Monday 15 December 2008

BULLSHIT INCORPORATED





Paul Revere was a totally obscure figure until a poem in 1863 by Longfellow blew him out of all proportion. At best a perifiral figure of the English Civil war in america, he , like the war ,was created more or less by a writer and because people liked the lie. The truth as they say is the first thing to die in a Moronic Inferno, run by morons for morons.That goes for most places; the victors write the history.

In this particular case if there had been no Longfellow there would have been no Paul Revere; he would have been one of those figures who slipped out of history for he had no history.
Other situations like the British army before Sevastopol and the Boston Massacre and The charge at Omdurman are further examples of history twisted and tainted to suit particlar times and minds.
Revere's ride is one of the worst foremost for the fact that it is nearly entirely fictional. Winston Churchill said that the charge at Omdurman was one of the most useless military actions that ever got off the ground but as a schoolboy we were told it was the winning factor in the war against the Mahdi, the only trouble was Churchill was there and the Mahdi had been dead for 15 years. Another charge created as a great wartime tactic was The Charge Of The Light Brigade in the Crimea; this was another myth.
Toy soldier enthusiasts continue to add fantasy upon fantasy to historical myths that are of no use to anyone as they are exactly the same as present day history. Things like Iraq; the bullshit behind a war that needn't ever have been fought and also Vietnam. The victors of Vietnam were the draft dodgers in that these people saw the myth.

Friday 12 December 2008

THE Indian Mutiny ninth part "RANI"

The end of the war came at Gwalior and here India produced one of its most famous warriors and for the times one of the strangest,a woman. The war came to an end with a bloodbath;vendetta of the soul but also the righteous sense of dominion. She had been born to a Brahmin family around 1828 in Varanasi. In 1858 the British attacked Gwalior; they laid siege to the city .On June the 17th during the Battle of the Gwalior forts (above) Rani set fire to herself so the story goes as she did not want to become the prisoner of the British. Colonel Molleson saw her as a created martyr as he said."Her countrytmen will always see her as driven by ill-treatment into rebellion".

(below one of the few Indian Sepoy Mutiny producers William Hocker Bengal Horse artillery plus the Gurkhas who sent 10,000 men from Nepal to team up with Campbell)










Wednesday 10 December 2008

THE INDIAN MUTINY. HODSON'S HORSE. Part 8






What Ban Tarleton had been to the British rebels in the American colonies William Hodson was to the murdering sepoys and ruffians, who had mutilated,raped and killed women and kids. He was fearless and rode 30 miles at the gallop with his irregulars to hit the mutineers where they didn't expect to be hit. His men were indians and they wore khaki and called themselves Hodson's Horse.These riders became the Bengal Lancers.The three main players on the British side didn't last long.Havelock died of dysentry, Outram soldiered on for another few years but died because of his exertions in India during the mutiny and Hodson was shot in the liver when they returned to Lucknow.

  1. A soldier was ready to blow a door when Hodson appeared, told him to leave it and then kicked the door in, on its opening he was shot in the liver.He had been the epitomy of the British Cavalry leader, a great leader in war.His only portrait that I know of is below, the one wearing the Pith helmet.His grave is still in India pictured below( Apart from Britains the mutiny is barely covered by the 54mm figure.Britain's did something but not a success. Below are some 28 mm by OLD GLORY(to be continued)
The final episode of the sepoy Mutiny were the lies put out by the Indepenedence movement for india.With this in mind we may remember how the British forces defended India in its hour of need then gave it up immediately after; this was of course the final year of WW2.
Any sane person knows that if the British at Impala had not have stopped the Japs then India would be Jap to this day.Compare some Old Glory metals of the mutiny, see how these compare with the plastic in the post above; the image of Lord Roberts sabrering the sepoy; he won his V.C after taking the colour flag of the sepoys at Khudaganj. Below him is an original photo of the irregular cavalry of Hodson.
( continued above)

THE INDIAN MUTINY 7th Part "A KIND OF FEVER"



If you walk the Thames embankment you'll see a little memorial to Outram, no one knows who he was today but all Victorian children knew him.It is in Victoria Gardens;pay your respects next time cos now you know.
Go further to Trafalquar Square and see Havelock's one.

