A 6 3 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF -;. Holt Digitized by Microsoft® CoroeH Onlversity Ubrary OS 463.f=84 968 039 3 Dt^Ma dp^icrosoft® This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in cooperation with Corneii University Library, 2008. You may use and print this copy in iimited quantity for your personai purposes, but may not distribute or provide access to it (or modified or partiai versions of it) for revenue-generating or other commerciai purposes. Digitized by Microsoft® \B Cornell University M Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023968039 ' Digitize by Microsoft® Heroes of the Nations Series of Biographical Studies presenting the lives and work of certain representative histori- cal characters, about whom have gathered the traditions of the nations to which they belong, and who have, in the majority of inslEances, been accepted as types of the several national ideals. 12°, Illustrated, cloth, each . . $1.50 Half Leather, gilt top, each. . $i.75 No. 33 and following Nos. . . net $1.35 Each . . . (By mail, $1.50) Half Leather, gilt top, . . . net $1.60 (By maU, $1.75) FOR FULL LIST SEE END OF THIS VOLUME Digitized by Microsoft® BRITISH Il^DIA Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® I b Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® THE STORY OF THE NATIONS BRITISH INDIA BY R. W. JRAZER, LL.B., I.,C.S. (retired) LECTURER IN TELUGU AND TAMIL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE AND IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, ETC. NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN 1908 Digitized by Microsoft® /i\ V JV ^ O Uo Copyright, 1897, by G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Entered at Stationers' Hall, London By T. fisher UNWIN Bbe IRnicIietbocSer pccBB, Hew IBotIt Digitized by Microsoft® PREFACE. I HAVE considered it best not to include in foot-notes or in the body of this short Story of Indian History references to the many authorities I have consulted. To have done so would have brbken the narrative and been of no service to the reader for whom the Story is intended. As far as possible original sources of information have been relied on, while all recent works of any importance on Indian History have been read or consulted. To the numerous works of Sir W. Wilson Hunter — including the " Rulers of India" Series he has edited — I would especially acknowledge indebtedness, and this with particular gratitude as it was his writings which first, over twenty-five years ago, inspired me with a love for India and its people. Sir George Birdwood's exhaustive and learned "Report on the Old Records of the India Office," Captain Mahan's " Influence of Sea-Power upon History," Professor G. W. Forrest's " Selections from the State Papers of the Foreign Department of India," and " The History of the Portuguese in Digitized by Microsoft® VUl PREFACE. India," by Mr. F. C. Danvers, have all been most valuable and suggestive. Throughout the Story attention has been centred more on the main factors which led to the foundation and expansion of British Empire in India than to mere details of military operations or of administration. The early history of commerce between the East and the West, the gradual passing of the course of that commerce from the Mediterranean to the route round the Cape of Good Hope, the long struggle between the Dutch, French, and English for predominance which ultimately left England at the close of the seventeenth century in com- plete possession of the seas and absolute command over the Eastern trade, are traced for the purpose of enabling the reader to gain a clear insight into the primary factors underlying British Dominion in India. The gradual decay of the Mughal Empire and loosening of all controlling authority over outlying principalities are shown to have been the secondary elements which left India as a field for the statesmancraft of Hastings, who extended the British influence from its secure basis in the delta of the Ganges — where it had been established by Clive — across India to Bombay in the west and down to Madras in the south. After a careful consideration of the State Papers, edited by Professor Forrest, Sir John Strachey's " Hastings and the Rohilla War," Sir James Stephen's " Nuncomar and Impey," Sir Alfred Lyall's " Warren Hastings," Mr. Beveridge's " The Trial of Maharaja Nanda Kumar," and contemporary papers, I have Digitized by Microsoft® PREFACE. IX endeavoured to give an unbiassed account of the career and policy of Warren Hastings. The further conquests and acquisitions by a long series of Governors-General, from those of the Mar- quess Wellesley down to the annexation of Upper Burma, in the present day, by Lord Dufferin, have been but the inevitable results of the policy inaugu- rated by Clive and Hastings. The important article, by Sir W. Wilson Hunter in the May number of the Fortnightly Review for 1896, detailing the discovery by him of evidence that as early as 1681 a movement was started by Fell, Bishop of Oxford, for the purpose of the "Conversion of the Natives" to Christianity, was unfortunately received too late for reference in the account of Education and early efforts made for the spread of Christianity in India. Miss E. J. Beck has kindly placed at my disposal two photographs taken by her, and reproduced on pages 55 and 338 ; while to the kindness of the publishers of Mr. James Samuelsoii's " India Past and Present," I am indebted for permission to re- produce the photograph on page 293. The spelling of Indian words is that adopted by the Government of India in Sir W. Wilson Hunter's Gazetteer of India : — a as in wom«n ; a as in father ; / as in pok'ce ; / as in intrz'gue ; o as in c^^ld ; « as in \)u\\ ; 2^ as in sare ; ^ as in gr^. The popular mode of spelling is used in the case of well-known places, and in extracts the mode of spelling used therein is retained. R. W. FRAZER. London Institution. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. Early History of Indian Commerce PAGE 1-26 Ancient Trade, 1-4 — Invasions of Alexander the Great, 4-6 — Intercourse between East and West, 6-8 — Muhammad, 8-10 — Cities of the Mediterranean, 11-12— Portuguese Dis- coveries and Trade, 12-20 — Dutch and English, 21-22 — Early Travellers, 22-24 — Early Voyages, 24-26. II. Rise of the Honourable East India Company 27-47 The First Voyage, 27-30 — Subsequent Voyages and Hostility of Portuguese and Dutch, 31-36—Profits of Eastern Trade, 36-38 — Early Settlements, 39-40 — Wars with Holland and France, 41-45 — England remains supreme maritime power, 45-46 — The United Company or Honourable East India Company, 46-47. III. India on the Eve of Conquest 48-67 Early Invasions of India, 48-56 — The Aryans, 51-55— Mu- hammadan Invasions, 55-57 — The Mughal Emperors, 57-67 — The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, 59-62 — Break-up of the Empire, 62-66 — Anarchy and Weakness of Oriental Troops, 65-67. Digitized by Microsoft® xii CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. IV. French Efforts to Establish an Empire IN India 68-77 French in South India, 68-69 — The IVIaraihils and Native Princes of Soulh India, 69-7C — Dupleix and French Suc- cesses, 70-75 — Capture of Madras and Siege of Trichino- poli, 71-75 — Chve to the rescue, 77. V. Robert Clive 78-118 Early Life, 78-80 — Defence of Arcot, 83-84 — 4' Kaveripak, 85-86— At TrichinopoU, 86-88— Returns to England, 89— Arrival at Madras, go — Black Hole of Calcutta. 91-93 — Defeat of Siraj-ud-Daula, 95-96 — French surrender Chan- dranagar, 97 — Aminchand deceived, 97-98 — Plassey, 99-102 — French driven from Northern Circars, 103 — Dutch defeated at Biderra, 104 — French Reverses in South India, 105-106 — Return to England, 107 — Misrule in Bengal, 107-111 — Clive sent out to restore order, 111-112 — Reforms and Discontent, 113-115 — Famine and Parliamentary Inquiry, 117 — Death ; Lord North's Regulating Act of 1773 ; The New Governor-General and Council, 118. VI. Warren Hastings 119-150 Early Service, 120-122 — Rise of the Marathas, 122-123 — The RohillaWar, 125-127— Story of Nanda Kumar, 129-133 — Hastings First Governor- General, 130 — His Council and Philip Francis, 130-135 — "Declaration of Independence" and War with France, 134-135 — Hastings calls on Raja of Benares, and Nawah of Oudh for contributions, 137-139 — The Begams of Ovidh, 139 — Maratha War, 140-143 — War with Haidar Ali, 144-147 — Sea fights with French, 147- 148 — Peace of Versailles, 148 — Pitt's New India Bill, 149 — Impeachment of Hastings, 150 — Character, 150. VII. Lord Cornwallis and Sir John Shore . 