1857.

GRETNA GREEN.

43

had to reconcile herself to the licence and the blessing, and even the writers of fiction might have given up without a sigh an incident which had grown wearisome in romance long before it ceased to be interesting in reality.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE SEPOY.

On the 23rd of June, 1857, the hundredth anniversary of the battle of Plassey was celebrated in London. One object of the celebration was to obtain the means of raising a monument to Clive in his native county. At such a meeting it was but natural that a good deal should be said about the existing condition of India, and the prospects of that great empire which the genius and the daring of Clive had gone so far to secure for the English Crown. It does not appear, however, as if any alarm was expressed with regard to the state of things in Bengal, or as if any of the noblemen and gentlemen present believed that at that very moment India was passing through a crisis more serious than Clive himself had had to encounter. Indeed, a month or so before a Bombay journal had congratulated itself on the fact that India was quiet throughout.' Yet at the hour when the Plassey celebration was going on the great Indian mutiny was already six weeks old, had already assumed full and distinctive proportions, was already known in India to be a convulsion destined to shake to its foundations the whole fabric of British rule in Hindostan. A few evenings after the celebration

'TAM FICTI PRAVIQUE TENAX QUAM NUNTIA VERI.' 45

there was some cursory and casual discussion in Parliament about the doubtful news that had begun to arrive from India; but as yet no Englishman at home took serious thought of the matter. The news

came at last with a rush.

Never in our time, never probably at any time, came such news upon England as the first full story of the outbreak in India. It came with terrible, not unnatural, exaggeration. England was horrorstricken by the stories of wholesale massacres of English women and children; of the most abominable tortures, the most degrading outrages inflicted upon English matrons and maidens. The news

papers ran over with the most horrifying and the most circumstantial accounts of how English ladies of the highest refinement were dragged naked through the streets of Delhi, and were paraded in their nakedness before the eyes of the aged king of Delhi, in order that his hatred might be feasted with the sight of the shame and agony of the captives. of the captives. Descriptions were given, to which it is unnecessary to make any special allusions now, of the vile mutilations and tortures inflicted on Englishwomen to glut the vengeance of the tyrant. The pen of another Procopius could alone have done full justice to the narratives which were poured in day after day upon the shuddering ears of Englishmen, until all thought even of the safety of the Indian Empire was swallowed up in a wild longing for revenge on the whole seed, breed, and race of the mutinous people who had tortured and outraged our countrywomen. It was not till the danger was

all over, and British arms had reconquered Northern India, that England learned the truth with regard to these alleged outrages and tortures. Let us dispose of this most painful part of the terrible story at the very beginning, and once for all. During the Indian Mutiny the blood of innocent women and children was cruelly and lavishly spilt; on one memorable occasion with a bloodthirstiness that might have belonged to the most savage times of medieval warfare. But there were no outrages, in the common acceptation, upon women. No Englishwomen were stripped or dishonoured, or purposely mutilated. As to this fact all historians of the mutiny are agreed.

But if the first stories of the outbreak that reached England dealt in exaggerations of this kind, they do not seem to have exaggerated, they do not seem to have even adequately appreciated, the nature of the crisis with which England was suddenly called upon to deal. The fact was, that throughout the greater part of the north and north-west of the great Indian peninsula there was a rebellion of the native races against English power. It was not alone the Sepoys who rose in revolt. It was not by any means a merely military mutiny. mutiny. It was a combination, whether the growth of deliberate design and long preparation, or the sudden birth of chance and unexpected opportunity-a combination of military grievance, national hatred and religious fanaticism, against the English occupiers of India. The native princes and the native soldiers were in it. The Mahomedan and the Hindoo forgot their own religious antipathies

1857.

THE GREASED CARTRIDGES.

47

to join against the Christian. Hatred and panic were the stimulants of that great rebellious movement. The quarrel about the greased cartridges was but the chance spark flung in among all the combustible material. If that spark had not lighted it, some other would have done the work. In fact, there are thoughtful and well-informed historians who believe that the incident of the greased cartridges was a fortunate one for our people; that coming as it did it precipitated unexpectedly a great convulsion which, occurring later, and as the result of more gradual operations, might have been far more dangerous to the perpetuity of our rule.

Let us first see what were the actual facts of the outbreak. When the improved (Enfield) rifle was introduced into the Indian army, the idea got abroad that the cartridges were made up in paper greased with a mixture of cow's fat and hog's lard. It appears that the paper was actually greased, but not with any such material as that which religious alarm suggested to the native troops. Now a mixture of cow's fat and hog's lard would have been, above all other things, unsuitable for use in cartridges to be distributed among our Sepoys; for the Hindoo regards the cow with religious veneration, and the Mahomedan looks upon the hog with utter loathing. In the mind of the former something sacred to him was profaned; in that of the latter something unclean and abominable was forced upon his daily use. It was in 1856 that the new rifles were sent out from England, and the murmur against their use began at