Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/189

Rh Náná Sáhib had been powerless to prevent this march. A too great insistance on his part would have shaken to pieces his newly assumed authority. He had, then, apparently acquiesced in the propriety of the policy. But recognising that, if the movement were to continue, his labour had been in vain; that at Dehlí he, a Maráthá, would be a cypher, whereas at Bithor it might be possible for him to play the part of a sovereign prince; that the first essential to the success of his plans was to root out the hated English, to infuse his own hatred of them into the minds of the sipáhís, so that with them also it should be a race hatred; that to leave the English masters at Kánhpur was to leave open a gate upon the closing of which depended the success of his schemes, he and his agents employed all that night in endeavouring to persuade the sipáhís that their work was but half done so long as one English person remained alive at Kánhpur. Not that he and they were so unwise as openly to oppose the march to Dehlí. 'By all means,' they said in so many words, 'let us march to Dehlí; but let us first exterminate the English now at Kánhpur. If you do not exterminate them, they will soon receive reinforcements and march on your track. At present they are few in number; they have women and children with them; the position they occupy cannot be long defended. In a few days you will be able to wreak your vengeance upon them. Then we will march to Dehlí — I first of all at your head. If you decide to march thither now, you can never be sure how quickly they may recover, and then you will all be marked men. But dead men tell no tales.' Whether the precise arguments used were in these words cannot be affirmed, but that they were in this sense is certain. They were effectual, for on the morning of the 6th the rebelled sipáhís marched back from Kaliánpur to Kánhpur.