The Council argued that they had responsibilities to maintain the defences of Bengal and protect their military gains. They therefore authorised 44 per cent of their £22 million annual budget* to be spent on the army and on the building of fortifications, so rapidly increasing the size of their sepoy regiments to 26,000 sepoys.23 The only rice they stockpiled was for the use of the sepoys of their own army; there was no question of cuts to the military budget, even as a fifth of Bengal was starving to death.
