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268 In the province of Rohilkhand matters were even worse. From the districts and stations of Bijnáur, of Murádábád, of Badáon, of Barélí, of Sháhjahanpur, the English had been expelled under circumstances of great cruelty, and with much shedding of innocent blood. Then a pensioner of the British Government, Khán Bahádur Khán by name, the descendant and heir of the last ruler of the Rohílahs, proclaimed himself Viceroy of the province, under the King of Dehlí, and despatched the sipáhís he had helped to corrupt, under the orders of Bakht Khán, a Subáhdár of artillery, with the title of Brigadier, to Dehlí. Bakht Khán subsequently became Commander-in-Chief of the rebel forces in the Imperial city. Khán Bahádur Khán governed the province for three months and a half. His rule drove to despair all the honest men in it. The nature of that rule may be gathered from the proverb the inhabitants repeated when describing it after the restoration of British rule. 'Life and property were equally unsafe,' they said; 'the buffalo was to the man who held the bludgeon.'

A glance at the map, then, will show that whilst the province immediately contiguous to Dehlí on the east, the province of Rohilkhand, with a population of over five millions, was absolutely held for the King of Dehlí; whilst the Gujar villages between Mírath and the beleaguered city, and the districts of Rohtak and Hisár to the north of it, were in the possession of the insurgents; whilst Mírath, Saháranpur, and Muzaffarnagar were held with difficulty by the British; whilst the country between Dehlí and Agra had pronounced for the rebels; whilst Central India, and the Ságar and Narbadá territories, were overrun by mutineers; whilst Rájpútána itself alone remained true to its traditionary fidelity; whilst, in a word, whether before Dehlí, or in Mírath and the adjoining