Company’s mercenary forces were reduced to the scale of home service. Conquests, therefore, while they imposed more work on the army, practically reduced its pay. (2), Another cause of discontent was the “General Service Order” of 1856. The Sepoy was originally enlisted for service in India only. He could not be sent across the sea; in fact, only low caste men dared cross “the black water.” During the first Burmese War the Sepoys had to be marched round the Indian frontier to the enemy’s territory; and when the second Burmese War broke out, the 38th Native Infantry refused to embark for Rangoon. Of course, though they should not have been asked to go without having been previously “sounded” on the subject, refusal in their case was tantamount to mutiny. Dalhousie could not, however, legally punish them, so he sent them to Dacca, where they were decimated, not by courtmartials, but by cholera. Thus the Sepoy argued that he must in future choose between his caste or a pestilential station, if he refused to serve across the sea. But while the Sepoys were brooding over this dilemma in 1856, the Governor-General promulgated the “General Service Order” to the effect that no more Sepoys should be enlisted who would not take an oath to cross the sea if called on to do so, and veteran officers, who had grown grey in the Company’s service predicted that this Order would make mischief in the army. And so it did. To the Sepoy, his service under the Company was a source of pride, profit, and even of valuable civil privileges.[337] To him it was as great a grievance to issue an Order of this sort, as it would be to the English aristocracy to attach conditions to military service, which should render it impossible for a gentleman to hold the Queen’s Commission. The individual Sepoy, no doubt, was not touched by the Order. But then his sons and grandsons, whom he expected to become Sepoys, were. The army was thus closed to every Native, unless they were prepared to submit to loss of caste. In fact, a lucrative profession was, by Lord Canning’s Order, made the monopoly of low-caste natives. Unfortunately, too, most of the recruits were drawn from Oudh, the annexation of which had been a scandal, and which was swarming with disbanded soldiers, who had been in the personal service of the deposed King.