First war of Independence - Vellore mutiny
India knows a lot about the so-called first war of independence and Mangal Pandey. Least does it know that it was not the first uprising of its kind. In fact, the first large-scale revolt against the British took place a thousand and eight hundred kilometres south, in a town called Vellore in 1806, twenty-one years before Mangal Pandey was even born. The revolt: On July 10, 1806, at three in the morning, five hundred Indian soldiers from the Vellore fort, armed with hundreds of muskets and two small cannons, slithered out of the Indian barracks and stole their way to where the Europeans were stationed. Briefly, they waited outside the European barracks for a signal to be issued. Finally when the signal came, the doors of the Europeans barracks were blown away. Some Indian soldiers rushed into the barrack and opened fire on the British soldiers who were asleep. Others blasted the barrack from the outside. The British soldiers who were stationed in the Vellore fort did not fight back....