It is on every account to be desired that the great measures which we have authorised should be carried into effect under the auspices of the nobleman who has so long, and with such eminent ability and success, administered the affairs of the British Empire in India-who has bestowed such attentive and earnest consideration on this particular subject-and those acts may carry a weight of authority which might, perhaps, not in the same degree attach to the first proceedings of a new administration. Entertaining full reliance on the ability and judgment of the Marquis of Dalhousie, with the suggestions of the other members of your Government before him, we abstain from fettering his Lordship's discretion by any further instructions; and feel assured that, whichever mode of attaining the indispensable result may be resolved on, the change will be carried into effect in the manner best calculated to avert collisions of any kind, and with every proper and humane consideration to all persons whose feelings have a just claim to be consulted.

It was doubly unfortunate that an act of such importance had necessarily to be carried out during the last few weeks of Lord Dalhousie's rule. It is unfair, therefore, to look upon his policy towards Oudh as a completed whole. It was similar to that of the younger Pitt towards Ireland, a mere fragment of what was intended. The necessary steps were not taken to provide for the legitimate needs of the king, the disbanded soldiers, or the landowners. And, as was the case with the Punjab a few years before, the one essential man left the province just at the very time when his services were most needed. Sir James Outram had to go away in consequence of ill-health and, a few months later, was put in command of the expedition against Persia. By a strange mischance Sir Henry Lawrence was not appointed to the vacant post in Lucknow until it was too late and many serious mistakes had been committed.

Mistaken Policy after the Annexation

Source.-(i) Private Letters of the Marquess of Dalhousie.' Edited by J. G. A. Baird. p. 401. (Blackwood.)

There is no official record of my resolution to disarm Oudh, and for this very excellent reason. The province of Oudh was annexed on 7th February. On the 29th of the same month I handed over the government of India to my successor. consider that my duty was to do everything that was necessary

I

for the annexation of Oudh; to omit nothing which was requisite for the immediate organisation of its administration, for the guidance of his officers, and for the present security of its territory; but to avoid anticipating the action of my successor, and to leave his judgment unfettered and his hands unimpeded by any orders of mine respecting the future, which it was not indispensably necessary to issue at the moment in which I was acting. Accordingly, a large military force was moved into Oudh, and the annexation was effected without firing a shot. It was necessary that from the first hour of annexation a form of administration should be established; and it was established, the officers appointed, and all sent out to their posts. It was necessary that the principles on which the local administrations were to act should be laid down; and they were laid down in full and clear detail. It was necessary that the revenue should be at once collected, and the rules for a settlement declared; and the collection was at once commenced, and the rules in question promulgated. It was necessary that police for the preservation of order should be formed; and it was ordered, and the officers selected. It was necessary that a local military force should support the police, and should absorb as many as possible of the king's army. The Oudh Irregular Force was formed, and every officer named before I laid down the government. I avoided no labour, evaded no responsibility, omitted no precautions, and shirked nothing which was indispensable for the moment; but I meddled with nothing, and even made mention of nothing which belonged to the time of my successor; and it had been decided that the disarming of Oudh should be postponed until his time, for reasons which follow. But the resolution I had taken to disarm Oudh, and the reasons for postponing the execution of it, are fully recorded in my confidential demi-official correspondence with General Outram, the Resident, and subsequently the Chief Commissioner in Oudh. My despatch to the Court of Directors regarding the occupation of Oudh was sent in June. On 12th July I addressed a long and confidential letter to General Outram respecting the measures which were to be taken, and the preparatory arrangements which were to be made in the event of the occupation being sanctioned. As secrecy and celerity were both of great importance, I sent the Military Secretary with the letter to Lucknow. My instructions assumed that the occupation would be sanctioned. The very first measure which they directed was the disarming of the population and the dismantling of the forts. These were my words: "Obviously, the great evil which should be at once grappled with, overthrown, and crushed, is the power of the great landholders, occupying, according to Colonel Sleeman, some 250 forts throughout the country, and maintaining huge bodies of armed men. In effecting this object

