| Summary/Abstract |
Mountain artillery batteries are a fascinating study of the Indian Army during the colonial period. Even in English literature, mountain gunners or the pack artillery has been eulogised in the famous poem ‘Screw-Guns’ by Rudyard Kipling:
“Smokin’ my pipe on the mountings, snifin’ the mornin’ cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along o’ my old brown mule….”
Regular artillery companies had been approved by the East India Company in 1748 for the three Presidency Armies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay. Before the First War of Independence (called Great Indian Mutiny of 1857 by the British or the rebellion), ‘‘the Company’s artillery consisted of mountain units, the horse artillery and the somewhat curiously termed ‘foot’ artillery (field gunners). The last two were made of British and Indians, but the new mountain trains consisted of Indians only under a British commanding officer.1 The First War of Independence or the rebellion ‘saw almost the entire Bengal native artillery rise in arms except the newly raised mountain trains and the horse field batteries employed on the frontier.’2 Post 1857 till outbreak of the war, only 12 mountain pack batteries were entrusted to Indian units for action in the tribal belt against insurgents in the northwest of India.
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