by the sipáhís, and when, on the mornings of the 31 st May and the 1st and 2d of June, the first relays of the 1st Madras Fusiliers and the 84th, despatched by Lord Canning from Calcutta, reached Kánhpur, Wheeler considered that the crisis was past, that is, that the sipáhís, noting, from the arrival of English troops, that the country to the south-east was open, would feel that mutiny was too hazardous to be attempted. So great, indeed, was his confidence that he passed on fifty of the 84th to Lakhnao.
It is possible, indeed, that, could the line between Calcutta and Kánhpur have been maintained intact, this result might, to a certain extent, have been obtained. The sipáhís, that is to say, might have been content to march on Dehlí without attempting to molest the English at Kánhpur; but early in June that line was broken, in the manner to be described, at Allahábád; it was menaced at Banáras; and, later still, it was rent in twain at Dánápur. The consequences of the breaking of the line at the place first named, and of the example set by the sipáhís there and elsewhere in the vicinity, were seen when, on the night of the 4th of June, the men of the 2d Cavalry mutinied. I must ask the reader to permit me to defer the story of the events which followed that uprising until I shall have cleared the ground by narrating the contemporaneous events at Lakhnao, at Allahábád, and at Calcutta.
In a previous chapter I have narrated how Sir Henry Lawrence met and suppressed the first attempts at mutiny at Lakhnao (May 3d and 4th). Knowing the impressionable character of the natives of India, and having at the moment no means of judging the extent to which the ill-feeling had been nurtured, or the depth to which it had taken root, Sir Henry resolved to emphasise the first repression of disloyal action by the holding of a grand
