If I am compelled, in the course of these pages, to speak of myself and my own doings, I trust that I may be absolved from the imputation of being prompted by vainglorious motives; and that my excuse may be found in the evident impossibility of keeping the first personal pronoun out of a personal narrative. My having been mixed up in the events which I propose to describe is clearly an accident for which, though I may apologise, I am not responsible; and perhaps if I had not been engaged in them I should have known a good deal less about them. Whether that is an advantage, or the reverse, to a _raconteur_, is, of course, a matter of opinion. Certainly, a witness is much less hampered in his statements if he is not limited and bound down by the fact of his having been actually present at the scenes described in his evidence. His imaginative faculties are thereby quickened and enriched.
Hitherto, though often sorely tempted, I have refrained from publishing any account of those details of events during the Mutiny at which I was myself present; for, as will be seen, these details involve certain corrections in narratives which have been, for want of fuller information, accepted as complete. While perfectly true, in most points, so far as they have gone, they yet suffer from omissions which I am able to supply. The accuracy of my rectifications is, fortunately, capable of ample proof, since several very distinguished officers still survive who can vouch for it; and in most instances I am also in possession of conclusive contemporary documentary evidence.
It is not my intention to inflict on the reader my own views as to the origin of the Mutiny. Whether the _fons et origo mali_ was deep-seated and of slow growth--whether it was due to political discontent at the overthrow of the great Mogal Empire, the annexation of Oudh, and the reduction of the King of Delhi to the position of a puppet of John Company Bahadur--or whether it arose simply from the excessive and pampered growth of the sepoy army, which, like the ass Jeshuron, waxed fat and kicked, is a question which has been often dealt with by abler pens than mine. It is, however, a significant fact that many clear-sighted men had, from time to time, issued notes of warning as to the likelihood of such a catastrophe.