Not only is the Mutiny without an historian, but it remains without any finally convincing analysis of its causes. Justin McCarthy’s summary of the causes of the Mutiny, as given in his “History of Our Own Times,” is a typical example of wrong-headed judgment. Mr. McCarthy contemplates the Mutiny through the lens of his own politics, and almost regards it with complacency as a mere struggle for Home Rule! It was not a Mutiny, he says, like that at the Nore; it was a revolution, like that in France at the end of the eighteenth century. It was “a national and religious war,” a rising of the many races of India against the too oppressive Saxon. The native princes were in it as well as the native soldiers. The plain facts of the case are fatal to that theory. The struggle was confined to one Presidency out of three. Only two dynastic princes—Nana Sahib and the Ranee of Jhansi—joined in the outbreak. The people in the country districts were passive; the British revenue, except over the actual field of strife, was regularly paid. If their own trained native soldiery turned against the British, other natives thronged in thousands to their flag. A hundred examples might be given where native loyalty and valour saved the situation for the English. There were Sepoys on both sides of the entrenchment at Lucknow. Counting camp followers, native servants, &c., there were two black faces to every white face under the British flag which fluttered so proudly over the historic Ridge at Delhi. The “protected” Sikh chiefs, by their fidelity, kept British authority from temporary collapse betwixt the Jumna and the Sutlej. They formed what Sir Richard Temple calls “a political breakwater,” on which the fury of rebellious Hindustan broke in vain. The Chief of Pattalia employed 5000 troops in guarding the trunk road betwixt the Punjaub and Delhi, along which reinforcements and warlike supplies were flowing to the British force on the Ridge. This enabled the whole strength of the British to be concentrated on the siege. The Chief of Jhind was the first native ruler who appeared in the field with an armed force on the British side, and his troops took part in the final assault on Delhi. Golab Singh sent from his principality, stretching along the foot of the Himalayas, strong reinforcements to the British troops besieging Delhi. “The sight of these troops moving against the mutineers in the darkest hour of British fortunes produced,” says Sir Richard Temple, “a profound moral effect on the Punjaub.”