John Campbell Erskine MacNabb

John Campbell Erskine MacNabb
Born(1838-06-05)5 June 1838
Died10 May 1857(1857-05-10) (aged 18)
Meerut

John Campbell Erskine MacNabb (5 June 1838 - 10 May 1857) was a British officer with the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry, based at Meerut, British India, and the first European to be killed in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. His unsent letter to his mother, discovered 38 years after his death, criticised Lieutenant-Colonel George M. Carmichael-Smyth's punishment of 85 men who refused to use the cartridges of the Enfield rifle which had recently been issued.[1][2][3][4] His letter to his mother stated:

My dear mother, I began writing this letter early as I have a great deal to write about. We have had a mutiny in this regiment, like several others, on the cartridge question. Of course you have heard in England that the 19th N.I. had refused to bite the greased cartridges, because they said they had pig's fat in them. The 19th are disbanded. Some other regiments made a fuss about it, so an order was issued that the men were to tear the top of the cartridge off with their fingers, instead of their teeth. Our Colonel Smyth most injudiciously ordered a parade of the skirmishers of the regiment to show them the new way of tearing the cartridges. I say injudiciously because there was no necessity to have the parade at all or to make any fuss of the sort just now, no other Colonel of Cavalry thought of doing such a thing, as they knew at this unsettled time their men would refuse to be the first to fire these cartridges, but that by not asking they would not give their men the chance of refusing, and that next parade season when the row had blown over they would begin to fire as a matter of course, and think nothing of it. But Colonel Smyth orders a parade at once. ...[1][5]

References

  1. ^ a b Cadell, Patrick (1955). "The Outbreak of the Indian Mutiny". Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 33 (135): 118–122. ISSN 0037-9700. JSTOR 44226277.
  2. ^ Mackenzie, Alexander (1889). "History of the Macleods with genealogies of the principal families of the name". Inverness: A. & W. Mackenzie. p. 389.
  3. ^ MacInnes, John (1899). The brave sons of Skye, containing the military records of the leading officers, non-commissioned officers, and private soldiers whom 'Eilean a Cheo' has produced. London: Eyre and SPottiswoode. p. 171.
  4. ^ Mount, Ferdinand (2015). The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805-1905. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4711-2947-6.
  5. ^ Wagner, Kim A. (2010). "6. Meerut". The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising. Peter Lang. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-906165-27-7.
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