Indian Mutiny
Stimulated by Jon Suth's "show" in the gallery forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=4601" target="_blank">http://wdlovesme.19.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=4601 I've started reading a little about the Indian Mutiny. I confess to not knowing anything about the IM beforehand but I did know where India was and a little about different kinds of curry :mental: I've only read 1 book that I suppose tells the story from the British perspective. This left me with the distinct impression that the war consisted of Mutineers suprising and killing their European Officers then slaughtering/imprisoning the European non-combatants at the start. Cities occupied, British left with a toe hold only, disease and sun drops weaklings like flies. One big "wagon circle" at Lucknow Eventually starting with a small force the "Empire Strikes back", either dislodging Mutineers happy to sit in fortified positions or outflanking their dumb commanders overcoming huge odds and usually resorting to bayonet charges to produce a decisive result. Charging the guns seemed commonplace - rallying cry = Cawnpore few cavalry, lots of guns, gallant British high command dying just when relieved, lots of VCs - notable commanders buying it at the death, eg Nicholson, Hodson, Havelock and the CinC at lucknow who's name I forgot . Few British cock ups a la Zulu wars despite a "superiority complex" or lack of respect vs natives once the initial shock overcome and thank god for the loyal Sikhs Overriding impression is that the dogma of the day was Dad's Army's Coropral Jones "they don't like it up em sir" Once victorious, the Brits just about hang every man and his dog, no quarter and slaughter seemed everyday words Can't remember which elusive rebel leader seemed to fight a protracted guerrilla campaign only to be eventually beaten by the long arm of the law. Indian Joan of arc dies in battle Seems a one sided account to me, quite a bit of boys own stuff - so who are the "revisionists" and what other books should I read to get more of a balance? Suggestions gratefully accepted Got me thinking that I really need to school up on this and the Crimeam and before you ask - no I'm not going to buy any figures............ :beg: ........but just in case I do what sort of ratio of mutineer vs British infantry would one need for a balanced fight according to wargames rules and how many cavalry? :doh:

VB, that sounds like an excellent review of Christopher Hibbert's "The Great Mutiny" which is the first book I read on the war :) . The revisionist approach is that it wasn't so much an army mutiny but the first great attempt to throw off British colonial oppression. Hence the current PC-fuelled habit of calling it the "Great Rebellion" or somesuch rather than "Indian Mutiny". I don't know if there are any books in English which argue this line. In my reading pile somewhere is Saul David's recent-ish book, which is supposed to be very good. I'd also recommend JG Farrell's "The Siege of Krishnapur" which is a Booker Prize-winning novelisation of the Lucknow siege and quite entertaining. I think it's a great period and it's one of the first 25mm projects I ever really got stuck into (in my late teens using Foundry's figures).

I quite liked Hibbert's book, but Giles is right, it is a bit jingoistic, nothing wrong with that. George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman book, "Flashman and the Great Game" is very good flavour of the period material. The "Joan of Arc" figure you are thinking of is the Rani of Jhansi btw.

That's right - the Rani and old Flashy have a bit of a fling, IIRC.

VB, what book did you read? I think that the best basic accounts would be Hibbert and Saul David. Then try Heathcote - Mutiny and Insurgency in India 1857-58: The British Army in a Bloody Civil War. Trying to get a decent set of rules is something I still havent figured out. Balance - two to one would be about right. Its far from a one-sided encounter. The Brits were just hanging on through the first six months with Lucknow besieged and the Delhi beseigers hard pressed. Have a look more at the latter campaign than Lucknow, more varied and interesting IMHO. john