(That friend of you and me, that Neo-Liberal Mr Ken Livingstone waged a campaign to get Havelock and Outram displaced by people Ken likes; Winnie Mandella and some of his bizzare friends maybe?)
The regiments of the British crown had started to look like the Sepoys and they cried CAWNPORE!!!! CAWNPORE!!!!! as the Texans had cried THE ALAMO once in a voice of revenge.
But this was real revenge, revenging the rapes, the mutilations of women and kids.
60 miles in 24 hours=fighting at the end of it.
When the British found the charnel house of the Bibighar in Cawnpore they made the murderers lick up the blood, they added some hot water so it became liquid again then the murderer was forced to lap it and then hanged.
Others were forced onto cannons while officers drank champagne in deck chairs and the human body was blown to pieces , bits and fragments.
They bayoneted as they went for Palmerston had called the atrocities "To be perpetrated only by demons". And you know what? He was right.
The merciless bayonet searched and found and the Indians called the British revenge "The Devils Wind".
India had never been a united kingdom so the idea of a war of independence was wrong, it had been a petty series of war lords who had an idea of justice all their own.
And nothing has changed.Today you are free to starve to death,that's where Independence took them.

LUCKNOW THE INDIAN MUTINY 6th PART









  1. (Images are the residency directlybefore/ after Campbell's arrival. As it is today.Then we see Havelock and then Outram)The arrival of Sir Colin Campbell was weeks away so Havelock had to wait.In that time he sent a messenger to Campbell , he was told four days but it was more like four weeks, the residency was a mere shell but he fought on. When Campbell arrived he did not jopin the garrison but kept things quiet outside so Havelock spirited away the civilian population under many disguises and covers, they marched with the military plus Havelock's troops towards Cawnpore, it was over.
  2. The British flag had never been taken down as it fluttered in the residency. Havelock died shortly=cholera. Here are some images for your pleasure. The first are the bones left after one of the massacres.Then two www.soldier.com figures of the cavalry of Havelocks relief column plus infantry.The red coat is by Clydecast who by the way are still in production.(The owner told me that while he is not selling much he still keeps the soldiers available) To be continued.See other parts below



Tuesday 9 December 2008

THE INDIAN MUTINY FOURTH PART. CAWNPORE


To understand the British reaction after Cawnpore one must understand Cawnpore itself.It was an Indian thing, great suffering of children, women, the invalid, the weak, placed on them by the bully, the psychotic and the sadist.In no way were the assailants of the whites at Cawnpore those fighting for a real and tangible cause. Beggars,Ne'er do wells, the unemployed and the mutineers. Those who were not at Cawnpore can have no idea of vengeance. Nana Sahib ordered it.He ordered it and the so called Indian Mutiny because he had been disgraced as an bad landlord and his pension had been taken away by the British. It is a pity that national heroes are sometimes made of men who were merely in a certain place at a certain time but Indian websites and their national government(the Panjay postage stamp) have euluogised this local uprising/mutiny into a glorious war of Independence.Ganhi should have known better. It must also be said that the majority of Indians backed the British benefactor.They knew what the NANA SAHIBS of their country were like. The Gurkhas did come under suspicion but this was quickly allayed. AT CAWNPORE there were four hundred British fighting men,seventy were invalids plus several hundred women and kids. The whites with the faithful sepoys took refuge in a magazine and tried to defend the women and kids.Agony from heat,thirst,sickness,wounds,all that.No medicines.Nama Sahib offered safe passage to Allahabad to every member of the garrison who surrended;a ragged crowd of survivors took him up on the offer.They were embarked on barges but then the barges were set alight and bullets poured into the whites from all sides.One hundred and fifty women and children who survived were dragged back to Cawnpore and imprisoned, they were pushed down the well you can see in the illustration.The men were killed,those who were still alive, in the presence of Nana Sahib. Hacked to death by the now crazy murderous folly. This was the so called War of Liberation that idiots on the internet and elsewhere would have us believe.BUT CAMPBELL WAS COMING like the shroud of death, he was coming surely ,slowly and steady but he would avenge CAWNPORE. It was written. Campbell seen above in the double illustration(Diorama above by Tedtoy)(TO BE CONTINUED IN THE POST ABOVE SEE BLOW FOR PREVIOUS POSTS)