I would propose that three or four columns of troops should enter Oudh at different points as soon as the proclamation has been promulgated, and that each column should have a district assigned to it, within which it should do its work effectually and with all practicable speed. It is my intention that not a single fortified place be left in Oudh with the exception of those which belong to the Government. It is further my intention that the whole population should be disarmed, and that no man should be permitted to carry a weapon in Oudh except under licence and rule, as was done with such excellent effect in the Punjab in 1849." Detailed instructions on the same point follow. What I have extracted, however, will show you that from the very first my determination was made known to dismantle the forts and disarm the people of Oudh, simultaneously with the issue of the proclamation which should make the country ours. General Outram concurred in the propriety of the measure; but he suggested that if the Court's orders did not permit of the annexation being made until far on in the cold weather, the disarming should be delayed for a few months on the ground that, if it were commenced at once, the hot weather and the rains would be upon us before it could be completed; in which case either the operation must be interrupted, which was inexpedient, or the European troops must be subjected to great exposure, which was more inexpedient still. To these reasons for a short delay I deferred. The annexation was peaceably made, and if I had been G.-G., the disarming would have been commenced in October, 1856, and would have been completed by the end of that year. Not a sepoy would have shown a scruple. If they had, what would it have mattered if the mutinous spirit which had showed itself in May had shown itself in the preceding October, at the commencement of the cold season instead of at the commencement of the hot season, while the Government of India would at least have attempted to do its duty, and take the precautions which prudence required. If the sepoys had not scrupled, and the disarming and dismantling had been effected, in what a different position would our officers in Oudh have stood during this last summer. We should still have had to meet a mutinous sepoy army, but there would have been no armed population to rise in their support. And what a different prospect should we have had now -a helpless and prostrate province to reoccupy instead of a batch of 250 forts to reduce, defended by armed men, whose guilt as rebels will cause them to fight with the feelings of men having halters about their necks. I think this long story of mine about Oudh will have satisfied you that my intention of disarming it was very unmistakably expressed-that it would unquestionably have been carried into effect if I had continued to rule, and that those who neglected or pooh-poohed the measure have much to answer for.

30 WING

Source.-(ii) Trotter, "British Empire in India." Vol. II., p. 96.

That all Oudh should thus have risen against her new masters was a misfortune for which neither Lord Dalhousie nor Sir Henry Lawrence can be held fairly to blame. The former, had he stayed in India, would have taken good care to fill up the place of Outram with some one fitter than a mere Bengal civilian to confront the unwonted difficulties of such a post. On the other hand, had Lawrence been sent a year earlier to Lucknow, the force of his statesmanship and the charm of his personal sway might, perhaps, have done much to reconcile the bulk of his new subjects to a rule which may have aimed at keeping the public peace, oppressing none but criminals, and meting out the same cold justice alike to lord and peasant. If any one Englishman could have forestalled the coming disaster, he was the man. As things stood, however, at the recall of Mr. Coverley Jackson, no power on earth could have prevented the final explosion for which long years of misrule and anarchy had supplied the combustibles, even if Wajid Ali's dethronement and Mr. Jackson's hard fiscal policy had together applied the torch. When Sir Henry Lawrence took up his new duties, the train was already fired. It was glory enough for Sir Henry that, with one weak British regiment at his command, he staved off the worst of the coming crash, even to the end of that fatal June.

CHAPTER V

THE DISCONTENT OF THE SEPOY AND OUTBREAK OF

THE MUTINY

THE introduction of the Enfield rifle in place of the oldfashioned musket provided the spark which fired the powder and caused the actual explosion of the Mutiny. Certain of the sepoys, many of whom were high-caste Brahmins, believed that in biting the cartridges they would lose caste, and that this was part of a deliberate plan engineered by the British Government to convert them forcibly to Christianity. In regard to the actual ingredients of the grease used for the cartridges there was considerable difference of opinion, but the Superintendent of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich gave his verdict that hogs' lard did not in any way enter its composition. Be that as it may, the sepoys thought differently, and their somewhat natural anxiety was taken advantage of by political agitators for their own purposes, and with disastrous results.

It is still a question whether the great insurrection in its early stages was merely a mutiny of the soldiers or a general revolt of the people, and how far it was a case of the soldiers terrorising the people, or the people working on the minds of an ignorant and suspicious soldiery. The majority of British officers, till the very last, were firm in their belief in the sepoys' loyalty, and could not listen even to the suggestion that their men were not all that they considered them to be. A few more discerning minds, however, for some time past, had felt considerable uneasiness in the matter. The mere fact that the Indian element in the army had increased out of all proportion to the European was in itself a cause for considerable anxiety; and the fact that the sepoys of the Bengal Army were drawn very largely from the same part