THE COMING OF 1857 7 ten of each rank to a regiment, and, finally, to the rank of "Soubahdar Major", only one for the whole regiment. With these ranks obtainable only by a few after long years of service, the chain ended. In these promoted capacities the sepoys were merely expected to act as informants and errand-boys. Authority lay only with the Europeans, who monopolised all ranks from subalterns upwards. The Bengal Army was formally the army of the Governor-General' s own Presidency of Bengal that extended over the whole of Northern India, except Sind. But in fact,;the Army' s recruitment zone was largely confined to the limits of the present-day Uttar Pradesh, minus the Himalayan districts, together with Haryana and Western Bihar. This may partly have been because the English found it convenient for the sepoys to share a common language ("Hindustanee") The enlisted men came overwhelmingly from the class of small landowners. In the Infantry comprising the bulk of the Bengal Army (some 112,000 men), the Brahmans formed the largest segment, followed by Rajput and other Hindus and Muslims. In the cavalry (over 19,000 men) Muslims ("Syeds and Pathans") appear to have predominated. The much smaller artillery (less than 5,000 men) had a more mixed composition.3 A surprisingly large number of the sepoys (about 40,000) were recruited from Oudh, comprising the present-day Lucknow and Faizabad divisions. It is important to consider this territorial affiliation of the sepoy, because it coincided with the area where the 1857 Rebellion flared up most strongly. Moreover, it helps us to find yet another explanation of the sepoy s growing alienation from the colonial regime. The enlistment area of the Bengal Army, if one excludes Oudh, lay under the Mahalwari system. Unlike the Permanent Settlement, of Bengal and Bihar, this involved a constantly increasing revenue demand. After 1833 the "mafi" lands, of which the Brahmans and upper-strata of Muslims had been the major beneficiaries, had been extensively resumed. The system pressed hard on the land-holdings of the families from which the sepoys came. Only in Oudh things had been different: Before the Annexation of 1856, the sepoy as land-holder had been protected by the British Resident whenever he preferred complaints against the Nawabi government and its officials. But after the Annexation, the sepoy' s favoured position went. Indeed, the Mahalwari system was now to be extended to Oudh, and this would soon deprive him of much of his former income and possibly his land as well. As the grievances of the sepoy against the military authorities and