On the occasion of our independence day it’s only   appropriate that we talk about the 1857 revolt, and   Lucknowi we might as well talk about our city’s role   in the rebellion.

  Following the arrival of new ammunition for the   Enfield rifles the East India Trading Company Faced a   mass mutiny in several regions. The cause for the   turmoil was that the reloading drill required the   soldiers to bite of the cap of the bullet cartage, the bullet cartages were greased with pig and cow fat which angered the Hindu and Muslim soldiers as it went against their religious traditions.

What followed were major mutinies in the Army and regional kingdoms revolting to exit the British Sphere of Influence. Some mutineer regiments marched on Delhi as soon as the news reached Lucknow. Sir Henry Lawrence prepared munitions and started to fortify the Residency area for a siege, a number of British civilians moved to the area from the surrounding districts to bunker in.

Lawrence received news of a rebellious army forming in the North of Lucknow. He lead an expedition, they were in adequately equipped and defeated at Chinhat. They withdrew to the Residency and awaited a relief force.

Though the First relief attempt was initially unsuccessful they eventually managed to get to the Residency Lawrence was dead by the time and the garrison had been besieged for nearly 87 days and had lost many defensive positions. But recently they had found another store of supplies and decided not to evacuate but rather stay put and control the city.

For the next six weeks the garrison remained besieged by a new rebel army though bolstered by the relief force, it was becoming a losing battle. Yet another relief force arrived slowly and painfully capturing building in close-range urban combat taking heavy losses, atlast capturing the Motti Mahal and reuniting with the besieged garrison.

A few pockets of resistance remained in the city which gave stiff resistance before being driven out.

The second Mughal empire was declared by rebels who had captured Delhi but it too fell as quickly as it had risen, the rest of India followed suite. Though the rebellion was unsuccessful it planted the seeds for the eventual Independence of India in 1947. It directly resulted in the dissolution of the EITC and various smaller groups of resistance.

In the Napoleonic era of warfare firearms and artillery saw major advancement, paired with new reloading techniques a soldier could fire up to 6 rounds a minute. (Which was fast for the time). New cavalry units such as the Dragoons paired the speed of a horse with the firepower of a musketeers. New kinds of socket-bayonets allowed a soldier to remove them easily will still being able to fire his weapon with the bayonet fixed. Artillery was becoming more and more mobile becoming a devastating weapon on the battlefield.

But technology is useless without tactics so let us take a look at the infantry formations used by various commanders during this era.

The Column - Armies usually marched in columns flanked by cavalry; artillery guns were dragged by horses.

The Line - During battle most infantry units fought in long lines   three-four lines deep. The obvious question that comes   with this is why stand in a straight line with no cover?   Standing in a long line allowed a larger number of   soldiers to fire at a given target, as muskets were   extremely inaccurate the target had to be around 50   meters away, even then there was a large chance that a   soldier could miss or his musket could fail him, plus the   hesitancy to take a life also affected the accuracy. Thus, to   hit consistently hit a target a large number of shots had to be fired at it. But such a thin formation made the infantry vulnerable to a cavalry charge which could simply sweep through the regiment.

The Square - To combat the weakness of the line formation against   cavalry a square formation was used, infantry with spears,   (later with bayonets fixed) would form a square, the   charging horses would hesitate to charge into a wall of   spears and would get consistently shot at by the soldiers.   Many squares placed close together could devastate a   cavalry charge, a famous example being the Battle of   Waterloo.

After the allied victory at the beaches of Northern France and the subsequent success of the landings in Southern France, the allied force started to liberate Nazi occupied France as the German forces retreated. Disorganized and weakened they retreated across the river Rhine to their forts at the German border called the Siegfried line. Though the concept was similar to the French Maginot line which had been outflanked by the German in 1940 during their invasion of France and the Low countries, but without a way to outflank the defences the Allied Forces struggled to push through.

American General and the commander of the allied forces on the western front Dwight D. Eisenhower favoured offenses on a large front as he believed that the dying German war machine would collapse between the two large fronts. British General Bernard Montgomery (Who had led the commonwealth forces to victory at El Alamein)  on the other hand wanted a concentrated breakthrough to outflank the Siegfried line and capture the important industrial area of the Ruhr. He suggested pushing through the Netherlands in an operation named operation Comet which was cancelled due to bad weather. So he suggested an even more ambitious operation dubbed ‘Market Garden’. Though Eisenhower needed convincing, he eventually decided to give it a go as the pressure from the American Government to use the newly created 1st Allied Airborne Army.

The operation consisted of two parts:

“Market”

In this stage of the operation American, British and Polish airborne troops would land behind enemy lines and capture brides to help with the advance of the ground forces, The 101st Airborne division “The Screaming Eagles” would land closest to the ground forces, The 82nd Airborne division “The all American” would land farther away and The First British Airborne and the 1st Independent Polish Airborne would land at the last bridge near Arnhem. They would have to capture and hold Key Bridges to help with the advance of the ground forces. At most they were to meet up with the ground forces in 4 days.

“Garden”

In this stage of the operation Allied Ground forces, which mostly consisted of the XXX Corp which in itself consisted of Armoured and Mechanized units. They were to advance through a two lane highway which they gave the named “Hell’s Highway”. The Highway was flanked by forests and mud and often vehicles would fall off and halt the advance by hours not to mention the German ambushes they had to fight of throughout their advance. They were to meet up with the 101st on the first day , the 82nd of the second the British and the Poles on the Fourth.

The objectives

Apart from the aforementioned bridges the operation would have seen the collapse of the Siegfried line and the liberation of Netherland and if everything went well the war would be over by the Christmas of 1944. Though more realistically the objective was to cut off the industrious region of Ruhr crippling the German war machine even more and take further pressure of the Russians.

The Failure

Though an over simplification the following are the reasons which contributed to the failure of the operation.

The plan from the beginning was far too ambitious, Montgomery had to make many compromises in the initial plan. The Airborne units had to be dropped farther away from their objectives as they believed that a higher amount of AA guns were stationed near the bridges than there actually were.

Reconnaissance photos of German tanks were ignored by the command staff as they feared that that might delay or cancel the operation.

The failure of the 82nd to capture the Nijmegen bridge delayed the advance of the XXX Corp by 36 hrs

Speaking of the XXX Corp they were delayed repeatedly by accidents and ambushes.

The British and Polish Airborne troops were deployed too far from the frontlines and couldn’t make radio contact with the ground forces.

The Allied plans were captured by the Germans in a crashed glider, General Student a German General who was a pioneer of the Airborne technology, advised the defence effectively.

As the operation caried on the British and the Poles were running low on supplies and surrounded, their supply zones were captured by the Germans. Brutal urban fights were going on as the Airborne troops captured and pushed back of the bridge near Arnhem. In the end With the arrival of the German tanks, the airborne was finally pushed back of the bridge and surrendered the next day.

The battle was an example of how unsupported airborne operations can quickly turn into disaster a lesson Germany had learned during their invasion of Crete.