Page:The Mutiny of the Bengal Army.djvu/39

Rh as usual, and whispers were heard that a resolution had been arrived at in the lines not to touch a single cartridge.

To such a height were these manifestations carried, that it appeared advisable to bring them to the test. In the presence at the station of two European regiments, the 60th Rifles and the 6th Carabineers, besides two troops of Horse Artillery and a light field battery, General Hewitt had, or thought he had, a sufficient force to repress on the instant any act of open mutiny. He was resolved, therefore, that the Sepoys should see that he was there to give orders, they to obey them. A parade of the 3d Cavalry was accordingly ordered for the morning of the 6th of May. On the evening of the 5th, cartridges, the old cartridges of the kind which they and their fathers had always used, were served out to them. Eighty-five men in the regiment at once stepped out and refused to take them. They were subsequently offered, and again indignantly refused. But one course remained to the Brigadier. The men were confined, brought to a court-martial composed of native officers, and by those native officers condemned to periods of imprisonment with hard labour, varying from six to ten years.

In the meanwhile, impressed by the consequences resulting from Sir H. Lawrence's vigour and promptitude, the Government had sent instructions by telegraph to the commandants of the principal stations in India, directing that sentences pronounced on mutineers, whatever might be their nature, should be carried out at once, that no delay might be caused by a reference to army head-quarters. General Hewitt, therefore, prepared to carry out the sentences pronounced on the mutineers of the 3d Cavalry at the earliest possible moment. The condemned mutineers were placed under an European guard, composed of two companies of the 60th Rifles and twenty-five men of the Carabineers, and a general parade was ordered for the morning of the 9th. At day-break on that morning, all the troops in the station, leaving the guards standing, paraded on the 60th Rifle parade-ground; the Carabineers, the 60th Rifles, the 3d Light Cavalry, the 11th and 20th Regiments of Native Infantry, a light field battery, and a troop of Horse Artillery. The Carabineers and the Rifles were then ordered to load and be ready, and the Horse Artillery the same. This done, the mutineers were marched on to the ground; the European troops and Artillery guns being so placed, that the least movement of disaffection or insurrection would have been followed by instant slaughter. The mutineers were in uniform when marched on to the ground; they were then stripped of their clothes and accoutrements; and the armourers' and smiths' departments of the Horse Artillery being in readiness, every man was ironed and shackled for ten years' imprisonment on the hard roads, with the exception of five, whose period of bondage was only six years. These unfortunate wretches looked miserably crest-fallen and depressed, and many of them, putting up their hands, appealed to the General for mercy. None, of course, was