VB - thanks for the thumbs up, I've read just about everything and even bought the Mangal Pandy Bollywood movie - don't get Tim started on telling you it screwed up his DVD player on his computer. Pretty much you have the standard histories culled from Malleson in the main (now this is quite a committment reading wise - seven volumes in reprint form from Naval & Military Press its about £55 for the set). Then there's the so-called revisionist approaches that tend to view the mutiny as a war of independence, it was not. It was localised and literally millions of Indians wanted nothing to do with it, it was really a question of the old royal families in India stirring things up to try and reclaim their independence. Added to this, there was the belief that the British army had been destroyed by the Russians in the Crimea and what was in India was all that was left - no chance of reinforcements ever arriving. Also bear in mind that more Indian troops fought on the British side than in the rebel ranks. The war could not have been won without the loyalty of the Sikhs, many Hindus and of course the Gurkhas. I've tried whats around rules-wise. Frankly nothing really works, but that's probably done to size of the units and armies I've built up. John Company (Chris Peers I think and available through the Armchair General in the US) are interesting but way too complicated for my tastes, very useful background stuff and army lists though. I tried another set by Howard Whitehouse, madly bloody and not really a complete working set in my opinion. Sharp Practice is another option, some quite useful ideas in one of Richard's supplements to convert the basic system to the mutiny. They work fine, but again with the number of figures I found them a bit clumbersome at times. So what I'm really saying is I use my own rules now. Quick, easy, bloody and designed to give a flavour of the period. I reckon they work. I'm in very preliminary discussions with someone to offer them commercially as there really isn't anything else around. On the odds side, I'd reckon 2:1 or 3:1 would be OK, bear in mind that most of the mutineer army will be useless. The cavalry never wanted to know on the battlefield, the mutineers themselves were frittered away and lacked decent officers, the fanatics would be interested if there was a good chance of cutting off some heads or looting something and the rest of army was pretty lack lustre retinues, colourful mind. You need to make the British and HEIC units much smaller than the mutineer ones, just to make them a bit brittle and have serious consequences if they take casualties. I've gone for 20 figure British units and 30-40 figure mutineer ones, it also has the added effect of making the mutineers less manoeuverable which is correct. There were battles when 1,500 to 2,000 British took on and beat armies ten times or more than number, you won't need many British cavalry (a big bonus for me I hate painting horses) as they used skirmish order infantry and artillery on the flanks. God, I did go on a bit... sorry.

VB - thanks for the thumbs up, I've read just about everything and even bought the Mangal Pandy Bollywood movie - don't get Tim started on telling you it screwed up his DVD player on his computer. Pretty much you have the standard histories culled from Malleson in the main (now this is quite a committment reading wise - seven volumes in reprint form from Naval & Military Press its about £55 for the set). Then there's the so-called revisionist approaches that tend to view the mutiny as a war of independence, it was not. It was localised and literally millions of Indians wanted nothing to do with it, it was really a question of the old royal families in India stirring things up to try and reclaim their independence. Added to this, there was the belief that the British army had been destroyed by the Russians in the Crimea and what was in India was all that was left - no chance of reinforcements ever arriving. Also bear in mind that more Indian troops fought on the British side than in the rebel ranks. The war could not have been won without the loyalty of the Sikhs, many Hindus and of course the Gurkhas. I've tried whats around rules-wise. Frankly nothing really works, but that's probably done to size of the units and armies I've built up. John Company (Chris Peers I think and available through the Armchair General in the US) are interesting but way too complicated for my tastes, very useful background stuff and army lists though. I tried another set by Howard Whitehouse, madly bloody and not really a complete working set in my opinion. Sharp Practice is another option, some quite useful ideas in one of Richard's supplements to convert the basic system to the mutiny. They work fine, but again with the number of figures I found them a bit clumbersome at times. So what I'm really saying is I use my own rules now. Quick, easy, bloody and designed to give a flavour of the period. I reckon they work. I'm in very preliminary discussions with someone to offer them commercially as there really isn't anything else around. On the odds side, I'd reckon 2:1 or 3:1 would be OK, bear in mind that most of the mutineer army will be useless. The cavalry never wanted to know on the battlefield, the mutineers themselves were frittered away and lacked decent officers, the fanatics would be interested if there was a good chance of cutting off some heads or looting something and the rest of army was pretty lack lustre retinues, colourful mind. You need to make the British and HEIC units much smaller than the mutineer ones, just to make them a bit brittle and have serious consequences if they take casualties. I've gone for 20 figure British units and 30-40 figure mutineer ones, it also has the added effect of making the mutineers less manoeuverable which is correct. There were battles when 1,500 to 2,000 British took on and beat armies ten times or more than number, you won't need many British cavalry (a big bonus for me I hate painting horses) as they used skirmish order infantry and artillery on the flanks. God, I did go on a bit... sorry.

