and Buddhist and Brahmin, and apt to treat all alike with the scorn of superiority.  A trivial incident, which was held no trifle by the distrustful Sepoys, proved to be the spark that kindled a vast explosion.  The cartridges supplied for use with the Enfield rifle, introduced into India in 1856, were greased; and the end would have to be bitten off when the cartridge was used.  A report was busily circulated among the troops that the grease used was cow’s fat and hog’s lard, and that these substances were employed in pursuance of a deep-laid design to deprive every soldier of his caste by compelling him to taste these defiling things.  Such compulsion would hardly have been less odious to a Mussulman than to a Hindoo; for swineflesh is abominable to the one, and the cow a sacred animal to the other.  Whoever devised this falsehood intended to imply a subtle intention on the part of England to overthrow the native religions, which it was hoped the maddened soldiery would rise to resist.  The mischief worked as was desired.  In vain the obnoxious cartridges were withdrawn from use; in vain the Governor-General issued a proclamation warning the army of Bengal against the falsehoods that were being circulated.  Mysterious signals, little cakes of unleavened bread called chupatties, were being distributed, as the spring of 1857 went on, throughout the native villages under British rule, doing the office of the Fiery Cross among the Scotch Highlanders of an earlier day; and in May the great Mutiny broke out.

Some of the Bengal cavalry at Meerut had been imprisoned for refusing to use their cartridges; their comrades rose in rebellion, fired on their officers, released the prisoners, and murdered some Europeans.  The British troops rallied and repulsed the mutineers, who fled to Delhi, unhappily reached it in safety, and required and obtained the protection of the feeble old King, the last of the Moguls, there residing.  Him they proclaimed their Emperor, and avowed the intention of restoring his dynasty to its ancient supremacy.  The native troops in the city and its environs at once prepared to join them; and thus from a mere mutiny, such as had occurred once and again before, the rising assumed the character of a vast revolutionary war.  For a moment it seemed that our hard-won supremacy in the East was disappearing in a sea of blood.  The foe were numerous, fanatical, and ruthless; we ourselves had trained and disciplined them for war; the sympathies of their countrymen were very largely with them.  Yet, with incredible effort and heroism more than mortal, the small and scattered forces of England again snatched the mastery from the hands of the overwhelming numbers arrayed against them.

[Illustration:  Sir Colin Campbell.]