ngs of the people, and, with the advice of his
Council, he came to the conclusion that it would be wiser to let
affairs remain _in statu quo_ during Bahadur Shah's lifetime. The
royal family were informed accordingly, and an agreement was drawn up,
signed, sealed, and witnessed, by which the Heir Apparent accepted the
conditions to be imposed upon him on the death of his father, who was
to be allowed to remain in Delhi during his lifetime, with all the
paraphernalia of royalty.

However satisfactory this arrangement might be to the Government of
India, to every member of the Delhi royal family it must have seemed
oppressive and humiliating to the last degree. Outwardly they appeared
to accept the inevitable quietly and submissively, but they were only
biding their time, and longing for an opportunity to throw off the
hated English yoke. The war with Persia in 1856 seemed to offer the
chance they wanted. On the pretence that the independence of Herat
was threatened by the Amir of Kabul, the Persians marched an army to
besiege that place. As this act was a violation of our treaty with
Persia made three years before, Her Majesty's Government directed that
an army should be sent from India to the Persian Gulf. The troops had
scarcely left Bombay before the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West
Provinces was warned by a Native correspondent that the King of
Delhi was intriguing with the Shah of Persia. At the same time a
proclamation was posted on the walls of the Jama Masjid (Shah Jehan's
famous mosque at Delhi), to the effect that a Persian army was coming
to relieve India from the presence of the English, and calling on all
true believers to rise and fight against the heretics. Reports were
also diligently circulated of our being defeated on the shores of
the Persian Gulf, and the people were made to believe that their
opportunity had arrived, and that the time was now favourable for a
successful rebellion.

Of the three principal movers in the events which immediately preceded
the Mutiny, the Nana Sahib was by far the most intelligent, and had
mixed most with Europeans. He was the adopted son and heir of the last
of the Peshwas, the Chiefs of the Mahratta confederacy. His cause of
dissatisfaction was the discontinuance to him of a pension which, at
the close of the Mahratta war in 1818, was granted to the Peshwa, on
the clear understanding that it was to cease at his death. The Peshwa
died in 1851, leaving the Nana an