s mischief. The most prominent of these
amongst the Mahomedans were the royal family of Delhi and the ex-King
of Oudh, and, amongst the Hindus, Dundu Pant, better known by English
people as the 'Nana Sahib.'

All three considered themselves badly treated, and no doubt, from
their point of view, their grievances were not altogether groundless.
The King of Oudh's I have already indicated, and when his province was
annexed, he was removed to Calcutta. Having refused the yearly pension
of twelve lakhs[2] of rupees offered to him, and declined to sign the
treaty by which his territory was made over to the British Government,
he sent his mother, his son, and his brother to England to plead his
cause for him.

The most influential of the three discontented Rulers, or, at all
events, the one whom the rebellious of all castes and religions were
most inclined to put forward as their nominal leader, was the head of
the Delhi royal family, by name Bahadur Shah. He was eighty years old
in 1857, and had been on the throne for twenty years. His particular
grievance lay in the fact of our decision that on his death the
title of King, which we had bestowed on the successors of the Moghul
Emperor, should be abolished, and his family removed from Delhi.

In the early part of the century Lord Wellesley pointed out the danger
of allowing a Mahomedan Prince, with all the surroundings of royalty,
to remain at the seat of the old Moghul government, but the question
was allowed to remain in abeyance until 1849, when Lord Dalhousie
reconsidered it, and obtained the sanction of the authorities in
England to the removal of the Court from Delhi to a place about
fourteen miles off, where the Kutub tower stands. At the same time the
Heir Apparent was to be told that on his father's death the title of
King of Delhi would cease.

Lord Dalhousie had been only a short time in India when he took
up this question, and he could not properly have appreciated the
estimation in which the Natives held the King of Delhi, for he wrote
in support of his proposals 'that the Princes of India and its people
had become entirely indifferent to the condition of the King or his
position.' But when the decision of the British Government on the
subject reached India, he had been more than two years in the country,
and although his views as to the desirability of the measure remained
unchanged, the experience he had gained enabled him to gauge more
accurately the feeli