any combination of assailants, and the propagandists of disloyalty, from one end of India to the other, would have been cowering, in terrified silence, before the signal punishment which had overtaken the first attempt at rebellion. Not so had the book of fate been written. The history of many months of struggle, suffering and sacrifice, may be summarised as a prolonged effort to repair the disastrous consequences of this ineffable shortcoming. Nobly was it to be retrieved.
The seizure of Delhi severed the great British line of communication which runs straight across Upper India for 1500 miles from Calcutta to Pesháwar. As his eye followed it on the map, Lord Canning realised profoundly the huge distances with which he had to deal, the defencelessness of the European position, in case the movement initiated at Delhi and Meerut should spread, and the many grave possibilities which the position presented of further trouble. Delhi, the immediate scene of action, was 900 miles away. The great Province of Bengal was destitute of European troops. There were in the Province 2400 European soldiers, as against a native force of more than 29,000. A single English regiment was distributed between the fort in Calcutta and the neighbouring cantonments. A traveller, who at that time had journeyed up the line, would have found no other European troops till he reached Dinápur, 380 miles away; and the English regiment there stationed had enough to do in watching four
