That was just the warm-up act for a night in which 50 European men, women and children were all hacked to death. Then things really got out of hand.

The British authorities didn’t fancy having the mutinous and apparently astonishingly violent sepoys hanging about Meerut. So, when they got wind that the rebels were leaving town in the direction of Delhi, 40
miles away, they wiped their brows at having not been horribly murdered and simply let them go. This was a mistake, however, because, if you are trying to start a revolution, you need to get the word out. The sepoys were therefore on their way to the ancient Mogul capital to really get things going. Had General Hewitt ordered the 2,000 British soldiers to pursue and apprehend the rebels, the 14 months of terrible violence about to engulf India might have been avoided. Instead, the British officers raised a glass of sherry and thanked their lucky stars that things were about to ‘blow over’.

Kaiser Bill was a brutal, bullying man who was always out to prove himself stronger than everyone else, mainly because he was in fact weaker. His arms race with Britain, which resulted in the First World War, was, perhaps ironically, a result of his arm. His left arm, to be precise, which was malformed.

Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht (Fred Bill Victor Bert to his English cousins) was born on 27 January 1859. His father was Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia, but his mother was English – Vicky, eldest daughter of Queen Victoria. Vicky wanted good English doctors around her for the birth of her child, rather than one of those foreigners, so she sent for Dr James Clark
*
, Dr Edward Martin and the royal midwife, one Mrs Innocent. But having all these
Britishers swanning about the place irritated the Teutonic medical brotherhood and Dr Martin was deliberately given accommodation about as far away as they could find it. The German royal physician, Dr Wegner, was especially determined to keep them away from the future heir to the German throne and if that meant the expectant mother suffered, so be it.

And suffer she did. The baby was in breech position in the birth canal and the lack of modern anaesthetics meant the Princess felt every second of it. Labour began in the early hours of 26 January and Wegner, neither a competent doctor nor a competent correspondent, decided to inform Martin – but, instead of sending a note by messenger, he sent it by normal post, meaning it was 36 hours before Martin discovered his patient was in severe difficulties. He arrived to find Wegner had botched the procedure and the child had still not been born, but the mother was utterly exhausted and unable to push any more. In fact, as he entered the room, the German doctor called over in full earshot of Vicky and her husband to say that there was no point in exerting himself because both mother and son were going to die soon.

Unfortunately for European history, Martin didn’t take heed of his advice and first administered chloroform to reduce the Princess’s pain before proceeding to perform an arduous forceps delivery.

Mother and son lived – just. There was great rejoicing in the room, but it ceased when the midwife noticed that the baby was silent and had turned blue. For half an hour, Mrs Innocent smacked the royal buttocks to get the child
breathing properly. Eventually, Wilhelm began to scream and joy returned to the room.

The next morning, however, there was great concern again as Mrs Innocent informed Martin that the boy’s left arm was blue and limp (the elbow had become dislocated during the forceps delivery). The limb never recovered, remaining stunted and weak.

As Wilhelm grew older, Vicky, who was fiercely protective of her son, worried that his deformity would make him seem and feel weak so she encouraged his aggressive nature, overly praising him whenever he succeeded in a physical task and telling him that he had enemies everywhere, whom he must confront. Thus, his physical inferiority to other men resulted in a bullying nature, using his hereditary power to hurt them. It was a character that would be exhibited on a global scale when he tried to prove his superior might to his British cousins.

The Zulu Wars were brutal affairs – especially when the soldiers were being stabbed by African warriors to the front, and British bureaucracy to the rear. Already in two minds as to how sensible it was to wear bright-red uniforms in a predominantly brown landscape, the British troops were fighting the Battle of Isandlwana when it became clear they were running out of ammunition. No trouble, though: they had lots to spare in crates to the rear of their lines.

But when one young officer, Lieutenant Smith-Dorien, took some of his men on a desperate errand for more
ammunition, he found that the screwdrivers to open the crates were nowhere to be found. His men therefore resorted to hacking away at the boxes with axes and bayonets. When they eventually got one open and started handing out the precious cargo, however, the lieutenant heard a cough at his shoulder as the regimental quartermaster informed him that he would have to put it all back because he didn’t have the right chit to request a distribution of more ammunition. If he would like to fill out the correct forms, the quartermaster would see what he could do.

While the surreal argument about the paperwork raged, in the background his men ran out of bullets and the Zulus completely over-ran the camp.

Lasting just 35 minutes, Britain’s war against Zanzibar is chiefly notable for being the shortest in the history of the United Kingdom.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the pro-British sultan of Zanzibar (part of modern Tanzania), Sultan Hamad, was poisoned by his devious pro-German relative, Khalid bin Barghash, who usurped the throne. At the time, Britain had a veto over candidates for the sultancy, but Bin Barghash didn’t seem to care. In fact, he told Britain to take a running jump – he was going to rule and there was nothing they could do about it.

‘Actually,’ replied the British, politely, ‘there’s quite a lot we can do about it.’ The Royal Navy consequently turned
up in Zanzibar harbour, anchoring five warships opposite the palace. Bin Barghash was confident, however, because he had given his slaves and the women of his harem guns to repel the British – after all, he was a sultan and the British were mere infidels.

At 8.30am on 27 August 1896 he told the British once more that he didn’t believe for one second that they would do anything to him. He was informed that at 9am precisely the Navy would begin shelling his palace. Once more he scoffed. At 9am precisely, the Navy began shelling his palace. At that point he bravely fled, after giving his subjects in the palace strict instructions not to do the same. He ran to the German compound, seeking refuge, and during the next half hour the palace was turned into matchsticks.

At 9.35am the war was declared over, when the Navy was surprised (and somewhat distraught) to discover that Bin Barghash’s servants had actually followed his orders and remained in the palace while it was being reduced to rubble.

When a number of fishermen from Hull went out one day in October 1904 they didn’t expect the Russian Navy to attempt to kill them all. But while the trawlers were happily drifting about in the North Sea, a number of Russian warships did, indeed, open fire. A 15-minute one-sided battle commenced, with one of the trawlers being sunk and three men killed.

The Russians, it seemed, had somehow misidentified the fishing trawlers as part of the Japanese Navy. Russia and
Japan were at war and there had been a bizarre belief, started by an over-zealous Russian spy, that Japanese vessels were planning to sail halfway around the world to fight the Russian fleet from the other direction – what would have been one of the world’s most pointless sneak-attacks. The Russians’ action served only to strengthen British anti-Russian, pro-Japanese bonds and, when the Russian fleet was destroyed by the Japanese Navy, Britain awarded the Japanese commander, Admiral Togo, the Order of Merit.

During the Great War the campaign in East Africa was seen by the British Army as a sideshow to the main event in Europe, meaning it could be left to Indian troops. In fact, other than the Gurkhas (who enjoyed the same high reputation as they do now), the badly equipped, ill-disciplined and under-trained Indian regiments were among the least able troops under British command. They were therefore given the relatively simple task of taking the port of Tanga, in modern Tanzania, from the Germans.

So it was that the 8,000-strong force that Britain dispatched from Bombay under the command of Major-General Arthur Edward Aitken was described by his intelligence officer as ‘the worst in India … I tremble to think what may happen if we meet with serious opposition. The senior officers are nearer to fossils than active energetic leaders.’ They would, at least, have one vital weapon in their armoury: surprise. The Germans would not know about the assault until it happened.