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Rh shared our reverses as well as our triumphs. Native soldiers had suffered and died by the side of their English comrades on the banks of the Chambal, in the defiles of Kábul, and behind the crumbling earthworks of Jalálábád.

The English leaders of this force, in its earlier days, appear to have wielded a strange spell over their followers. Romantic stories are told of the devotion with which the native soldier regarded his European officer, and the chivalrous loyalty with which he obeyed him. On one occasion the Sepoys had stood by Clive against a mutiny of English officers and troops. On another they had, when food was running short, given up their own rations in order that the Europeans of the garrison, less inured than themselves to privation, might not feel the pinch of hunger.

An honourable record of meritorious service had embodied itself in the tradition that the Sepoy, if properly led, would go anywhere and do anything that his officer enjoined. The officers, on the other hand, were proud of their men, careful of their well-being, confident in their loyalty — a confidence, which, in many instances, was not to be shaken by the clearest evidence, and which cost many lives by the delay of precautions till it was too late to strike a blow. Some signal instances, however, had proved that the Sepoy was capable of a mutinous mood. At Vellore, in 1806, discontent — aroused by certain innovations in drill and dress, which were regarded as