The Tale of the Great Mutiny

Excerpt: The scene is Barrackpore the date March 29 1857. It is Sunday afternoon; but on the dusty floor of the parade-ground a drama is being enacted which is suggestive of anything but Sabbath peace. The quarter-guard of the 34th Native Infantry—tall men erect and soldierly and nearly all high-caste Brahmins—is drawn up in regular order. Behind it chatters and sways and eddies a confused mass of Sepoys in all stages of dress and undress; some armed some unarmed; but all fermenting with excitement. Some thirty yards in front of the line of the 34th swaggers to and fro a Sepoy named Mungul Pandy. He is half-drunk with bhang and wholly drunk with religious fanaticism. Chin in air loaded musket in hand he struts backwards and forwards at a sort of half-dance shouting in shrill and nasal monotone “Come out you blackguards! Turn out all of you! The English are upon us. Through biting these cartridges we shall all be made infidels!”