but recent researches have
fully proved that the real as well as the ostensible cause of the Mutiny
was the greased cartridges. It was believed that the cartridges which
had been recently issued for the Sepoy regiments were smeared with a
mixture of cow's fat and pig's fat, one of these ingredients being
utterly impure in the eyes of the Hindoo, and the other in the eyes of
the Mussulman. To bite these cartridges would destroy the caste of the
Hindoo and carry with it the loss of everything that was most dear and
most sacred to him both in this world and in the next. In the eyes both
of the Moslem and the Hindoo it was the gravest and the most irreparable
of crimes, destroying all hopes in a future world, and yet this crime,
in their belief, was imposed upon them as a matter of military duty by
their officers. It was as if the Puritan soldiers of the seventeenth
century had been ordered by their commanders to abjure their hopes of
salvation and to repudiate and insult the Christian faith.

It is true that the existence of these obnoxious ingredients in the new
cartridges was solemnly denied, but the sincerity of the Sepoy belief is
incontestable, and General Anson, the commander-in-chief, having
examined the cartridges, was compelled to admit that it was very
plausible.[31] 'I am not so much surprised,' he wrote to Lord Canning,
'at their objections to the cartridges, having seen them. I had no idea
they contained, or rather are smeared with such a quantity of grease,
which looks exactly like fat. After ramming down the ball, the muzzle of
the musket is covered with it.'

Unfortunately this is not a complete statement of the case. It is a
shameful and terrible truth that, as far as the fact was concerned, the
Sepoys were perfectly right in their belief. In the words of Lord
Roberts, 'The recent researches of Mr. Forrest in the records of the
Government of India prove that the lubricating mixture used in preparing
the cartridges was actually composed of the objectionable ingredients,
cow's fat and lard, and that incredible disregard of the soldiers'
religious prejudices was displayed in the manufacture of these
cartridges.'[32] This was certainly not due, as the Sepoys imagined, to
any desire on the part of the British authorities to destroy caste or to
prepare the way for the conversion of the Sepoys to Christianity. It was
simply a glaring instance of the indifference, ignorance and incapacity
too often shown by Brit