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out risking the injury to their caste which a sea voyage would involve. It was no answer to him that the regulation did not apply to himself. It applied to his class, and was in consequence almost equally objectionable to him.

The sepoys, moreover, were largely recruited from Oudh, and Oudh was a province where discontent had much fuel to feed upon. The worst Governments have some

The state of
Oudh.

supporters, and the destruction of a bad Government must always arouse opposition. It is, indeed, permissible to believe that the supporters of misrule have a direct interest in its continuance which a good sovereign can hardly hope to find in his own adherents. For misrule always leans on abuse, and gilds the pockets of the agents it finds necessary to employ. The King of Oudh had maintained a considerable force which had cut itself adrift after the annexation of the province, and its members were left without employment, without resources, to brood over their wrongs and seek opportunity for remedying them.

Various causes, then, existed in 1856 which might have induced a cautious ruler to forecast the possibility of coming trouble. A series of mutinies had shown that the sepoys were neither contented nor subordinate; the annexation of conquered provinces had increased their duties and diminished their allowances; the general service order had deprived the army of some of its attractions; while vast numbers of persons in Oudh, deprived of occupation by the appropriation of the province, were dissatisfied with their position. To the outward eye, indeed, everything was peaceful; British officers, with their wives and children, lived surrounded by their men, and trusted implicitly to their fidelity. But, if the fire had not begun, the materials were already prepared. A chance spark might at any moment ignite the heated pile, a chance breath might at any moment fan the incipient flame, and, if fire once burst forth on Indian soil, no human being could venture to assign a limit to the conflagration.

And in the beginning of 1857 a spark was thoughtlessly allowed to fall on the imflammable mass which was already

The Minié

prepared for its reception. Military men, warned by the losses and the lessons of the Crimean war, were introducing a new weapon into the army. It is an instructive but lamentable fact, that invention, which during the first half of the century was busy in promoting the works of peace, has been occupying itself, since the last half of the century began, with perfecting the implements of war. Except that the percussion cap had superseded flint and steel, just as flint and steel had superseded more than a hundred years before the old matchlock, the soldiers who climbed the slopes of the Alma were furnished with a musket similar to that which their predecessors had carried through the Peninsula and at Waterloo. But, before the Crimean war was over, proof had been furnished of the efficacy of a new rifle which owed its name to its inventor, a Frenchman, M. Minié. In 1856 it was wisely decided to issue the improved arm to the Native Indian rifle. army. But it was most unfortunately forgotten to accompany its issue with a precaution which might easily have been taken, and which ought not to have been overlooked. The cartridge in which the bullet of the Minié rifle was enclosed could not be forced into the barrel unless the paper was first lubricated with fat or other grease. It was well known that no Hindoo could touch the fat of ox or cow without consequences to his caste which in his judgment would seem worse than death; it was equally well known that no Mohammedan would touch the fat of swine. Yet, though the army consisted mainly of Hindoos and Mohammedans, no adequate precautions were taken to provide that the cartridges should be lubricated with the fat of mutton or other unobjectionable ingredient.1

And so, without thought, without care, the new cartridges 1 Cf. the indent on the contractor for grease and tallow published by Kaye, Sepoy War, vol. i. p. 519, note, and Lord Canning's opinion: "In the matter of grease the Government was in some degree in the wrong (not having taken all the precautions that might have been taken to exclude objectionable ingredients)." Ibid., vol. i. p. 559, and the Military Report :-" Captain Boxer is quite unable to offer any decided opinion as to the particular description of animal from which the tallow is derived." Parl. Papers, 1857; Mutinies in the East Indies, p. 2.

VOL. VI.

T

The Lascar and the greased cartridges.

were lubricated, were sent out to India, and were issued to the sepoys. "One day in January 1857, a Lascar, attached to the magazine at Dum Dum, near Calcutta, asked a sepoy of the garrison to give him a drink of water from his lotah. Nettled by the haughty reply that the vessel would be contaminated by the lips of a low-caste man, the Lascar retorted that the sepoy would soon be deprived of his caste altogether; for the Government was busy manufacturing cartridges greased with the fat of cows or swine, and the sepoys would have to bite the forbidden substance before loading."1

The sepoy heard, believed, and retold the story. It passed from mouth to mouth, it was carried from station to station. It was everywhere repeated, it was everywhere credited, that the British Government was lubricating cartridges with fat of kine in order to destroy the soldiers' caste. And as the report spread, and was magnified in the spreading, there fell on the Native army a mighty terror, the terror of a defilement which was worse than death, which would separate men from every object of their love in this world, from every hope in the world to come.2

The terror of the sepoys.

Dum Dum is on the outskirts of Calcutta. A few miles further north, on the banks of the Hooghly, is the great military station of Barrackpore. Four Native regiments were

1 Holmes's Indian Mutiny, p. 83. The story is always related in almost the same words. Cf. Kaye's Sepoy War, vol. i. p. 490; Argyll, India under Lord Canning, p. 77 et seq.

