Personal Adventures during the Indian Rebellion in Rohilcund Futtehghur and Oude

To the large number of these sales daring the past twelve or fifteen years and the operation of our revenue system which has had the result of destroying the gentry of the country and breaking up the village communities I attribute solely the disorganization of this and the neighbouring ditricts in these provinces. [...] For more than a year previous to the oubreak I had been publicly representing to superior authority the great abuse of the power of the civil courts and the reckless manner in which they decreed the sale of rights and interests connected with the soil in satisfaction of petty debts and the dangerous dislocation of society which was in consequence being prduced. [...] The chupaties entered my district from the adjoining one of Shajehanpore ; a village watchman of that place giving to the watchman of the nearest Budaon village two of the cakes with an injunction to make six fresh ones retain two for his own and give the others to the watchman of the next village who would follow the same course and continue the manufacture and distribution. [...] Every moment reports of one complexion or another were being brought to me of risings in the town the defection of individuals in the police and of the near approach of a large body of mutineers from Bareilly to murder me plunder the treasury and break open the jail. [...] The town then full of mutineers lay btween us and the road to Moradabad by which I had hoped to escape to the hills ; I was therefore anxious to give the mutineers time to get to the Treasury which I knew would be their first point and then endeavour to make a circuit round and thus fall' into the Moradabad road.