Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/77

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Reason why He failed.
53

at Barrackpur only but in all the principal stations of the North-western Provinces of India, had gone to but one point — the implanting of a conviction in the mind of the native soldiers that the foreign masters who had annexed Oudh would hesitate at nothing to complete their work of forcing them to become Christians. They had discounted beforehand the arguments of General Hearsey, for they had pointed out that a Government which, in defiance of treaties, had entered Oudh like 'a thief in the night,' and deposed the native sovereign at the point of the bayonet, would shrink from no means, however fraudulent, to complete the scheme of which the annexation had been the first move. It was not a logical argument, and the European mind would have found it full of flaws; but the emissaries knew the men they were addressing. Sentiment goes much further than logic with Asiatics, and they appealed to the sentiments which touched the sipáhís to the quick. It is not surprising, then, that the logical arguments of General Hearsey produced no effect whatever.

Evidence of this was very speedily given. On the 29th of March, a Sunday afternoon, it was reported to Lieutenant Baugh, Adjutant of the 34th N. I., that several men of his regiment were in a very excited condition; that one of them, Manghal Pándi by name, was striding up and down in front of the lines of his regiment, armed with a loaded musket, calling upon the men to rise, and threatening to shoot the first European he should see. Baugh at once buckled on his sword, and putting loaded pistols in his holsters, mounted his horse, and galloped down to the lines. Manghal Pándi heard the sound of the galloping horse, and taking post behind the station gun, which was in front of the quarter-guard of the 34th, took a deliberate aim at Baugh, and fired. He missed Baugh, but the bullet struck his horse in the flank, and