151-160 War with Tipii, 152-154 — Permanent Settlement, 154-158 — Judicial Reforms, 158-159 — Private Trade allowed, 159. Digitized by Microsoft® CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. XUl VIII. Establishment of British Supremacy ■ — Marquess Wellesley. . . . 161-185 War with Tipu and Capture of Seringapatara, 163-168 — Death of Tipu, 167-168 — Treaty of Lucknow, 169-17 1— The Maratha Armies, 171-174— Treaty of Bassein, 174 — Maratha War, 175-180 — Monson's Retreat before Holkar, 178-180 — Siege of Bhartpur, 180 — Recall of Wellesley and " Admira- tion and Gratitude " of the Company, 181 — Second Adminis- tration of Lord Cornwallis, 181 — Mutiny at Vellore, 181- 183 — Lord Minto, 183 — Conference of Tilsit, 183 — Capture of Java, 184 — Conversion of Debt, 185. IX. Marquess of Hastings — Extension of Influ- ence OVER Native States . . . 186-200 Ghiirka War, 188-igo — The Pindari War, 190-191 — Ma- ratha War, 192-197 — Banking Firm of Palmer and Co., 198 — Resignation, 198 — Indian Trade thrown open, 198-199— Revenue Settlement of Madras, 199 — Christianity in India and a Bishop appointed, 199-200. X. Lord Amherst — First Burmese War . 201-204 War Proclaimed, 202 — Bengal Sepoys refuse to cross the Sea, 202 — Peace, 203 — Siege and Capture of Bhartpur, 203- 204. XI. Lord William Bentinck — Commencement of Modern History of British India 205-215 Financial Reforms, 205-206 — Revenue Settlement of North- west Provinces, 206 — Abolition of Sati or Widow-Burning, 206-211 — Suppression of the Thags, 211-214 — Renewal of the Charter ; trade to China thrown open, 214 — Lord Macaulay and Education, 214-215. Digitized by Microsoft® XIV CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. XII. Lord Auckland — Lord Ellenborough — Afghanistan ... . 216-239 Afghanistan and the Punjab, 216-217 — Treaty of Turk- manchi, 217 — Siege of Herat, 218 — Russian Embassy received at Kabul, 218-219— War Declared, 219 — The Cam- paign, 219-224 — Occupation of Afghanistan, 223-226 — Out- break at Kabul, 227 — British Position Untenable, 229 — Macnaghten makes terms, 229 — Secret Negotiations, 230 — Assassination of Macnaghten, 230 — The Retreat, 231-233 — Dr. Brydon reaches Jalalabad, 233-234 — The Avenging Army^ 235-236 — Lord Ellenborough and Withdrawal Trom Afghanistan, 235-237 — Conquest of Sind, 237-238 — Final Maratha War, 238-239. XIH. Lord Hardinge — The Sikhs and Annexa- tion OF THE Punjab . . . 240-259 Ranjit Singh, Character and Conquests, 240-244 — The Sikhs and their Gurus, 245-246— The Army or Khalsa, 247- 249— First Sikh War, 250-255— Lord Dalhousie and the Second Sikh War, 255-258— Annexation of the Punjab, 258- 259- XIV. The Mutiny 260-317 Annexations of Lord Dalhousie, 262-268 — Oudh, 262-264— Doctrine of Lapse, 265— Rani of Jhansi and Nana Sahib, 266-267— Railway Minute and Despatch of Sir C. Wood, 268 — The People of India, 268-270 — The Sepoys and Previous Mutinies, 270-272— Conversions to Christianity, 273-274— Unrest and Intrigues, 274-276 — The Greased Cartridges, 276-277 — Manghal Pandi, 278 — Mutiny at Meerut, 280-282— The Rebels at Delhi, 283-285— The English before Delhi, 285-286— Measures of Lord Canning, 286-288— Defence of Arrah, 288-289— Neill at Benares and Allahabad, 289-290— Wheeler's Defence of Cawnpur, 290- 291 — Massacre of the Garrison, 291-294 — Henry Lawrence secures Lucknow, 294— Havelock's March to Cawnpur, 294- 298 — Attempts to reach Lucknow, 299-300 — John Lawrence holds the Punjab, 301— Fall of Delhi, 302-303— Havelock and Outram reach Lucknow, 303-305— Sir Colin Campbell's Relief of Lucknow, 305-309— Retreat, 309— Final Capture Digitized by Microsoft® CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. XV PAGE of Lucknow, 310 — Sir Hugh Rose in Central India, 311-314 — India passes from the Company to the Queen, 314 — The Proclamation, 315— Changes in the Sepoy Army, 315 — The Debt from the Mutiny, 315-316 — Financial Reforms, sib- Death of Lord Canning, 316-317. XV. India under the Crown . . . 318-352 Lord Elgin and Sir William Denison, 318— The Wahabis, 318-319 — The Bhutan War, 319-320 — Sir John Lawrence, Governor-General (Viceroy) 319 — Famine in Orissa, 321- 322 — Irrigation and Railways, 323-324— Financial Crisis in Bombay, 324 — Afghanistan and " Non-intervention," 325- 327 — Lord Mayo and Russia, 327-328 — Financial Reforms, 328-329 — Assassination of Lord Mayo, 329-330 — Lord Northbrook and Afghanistan, 331-332 — Famine, Gaekwar of Baroda, 333-334— Lord Lytton, 334— Queen proclaimed Empress of India, 334 — Famine in South India, 334 — License Tax, 334 — Embassy forced on Afghanistan, 334- 336 — Assaissination of Sir Louis Cavagnari, 337 — War, 337- 341— Disaster at Maiwand, 341 — March of Sir Frederick Roberts, 341-342 — Reforms of Lord Ripon, 342 — Lord Dufferin and- Annexation of Upper Burma, 342 — The Claim to Panjdeh, 343-344 — Lord Lansdowne and the National Congress, 344-345— Manipur, 345-346— Chitral, 346-351— Limits of British Territory, 351-352. XVI. Moral and Material Progress under British Rule 353-390 Extent, Religions, and Languages of India, 353-355 — Army and Defences, 356-361 — Financial Alarm, 362-364 — ^Agri- cultural Population, 364-366 — Land Tax and Revenue, 366- 368 — Administration, 368-370 — Employment of Natives, 370-374 — Railways, Roads, and Sanitation, 374-375 — The Tansa Reservoir and Periyar Project, 375-377 — Coal, Petroleum, Iron, 377-378 — Suez Canal, 379-380 — Cotton and Cotton Duties, 380-382 — Imports and Exports, 382-384 — Education and Christianity, 384-387 — English and Universities, 387-388 — Ultimate Tendencies, 389-390. Index 391 Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. THE NORTH GATE — OLD DELHI i^From a Painting PAGE by W. Daniels, Ji.A.) . . . Frontispiece MAP OF INDIA facing I MAP OF ANCIENT CARAVAN ROUTES ... 9 INDIAN SHIPS 13 KING OF KOCHIN 18 OLD EAST INDIA HOUSE 27 MUHAMMADANS PRAYING 55 AKBAR 59 FORT ST. GEORGE 72 ROBERT, LORD CLIVE 79 FORT OF ARCOT 82 WARREN HASTINGS I36 TIPU SULTAN 153 GOVERNMENT HOUSE, CALCUTTA .... 162 DE BOIGNE 173 WIDOW-BURNING 207 OUTRAM 221 KABUL 228 RANJIT SINGH 242 SEAT OF MUTINY . 261 HENRY LAWRENCE 279 I* xvii Digitized by Microsoft® xviu LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. MEMORIAL WELL AT CAWXPUR SIR COLIN CAMPBELL, LORD CLYDE FAMINE GROUP FROM MADRAS J) jj )) KABULl's ... MAP OF AFGHANISTAN . MEKONG RIVER MAP OF STEAM NAVIGATION . RIVER SCENE .... 293 306 334 334 338 343 361 379 390 Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® THE STORY OF BRITISH INDIA. EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. The strange story of the rise and fall of once mighty nations is one to which we dare not close our eyes, firm though our belief may be in the abiding strength of the material resources of our own civilisation. The story tells how other civilisa- tions crumbled to pieces amid all the pride and glory of their manhood ; it tells how nation after nation, city after city, rose to opulence and power as each in turn became the centre of commerce between the East and the West, only to sink into insignificance and decay as if they had been struck by magic, when the course of that commerce drifted elsewhere. On the banks of the Nile an ancient civilisation was evolved and nurtured, the secrets of which now lie half-buried amid its tombs and monuments beneath the desert sand that sweeps ceaselessly over the land. Yet in the days of Joseph " all countries came into Egypt ... for to buy corn." Fifteen hun- dred years before the advent of Christ its merchants 2 ' Digitized by Microsoft® 2 EAkLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. brought indigo and muslins from India, and porcelain wares from far-off China, and the fame of its mariners was great, the memory of their going to and fro living long in fable. The great King Sesostris (Ramses II.), as narrated by the historian Diodorus the Sicilian, sent forth, even before the days of Moses, " a navy of four hundred sail into the Red Sea . . . conquered all Asia . . . passed over the river Ganges, and likewise pierced through all India to the main Ocean." Again in the rich alluvial tracts lying between the • Tigris and Euphrates the Babylonians and Assyrians once held sway, surrounded by all the pomp and splendour of wealth and luxury. Their ships went forth to bring from India the teak wood wherewith the people of the city of Ur builded their palaces ; the gold of the East, with which they gilded their temples ; the Indian muslins, silks, pearls, and spices, of