CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST MANIFESTATIONS OF REVOLT.
During the year 1854, the 38th Regiment Native Infantry, unpunished for their refusal to go to Burma, were located at the station of Cawnpore; there were two other regiments at the same station, the 63rd and 74th Native Infantry. At Lucknow, distant about fifty miles, were the 19th and 34th Regiments; at Allygurh, on the high road between Cawnpore and Meerut, was the 54th Regiment, which also supplied troops to the small civil stations of Etawah, Mynpoorie, and Bolundshuhr, the two former in the vicinity of Cawnpore and Agra, the latter close to Meerut. At Allahabad, about 125 miles from Cawnpore, the 11th and 48th Regiments were stationed. The native troops at Meerut consisted of the 3rd Cavalry, and the 36th and 46th Regiments. Considering the joint share which many of the regiments thus enumerated had in the late outbreak, it is reasonable to suppose that constant communications were going on between them all. No suspicion of it existed at the time in any quarter. Our native troops were as much trusted as Europeans; it was believed that they were not only completely satisfied, but that they regarded service in our ranks as preferable to any other mode of obtaining a livelihood. And certainly the authorities had grounds for this belief. No sound of disaffection was heard in any quarter. For every vacancy in the ranks there were more candidates than could possibly be enrolled, and the tone and bearing of the Sepoys towards their officers left nothing to be desired in that respect.
The relation of the Sepoys to the Province of Oudh.—An event, however, was about to occur, which, in the opinion of officers who had served long in India, would put to the severest test the feelings of the native soldiery towards their foreign masters. Of all the considerable native states with which we had come in contact, the province of Oudh was the only one which had maintained its independence intact. Immediately contiguous to our own possessions, inhabited by a mixed population of Hindoos and Mahomedans, from which our own army was principally recruited, the kingdom of Oudh had remained for upwards of half a century firm in its alliance to the British Government. During the height of our reverses in Affghanistan, that friendship had never wavered. So firm indeed was the attachment to, or the perception of the power of British arms, that
