eaty of peace
was presently concluded in which all claim to Herat was abandoned by
Persia. Early in the year the British expedition in China resumed
hostilities. Commodore Elliot with five gunboats and a host of small boats
destroyed a fleet of forty armed junks. Next an attack was delivered on the
Chinese headquarters at Fatshan. A flotilla of English small boats cut
their way through the long line of war junks, and a landing party under
Commodore Harry Keppel attacked the main position. The Commodore's boat was
sunk and several others had to be abandoned. A number of the Chinese junks
were burned. Keppel's force was found too small to capture Fatshan. Sir
Michael Seymour decided to postpone further hostilities until the arrival
of the promised reinforcements that were to come after Lord Elgin. When
these troops failed to arrive in good time, Lord Elgin went to Calcutta
himself to hasten their despatch. There he found affairs of far more
serious import than those in China.

[Sidenote: Murmurs in India]

[Sidenote: The greased cartridges]

Some time previously rumors had been circulated concerning a danger to
British rule in India. Mysterious little cakes were circulated far and
wide. Lord Canning, the new Governor-General, was blamed for not taking
alarm. A dangerous story got abroad early in the year. The Enfield rifle
had been introduced. Its cartridges were greased with animal lubricants.
The fat of pigs was hateful to Mohammedans, while that of cows was still
more of an abomination in the eyes of the Hindus. At Barrackpore, near
Calcutta, where Sepoys were stationed, a Laskar reviled a Brahmin as
defiled by the British cartridges. The whole of the Bengal army was seized
with horror. The British authorities claimed that none of the greased
cartridges had been issued to the Sepoys. The story of the greased
cartridges ran up the Ganges to Benares, Delhi and Meerut. It was soon
noised abroad that the bones of cows and pigs had been ground to powder and
thrown into wells with flour and butter in order to destroy the caste of
the Hindus so as to convert them to Christianity.

[Sidenote: Hindu soldiers demur]

In March, incendiary fires broke out at Barrackpore. The Sepoys from the
Nineteenth Regiment refused to receive the cartridges dealt out to them.
There was only one white regiment in the 400 miles between Barrackpore and
Patna. After remonstrances had been made by the English officers, the
Sepoys returned, but