more value than fine gold. Diodorus tells us how, two thousand years before Christ, the famed Queen Semiramis carried overland a fleet of two thou- sand boats to the Indus, which she crossed at the head of three million foot-soldiers and two hundred thousand horsemen, and then fought the Emperor Stabrobates only to fall back defeated, wounded herself in many places. Now the palaces and temples of Babylon and Assyria lie prone, and in our museums the fine work of her cunning men is an empty show to the passing crowd. Tyre, the city of the Phoenicians, grew in the days of Hiram to be the mistress of the seas and the " merchant of the people for many isles." Westward Digitized by Microsoft® TYRE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. ' % to Carthage, to Tarshish in Spain, round Libya, till, as we are told by Herodotus, the sun was on their right, the Phoenician ships sailed, some going East down the Red Sea to Arabia and Ophir. When Solomon received a mandate from his father David to build the Temple to Jehovah, it was from Tyre that he summoned wise men 1;o bring back spices and frankincense from the land of the Queen of Sheba, gold and silver, sandal-wood, ivory, apes, and peacocks from the land of Ophir, so that the Temple might be adorned and Solomon exceed " all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom." He founded " Tadmor in the Wilderness " as a resting-place for the caravans travelling across the desert towards Babylon, the " city of merchants," where were gathered together embroidered vestments and woven carpets, shawls of many colours, gems and pearls and brazen vessels brought from the Indies, from Malabar, Ceylon, and the further East by the Arabian mariners. Tyre resisted all the continued efforts of the Assyrians to destroy her commercial prosperity : she remained the mistress of the seas only td fall before the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, in 585 B.C., as of her it had been foretold by the Prophet Ezekiel, "they shall make spoil of thy riches and make a prey of thy merchandise, and they shall break down thy walls and destroy thy pleasant houses, and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water." When in 558 B.C. the Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus, the wealth from the East no longer passed to Digitized by Microsoft® 4 EARLY HISTORY OP INDIAN COMMERCE. PhcEnicia and Syria through Tadmor, but stayed with the Persians. Under Darius Hystaspes the Persian Empire advanced its conquests as far as the Punjab, whence it drew a yearly tribute of three hundred talents of gold, employing in its armies the Indian soldiers, who, clothed in white cotton and armed with bows and arrows, marched with Xerxes towards Greece and fought under Mardonius at Plataea. It was not until the time of Alexander the Great that the trade from India once more resumed its ancient route down the Persian Gulf, along the Tigris through Palmyra, the Tadmor of old, to enrich the cities of the Mediterranean. Alexander the Great, born in 356 B.C., succeeded his father, Philip of Macedon, at the age of twenty. Having first curbed the northern barbarians who, under Attalos, came swarming down on his kingdom from the Danube, he razed Tyre to the ground, reduced Syria and Egypt to submission, and founded the city of Alexandria. He then passed on towards the East, where he broke in pieces the empire of Cyrus, swept up the wealth of Baby'on and Susa and slew Darius, thus avenging the insults that Xerxes and Mardonius had offered to the altars and temples of Greece, leaving nought to tell of the wealth and power of the Persian nation save the burned ruins of Persepolis and the rifled tomb of Cyrus. Marching into Bactria, he founded another Alexandria, now known to us as Herat, there pausing for three years before he set out, in 327 B.C., for his invasion of India. Crossing the river Indus, near Attock, on a bridge of boats, he defeated Porus, the Indian ruler of the Digitized by Microsoft® ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 5 Punjdb, in a pitched battle near the well-known modern battlefield of Chilianwdla, where, in memory of his victory, he established a city which he called Bucephala, after his charger Bucephalus, slain during the conflict. Many are the stories told of the marvels seen by Alexander and his soldiers in their marches through the sacred land of the Five Rivers. With awe- stricken wonder they had seen elephants seize armed soldiers in battle and hand them to their drivers for slaughter ; they had seen in the dense forests serpents, glittering like gold, whose sting was death, and pythons of huge girth capable of swallowing a deer ; they had heard of ants, the colour of cats and the size of Egyptian wolves, that dug up the gold hid in the sands of the deserts of AfghdnistAn, and mangled the Indians who came on camels to carry off the pre- cious metal ; they had seen fierce dogs seize lions and allow their limbs to be cut off one by one before they relinquished their hold ; they had razed the cities of the Kathians, of whom it was told that their custom was to burn widows along with their deceased hus- bands ; they had listened when Alexander was rebuked by the Indian sages, who told him that of all his conquests nothing would remain to him but just as much earth as would suffice to make a grave to cover his bones, and they had seen with astonish- ment the ascetic sage Kalanos, wearied of life, give his begging bowl and rug to the Conqueror of the World and ascend the funeral pyre without emotion, moving not as the flames slowly carried his soul to rest. Ere they left India one more wonder, stranger Digitized by Microsoft® 6 EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. to their eyes than all others, awaited them. As they sailed down the Indus for the ocean, the tide, a phenomenon as yet unknown to them, came rolling up the river, tossing on its mighty bore their frail ships, while, in the words of the historian Arrian, " to add to their terror, monstibus creatures of frightful aspect, which the sea had left, were seen wandering about." The rising tide rescuing them from their position, Alexander's invading army gladly turned its back on India, leaving behind more or less permanent colonies of Macedonians and allies in Bactria, Taxila, the Punjab, and Sind. From the writings of the scientific men and historians who accompanied the Macedonians on their raid into India, the Western world obtained the first reliable accounts respecting the social and religious life of the people of India at this early period. After the death of Alexander, India (as far as con- quered) and Bactria fell to Seleukos Nikator, who made an alliance with the renowned Indian monarch Chandragupta, to whom he gave his daughter in marriage, sending Megasthenes to reside as ambas- sador at the capital Palibothra, said to have been a mighty city, ten miles long by two miles broad, strongly defended, entered by sixty gates, its entire army numbering 400,000 men with 20,000 cavalry. For many centuries the interchange of ideas between the East and West continued, the wide- spreading influence of which is even at present but little realised and but seldom acknowledged. Asoka, the Constantine of Buddhism, grandson of Digitized by Microsoft® £AST AND WEST. 7 Chandragupta, ascended the throne about 260 B.C., and from the inscriptions which he caused to be graven on rocks we learn that the intercommunication between the East and the West was close enough at this period to enable him to send forth missionaries to Antiochus of Syria, to Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt, to Antigonus of Macedon, to Megas of Cyrene, and to Alexander of Epirus, to proclaim in their lands the gospel of self-control and respect for all life as taught by Buddha. Pliny, who died 79 A.D., lamented the drain of gold from Rome to India, which in his days amounted to the sum of i^2,ooo,ooo sterling, sent annually . in exchange for silks, pearls, sapphires, gems, cinnamon, spices, and other Eastern luxuries, for which fabulous sums were paid, and Roman coins of all the em- perors, from Augustus to Hadrian, are still dug up in numbers all over'South India. It is now almost certain that from the West, probably through Palmyra, India first learned to construct architectural buildings and to carve in stone, having, previous to the invasion of Alexander the Great, worked out her own artistic ideals, as far as we know, in wood. There still remains unexplained the strange re- semblance in form between the Indian