THE INDIAN MUTINY THIRD PART


In Meerut the next day 10 May British troops assembled for church . It was evening when hundreds of Sepoys broke into the jail; they were joined by looters and general beggar types intent on plunder.They slew anyone who was white or on the side of the British. On 11 May native cavalry arrived in Dehli and released all prisoners in the jail.They were joined by Sepoys. They killed defenceless babies, their Mothers, the old and ailing and of course any white military or civilian administrators.The English with no companies available blew up the magazine with a great act of heroism.(images above are from the battle/massacre at Dehli) They collected the children and Mothers and tried to retreat.The sufferings of the children were manifold and manifest,at times beyond belief.The survivors were few. On the 26 June 1857 Palmerston got the news.The commander in chief Anson in india was dead.Palmerston appointed the immortal, the Scot, that highlander Sir Colin Campbell to take command. He started the next day to India.On the 1st of July the first ship left England with troops to quell the mutiny. By the end of september 30,000 were on the high seas bound for India. Then Nana Sahib ordered the massacre at Cawnpore.

Sunday 7 December 2008

THE INDIAN MUTINY SECOND PART







The structure of the Sepoy army was at times chaos.Because of the class/caste system an officer would kneel before a private.Going across seas was a great problem due to religous observation. The Sepoy was also alarmed at the idea that the British wanted to employ Sikhs in their place.The Sikh infantry was regarded as the best in the world. Then came the idea that on the centenary of the battle of Plessey in 1857 European rule would be destroyed.
A spark therefore was needed to explode the whole.
It came at Dum Dum in Bengal near Calcutta in Jan 1857; the story of the greased cartridge. It spread like wildfire.
At Berhampore and Barrackpore the 19th and 34th native infantry refused to accept cartridges. The official outbreak occured at MEERUT near Dehli .Two Sepoy regiments, one native cavalry. Here they were quartered with the 60th rifles, a dragoon regiment, a troop of artillery, and a light field battery. The strongest British force at any station in Bengal.(Model soldiers are Blues Limited,William Hoeker and Britain's). On April the 23rd Colonel Smyth ordered a parade of skirmishers; only four accepted the cartridges offered.
The men were tried , ten years hard labour.But as they were led away a terrible silence invaded the fortress. Plans were brewing, vendetta was in the air. A month before the mutiny began at Barrackpore Mangal Pandey was executed before his sentence could be carried out and this further incensed the sepoys;Pandey had killed a British officer in Barrackpore during the argument over cartridges; the officer had been on his side as he wanted to replace the cartridges creaed with pig fat. Many Indian websites unfairly and to be honest incorrectly point out that Meerut and people like Pandey(the colour photo above shows him in the supposed uniform of the 34th from an Indian film, the other is an old illustration) were the beginnings of a great liberation war; this is as much a falsity as those so called "facts" which sparked off the 1st civil war in America as regards "The Boston Massacre" and "Paul Revere's ride". They suit the university proffesors and would be liberationists in their reasons behind national pride.Read on in the post above this the first post is below this.(to be continued.Read the first part below)

THE INDIAN/BENGAL MUTINY FIRST PART


February 1856= 233,000 native troops plus 40,000 European (East Indian and Crown) 3 Sepoy armies=Bengal,Bombay,Madras Keep in mind that the mutiny was one of the Bengal sepoy army only. It was not a national rising. It started after Lord Dalhousie annexed territory of Indian despots whose scandalous handling of law and order was manifest. In OUDH in Bengal the ruler Nana Sahib was pensioned off. He was allowed to continue to take rents. This he resented and started to tamper with native soldiers, the SEPOYS. Also a large number of soldiers had becomre redundant when Oudh was annexed.They were now penniless and became one of the causes of the Bengal mutiny.Apart from this the victory at Gujerat had left a Sepoy army inflated with its own importance.It was idle and as you know that condition leads to many things.In the first image THE BATTLE OF GUJERAT.In the second NANA SAHIB. Now go to the post above this to continue (to be continued)

Saturday 6 December 2008

PAINTING THE CRIMEAN ARMY















  1. This post and the one below are in connection with the post on The Crimean war. This is below the one below this.Worth a read as I have put some new information there on the war.
  2. These are some of the images you can use for your painting.Please see blogs on Crimea below.(to be continued)