their officers, and when they had plundered and burned their
bungalows, to proceed to Calcutta and try to seize Fort William,
or, if that proved beyond their powers, to take possession of the
treasury.

This circumstance was reported to Government by General Hearsay on the
11th February. In the same letter he said, 'We have at Barrackpore
been living upon a mine ready for explosion,' and he reported a story
which had reached him from Dum-Dum of a sepoy, on his way to cook
his food with his _lota_[1] full of water, meeting a low-caste man
belonging to the arsenal where the Enfield cartridges were being
manufactured. This man, it was said, asked the sepoy to allow him to
drink from his _lota_. The sepoy, a Brahmin, refused, saying: 'I have
scoured my _lota_; you will defile it by your touch.' The low-caste
man replied: 'You think much of your caste, but wait a little: the
_Sahib-logue_[2] will make you bite cartridges soaked in cow's fat,
and then where will your caste be?' The sepoy no doubt believed the
man, and told his comrades what was about to happen, and the report
rapidly spread to other stations.

Early in March several of the Hindu sepoys belonging to the Dum-Dum
School of Musketry expressed their unwillingness to bite the new
cartridge, and the Commandant proposed that the drill should be
altered so as to admit of the cartridge being torn instead of bitten.
Hearsay supported the proposal, remarking that the new mode of loading
need not be made to appear as a concession to agitation, but as part
of the drill for the new weapon. Events, however, moved so quickly
that, before sanction could be received to this suggestion, the troops
at Berhampur had broken into open mutiny. They refused to receive
their ammunition, on the ground of its being polluted, even after
it was explained to them that they were not being given the new
cartridges, but those which had been made up in the regiment a year
before. That night they broke open the bells-of-arms, and carried off
their muskets.

The Government then became aware that prompt action was necessary.
They decided that such open mutiny could not be excused on the grounds
of religious scruples, and ordered the regiment to be disbanded. As
Berhampur was somewhat isolated, and some distance from European
troops, it was arranged that the disbandment should take place at the
Head-Quarters of the Presidency division, and the 19th Native Infantry
was accordingly ordered to mar