Page:Clyde and Strathnairn.djvu/19



thrilling incidents and heroic deeds of the Indian Mutiny have already been so graphically recounted by historians and biographers that it is difficult to invest the subject with new interest, or to compress the narrative within reasonable limits. An attempt will be made, however, in the present volume to describe in general terms the military operations rendered necessary for the suppression of the revolt; indicating, as briefly as practicable, the causes of the outbreak, and the sequence of events during the anxious months of 1857, when British rule seemed for a moment to tremble in the balance.

To realise the position of affairs in that year, and the magnitude of the danger, it mus be borne in mind that India is not a united country containing a homogeneous population, but a congeries of countries inhabited by races who in number (287,000,000)