upon. They saw that the English were unsuspicious, and they believed that the plot, so far as Mírath was concerned, might, by a prompt rising, be brought to a successful issue. In that events proved them to be right. But they had lost sight of the fact that, by acting solely for their own hand, they were imperilling the great principle which had been impressed upon them by their committees, and, with it, the general success aimed at by their chiefs. This premature action proved ultimately as fortunate for the English as disastrous to the cause of revolt. A blow which, struck simultaneously all over India, might have been irresistible lost more than half its power when delivered piecemeal and at intervals.[1]
On the 12th of May a telegram from Agra conveyed to the Government, in Calcutta, the information that the native cavalry at Mírath had risen, had set fire to several officers' houses and to their own lines, and had killed or wounded all the English officers and soldiers they had come across. It is not too much to record that the atti-
- ↑ This is not mere surmise. Mr Cracroft Wilson, of the Civil Service, who was selected by the Government of India, after the repression of the Mutiny, to ascertain who were the guilty and who deserving of reward among the natives of the North-west, has recorded his conviction, derived from oral information, that the 31st of May was the day fixed upon by the conspirators for a general rising. Committees had been formed in each regiment, and to these alone was intrusted the general scheme of the plot. The sipáhís were directed to obey only the orders of the regimental committees. It is probable that the very severe punishment dealt out to the eighty-five men of the 3d L. C. so excited the men that they overrode the directions of their committee and insisted upon prompt action.
From information I have obtained, in conversation with natives of the Upper Provinces, I am convinced that the theory broached by Mr Cracroft Wilson is true. It is very difficult to induce the natives who lived and took a part in the great uprising of 1857 to open their minds regarding it. But I have heard from some of them sufficient to produce conviction in my mind that a day was fixed, and that the premature action of the 10th and 11th of May was considered to have greatly damaged the chances of success.
