The explanation offered by the aged king of Delhi, is terse, and has probably as much of truth as more lengthy and philosophical theories. Colonel Vibart relates how, after the capture of Delhi, he went to see the king, and found him sitting cross-legged on a native bedstead, rocking himself to and fro. He was “a small and attenuated old man, apparently between eighty and ninety years of age, with a long white beard, and almost totally blind.” Some one asked the old king what was the real cause of the outbreak at Delhi. “I don’t know,” was the reply; “I suppose my people gave themselves up to the devil!” The distribution of the British forces in Bengal, in 1857, it may be noted, made mutiny easy and safe. We have learned the lesson of the Mutiny to-day, and there are now 74,000 British troops, with 88 batteries of British artillery, in India, while the Sepoy regiments number only 150,000, with 13 batteries of artillery. But in 1857, the British garrison had sunk to 38,000, while the Sepoys numbered 200,000. Most of the artillery was in native hands. In Bengal itself, it might almost be said, there were no British troops, the bulk of them being garrisoned on the Afghan or Pegu frontiers. A map showing the distribution of troops on May 1, 1857—Sepoys in black dots, and British in red—is a thing to meditate over. Such a map is pustuled with black dots, an inky way stretching from Cabul to Calcutta; while the red points gleam faintly, and at far-stretched intervals. All the principal cities were without European troops. There were none at Delhi, none at Benares, none at Allahabad. In the whole province of Oude there was only one British battery of artillery. The treasuries, the arsenals, the roads of the North-West Provinces, might almost be said to be wholly in the hands of Sepoys. Betwixt Meerut and Dinapore, a stretch of 1200 miles, there were to be found only two weak British regiments. Never was a prize so rich held with a hand so slack and careless! It was the evil fate of England, too, that when the storm broke, some of the most important posts were in the hands of men paralysed by mere routine, or in whom soldierly fire had been quenched by the chills of old age. Of the deeper sources of the Mutiny, John Lawrence held, that the great numerical preponderance of the Sepoys in the military forces holding India, was the chief. “Was it to be expected,” he asked, “that the native soldiery, who had charge of our fortresses, arsenals, magazines, and treasuries, without adequate European control, should fail to gather extravagant ideas of their own importance?” It was the sense of power that induced them to rebel. The balance of numbers, and of visible strength, seemed to be overwhelmingly with them.