‘In England, almost every child is aware that, with a smooth bored gun, no grease of any kind is required to ensure the proper loading of it, whilst with a rifle-bored piece such is necessary.’ So writes Mrs Peile, one of those who escaped from Delhi on 11 May 1857. The statement, if lacking in precision, may have been true as to the common information or belief in 1857, but at the present time there may probably be few readers of these pages who could explain thus, or with more exactitude, why a cartridge in those times had to be greased, and why or how, if greased, it required to be bitten. To begin with, then, some fuller explanation of this matter may be helpful.

Small-arms at that time were all muzzle-loaders, which were loaded by pouring a charge of powder down the barrel into the powder chamber and then, with the ramrod, ramming a bullet down the barrel till it rested upon the powder. By origin, a cartridge is a container, usually of paper, designed to hold enough powder for one discharge of the weapon. A cartridge of this kind, containing powder and nothing more, is often specified as an ‘unballed cartridge’. It is however also possible to enclose within the paper container the bullet as well as the powder and the cartridge then becomes a ‘balled cartridge’.

Whether the cartridge was unballed or balled, it was necessary, in loading a muzzle-loader, to open the end of the cartridge.