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There was but a single European regiment, H. M.'s 81st. A ball, which had been previously advertised, was attended by all the European residents of the station, care being taken not to exhibit the slightest apprehension of impending danger. The festivities were unbroken, but at daylight the whole of the garrison turned out at what was thought to be an ordinary parade, and then, in the front of guns loaded with grape, and with the Europeans on either flank, the four regiments were ordered to lay down their arms. The surprise was complete, and they obeyed without a moment's hesitation. Whilst the work of dancing was going on, three companies marched quietly to the fort, turned out the native guards, and took possession. The whole business was managed with tact and discretion, and was completely successful. On the 13th of May, after the news of the Meerut revolt had reached Ferozepore, the 57th and 45th N. I. mutinied. The former regiment listened to reason, returned to obedience, and was disarmed; the latter was attacked by H. M.'s 61st, and the 10th light cavalry, who remained true to their salt, and in great part destroyed during the conflict at the station, and on their subsequent flight across the open country.

At the same time, alarming news spread regarding the safety of Benares and Allahabad, where a very doubtful spirit prevailed among the sepoys.

Such were the opening scenes of the first act of the Indian tragedy of 1857, soon to be followed by horrors still greater, if possible, by deeds of foul bestiality, infamous treachery, and fiendish cruelty, unparalleled in the history of civilized nations. These first scenes were enacted in the first half of the month of May, at places far apart, Lucknow, Meerut, and Delhi, Ferozepore, Lahore, by large bodies of an army of one hundred thousand men, mutinous to the core, unrestrained by a sense of religion, devoid, with rare exceptions, of every feeling of loyalty, honor or morality, by masses of inflamed rebels, banded together against overweaningly confident, unsuspecting, and unprepared masters, aliens in race and color, language, and religion, whom they now hated and despised in exact proportion to the obsequious awe, with which their unquestioned superiority had inspired them in days now past. The four days, from the 10th to the 14th of May, gave British supremacy a shock, which was felt all over India, and from which the Government has begun to recover only after four long and dreary months of humiliating exposures and panics, of appalling disasters, heart-rending catastrophes, and of anxieties bordering on despair.

On the 16th of May, the supreme Government published the following proclamation, which is a good specimen of Indo-British

statesmanship, promulgating manifestos, waste paper in India, but excellently adapted to the notions and the temper of the British houses of parliament, and of the home public in general, of that art, of which the first adept and master among the Indian Governors-General was the Marquis of Wellesley, who, before his well-planned and successful attack on the formidable and implacable enemy of British power in the south of India, addressed to poor Tippoo Sultan long and labored state-papers on international law and general principles of Government, which the fanatical Mohammedan could not, if he would, have understood, but which created quite a sensation among political men at home, and fully convinced John Bull, that a more righteous, a more disinterested, a more unavoidable war had never been waged. Lord Canning's proclamation runs thus:

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"The Governor General of India in Council has warned the 'army of Bengal, that the tales by which the men of certain regiments have been led to suspect, that offence to their religion or injury to their caste is meditated by the Government of 'India, are malicious falsehoods.

"The Governor General in Council has learnt, that this sus'picion continues to be propagated by designing and evil-minded men, not only in the army, but amongst other classes of the 'people.

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"He knows, that endeavours are made to persuade Hindoos and Mussulmans, soldiers and civil subjects, that their religion is threatened secretly, as well as openly, by the acts of the Government, and that the Government is seeking in various ways to entrap them into a loss of caste for purposes of its

own.

"Some have been already deceived, and led astray by these tales.

"Once more, then, the Governor General in Council warns all classes against the deceptions that are practised on them.

"The Government of India has invariably treated the religious feelings of all its subjects with careful respect. The Governor 'General in Council has declared, that it will never cease to do so. He now repeats that declaration, and he emphatically proclaims, that the Government of India entertains no desire to interfere with their religion or caste, and that nothing has been, or will be done by the Government to affect the free exercise of the observances of religion or caste by every class of the · people.

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"The Government of India has never deceived its subjects, therefore the Governor General in Council now calls upon them to refuse their belief to seditious lies.

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"This notice is addressed to those who hitherto, by habitual loyalty and orderly conduct, have shown their attachment to the Government, and a well-founded faith in its protection and justice.

"The Governor General in Council enjoins all such persons to pause before they listen to false guides aud traitors, who would lead them into danger and disgrace.

"By order of the Governor General of India in Council,

CECIL BEADON,

Secretary to the Government of India."

Calcutta Gazette Extraordinary, May 18.

This was a bottle of oil poured out upon a stormy sea to quell the wild tumult of its waves. But the Governor General did not put his trust in papers or any other contrivance of mere state craft. He summoned European troops from all quarters, from Burmah, Madras, Ceylon, the Mauritius, Bombay, Persia, with which peace had been concluded, yea from New South Wales; despatched ships to intercept the Chinese expedition under the direction of Lord Elgin, and applied for speedy and considerable reinforcements to the Home Government. Martial law was proclaimed in the disturbed districts. An act was passed, suspending the liberty of the press. In short, no stone was left unturned, no resource was forgotten, in the most strenuous endeavour of collecting every element of strength on the side of the Government, to make head against the sudden storm. It is beside the scope of this article to criticize the measures adopted by Government during an unprecedented crisis, or the siege, if it may so be called, of Delhi, which was ordered and prepared by General Anson, the Commander-in-Chief, who died at Kurnoul, on the road to the scene of operations, commenced by General Barnard, who was taken away by cholera before Delhi, carried on by General Reed, whom sickness soon incapacitated, then by Lieut. Col. Chamberlain, who was severely wounded a few days after taking the command, and brought to a successful issue by General Wilson, on the 14th September, when the Government forces, consisting of British, Seikh and Goorkha troops, stormed and took the north side of the walls, with the Cashmere, Cabul and Moorgates, and thus made themselves virtual masters of the rebel city. Nor shall we venture to paint the sickening scenes of the dreadful Cawnpore tragedy, in which five hundred British men, women, and children were butchered, like a flock of sheep, through the revengeful treachery of an upstart, petted and

