Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/40

 climate. Through such novel experiences, suspicion began to spring up among them that the English designed to change their religion by force.

This suspicion grew to a height when, after the Crimean War, a wave of unrest and expectation passed over our Eastern possessions. In every bazaar, the discontented spoke ignorantly of the power of Russia as a match for their conqueror. Our disasters in Afghanistan had already shown us to be not invincible. An old story spread that the British rule was fated to come to an end one hundred years after the battle of Plassey, 1757. Now, the century having elapsed, secret messengers were found going from village to village bearing mysterious tokens in the shape of chupatties, flat cakes of unleavened bread, which everywhere stirred the people as a sacrament of disaffection. For once, Moslem and Hindoo seemed united in a vague hope that the time was at hand when they should be able to shake off the yoke of a race so repellent to both in faith, habits, and manners.

The centre of the agitation was in the north-*western provinces of Bengal, where the recent annexation of Oudh, though meant as a real boon to the ill-governed people of that fertile