and Classical drama, and the close connection between early Indian and Greek philosophy. The Indian astronomer Garga, who wrote in the first century B.C., said that the Greeks were very barbarians, yet he hesitated not to confess that their astronomy was worthy of study. Later astronomers, Digitized by Microsoft® 8 MARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. such as Aryabhatta and Vardha Mitra, not only adopted the Greek zodiac and its divisions, but made use of the Greek names slightly orientalised. There were many routes by which this intercom- munication of ideas, religious, artistic, and social, could have taken place. There was the well-known route by the Persian Gulf through Palmyra, a city which became so renowned that Aurelian, jealous of its wealth and power, razed it to the ground in 273 A.D., and carried off its Queen Zenobia. Arab mariners also sailed from India and the further East, keeping close to the coast till they reached Berenice in the Red Sea, whence the goods were transported to Coptos, thence down the Nile to Alexandria. Under such emperors as the cruel and dissipated Corn- modus, the plundering barbarian Caracalla, and the infamous Eleogabalus, the wealth that came from the East through Alexandria to the imperial city of Rome passed away to Constantinople, founded in 320 A.D., and to the rising cities along the Medi- terranean. So the trade between the East and the West grew and flourished till suddenly a new power arose, claiming for itself the temporal and spiritual supre- macy over the whole known world. From the deserts of Arabia came forth the haughty message to Christendom, that Muhammad had pro- claimed himself as the only Prophet of the One True God. To all idolaters he gave the choice between accepting his mission and teachings, and of being put to the sword ; while all Christians and Jews were to be subdued and made to pay tribute Digitized by Microsoft® MUHAMMAD. g to his followers, who now came swarming from their tents, drunk with a new religious fanaticism, eager to seek fresh homes in the stately palaces of the lands they were soon to overrun. To the successors of Augustus and Artaxerxes summonses were sent, calling on them to bow down and acknowledge the Divine mission of the new Prophet. The Roman Empire — with its capital at Digitized by Microsoft® lO EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. Constantinople — then extended over all the lands on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, its commands being obeyed from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, while in Persia the ancient dynasty of Cyrus and Darius had been reinstated when Artaxerxes, in the third century, was proclaimed king, and the religion of Zoroaster, the belief in Ormuzd and Ahriman, the contending powers of light and darkness, once more restored. In answer to the summons of the Prophet, the Roman emperor, Heraclius, fearing danger from Arabia, sent back presents ; the proud Persian monarch tore the letters he received in pieces and scattered it to the winds, hearing which Muhammad swore that so he would scatter the Persian power. Within the space of eight years Bostra, Damascus, Heliopolis, Jerusalem, Aleppo and Antioch fell before the Crescent, and Syria passed for the next three hundred years under the sway of the followers of Muhammad, Persia falling in 636 A.D., after the battle of Kadesia. In 640 Amru marched into Egypt and took possession of Alexandria, leaving the Arabian conquerors in command of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the two great trade routes from the East. One route alone remained by which Eastern pro- duce could reach the cities of the Mediterranean free from the prohibitory dues exacted by the Muham- madan conquerors : that by the Indus along the ancient route by the banks of the Oxus, across to the Caspian, thence to the Black Sea, Constantinople, and the Mediterranean. To gain possession of this Digitized by Microsoft® CITIES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. I I route, and to avoid the duties enforced at Alexandria, amounting to one-third the value of all produce exported, Venice, founded in 452 A.D., on the islets of the Adriatic by fugitives from North Italy, strove incessantly, knowing well that alone by a command of the Eastern trade could she rise to be mistress of the seas. To the pilgrims of the Fourth Crusade she agreed to give shipping if they would but for a time forget their holy mission and aid in reducing her rival Constantinople. The compact was made. In 1.204 Constantinople fell, the rich homes of its peace- ful citizens being given over to rapine and flames, its art treasures, the finest and most prized that the world has ever known, being broken in pieces and trampled underfoot by the marauding crusaders and hired mercenaries of the merchants of Venice. Count Baldwin of Flanders was enthroned Emperor of the East, the Venetians holding the forts to gain command over the Eastern trade. Of these advantages on the Black Sea Venice was, however, soon deprived by Genoa, Pisa, and Florence — cities now eager to enter into the competition for the monopoly of the gems, spices, and silks of India sent to the further West in exchange for Easterling or sterling silver. Pisa gave up the struggle after her defeat at Meloria in 1284, and in 1406 fell subject to Florence, which, unuer the Medici, had become the city of bankers for all nations. Genoa fought on down to the fifteenth century when Venice again became supreme, selling the valued products of India to the Flemish mer- chants who sailed with them to Sluys, then the seaport town of Bruges, to Bergen in Norway, Digitized by Microsoft® 12 EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. Novgorod in Russia, to the many associated towns of the Hanseatic League, and also to their steel- yard or warehouse on the Thames. In these Western cities it was known that the costly goods they so prized came from the East, but the way there was unknown. In Portugal Prince Henry the Navigator spent his life in endeavouring to discover how his ships might reach the Indies by sailing round Africa. In i486 Bartholomew Diaz went south with three ships, and discovered what he called " The Cape of Tempests," renamed in joy " The Cape of Good Hope " by King John II. In 1492 Columbus, a Genoese, after offering his services in vain to Genoa, Portugal, and England, sailed away to the West, hoping thus to reach India, and discovered America. When Emmanuel succeeded John II. as King of Portugal, he resolved to send a gentleman of his household, Vasco da Gama, to find out if land lay beyond the wild southern seas. On the 8th of July, 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed from the Tagus with three small ships, the Sam Gabriel the Sam Rafael, and the Sain Miguel each of some 100 to 120 tons burden, having crews amounting in all to 170 men. By the time Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope the pilots and sailors were so wearied from the incessant labour of working the pumps to keep the frail ships afloat, and so terrified by the heav)' seas, that they mutinied and demanded that their leader should turn back and no further seek to brave the unknown perils of a trackless ocean. Digitized by Microsoft® - a ^> »=, CO a CO Digitized by Microsoft® 14 EARLY HISTORY OP INDIAN COMMERCE. Vasco da Gama at once placed the pilots in irons, threw all the charts and instruments of navigation overboard, declaring that God would guide him, and other aid he required not ; if that aid failed, neither he nor any of the crews would ever again see Portugal. So the ships had to toil on, many of the sailors dying of scurvy, a disease now heard of for the first time in history. Their labours were at length rewarded. Eleven months after they had left home they sighted the west coast of India, and cast anchor near the city of the Zamorin, or Ruler of the Seas, whence many people came crowding .to the beach, wondering greatly at the Portuguese ships. The Zamorin and his Indian subjects were willing to open up a friendly intercourse with Vasco da ' Gama and his sailors, but the Arab mariners, or /Moors, as they were called, who for many centuries had hsld in their own hands the trade between the west coast of India and the Persian Gulf, or Red Sea, were unwilling to see any rivals in their lucrative business. Having succeeded in inducing Vasco da Gama to come on shore, they carried him off on various pretexts through the malarious lagoons bor- dering the coast, hoping that he might resent their treatment and so give them some excuse to slay him and drive away his ships. By quiet patience he -eluded all the plots laid against him, until his ships were laden with such scanty stores of pepper, cinnamon, and spices as his captains were able to purchase. Vasco da Gama at length obtained his release, and departed from Calicut, vowing to come Digitized by Microsoft® THE PORTUGUESE. 