Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/70

46 He really believed that the whole offence of the Government had been the greasing of the cartridges for use by the sipáhís, and that the latter were under the influence of terror lest their religion should be tampered with. He did not ask how it was that, before a single cartridge had been issued, before one sipáhí had been asked to defile himself by applying his teeth to the greased paper, the demeanour of the men of the four native regiments at Barrackpur had displayed unmistakable signs of the discontent which raged within their minds. Believing that the greased cartridge was the outward sign and inward cause of the evident discontent, he had, with the sanction of Lord Canning, on the 9th of February, paraded his brigade, and addressing the sipáhís of the four regiments in their own language, had endeavoured to dissipate their fears. He had told them that the English were Christians of the Book; that they admitted no proselytes except those whom the reading of that Book had convinced; that the notion that any other mode of conversion was possible was absurd; that baptism only followed conviction; and he implored them to dismiss from their minds the tale told them by designing men that the English had any design to convert them by a trick.

General Hearsey meant well, and he thought he had succeeded in convincing his men of their delusion. But he had missed the point. The conspirators, who had fomented the ill-feeling of the sipáhís all over India, had not told their victims that the English would make them Christians by force. They had rather impressed on their minds that the object of their masters was to deprive them, by the compulsory use of the cartridges, of the caste, to which they adhered with the passionate conviction that it was the one thing necessary for consideration in this