The Indian Mutiny Of 1857

In writing this short history of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, he has aimed at the compilation of a work which, complete in itself, should narrate the causes as well as the consequences of a movement unforeseen, undreamt of sudden and swift in it action, and which taxed to the utmost the energies of the British people. Preceding writers on the same subject, whilst dealing very amply with the consequences’ have, with one exception, but dimly shadowed forth the causes. The very actors in the Mutiny failed to detect them. Sir John Lawrence himself, writing with the fullest knowledge of events in which he played a conspicuous part, mistook the instrument for the chief cause. He stopped at the greased cartridge. But the greased cartridge was never issued to the great body of troops, if indeed to any. It remains for him now also to acknowledge gratefully the courteous manner in which other scholars granted him permission to use in a reduced form the plans they had prepared for their larger history of the Indian Mutiny. The author has preserved seven illustrations from oblivion, which he considers his duty in the interest of this book.