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Rh regard any postponement of the target practice at the drill depôts as a concession to unreasonable fears. No violation of caste would be caused by the use of the cartridges, therefore the drill must be persisted in. The main offence of the 19th N. I. had been the refusal to take the cartridges. For that they had been punished, and it would be inconsistent with discipline to go back on the resolution then taken. Despite, then, the consequences clearly shadowed forth by the assembled native officers to Martineau, the drill instruction was continued.

In due time General Anson continued his journey to Simla. He was there when the report reached him of the behaviour of the eighty-five troopers of the 3d N. L. C. at Mírath, already described. The Commander-in-Chief considered their offence so serious that he directed they should be brought to trial before a court composed of their own countrymen. How they were tried, how condemned, how lodged in confinement, has been already told. It has been told, also, how the vindication of discipline led immediately to the revolt of Mírath and the uprising of Dehlí.

The news of this double catastrophe reached General Anson in a bleared and imperfect form on the afternoon of the 12th. His clear and practical mind recognised that immediate action was necessary. He had three English regiments near him, on three different spurs of the Himaláyas. To that on the spur nearest to the plains, the 75th Foot, at Kasáuli, he sent orders to march immediately for Ambálah. To the two others, the 1st Fusiliers and the 2d Europeans, at Dagshai and Sabáthu respectively, he transmitted orders to hold themselves in readiness to march at a moment's notice. Simultaneously he sent expresses to desire that the fort at Fíruzpur should be secured by the 61st, and that at Govindgarh by the 81st,