Owing to the wide distribution of the large force of artillery which had arrived from home, it was considered necessary, for administrative purposes, that General Dupuis and his staff should return to the seat of Government at Calcutta; and therefore, after the battles at Cawnpore in November and December, I took no further active part in operations in the field. Residence in India, however, was full of interest at that time, when the causes of the revolution, together with the military changes which ensued, were matters of constant discussion and consideration. The idea that the serving out of greased cartridges to the native soldiery was a dominant factor in the crisis is of course a mere exaggeration of a minor ultimate detail. It may possibly have been the final exciting cause, in the same way that a lucifer match suddenly lighted in a powder magazine may lead to a great explosion; but the causes which conduced to the revolution had been accumulating long before 1857, and were partly political, partly military; and it will be interesting to quote briefly the opinions of various statesmen and high authorities who took part in and studied the history of our conquests, and who traced the results caused by our gradual absorption of the kingdoms, principalities, and provinces into which, until our advent, the vast peninsula of India was divided. Sir John Malcolm, in his 'Political History of India,' in 1826, wrote: 'The great empire which England has established in the East will be the theme of wonder to succeeding ages. That a small island in the Atlantic should have conquered and held the vast continent of India as a subject province, is in itself a fact which can never be stated without exciting astonishment. But that astonishment will be increased when it is added that this great conquest was made, not by the collective force of the nation, but by a company of merchants, who, originally vested with a charter of exclusive commerce and with the privilege and right to protect their property by arms, in a few years actually found themselves called upon to act in the character of sovereigns over extended dominions before they had ceased to be the mercantile directors of petty factories.'[49] Sir John goes on to show that our rapid progress was due in a great measure to two leading causes: one, that coming originally as unpretending traders, we disarmed suspicion, and were, indeed, welcomed by the natives; the other, that the gradual rise of our power was coincident with the decline of the Mogul empire.