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Rh best refuge and in many of the landholders their warmest allies.

Sir James Outram, the Head Official of the newly-annexed Province, had welcomed Lord Canning's arrival with a telegraphic announcement that all was well in Oudh; but failing health had driven Outram to Europe, and his successor had by violent temper and want of judgment materially enhanced the dangers of an already perilous situation. In the meantime, the dethroned Sovereign was established in a suburb of Calcutta, and was consoling himself by the mission of various members of his family to plead his cause before the authorities in London. Those who profess to find elsewhere than in military disaffection the causes of the great outbreak of 1857, are accustomed to point to the presence of the ex-King of Oudh at Calcutta as one of the motive causes of the convulsion. No evidence, however, has ever been produced that the ex-King, either directly or indirectly, took part in the movement; while amongst the circumstances connected with the Mutiny, which favoured the fortunes of the English, may reasonably be counted the fact that, when Oudh threw off its allegiance, the natural centre of local loyalty was not on the spot to afford a nucleus for disaffection.

North-westward across the Doáb, well placed in a commanding position on the Jumna, such a nucleus existed. The historical capital of the Mughals — so the will of Heaven or the fatuity of man had decreed — was now at once a strong fortress, a