VB - thanks for the thumbs up, I've read just about everything and even bought the Mangal Pandy Bollywood movie - don't get Tim started on telling you it screwed up his DVD player on his computer. Pretty much you have the standard histories culled from Malleson in the main (now this is quite a committment reading wise - seven volumes in reprint form from Naval & Military Press its about £55 for the set). Then there's the so-called revisionist approaches that tend to view the mutiny as a war of independence, it was not. It was localised and literally millions of Indians wanted nothing to do with it, it was really a question of the old royal families in India stirring things up to try and reclaim their independence. Added to this, there was the belief that the British army had been destroyed by the Russians in the Crimea and what was in India was all that was left - no chance of reinforcements ever arriving. Also bear in mind that more Indian troops fought on the British side than in the rebel ranks. The war could not have been won without the loyalty of the Sikhs, many Hindus and of course the Gurkhas. I've tried whats around rules-wise. Frankly nothing really works, but that's probably done to size of the units and armies I've built up. John Company (Chris Peers I think and available through the Armchair General in the US) are interesting but way too complicated for my tastes, very useful background stuff and army lists though. I tried another set by Howard Whitehouse, madly bloody and not really a complete working set in my opinion. Sharp Practice is another option, some quite useful ideas in one of Richard's supplements to convert the basic system to the mutiny. They work fine, but again with the number of figures I found them a bit clumbersome at times. So what I'm really saying is I use my own rules now. Quick, easy, bloody and designed to give a flavour of the period. I reckon they work. I'm in very preliminary discussions with someone to offer them commercially as there really isn't anything else around. On the odds side, I'd reckon 2:1 or 3:1 would be OK, bear in mind that most of the mutineer army will be useless. The cavalry never wanted to know on the battlefield, the mutineers themselves were frittered away and lacked decent officers, the fanatics would be interested if there was a good chance of cutting off some heads or looting something and the rest of army was pretty lack lustre retinues, colourful mind. You need to make the British and HEIC units much smaller than the mutineer ones, just to make them a bit brittle and have serious consequences if they take casualties. I've gone for 20 figure British units and 30-40 figure mutineer ones, it also has the added effect of making the mutineers less manoeuverable which is correct. There were battles when 1,500 to 2,000 British took on and beat armies ten times or more than number, you won't need many British cavalry (a big bonus for me I hate painting horses) as they used skirmish order infantry and artillery on the flanks. God, I did go on a bit... sorry.

How did that happen? How do you get rid of multiple posts?

We have an Indian Mutiny variant of Sharp Practice if you fancy doing more modest actions, say 30 to 100 figures a side. It's all in the Christmas Special for 2008. Rich

The Saul David book is pretty basic but worth a look all the same. The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple is worth a shout as well. Good on mutineer politics and what was going on in Delhi. From Sepoy to Subedar by Sita Ram is worth a look as well. As far a I know it's the only authentic diary of a loyalist sepoy. Covers about 50 years of service of which the IM is only a small part but still worth a read.

For more Indian views, try: http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0311/03112007_1857.htm http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/Books/10/SocSci-EM/chapter-3-english.pdf http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/itihas/1857.htm and there's an interesting book here: http://www.vedamsbooks.com/no60873.htm One Indian writer was running a blog which covered the Great Rebellion Mutiny day by day from the Indin perspective - unfortunately I lost the url and can't locate it again but it was an interesting corrective to the British view. When I was doing the Mutiny it seemed quite difficult to find Indian views - and those that I did find were brief and rather poor quality. I played it from a skirmish perspective, which provided a balanced game (and it a few cases made it very difficult for the British to win), using home-grown rules. With hindsight I was basically running it as a Zombie game - a few European survivors against sveral 'mobs' of mutineers that automatically killed if they touched your base but were slow moving and a bit random in their movements, with a number of single figures that were more focussed in their attempts to kill the red coat and his memsahib. We did run a 'Carry on up the Khyber' Mutiny variant for Caliver's bookshop opening many years ago. It got revived last year using Sharp Practice and a more organised unit structure for the eastbourne show. I'd have to say that our Mutiny games probably gave us the greatest amusement of any period we've played and Rich has reminded me that I need to buy the official SP supplement and review my figures for another outing. Go on VB, you know you want to :)

I've got many memoirs of the period, but I dont think that you can go past the Lang journal: Lahore to Lucknow: Indian Mutiny Journals. Oh and VB, just to get the juices flowing:

We've played a few games - large skirmish sized sieges, British units of 5 - 12 figures, mutineers in 10-30s, using home-grown rules. British being beseiged, all players British with mutineers controlled by chance cards. It's a while since we played but the basic ghist was an ordinary pack of playing cards, any spade = siegeworks by the mutineers (tunnels to undermine the wall or saps/parallels etc. number on card determines which one and how far), I think clubs were either mutineer reinforcements or bombardment, and there was one for mutinner attacks against the walls (possibly diamonds). One of the suits was British (hearts ?) and brought some reinforcements (casualties recovering etc), ammo, helpful events. Low numbers were weak, but high numbers (and court cards) were potentially devastating. Quite a few turns were just "siege" turns, tunnels get closer, walls get shot at etc, where the defenders just sat back and waited. The main difficulty the players had was actually working as a team, but the games were comparatively fast - typical 6 or 8 player siege running at about 3-3½ hours, faster if the players screwed up and the mutineers breached the wall early on.