The debates in Parliament on these dispatches and many other comments on them were daily perused with great interest, not only by ourselves, but, as we learnt, by the rebels still in arms, the several views expressed by them somehow reaching cantonments.
The publication of orders, in which it was considered that services performed by the Sikhs were referred to in exaggerated terms as compared with the purely British, produced for the time being one effect to which allusion may here be made. “Why,” said a very intelligent officer of that nationality, who was well known to most of us in cantonments, “you admit yourselves that we saved India for you; if we can do that for you foreigners, why should we not take the country for ourselves?” At the very time he spoke there were 82,000 Sikh troops in British employ. It was therefore not altogether subject of surprise to learn, as we did, that a mutinous plot had been discovered in the 10th Sikh Infantry at the distant station of Dhera Ishmail Khan.
Nor were matters satisfactory on the part of the Ghoorkhas, recently our “allies.” The circumstance transpired that correspondence had been discovered between some of the higher authorities of Nepaul and the Royal family of Oude; that Jung Bahadur had expressed himself dissatisfied with degree of acknowledgment awarded by the Indian Government for services rendered by himself and by his troops.
With the advance of the rainy season sickness and death made sad havoc among our ranks. Meanwhile a state of unrest among the general population became more and more apparent, fanned as it was by reports circulated among them that large reinforcements from England would speedily arrive. Nor was that unrest confined to the non-military sections; some of the remaining sepoys believed to be “staunch” were said to have been detected in treasonable correspondence with their brethren in open rebellion; that representatives of mutineers had taken service in the ranks of the police force.
The 1st of November, 1858, began an era memorable in the history of India. On that day was read at every military station throughout the country the Proclamation by the Queen, declaring the transference to Her Majesty of the governing power hitherto exercised by the Honourable East India Company, the 10th Regiment and other troops occupying our present station being paraded at the civil station of Bankipore to impart additional splendour to an otherwise imposing ceremony. The Proclamation was read by the Commissioner of the district, an immense concourse of natives being present on the occasion.