with all the fury of an irresistible tempest, and deluged the land with torrents of blood.
The above summary of facts is founded on Sunker Tewāre's statement, recorded in my journal on the day he made it; and, by what he has stated, it is transparently clear that, although the greased cartridge was so powerful a factor that it destroyed the loyalty of the Sepoys, the annexation of Oudh was, without a shadow of doubt, primarily, and solely, the cause that originated the Mutiny, and led to a tragical catastrophe without a parallel in the history of the world.
Turning to Sunker Tewāre, I asked him whether his statement would be corroborated by the mutineers themselves, and whether he was sure that the Mutiny resulted really from panic.
“I'll stake my life upon it, it did. I have been a Sepoy long enough to know the thoughts and feelings of my brethren; besides,” he added, with a broken voice once more, as if the recollection of the recent events was too much for him, “the minds of the Sepoys had been wrought to such a pitch of furious excitement by treason giving vitality and expansion to the terrible belief of their bodies, and their souls, being on the very brink of defilement, and eternal destruction, that, maddened under contagious delirium of panic, they instantaneously plunged into a conspiracy of extermination; and, in the frenzy of despair, their very nature changed, and they became, what they never were before, cruel and in-human in their determination to destroy those, whom they were convinced were about to destroy them.”
