Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/84

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Disaffection at Lakhnao.

19th N. I. were stealing into the province, that he detected or thought he detected, suspicious symptoms in the 48th N. I. He reported the circumstance to Lord Canning, and at once received permission to write to the Commander-in-Chief to have the regiment removed to Mírath. But to Sir Henry's mind the proposed remedy was no remedy at all. He wrote in that sense, on May 1st, to the Governor-General.

Two days later he discovered that treasonable communications were passing between the men of a local regiment and the 48th, that the men of the 7th Irregular Cavalry, stationed seven miles from Lakhnao, had proceeded to overt acts against their officers, and that the greased cartridges were in both cases the alleged cause of the ill-feeling. The act of the 7th Irregulars, in the opinion of Sir Henry, required prompt repression. Accordingly, he marched that night, with the three native regiments I have enumerated, the 32d Foot, and a battery of eight guns, against the peccant regiment. The men of that regiment, terrified by this demonstration, submitted without a blow. They laid down their arms at the given order, and allowed their ringleaders to be arrested, with every sign of penitence and submission.

On the 4th of May the electric wire flashed to Lord Canning an account of this mutiny and its repression. It was the receipt of this news which decided his vacillating council to disband the 34th, a measure which, we have seen, was carried out on the 6th. The effect which the simple disbanding of a mutinous regiment produced on the other native regiments of the same brigade was illustrated a few days later. A Jámadár of the 70th N. I. was arrested at Barrackpur in the act of urging his men to rise in revolt. Brought to trial before a court composed of native officers of his own caste, he was sentenced