2 The Duke of Argyll, with excellent point, quotes a story told by Colonel Skinner. Wounded severely in 1800, he crept into the bush for shelter in company with two other wounded men, one a native officer of his battalion, whose leg was shot off below the knee. They passed two terrible nights and one terrible day, tortured with pain and thirst. "Next morning we spied a man and an old woman who came to us with a basket and a pot of water, and to every wounded man she gave a piece of bread from the basket and a drink from her water-pot. To us she gave the same, and I thanked heaven and her. But the Soobahdar was a high-caste Rajpoot; and, as this woman was of the lowest caste, he would receive neither bread nor water from her. I tried to persuade him to take it that he might live, but he said that in our state, with a few more hours to linger, what was a little more or a little less suffering to us? Why should he give up his faith for such an object? No, he preferred to die unpolluted." India under Lord Canning, p. 75.

Thither came the Dum Dum, it was

The sepoys

at Barrack

quartered at that station in January 1857. news; there it was circulated; there, as at believed; and there the same terror fell on the men's minds. Maddened by fear, they did not wholly abstain from overt acts of injury. Fires broke out which were traced to incendiaries; and Hearsey, who was in command at Barrackpore-the same Hearsey whose tact and firmness had averted mutiny in December 1849-reported the facts to the Government. The Indian Government acted with commendable promptitude. It at once gave directions that cartridges should be issued without grease, and that the men should be allowed to apply with their own hands whatever mixture they might prefer. It directed the commander-inchief to institute experiments for the purpose of ascertaining the best ingredients to be used in greasing the cartridges, with reference both to the feelings of the Native soldiery and to the requirements of the service; it desired that the whole. matter should be fully explained to the men both at Barrackpore and at Dum Dum; and it congratulated itself on allaying the fears and on satisfying the scruples of the troops.1

pore.

But the terror which had fallen on the sepoys was not allayed. Men indeed allowed to choose their own grease could not, even under the influence of fear, repeat the old rumour. But, relieved from one suspicion, they almost immediately fell back on another. A specially fine and smooth paper was used in the manufacture of the new cartridge, and the men declared that the glaze on the paper was due to the presence of fat. This new suspicion fell in the first instance on the troops at Barrackpore; it was temporarily allayed by the tact of Hearsey. Assembling his men around him, he exposed in their own language the absurdity of their fears. He assured them, on the word of a good officer, that neither the Government nor their officers had any design of attacking

1 Parl. Papers, Mutinies in East Indies, p. 1. Cf. Kaye's Sepoy War, vol. i. p. 515; Holmes's Indian Mutiny, pp. 84, 85, whose accounts, however, hardly tally with the distinct statement in the Parliamentary papers, on which the text is founded.

either their faith or their caste, and he sent them away relieved, and as he thought happy.1

Berhampore.

But events soon proved that the suspicion had not been destroyed. A detachment of the 34th, one of the regiments stationed at Barrackpore, happened to be sent to Berhampore, where the 19th Native Infantry was stationed. The men of the 19th inquired of the detachment as to the truth of the story of the greased cartridges, and they were then told of the new suspicion, the new fear, which had fallen on the troops at Barrackpore. It so happened that, on the morning after the arrival of the detachment, the 19th Regiment was ordered to parade with blank cartridges; these cartridges had inadvertently been made up with two kinds of paper. This unlucky circumstance strengthened the suspicion which had seized the men's minds. They thought that new cartridges fatal to their caste had been purposely mingled with the old, and, in an agony of fear, they refused to receive the percussion caps. Their refusal was reported to the Colonel. Unfortunately, Mitchell, the Colonel in command, had neither the tact nor the temper of Hearsey. Hastily imputing to insubordination a movement which was really due to fear, he hastened to the lines, railed at the men, and threatened them with severe punishment if the caps were still refused. It was in vain that the Native officers begged the Colonel to be less violent. He was in no mood to restrain his temper; and the sepoys, their panic increased by the Colonel's language, hastily concluded that their suspicions were confirmed. He would not have spoken so angrily—thus they said to one another—if he had not known the cartridges were greased.2

The mutiny

That night, fear-for no critic has ever imputed a worse influence to the 19th-drove the regiment into open of the 19th mutiny. It rose, seized its arms, and stood in array, uncertain what to do. The tumult of the revolt gave Mitchell warning of what had occurred, and in the dead of 1 Kaye's Sepoy War, vol. i. p. 524.

Regiment.

2 India under Lord Canning, p. 82; Kaye's Sepoy War, vol. i. p. 502; Holmes's Indian Mutiny, p. 86; cf. Red Pamphlet, p. 21,

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