1 5 back and wage a war of extermination against the Moors — a vow which he and his successors ever afterwards barbarously and ruthlessly endeavoured to fulfil. From Calicut he sailed back towards Cannanore, where we hear, as recorded by Gaspar Correa ' in his account of Vasco da Gama's voyages, of one of the many strange prophecies told in the East. It is there recorded, " In this country of India they are much addicted to soothsayers and diviners. . . . According to what was known later, there had been in this country of Canna- nore a diviner so diabolical in whom they believed so much that they wrote down all that he said, and preserved it like prophecies that would come to pass. They held a legend from him in which it was said that the whole of India would be taken and ruled over by a very distant king, who had white people, who would do great harm to those who were not their friends ; and this was to happen a long time later, and he left signs of when it would be. In consequence of the great disturbance caused by the sight of these ships, the King was very desirous of knowing what they were ; and he spoke to his diviners, asking them to tell him what ships were those and whence they came. The diviners conversed with their devils, and told him that the ships belonged to a great king, and came from very far, and according to what they found written, these were the people who were to seize India by war and peace, as they had already told him many times, ' " Lendas da India," translated by the Hon. E. J. Stanley for the Hakluyt Society. Digitized by Microsoft® l6 EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. because the period which had been written down was concluded." The king and his counsellors were so assured of the truth of this prophecy, that they received the Portuguese with great honour and friendship, pressing on them more presents and goods than could be stored away in the ships, which were soon able to sail away with ample cargoes of pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, and nutmegs. Such was the commencement of the modern history of commerce between the East and the West. Vasco da Gama reached Portugal in 1499 to the great delight of the king, who immediately assumed the title of " Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and China," a title confirmed in 1502 by a Bull from Pope Alexander VI. The profits of the voyage being found to be sixty times the expenses incurred. King Emmanuel deter- mined to send to the East " another large fleet of great and strong ships which could stow much cargo, and which, if they returned in safety, would bring him untold riches." Vasco da Gama never forgave the Moors for their treatment of him on his first arrival at Calicut. When he visited the coast again, in 1 502, he captured two ships and sixteen small vessels, and having cut off the hands and ears and noses of eight hundred unfortunate Moors, who formed the crews, he broke their teeth with staves, placed them all in a small ship which he set on fire and allowed to drift ashore, so that the Zamorin might judge of the fierce wrath Digitized by Microsoft® ZAMORIN OF CALICUT. if' of the Portuguese sailors. No wonder the Portuguese historian writes, as recorded in the Introduction to the Hakluyt Society's account by Correa, " The con- quest of India is repugnant to us, and strikes us with horror, on account of the injustice and barbarity of the conquerors, their frauds, extortions and san- guinary hatreds ; whole cities ravaged and given to the flames ; amid the glare of conflagrations and the horrid lightning of artillery, soldiers converted into executioners after victory." The native princes were determined not to sur- render without one final struggle. Against Cochin, where Duarte Pacheco, a Portuguese captain, had been left in command of a little over one hundred Portuguese soldiers and three hundred Malabar native troops, the Zamorin of Calicut advanced at the head of an immense army of fifty thousand troops and numerous cannon, aided by a sea-force of some three hundred ships. For five months he strove to drive the handful of Portuguese from India. Time after time his troops were defeated, ten thousand of them being slain, and all his ships sunk save four. He at length retreated, finding that his undisciplined native troops could not avail against European soldiers, and Duarte Pacheco was left victorious, the first to show to the West the possibility of founding an empire in India, and the first of the long line of heroes whose services to their country were repaid by neglect or insult, poverty or death. Before the trade from the East finally passed to the Atlantic the Portuguese had to fight one more 3 Digitized by Microsoft® 2 = X ~ u -^ (1. ?■ O ^ ^ ^jMLIk^v., ,llMjm. Digitized by Microsoft® h6M LOUR EM q6 DE ALMMlbA. 10 fight. The Sultan of Egypt, seeing that the course of commerce, through his dominions to the Medi- terranean ports, was passing to the new route round the Cape of Good Hope, resolved to gather together a great fleet and send it to India to destroy the Portuguese ships now trading at Cochin, Cannanore, and Quilon. Dom Lourengo de Almeida, aged eighteen, son of Dom Francisco de Almeida, the first great Portuguese Viceroy of India, met the Egyptian and an allied native fleet off Chaul, where, after two days' fighting, the Portuguese were defeated and forced to retreat. Dom Lourengo's ship was surrounded, and he him- self wounded. Disdaining to yield, he fell fighting amid a brave band of heroes, as told in Mickle's well-known translation of Camoens : — " Bound to the mast the god-like hero stands, Waves his proud sword and cheers his woeful bands ; Though winds and seas their wonted aid deny, To yield he knows not, but he knows to die." With fierce wrath the Viceroy hastened to avenge the death of his son. He ravaged and burned the hostile city of Dibhol, scattered the Egyptian and allied native fleet of two hundred ships, plundering and burning them all with the exception of four, and slaying three thousand of the Moors, thus establishing the supremacy of the Portuguese in the Eastern seas. The same sad fate, allotted to so many who strove to knit together the East and the West, followed the footsteps of the first great Viceroy of India. De- prived, by orders from home, of his command, he Digitized by Microsoft® 20 EARLY HISTORY OP INDIAN COMMERCE. departed from India in proud anger to meet with an ignominious death in a petty fray with some Kaffir savages at Saldanha Bay in Africa — perhaps a happy release from the slow, cankering life of neglect and contumely meted out to Pacheco, La Bourdonnais, Duplei.x, Lally, Clive, Hastings, and many others who lived to be judged by their fellow- countrymen, whose fight they had fought and won. For a century the Portuguese held the " Gorgeous East in fee," trading unmolested from the Cape of Good Hope to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, to the Spice Islands and China, their possessions along the Atlantic, in Africa and Brazil, filling up the full measure of a mighty empire destined to fall to pieces and sink to decay when the trade from the East passed from its hands. Francisco de Almeida, the first Viceroy, saw clearly that Portugal could never establish a great colonising empire in India, that territorial possessions would prove too heavy a drain on her population and resources. His constant admonition to King Em- manuel was that the trade with India would ulti- mately fall to the nation whose forces ruled the seas. His successors, brave and wise men as many of them were, saw but the immediate present ; they possessed not the divine gift, granted but to few of India's early administrators, such as Almeida, Dupleix, Clive, and Hastings, of viewing all events that passed before them as mere phases in the world's history, directed and moulded by the irresistible principles which govern the destiny of nations, and Digitized by Microsoft® DUTCH AND ENGLISH. 