es at bay, surrounded
by a host who might any moment fall on us and destroy us.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE OUTBREAK AT BENARES.

At no place was the shock felt more severely than at Benares, where I
was residing with my family. In no place was the danger greater. We were
living in the suburbs of the most superstitious and fanatical city in
the land. Again and again during the eighty years of our rule there had
been riots in the city, professedly to avenge religious wrongs--riots so
formidable, that they were quelled by military force. A very few years
previous to 1857 the city was thrown into violent commotion, in
consequence of new messing regulations in the jail, by which it was
alleged, though without reason, the caste of the prisoners would be
affected. The rowdy element, composed of those emphatically called
_bud-mash_ "evil-doers," persons ready for every mischief, was very
strong. The Sepoys put in the forefront of their quarrel the plea that
they were fighting for their religion, and where could they expect so
much sympathy and help as in Kasee? Sir Henry Lawrence, writing some
time previously about the mistakes committed in the management of the
native army, named Benares as a place where fearful scenes would be
witnessed in the event of a Sepoy rising. Intensely Hindu, though
Benares be, it has, as we have already observed, a large Muhammadan
population, and in attacking us the Hindus could fully depend on their
help.

Our danger was greatly increased by the vast disproportion between the
native and European force--a disproportion so great, that apart from the
danger of our neighbourhood to a great city, from which we might expect
a host to pour out to attack us, it looked as if we were doomed to
destruction. We had in Benares a Native Infantry regiment, which was
believed to be tainted; a Sikh regiment, the temper of which was little
known; and, a few miles off, an Irregular Cavalry regiment, composed, it
was said, of a superior class of men, all, I believe, Muhammadans, but
whom few could trust in the event of a rising. Our European force
consisted of thirty artillery-men in charge of a battery of three guns.
At the fort of Chunar, sixteen miles distant, there was a number of
European soldier pensioners, of whom perhaps sixty or seventy might be
effective. So unbounded had been the confidence in the Sepoys, that the
artillery-men in Benares and the pensioners in Chunar were the only
European force in t