Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/57

Rh thereafter, she would have no mercy. There is reason to believe that she, too, had entered into negotiations with the Maulaví and Náná Sáhib before the explosion of 1857 took place.

Such, then, were the conspirators. The inhabitants of Oudh, directed mainly by the Maulaví and a lady of the royal House known as the Begum, the inhabitants of the North-west Provinces, goaded into bitter hostility by the action of the Thomasonian system, and the Rání of Jhánsi. The executive council of this conspiracy had arranged, in the beginning of 1857, to act upon the sipáhís by means of the greased cartridge, upon the inhabitants of the rural districts by the dissemination of chapátís. This dissemination was intended as a warning that the rising was imminent. It was further decided that the rising of the sipáhís should be simultaneous, and more than once the actual day was fixed. Providentially something always happened to prevent the explosion on that day. The splutterings which occurred on such occasions served to give timely warning to the Government. The delays which followed the warning were partially utilised. It was not, however, till the rising actually took place at Mírath that the Government realised the real nature, though not the full extent, of the danger. That they never realised it thoroughly until after the massacre of Kanhpúr we have the evidence of their own words and their own actions to prove. Indeed I may go so far as to declare that many of the actors in the drama failed to realise to their dying day that the outbreak was not merely a mutiny which they had to combat, but a vast conspiracy, the threads of which were widely spread, and which owed its origin to the conviction that a Government which had, as the conspirators believed, betrayed its trust was no longer entitled to respect or allegiance.