21 not as springing from the irresponsible actions of men or chance decision of battles. Alfonso de Albuquerque, the next Viceroy, deemed that by the prowess and valour of his European soldiers he could establish a lasting empire for his people in the East. In 1510 he captured Goa, which soon grew to be the wealthiest and most powerful city in the East ; he reduced Ormuz, thus closing the Persian Gulf to the Arab traders ; he built a fortress at Socotra to command the Red Sea, and left the coast from the Cape of Good Hope to China in the hands of his successors. Portugal held the commerce of the East, sending its goods north to Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, until she became united with Spain in 1580, when the Dutch, who, under William of Orange, had in 1572 shaken off the Spanish yoke, could no longer trade with Lisbon. It was then that the Dutch, determining not to be de- prived of their share in the Eastern trade, sent their navigators to the north-east, hoping to discover some new route to India and learn something of its com- merce; The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1 588 left the seas free for the Dutch and English to sail south round the Cape of Good Hope and take part in the commerce of the Eastern world, independent of Portugal. In 1595 one Jan Huygen van Linschoten, a West Friesland burgher, who had travelled to India with the Archbishop of Goa, returned home after thirteen years' residence in the East and published a cele- Digitized by Microsoft® C2 EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. brated book, in which he gave a full account of the route to India as well as of the commerce carried on there by the Portuguese. In 1595 the Dutch de- spatched four ships under Cornelius Houtman to sail round the Cape of Good Hope; in 1602 trading factories were set up in Ceylon and along the west coast of India, and in the farther East from Batavia in Java to Japan and China. By this time news had also reached England of the wealth of India. Thomas Stevens, the first English- man who ever visited India, had sailed from Lisbon to Goa in 1579 and had become Rector of the Jesuit College at Salsette. From there, in a series of letters written to his father, he aroused the interest of the English people in the East by the vivid account he gave of the trade of the Portuguese and the fertility of the land. In 1583 three English merchants, Ralph Fitch, James Newberry, and William Leedes, started over- land for India. They were made prisoners by the Portuguese at Ormuz, to the despair of Newberry, who wrote : " It may be that they will cut our throtes or keepe us long in prison, God's will be done.'' They were, however, spared, and sent on to Goa where they saw Thomas Stevens and the celebrated Jan van Linschoten. Escaping, after many adventures, from Goa, they travelled through a great part of India, giving in letters home an interesting account of the country and the customs of the people, all strange and wonderful to these first English travellers. From Bijapur, Fitch writes that there " they bee great idolaters, and they have their idols standing in the Digitized by Microsoft® EARLY TRAVELLERS. 23 woods which they call Pagodes. Some bee like a Cowe, some like a Monkie, some like Buffles, some like peacockes, and some like the devill." Golconda is described as " a very faire towne, pleasant, with faire houses of bricke and timber." Fitch then made his way to Masulipatam, on the east coast, " whether come many shippes out of India, Pegu and Sumatra very richly laden with pepper, spices and other commodities." Agra is described as " a very great citie and populous, built with stone, having faire and large streetes." " Fatepore Sikri and Agra are two very great cities, either of them much greater than London and very Populous. Between Agra and Fatepore are twelve miles and all the way is a market of victualls and other things as full as though a man were still in a towne.'' " Hither,'' we are further told, " is a great resort of merchants fiom Persia and out of India, and very much merchandise of silke and clothe and of precious stones, both Rubies, Diamants and Pearles." John Newberry departed from Agra for home, journeying through Persia ; William Leedes took service as jeweller with the Emperor Akbar, and Ralph Fitch continued his travels, proceeding towards Bengal, noting the power and influence of the Brahman priests, who, he says, are ' a kind of craftie people worse than the Jewes." The myriad temples, the bathing ghats, and sacred wells of Benares call fortli his wonder, but one custom struck him with more surprise than all other things he had heard of or seen in the course of his travels — the custom of widow- burning. " Wives here," he writes, " doe burne with Digitized by Microsoft® 24 EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. their husbands when they die, if they will not, their heads be shaven, and never any account is made of them afterward." Travelhng from Benares towards Patna he found that the road was infested with bands of robbers ; nevertheless he managed to reach Bhutan in safety, returning to " Hugeli, which is the place where the Portugals keepe in the country of Bengala," and thence sailing for home he arrived at Ceylon, where the king was very powerful, " his guard are a thousand thousand men, and often he commeth to Columbo, which is the place where the Portugals have their fort, with an hundred thousand men and many elephants. But they be naked people all of them, yet many of them be good with their pieces which be muskets." Fitch reached home in 1591, after an absence of eight years from his native country, where, in the meantime, more certain and accurate knowledge of the route to India and the Portuguese commerce had been gained. In the year 1587 a large Portuguese ship named the San Filippe had been captured by Sir Francis Drake off the Azores on its way from Goa to Lisbon, and amid great rejoicing towed into Plymouth, where its papers were examined and its cargo of Eastern produce found to be of ;£' 108,049 value. A few years later another great ship, the largest in the Portuguese navy, the Madre di Dios, was also cap- tured off the Azores on its way home from India, brought into Dartmouth, and her cargo of jewels, spices, nutmegs, silks, and cottons sold for ^150,000; the papers found in her giving a full account of the Digitized by Microsoft® GEORGE RAYMOND AND JAMES LANCASTER. 2$ trade and settlements of the Portuguese in the Eastern seas. In 1 59 1 three ships, the PenelopCj the Merchant Royal, and the Edward Bonadventm-e, sailed under command of George Raymond and James Lan- caster, on the first voyage to India from England. By the time they reached the Cape of Good Hope scurvy had so weakened the sailors, and the tem- pestuous seas and storms so damaged the ships, that the Merchant Royal had to be sent home with fifty of the crews. Six days after, on " the 14th of September, we were encountered," witnesses James Lancaster in his account as recorded by Hakluyt, " with a mighty storme and extreeme gusts of winde, wherein we lost our general's companie, and could never heare of him nor his ship any more." So Lancaster had to sail on, the Bonadventure alone being left out of the three ships to encounter more sore perils and trials, for " foure dayes after this uncomfortable separation in the morning toward ten of the clocke we had a terrible clap of thunder, which slew foure of our men outright, their necks being wrung in sonder without speaking any word, and of 94 men there was not one untouched, whereof some were stricken blind, others were bruised in the legs and armes and others in their brests, others were drawen out at length as though they had been racked. But (God be thanked) they all recovered saving only the foure which were slaine out right." Lancaster reached India, cruised about for some time in the Eastern seas, pillaging such Portuguese vessels as he captured, and then sailed for home, passed Digitized by Microsoft® 26 EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE. the Cape, reached the West Indies and the Bermudas, where he and nearly all his remaining sailors landed on a desert island, " but in the night time, about twelve of the clocke, our ship did drive away ^I'ith five men and a boy onely in it ; our carpenter secretly cut their own cable, leaving nineteen of us on land without boate or anything, to our great discomfort." From this position Lancaster and the few survivors of the ill-fated expedition were rescued by a French ship, and arrived at Dieppe on the 24th of May, 1 594, having "spent in this voyage three yeeres, five weekes and two dayes, which the Portugals performe in halfe the time.'' In 1596 a