Page:The empire and the century.djvu/714

In those days of great distances, unshortened by rail and telegraph, it would have been impossible to have had one army directed by a central authority. Campaigns, reorganizations, mutinies, followed in rapid succession. The Nepal War gave us the Gurkha soldier, and the Punjab Wars the Sikh; but we crowded the ranks of the largest portion of the army with high-caste Hindus, and a tremendous military revolt shook India from one end to the other. An overgrown and amalgamated army, dangerous centralization of authority, the weakness of the European force, religious fears bred by ignorance, credulity, and fanaticism, and our blind following of Western patterns and ideals, were the main causes which prepared the way. The Sepoys seized upon the new cartridge made up 'agreeably to instructions received from home,' to declare that the lubricatory material was a mixture of the fat of pigs and cows intended to destroy alike Mohammedans and Hindus, and became convinced that their religious safety lay in joining the standards of rebellion, and in exerting their utmost efforts to overthrow the dominion of their alien masters. The career of the East India Company had been 'from factories to forts, from forts to fortifications, from fortifications to garrisons, from garrisons to armies, and from armies to conquests,' but this chapter of history had now closed upon them. The Crown assumed the government of India, and after the Mutiny was quelled a period of reconstruction followed. The local European forces were merged into the general army; the native armies were reorganized on the 'irregular' system, under which there were but few British officers in each regiment; a Staff Corps was formed; but in creating a new Bengal Army, the Madras and Bombay armies, the Punjab frontier force, and the Hyderabad contingent, all of which had done admirable service in putting down the rebellion in a series of arduous campaigns, were maintained as separate entities. The minds of men were concerned with so framing the new plan that another outbreak might have no chance of success. But by