Page:Volunteering in India.djvu/116

102 of the discontented and designing Mahomedans of Oudh, who at once discovered in it an instrument to aid them in striking a blow for regaining the kingdom, and they hoped to succeed in the attempt by working through its powerful influence on the caste superstitions of the native army.

From their compatriots, of course, they naturally anticipated unanimous support; for they were aware that the whole population was exasperated by the annexation, and smarting in common with themselves under a cruel injustice, perpetrated in the peremptory confiscation of their cherished ancestral lands — lands of their birth, and to their notions steeped in honey and superior to all others in the world. Accordingly no time was lost in setting a gigantic conspiracy actively on foot.

In the infernal plot that was to create and ripen disloyal combination among the Sepoys, and produce the awful tragedies at which the civilised world stood aghast, Oudh, primarily, should be represented, figuratively speaking, as a charged mine, ready for explosion, and the greased cartridge, secondarily, as a lighted match in the hands of the Sepoy Army — a match which, at the appointed time, was so effectually applied that, while it blew up the mine and shattered Oudh to atoms, it also convulsed the whole of Upper India, and shook the very foundations of the Empire itself.

Shortly, therefore, after the appearance of the greased cartridge upon the tragical stage, and not many months 