Comments by "Voryn Rosethorn" (@vorynrosethorn903) on "Indian History Slander" video.

  1. The revolt started for a number of reasons, religious distrust, caste tensions (the British had started hiding lower caste people in some of there other armies and the long standing units were scared for their prestige), the policy of lapse which meant that you couldn't let adopted children inherit the British would take the kingdom, also long standing problems as the British weren't actually in charge a British private company with complex agreements with the actual British government was and they sucked pretty hard to the point of them being viewed negatively even in Britain. The rebels revolted and many killed their officers and then went and killed their families and occasionally even servants, other units revolted but helped the officers leave, this seems to have as much to do with the discipline and personal regard for honour of the individual units as personal relationships with officers, different units also had different motivations for rebellion. Even early in the revolt many Indian servants showed great bravery and personally risked themselves to save women and children, there were also Sikhs, half-white half-indian and individual other soldiers would died trying to protect civilians even in obviously hopeless circumstances, obviously a huge number of British officers and male civilians died similarly. The rebels then besieged groups of refugees and soldiers (usually a mix of British, civilian volunteers and loyalist Indians) while the British raced to respond, most of India did not rebel though some parts decided to sit on the fence. The Sikhs immediately supported the British despite having been recently conquered as they didn't like the rebels and thought that Indian soldiers had been arrogant towards them when in their eyes they had been defeated by the British not the Indians, Gurkhas also immediately responded as did tribes of Afghanis who had been fighting the British up to that point, importantly the loyalty of such groups was absolute. Many British had sympathy at first back in Britain and thought it was another American revolution, but then a big event happened. A besieged group of civilians surrendered to the rebels, they had run out of supplies and were mostly women and children, the were disarmed and taken to boats, then they were betrayed and the men killed, after that the women and children were taken to a house and all murdered in a very inhumane way, and after that thrown done a well, shortly after this the British recaptured the site of the Cowpore massacre and went wild, many of both the British and loyal Indians had known people killed and many were the relations of the tightknit officers in India, the British after that killed most prisoners, non-rebel Indians were disgusted or saw the response in advance and moved to back the British, the news got out into the world and even Britain's enemies announced revulsion and started supporting Britain, the British public called for the death of every rebel and people who had supported them made themselves scarce, the British then marched all new troops through cowpore and command started turning a blind eye to everyone associated with the rebels being killed, all villages where Europeans were refused aid or murdered were burned, rebels were tied into pigskins and hanged or shot or were strapped to a cannon and blown, the British started launching extremely aggressive attacks with bayonets even when greatly outnumbered and became mad with rage, any personal accounts of the period note that many many officers died in suicidal attacks, those with no family left often felt nothing to live for but vengeance, loyalist Indian troops were similarly fired up and started acting rashly, Gurkhas were of course always madly brave, though there loyalty meant use occasionally as police troops to stop the worst excesses by blood maddened troops. The British then started the siege of Delhi despite being outnumbered by the defenders, they made a breach but the commanders feared the casualties, a hero of the conflict so far Nicholson then threatened them with a pistol that he would shoot them if they didn't order the attack, he went into the attack himself and died, despite high casualties the rebels were broken and many massacred and the rest of the conflict became clean up and reprisals, though the old officers never thought they went far enough and many British permanently living in Indian remained paranoid practically up until independence. The Sikhs became favoured, the British took direct control of India and they started recruiting from loyal minority groups with similar cultural attitudes towards warfare, duty and the like to their own. These days Indians call it the first independence war despite the fact most Indians opposed it and that it likely would have have fractured India if it had succeeded due to a lack of any unifying cause other than fighting the British and a lack even of that among anyone other than those who actually rose up. It could possibly have succeeded but almost certainly would have splintered after that.
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