Page:The Mutiny of the Bengal Army.djvu/23

Rh accomplish it in three years. Hence the greasing of the cartridges: hence the changes that were talked about in their dress and equipments. They knew our skill; they witnessed the constant scientific improvements evinced in railways, electric telegraphs, &c., and they dreaded lest some morning they should awake and find themselves, owing to some unaccountable ingenuity on our part, deprived of their religion and caste. Discontent took possession of their minds; they were in perpetual dread of something undefined, supernatural: a restless desire of showing their discontent evinced itself, and resulted, after nearly a week's hesitation, in the perpetration of the act recorded above, viz. the burning of the electric telegraph office at Barrackpore.

This station, distant about sixteen miles from Calcutta, was garrisoned entirely by native troops; at this time four regiments were quartered there, the 2nd Grenadiers, the 34th Native Infantry, the 43rd Light Infantry, and the 70th Native Infantry. Between Calcutta and Dinapore, an extent of 400 miles in length and enormous breadth, there was but one European regiment, the 53d Foot. Half of this regiment garrisoned Fort William, the other half was stationed at Dumdum, about seven miles from Calcutta. In case of any disturbance, not a single man could have been spared from the wing located in the fort, whilst the other was insufficient in strength to put down a simultaneous rising of the town and of the native army.

Such an idea, at this time, never suggested itself to a single European in the country. Although after the burning of the telegraph office on the 24th, scarcely a night passed over without the perpetration of some act of incendiarism, these acts were never traced to their source. The Government were confident and callous. Although about this time the excited state of the minds of the Sepoys, consequent upon the discovery of the nature of the grease, was reported to them, not a single explanation was offered, not an attempt made to soothe them. It is true that an order was issued, after the interval of almost a month, to serve out no more greased cartridges, but, in the absence of any accompanying explanation, the Sepoys viewed that merely as an evidence that the Government was baffled for the time, and waited only a more convenient season for the renewal of their insidious attacks on their caste.

But, although the eyes of our Government were blinded, those of the King of Oudh and his agents were wide open to the importance of the occasion. The minds of the Sepoys at Barrackpore were hourly worked upon, and with such effect, that letters were despatched in shoals to every regiment in the service, giving full details, often amplified and exaggerated, of the cartridge business. Agents were also despatched, well supplied with money, to every station in India; these men were directed to prepare the native army for an immediate rise, and to adopt every possible means to bring about the revolt without the cognizance of the authorities.