trample them in the mud; they would not carry away with them the smallest reminiscence of their service to the Company!
The 19th and 34th, the only two regiments of the Bengal Army who, up to this moment, had been guilty of overt acts of mutiny, had now been disbanded, and the Government fondly imagined that disaffection had been dismissed with them. Two orders of the Governor-General had distinctly intimated to the native troops, that the Governor-General had neither the desire nor the intention to interfere with their religion or their caste, and it was believed that these orders, coupled with the disbandment of the 19th and 34th, would have the best possible effect.
The men of the 34th had assaulted their officer on the 29th of March; punishment was meted out to them on the 6th of May. This interval of five weeks was not lost on the men of the Bengal Army. Throughout India every eye had been turned towards Barrackpore, to ascertain what fate would befall that regiment which had encouraged a murderous attack on one of its officers. For five weeks they looked, and looked in vain. It is true that the murderer himself and one of his sympathisers had been hanged, but less than that the Government could not do, without entirely abdicating its functions; otherwise all was quiet; the regiment had not even been rebuked for its share in the crime. The universal impression consequently prevailed amongst the Sepoys that the Government could not do without, and feared to punish them.
That these feelings would not have become modified by listening to the order published by the Governor-General, on the disbandment of the 34th, may be imagined from the fact, that when it reached Lucknow, Sir Henry Lawrence, one of the best judges of native character in India, refused to allow it to be read to the native troops, being of opinion that it would hasten rather than repress an outbreak.
At Meerut, disaffection had been more plainly manifested than in any other station in the North-western provinces. A rumour had been spread amongst the troops by means, it cannot be doubted, of the agents of the King of Oudh, that the Government had plotted to take away their caste, by mixing the grounded bones of bullocks with the flour sold in the market; that thus the Hindoo, partaking inadvertently of the substance of the deified animal, would find himself compelled to embrace Christianity. It was in vain that General Hewitt and the commanding officers of regiments attempted to combat these ideas; it was fruitless that they pointed out to the Sepoys, that during a century's occupation of India no interference with caste had ever been tried. Left to themselves, the Hindoos might possibly have been pacified by these assurances; but they were urged on by the Mahomedans, who pretended similar fears for their own religion. The disbandment of the 19th, did nothing to allay the discontent, whilst the impolitic delay which intervened between the crime of the men of the 34th and their punishment served greatly to increase it. During the latter end of April this discontent showed itself in the usual manner. Houses were burned down, officers were not saluted
