Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/35

Rh vailing regulations referring to service beyond the Indus, and they notified the fact to the several divisional commanders. The result was to create so great a revulsion in the minds of the sipáhís that the native regiments under orders for Sind refused to march thither.

Ultimately the difficulty was got over, but in a manner not very creditable to the Government. The Bengal troops were relieved of the necessity of garrisoning Sind, and their place was taken by native troops from Bombay. One commanding officer was dismissed the service because, to induce his men to march, he had guaranteed them the allowances to which they considered themselves entitled, as indeed, upon the principles of abstract justice, they were. One regiment was disbanded. Sipáhís in others were selected for punishment. The Government of India believed they had by these and kindred measures stayed the plague, when in reality they had shaken to the core the confidence of the sipáhís in their justice, and laid the foundation of the evils which followed thirteen years later.

Those evils were precipitated by the conduct of the Commanders-in-Chief sent out from England, often without the smallest experience of India, to command, that is, to administer, an army of sipáhís outnumbering, in the proportion of five to one, the European garrison — men born under a different sky, bred in a religion and in the respect of customs regarding which the Commanders-in-Chief knew nothing and desired to know nothing, and animated by sentiments which prompted them either to be the most docile of followers or the most importunate of solicitors. These Commanders-in-Chief were, up to the close of the Mutiny, men trained in the traditions of the Horse Guards, and who, in their narrow view, regarded any deviation from those traditions as an evil to be at all cost eradicated.