The reader will not fail to comprehend the position. The native troops in Bengal and in the North-west Provinces of India had generally mutinied or had been disarmed. At Dánápur, twelve miles from the inflammable city of Patná, the centre of the richest province in India, were three native regiments still carrying their arms. Havelock was at Kánhpur crying for reinforcements. The arrival at Kánhpur of such reinforcements depended on the continued tranquillity of the middle piece of country of which Dánápur and Patná were the centres. The continued tranquillity of that middle piece could only be insured by the prompt disarming of the three native regiments at Dánápur. The public voice, the great mercantile community, besought the Government to issue positive orders for such disarming. The Government absolutely refused, but, as a sop, they threw the responsibility of the action to be taken upon an aged soldier, whose nerves were utterly unequal to the task; who, in fact, emulating the action of his superiors at Calcutta, endeavoured to reconcile the responsibility thrust upon him, with the evident reluctance of the Government that he should exercise it, by devising another half-measure, which brought about the very catastrophe which strong and resolute action would have avoided. Well might Lord Dalhousie write, as he did write, when the news of the catastrophe and its causes reached him: 'Why was it left to General Lloyd, or to General or Mister Anybody, to order measures so obviously necessary to safety?'
For, be it remembered, throughout the period from the outbreak of the mutiny at Mírath and the casting upon the shoulders of General Lloyd of responsibilities which properly belonged to the Government, it had been with the utmost difflculty, and by the display of the rarest qualities of courageous statesmanship, that Mr William
