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Excerpt from Memoirs of My Indian Career, Vol. 2
When the Mutiny broke out the Talookdars were still in possession of most of their estates, of their men and forts and some of their guns. They did not themselves look on their grievances in so very acute a light as that in which some of their friends have since painted them, and being rather civilised, and not really very war-like, with something to lose by a red rebellion, they did not very hastily rush into revolt, but were cautious, held aloof for some time, and generally protected our fugitives. It was not till the failure of the havelock-outram relief that they very generally joined the rebellion, and not till the retreat of the commander-in-chief in November that the whole mass of them became absolutely committed. When the tide of opinion turned in favour of aristocratic tenures, very many people, looking rather to the letter of the orders issued at annexation than to the practice, greatly exaggerated the extent to which the Talookdars had been dispossessed, and alleged that they had been treated with great injustice. Outram, who did not like the way things had been managed in his absence, asserted this, and other high authorities assumed the same thing. I will shortly quote a letter from Lord Canning, which I think very clearly shows how much exaggeration there was in this.
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