into the possession of the East India Company, it awoke from the slumber of ages, and became a mine of sedition, only requiring time to burst into flames of a sanguinary revolution, and from that day onwards its aroused Hindus and Mahomedans abided an opportunity to rise up against, and drive out the white interloper.
That this feeling rankled in the hearts of the people was manifested by the tumult caused in Oudh by a patriotic Mahomedan, named Fuzul Ali, who attempted to bring on an insurrection some six months before the Sepoy Army rose in mutiny. And mark — yes, mark, reader — these very same Sepoys were the men who hunted down this insurgent leader, and brought him to the gallows.
By the summary termination of Fuzul Ali’s abortive attempt at revolution, the insurrectionary movement temporarily subsided — not, however, for want of sympathy with its cause, but because it was premature; the agitation being merely a convulsive start of the active volcano, which subsequently burst out so fiercely and blazed so high. This agitation, however, would unquestionably have vanished, as soon as the people became reconciled to the novel state of things under the new Government; but before the wounds caused by the seizure of their beloved country had healed, a new cartridge, from a concurrence of phenomenal circumstances, was “introduced” to the Bengal Sepoys; while, at the same time, this very cartridge actually became an irresistible weapon in the hands
