Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/56

32 fluential native gentlemen, and from English officials concerned, that the grievance which caused disaffection was the harsh introduction, and the still harsher enforcement, of the Thomasonian system. And there remains the fact, which cannot be controverted, that in India the disaffection was greatest, and the hatred against Europeans most pronounced, in the districts to which that system had been applied.

Not very far distant from Agra there was a powerful chieftain who, from causes similar to those which had influenced Náná Sáhib, regarded herself as having been grievously wronged, and who therefore hated the English with all the bitterness of a woman who had been contemned. This chieftain was the Rání of Jhánsí. She was largely gifted, possessed great energy, had borne, up to the period upon which I am entering, 'a high character,' being 'much respected by everyone at Jhánsí. But the hand of the despoiler had lashed her into a fury which was not to be governed. Under Hindu law she possessed the right to adopt an heir to her husband when he died childless in 1854. Lord Dalhousie refused to her the exercise of that right, and declared that Jhánsí had lapsed to the paramount power. In vain did the Rání dwell upon the services which in olden days the rulers of Jhánsí had rendered to the British Government, and quote the warm acknowledgments made by that Government Lord Dalhousie was not to be moved. He had faith in his legions. With a stroke of his pen he deprived this high-spirited woman of the rights which she believed, and which all the natives of India believed, to be hereditary. That stroke of the pen converted the lady, of so high a character and so much respected, into a veritable tigress so far as the English were concerned. For them,