second effort was made to reach India, Captain Benjamin Wood sailing in charge of the Bear, the Bears Whelp, and Benjamin, but neither he nor his ships were ever heard of again. Renewed and more vigorous efforts were now necessary, for the Dutch, were gradually monopolising the trade with the East. In 1599, they raised the price of pepper in the English market from 3s. to 8s. per pound, and the Lord Mayor of London imme- diately called together a meeting of the principal City merchants to consider what course should be pursued. On the 22nd of September, Sir Stephen Soame, the Lord Mayor, sundry aldermen, and others of less dignity, such as grocers, drapers, vintners, leather- sellers, skinners, and haberdashers, met together at Founders' Hall, Lothbury, and there agreed — " with their owne handes to venter in the pretended voiage to the Easte Indies, the which it may please the Lord to prosper," Digitized by Microsoft® OLD EAST INDIA HOUSE. (From "Gentleman's Ma'j , the original cost being £2,gi\'j 15s. The two ships sent out on the fourth voyage in 1607 were lost, neverthe- less the Company made on its third and fifth voyages a net profit of 2 34 J per cent. By degrees trade was opened up at Surat and Cambay, where cloths and calicoes were purchased and carried to Bantam and the Moluccas to be ex- changed for the more valued spices and pepper. The Charter, as renewed by James I. in 1609, granted the Company not only the exclusive right in perpetuity Digitized by Microsoft® PORTUGUESE OPPOSITION. 33 of trading to the East Indies but also the right of holding and alienating land — concessions which inspired so much confidence that the subscriptions for the sixth voyage reached the sum of ;£'82,ooo. The sixth voyage is memorable for the fact that the largest merchant ship then in England, the Trades Increase, of i,ioo tons, was sent out to the East. The Portuguese made strenuous efforts to pre- vent the adventurers trading at Surat, whereon the English commander, Sir Henry Middleton, captured one of their ships laden with Indian goods, so that the profits of the voyage amounted to ;£^I2I 13s. 4d. per cent. The Trades Increase, however, struck on a rock and subsequently capsized — a calamity which so affected Sir Henry Middleton that he died of grief. The power and trade of the Portuguese had rapidly waned from 1580, when they were united with Spain under Philip II.; but in the East they still strove to hold their once opulent settlements. In 161 2 four Portuguese galleons and twenty-five frigates attacked the English fleet under Captain Best at Swally, off Surat, and were driven off with heavy loss. In 161 5 they made one final effort to drive from the vicinity of Goa and Surat the English, whom they describe in a letter to the King as "thieves, disturbers of States, and a people not to be permitted in a commonwealth." Eight galleons, three les.ser ships, and sixty frigates came up with the New Year's Gift, the Hector, the Merchants Hope, and the Solomon, off Swally, the natives anxiously looking on to see the contest between the two great European powers. Three of the Portuguese ships drew alongside 4 Digitized by Microsoft® 34 K!SE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. the Merchant's Hope, which was boarded, but after an . obstinate fight they were driven off with a loss of some five hundred men, the three ships set on fire and allowed to drift ashore, the rest of the fleet retreating during the night after a severe cannonade. For man)- reasons it was impossible that Portugal could ever have established a permanent empire in India. The union with Spain, the smallness of her population, the deterioration of her soldiers from habits of pampered luxury and intermarriage with native women, added to their heavy losses in war, are facts lying on the surface. Recent researches have brought to light graver reasons why the native powers themselves were nothing loth to be relieved from the contamination of a so-called civilisation introduced by foreigners who had lived amongst them and grown wealthy for a period of over one hundred years. The Portuguese historians tell how the tomb of the great Portuguese Viceroy, Don Francisco de Almeida, was, for many years after his death, visited both by Muhammadans and Hindus, who prayed that he might rise up and defend them from the barbarities, cruelties, and greed of his successors. Frorri 1 560 the tortures and the burnings at the stake of supposed witches, sorcerers, and Christians suspected of heresy, native and European alike, not only made every per- son within its jurisdiction fearful for his honour, life, and liberty, but also sent a shudder of horror through Europe when the full tale of its iniquities was made known. The whole history is summed up by the Portuguese editor of Correa's history : "Perfidy pre- siding o\-er almost all compacts and negotiations . . . Digitized by Microsoft® PORTUGUESE LOSSES. 35 conversions to Christianity serving as a transparent veil to covetousness : these are the fearful pictures from which we would desire to turn away our eyes. ... It was, therefore, to this moral leprosy, to these internal cankers, that Caspar Correa chiefly alluded, and to which Diogo do Conto attributed the loss of India, saying that it had been won with much truth, fidelity, valour, and perseverance, and that it was lost through the absence of those virtues." ^ From their settlements and fortresses in the Eastern seas the Portuguese were rapidly driven out by the English and Dutch. In 1622 Ormuz, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, was captured by the English fleet, assisted by a Persian army under Shah Abbas, the Portuguese population of over two thousand souls being transported to Muscat. The prize-money due to the Company from this conquest was estimated at ;^ioo,000 and 240,000 rials of eight, of which James I. claimed ;^ 10,000, his share as King, and the Duke of Buckingham i^io,ooo, his share as Lord High Admiral, the Company not being permitted to send any ships from England until they consented to pay these amounts. A few years later, in 1629, the Emperor Shdh Jahin captured the Portuguese settlement at Hugh', carried off some four thousand men, women, and children, slew over one thousand of the garrison, and took three hundred ships of the fleet. From all sides disaster soon followed. Goa was blockaded by the Dutch, who gradually gained entire control over the ' " Lendas da India," tr. by the Hon. E. J. Stanley ; Introduction, p.li. Digitized by Microsoft® 36 AV5£ OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. trade in the Spice Islands, Java, Ceylon, and on the mainland, leaving Portugal by the middle of the seven- teenth century stripped of her wealth and deprived of her commerce. As the trade in the East gradually fell from the hands of the effete and degenerate descendants of the early Portuguese adventurers the struggle commenced between the Dutch and English, each eager to seize this source of wealth, the true value of which was yearly becoming more apparent. In the nine voyages made by the Company up to 1612, the average profit on each share held by the London merchants had been 171 per cent. From 1613 to 1616 four voyages were made, the subscriptions being united as an in- vestment for the joint benefit of all the proprietors. Owing to the opposition shown by the Dutch to the English trade in the Spice Islands the profits made on each of these four voyages fell to ;^89 los. per share of .£^100. In spite of this the subscriptions increased to ;£^i,6oo,ooo, subsequently expended in three voyages on a second joint stock account. In 1621 the subject of the Eastern trade excited so much controversy in England that Thomas Nun issued his celebrated tract as a counterblast to the growing contention that " it were a happier thing for Christendom (say many men) that the navigation of the East Indies, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, had never been found out." He pleaded that, as a result of the discovery of the route to India by the Cape, " the Kingdom is purged of desperate and unruly people who, kept in awe by the good discipline at sea, doe often change their former course of life Digitized by Microsoft® THOMAS nun's TRACT. 