Injustice again, real or imagined, is as intolerable to sepoys as it is to children. More than once a regiment has been deprived of batta, or field allowances, under circumstances which kindled a burning sense of wrong. This batta is given during service in foreign territory, but is withdrawn after the return of the sepoys to British territory. Thus, sepoys who had borne the brunt of the wars in Sind and the Punjab, were suddenly deprived of batta when those countries became British provinces, and naturally rebelled against what must have appeared to them a crying injustice. The sepoy complained that he had helped to conquer Sind for the East India Company, and was then punished by the loss of batta. The paymaster pointed to the regulations, but the result was disaffection amounting to mutiny. [Sidenote: Disbandment.] Under such circumstances there was no alternative but disbandment. There can be no pardon for mutineers, yet capital punishment, or even a long term of imprisonment, would be needlessly severe in dealing with ignorant sepoys. As it was, their doom was terrible in the eyes of their fellows. In a moment they were deprived of all hope of pension, which secured to every sepoy, a life provision in his native village when age or infirmity compelled him to retire from the army. [Sidenote: Three armies: Bengal, or Northern India.] §2. The Company's regular forces in India were formed into three distinct armies, namely, those of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, and each army had its own commander-in-chief. The armies of Madras and Bombay were mostly recruited in their respective presidencies; but the people of Bengal are not a fighting race, and the Bengal army was mostly recruited from the warlike populations of Oudh and the North-West Provinces. Again the Bengal army was not kept within the limits of the Bengal presidency, but was distributed over the whole of Northern India as far as the north-west frontier. It was consequently larger than the two other armies put together. It garrisoned Bengal, the North-West Provinces, and the newly-acquired provinces of Oudh and the Punjab; whilst it overlooked, more or less, the Asiatic states to the south and west of the Jumna, including the principalities and chiefships of Rajputana, the territories of Sindia and Holkar, and the smaller domains of a host of minor feudatories. [Sidenote: Bombay in the Deccan; Madras in the South.] The Bombay army garrisoned the Western Deccan and Sind, and the Madras army garrisoned Southern India and Pegu; but neither of these armies played any prominent part in the great sepoy revolt of 1857-58. Some disaffection was shown in the Bombay army which was nearest to the Bengal sepoys, and caught something of the contagion. The Madras army was for the most part still further south; and only one regiment caught the infection, and was promptly disbanded. [Sidenote: Hindus in Bengal army.]