Unfortunately this is not a complete statement of the case. It is a shameful and terrible truth that, as far as the fact was concerned, the Sepoys were perfectly right in their belief. In the words of Lord Roberts, 'The recent researches of Mr. Forrest in the records of the Government of India prove that the lubricating mixture used in preparing the cartridges was actually composed of the objectionable ingredients, cow's fat and lard, and that incredible disregard of the soldiers' religious prejudices was displayed in the manufacture of these cartridges.'[32] This was certainly not due, as the Sepoys imagined, to any desire on the part of the British authorities to destroy caste or to prepare the way for the conversion of the Sepoys to Christianity. It was simply a glaring instance of the indifference, ignorance and incapacity too often shown by British administrators in dealing with beliefs and types of character wholly unlike their own. They were unable to realise that a belief which seemed to them so childish could have any depth, and they accordingly produced a Mutiny that for a time shook the English power in India to its very foundation. The horrors of Cawnpore--which were due to a single man--soon took away from the British public all power of sanely judging the conflict, and a struggle in which no quarter was given was naturally marked by extreme savageness; but in looking back upon it, English writers must acknowledge with humiliation that, if mutiny is ever justifiable, no stronger justification could be given than that of the Sepoy troops. Many of my readers will remember an exquisite little poem called 'The Forced Recruit,' in which Mrs. Browning has described a young Venetian soldier who was forced by the conscription to serve against his fellow-countrymen in the Austrian army at Solferino, and who advanced cheerfully to die by the Italian guns, holding a musket that had never been loaded in his hand. Such a figure, such a violation of military law, will claim the sympathy of all, but a very different judgment should be passed upon those who, having voluntarily entered an army, betray their trust and their oath in the name of patriotism. In the Fenian movement in Ireland, one of the chief objects of the conspirators was to corrupt the Irish soldiers and break down that high sense of military honour for which in all times and in many armies the Irish people have been conspicuous. 'The epidemic' [of disaffection], boasts a writer who was much mixed in the conspiracies of those times, 'was not an affair of individuals, but of companies and of whole regiments. To attempt to impeach all the military Fenians before courts martial would have been to throw England into a panic, if not to precipitate an appalling mutiny and invite foreign invasion.'[33]