finally disappointed Mahratta Brahman, Nana Saheb, the adopted son of the Ex-Peishwah, Bajee Rao, by an immense band of mutineers, naturally heartless, goaded by the consciousness of unpardonable crime, exasperated by the long and heroic resistance of the handful of Feringhees, and excited to demoniac cruelty by the insolence of momentary triumph, and the undefined dread of final ruin looming in the distance. Nor can we venture upon even a brief outline of the memorable siege of Lucknow, sustained by the fearless, the noble, the faithful Henry Lawrence and his successors, and their brave companions in arms, from the end of May to the end of September, against all the powers of a warlike country in insurrection. Neither is it to our purpose to trace the order, in which the mutinymine exploded from the borders of the Panjáb to Dinapore, near the angle of the Ganges, where it takes its southerly course, a few hundred miles to the north of Calcutta ; from Lucknow in Oude to Indore and Gwalior, Nagpore, Jubbulpore and Saugor in the direction of the Bombay and Madras presidencies, at the terrible rate of almost a regiment a day, either breaking out in violent mutiny, or being cautiously disarmed, during all June, July and part of August, until one hundred thousand sepoys were involved in the dreadful controversy, the arm of Government for a time paralysed in Bengal and the north-western provinces, and the whole north of the Indian empire to the east and south of the Panjáb, where John Lawrence and his honored associates, with clear heads, stout hearts, and strong hands, kept mutiny and treason in check and awe, appeared involved, or on the eve of being involved in one terrible conflagration. The history of the past five months, closing with the storming of Delhi and the relief of Lucknow, is fresh enough in the hearts of the readers of these pages. Its horrors need no retouching. Our object is not to narrate, but to reflect on the great tragedy, the first act of which has just ended, and to offer the results of patient, serious, impartial search after the true interpretation of the Indian crisis, to the earnest consideration of our readers.

It is certainly a very significant fact in the history of the revolt, which has, with the suddenness and destructiveness of a hurricane, swept over Bengal, Oude, and the north-western provinces, that after the lapse of five months, the all important question as to its character and causes, is yet far from being satisfactorily comprehended by the witnesses of its outbreak and progress, the sufferers in mind, body and estate from its violence and cruelty, and the actors in the bloody scenes of strife between established authority and lawless turbulence. Yet we entertain a strong hope, that we shall succeed in giving such an interpretation of DEC., 1857

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the terrible enigma, as will satisfy readers of common sense, who can divest themselves of prejudice and passion, and have patience enough to dig below the surface of symptoms,-the hopefulness or gloom, the coincidence or disconnectedness, the harmony or contrariety of which may be equally deceptive,-into the reality of things, into the depth of general principles, which act upon unchanging human nature with unvarying uniformity among all races, in all places, and at all times. Our subject of enquiry is the character and the causes of the present crisis. Let it be clearly understood and never forgotten, that the crisis has arisen from a mutiny of the Bengal army.

A mutiny, not an insurrection, has placed in jeopardy, for a season, the British domination over Hindustan. The revolt has nowhere, except in the recently annexed Oude, assumed the features of a general insurrection. It is true, that the people of the lower provinces have not turned against the mutineers nor hunted them down, like the sturdy peasantry of the Panjab; but who will expect Bengalis to take up arms in any cause? And farther to the north the people have certainly sympathized in a great measure, naturally enough, with a mutinous army drawn principally from themselves. Many a Hindu in the provinces convulsed by the revolt of a whole army, no doubt, considered the cause of the "Kumpani Bahadur " hopeless, and it would be too much to expect subjects of a foreign Government, humane and liberal indeed, but pressing heavily upon the masses of the people by a financial system which derives the principal resources of the state from the land-tax, to endanger or sacrifice property and life in the cause of strangers. We have no right, therefore, to construe the equivocal attitude of the population of several districts into a proof of their participation in a general insurrection against the Government. It is a mutiny, then, which we have to deal with, and a mutiny, not of the Indian army, but of the army of Bengal. One infantry regiment of the Madras army lately showed a stubborn temper at Masulipatam, when they were ordered to march to Hyderabad without their families, but they have remained loyal throughout the crisis. One cavalry regiment, who had volunteered for service in Bengal, on the way to the Presidency, attempted a strike for higher wages, and was punished by being deprived of horses and fire-arms, by the discharge of native officers, and the stoppage of promotion. There were rumours of insubordination and mutiny in a third Madras regiment, stationed in Burmah. All the rest of the Madras army, from Cannanore to Madras, from Hyderabad to Trichinopoly, all the troops stationed in the Mysore, have remained orderly, steady, loyal, under the pressure of considerable temptation. Many Madras regiments have volunteered for employment in

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