Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/37

Rh of the native army required to be looked to, the Commanders-in-Chief in India reduced that army to the Horse Guards' standard. They restricted the powers of the commanding officers; they encouraged appeals to army Headquarters; they insisted that promotion to the rank of native officer should be regulated, not by merit, but by seniority. They issued order after order the tendency of which was to impress upon the mind of the imaginative oriental the conviction that the Government desired to pet the sipáhí at the expense of his actual commandant. In this way they undermined the discipline of the army, and made their European regimental officers contemptible in the eyes of their men.

The sipáhís have always obeyed a master who knows how to command. But they will not obey a lay figure. Nor, equally, will they transfer their respect to an unseen authority residing in the lofty hill ranges which overlook the plains of Hindustán. They may use that unseen authority, indeed, to vex and annoy and baffle their own commandant. And that was the manner in which, for a few years immediately prior to the Mutiny, the sipáhís did use it. By petitions against the rulings of the officers appointed to command them, petitions examined and acted upon by the authority in the hills who did not know them, they in many cases rendered the enforcement of a rigid state of discipline impossible.

Whilst the determination of inexperienced Commanders-in-Chief, that is, of Commanders-in-Chief unacquainted with the oriental mind, but tied hand and foot to the traditions of the Horse Guards, was thus undermining the discipline of native regiments, other causes were supervening to alarm them as to their personal interests. The sipáhís of the Bengal army were enlisted, with the exception of those of six regiments, for service in