a petition to the Governor-General, offering, in case they were pardoned, to proceed at once to China, or to serve anywhere on land or sea. In short, they showed a repentant spirit, and were never less inclined to join in a conspiracy against the state. On arriving on the morning of the 30th at Barraset, they found a deputation from the 34th awaiting their arrival. It has since transpired that these men made them a proposal—the result of their deliberations of the previous night—which it was well for us that they did not accept. On that very morning, Her Majesty's 84th, from Chinsura, a wing of the 53d Foot from Dumdum, a couple of European batteries from the same place, and the Governor-General's body-guard (native) from Calcutta, had arrived at Barrackpore, and had been ordered to appear on parade with the native regiments at five o'clock on the following morning. The proposal made by the 34th to the 19th was to the following effect: that they should, on that same evening, kill all their officers, march at night into Barrackpore, where the 2nd and 34th were prepared to join them, fire the bungalows, surprise and overwhelm the European force, secure the guns, and then march on to and sack Calcutta.
Had the 19th been as excitable then as they had shown themselves on the 25th of February, these views might possibly have been entertained; but they were repentant, and ashamed of their former excess. That they were not thoroughly loyal is proved by the fact that the tempters were not reported: they were suffered to return unbetrayed, but their scheme was at once and definitively rejected.
On the following morning the 19th Regiment marched into Barrackpore. An order by the Governor-General in Council, in which their crime was recapitulated, their fears for their religion pronounced absurd, and their disbandment directed, was read out to them in the presence of the assembled troops before enumerated. On being ordered to lay down their arms, they obeyed without a murmur; many of them, indeed, showed signs of deep contrition. They were then paid up before their comrades, and were marched across the river without arms. They had ceased to belong to the Company's army.
CHAPTER III.
FROM THE DISBANDING OF THE 19TH REGIMENT TO THE REVOLT AT MEERUT.
The 19th were disbanded, and in the opinion of the Government a lesson had been thereby read to the Sepoys which they would not easily forget. They argued that Lord Ellenborough, by the disbandment of a regiment in 1844 (the 34th Native Infantry), had repressed