37 and so advance their fortunes." He then asserts that the new trade with the East •' is a means to bring more treasure into the Realme than all the other trades of the Kingdome (as they are now managed) being put together." Respecting the ships which had been employe^ in the Eastern seas he gave the following succinct infor- mation : " Since the beginning of the trade until the month of July last, anno 1620, there have been sent thither 79 ships in several voyages, whereof 34 are alreadie come home in safetie richly laden, foure have been worne out by long service from port to port in the Indies, two were overwhelmed in the trimming thereof, six have been cast away by the perils of the Sea, twelve have been taken and surprized by the Dutch, whereof divers will be wasted and little worth before they be restored, and 21 good ships doe still remayne in the Indies." The profit made by the voyages is summed up as follows: " First there hath been lost ^^3 1,079 in the six shippes which are cast away, and in the 34 shippes which are returned in safety there have been brought home ^^3 56,288 in divers sorts of wares which hath produced here in England towards the general stock thereof i^ 1,9 14,000. ... So there ought to re- main in the Indies to be speedily returned hither ^484,088." Elsewhere he shows in detail how pepper, mace, nutmegs, indigo, and raw silk, which would have cost ^1,465,000 if purchased at the old rates, could now be purchased in the East Indies for about ;£'5ii,458. The opposition of the Dutch to English enterprise Digitized by Microsoft® 38 JilSE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. in the East yearly became more openly aggressive until finally, in 1623, the Massacre of Amboyna sowed the seeds of that bitter animosity which sprang up between the two nations, leading to a long series of conflicts for the supremacy of the seas. At Amboyna, in the Moluccas, Captain Towerson and his English factors, eighteen in number, occupied a house in the town, the Dutch holding a strong fort garrisoned by two hundred of their soldiers. Suddenly Captain Towerson and his assistants were seized on a charge of conspiring to surprise the Dutch strong- hold. It was in vain that the prisoners protested their innocence ; the torture of the rack, according to the barbarous custom of the day, was applied until they were forced, in their agony, to admit the truth of the accusation. Captain Towerson, nine English sailors, nine natives of Japan, and one Portuguese were be- headed, praying forgiveness from each other for having in their torment confessed to the false accusation. The indignation excited in England on receipt of news of this outrage was carefully heightened by the Directors of the East India Company who widely distributed a picture depicting, in all the exaggerated extravagance capable of being conjured up by the imagination of the time, the tortures inflicted on the English factors, coupled with the statement that the Dutch had sued the London Company for the ex- penses of a black pall wherewith the body of Captain Towerson had been covered. The oppressions of the Dutch, however, continued, the English trade gradually decreasing until by 1628-9 the Company had incurred debts to the Digitized by Microsoft® GABRIEL BOUGH TON. 39 amount of ^300,000, shares of ;^ioo falling down to ;^8o, although previously shares of £(iO had been sold " by the candle " for as much as Li^O. To add to the depression permission was given, in 1635, to a rival Company under Sir William Courten to trade with the East. In 1640 the King, as usual in grievous want of . money, forced the old Company to sell him on credit all the pepper they had in store for the sum of ;£'63,283 lis. id., which the King imme- diately sold for ^^50,626 17s. id., ready cash ; it does not appear that the Company ever received any com- pensation, beyond some iJ^ 13,000 owing for Custom dues. I The Company, driven by the Dutch from the Eastern Archipelago gradually commenced to estab- lish factories and settlements along the coast of India. In 1632 a factory was reopened at Masulipatam under an order known as the " Golden Firman," obtained from the Muhammadan King of Golconda. This settlement soon became the chief place of trade in India, its affairs being regulated by a Council. The Chief of the Council, Mr. Francis Day, made a visit to the. Portuguese settlement at St. Thome, the supposed place of martyrdom of St. Thomas the Apostle, and founded there in 1640 a new factory and centre of trade known as Madras town. A more important concession was obtained in 1636 by Mr. Gabriel Boughton, surgeon of the Hopewell. He was sum- moned to attend the Emperor's daughter who, through her clothes catching fire, had been badly burned. De- lighted with the rapid recovery of his daughter, under the hands of the skilful English surgeon, the Emperor Digitized by Microsoft® 4'i RISE OF THE EAST 7XDIA COMPANY. Shah Jahan, at Mr. Boughton's requ3st, granted the Company permission to estabhsh a factory at Hiigli and to make a settlement lower down the coast at Balasor where a fort was built which soon became the strong- est position held by the Company on the east coast. Bombay, given by the Portuguese to Charles II. on his marriage with Catherine of Braganza, as part of her dower, was leased by the King in 1669 to the Company on a rent of ;^iO per annum — a possession which from 1685 grew to be the chief port of trade on the west coast. While the London merchants were thus establish- ing centres of trade abroad, efforts were being made by the home Government to undermine the growing enterprise of the Dutch who, in 1622-3, had founded New Amsterdam, now New York, in America, and in 1650 commenced the colonisation of the Cape of Good Hope._ By the Navigation Act, passed in 165 1, Cromwell not only prepared the Way for the future extension of English shipping and commerce, but struck a decisive blow at the prosperity of the Dutch, then the carriers of the world's sea-borne trade. By this Act no goods from the East, from Africa or from America, were allowed to be imported into Great Britain unless carried in ships belonging to England and her colonies. In the war which ensued the Dutch had much to lose ; attacks could be made on their rich merchant ships and their supplies cut off. England, on the other hand, had but little carrying trade to defend and was secure in her own agricultural resources. The Dutch flee', under Martin Tromp, was defeated by Digitized by Microsoft® DUTCH AND FRENCH. 4I Blake off Dover in 1652 — a defeat retrieved by the end of the year when Tromp won a decisive victory, afterwards sailing down the Channel with a broom flying at his masthead to show that he had swept the English from the seas. In March, 1653, Blake and Monk defeated Tromp and De Ruyter in the three days' fight off Beachy Head. In August Tromp was killed in the engagement off the Texel peace being afterwards concluded between the rival powers, neither able to gain much advantage by continuing the conflict. France was now commencing her struggle for participation in the commerce of the world. As early as 1604 French companies -had been 'formed and ships sent out to the East, but no serious efforts had been made to interfere with the Dutch and English. It was not until the year 1664 that Colbert, successor to the great finance Minister Mazarin, suc- ceeded in arousing the interest of Louis XIV. in a scheme for enriching France by a fostering of her resources and development of her commerce. The exclusive right of trading to the East was granted to a powerful Company, formed with a 'capital of fifteen million francs, while as a basis for naval operations in the narrow seas, Louis XIV., in 1662, purchased from Charles II. the fortress of Dunkirk taken by England in 1658 from the Spanish Nether- lands. In 1664 France laid claim to the whole of the Spanish Netherlands — a claim which, if enforced, would have enabled her to open up the Scheldt to navigation and divert the commerce from the Dutch Digitized by Microsoft® 42 RISE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. at Amsterdam to Antwerp, whence the trade had drifted after its sack in 1576 by the Spaniards. The whole history of the next fifty years centres round this poHcy of Louis XIV., which by its failure left the trade to the East and the supremacy of the seas in the undisputed possession of England. At first France met with a short but brilliant suc- cess, typical of all her subsequent enterprises to gain an Eastern Empire. Colbert fixed on an adventurer, Francois Caron, formerly cook and chief steward on a Dutch man-of-war, who by his erratic versatility had risen to be Member of Council of the Dutch settle- ment at Batavia, to inaugurate the new policy, and despatched him to Irtdia, in 1667, as Director-General of French commerce. Caron succeeded in establish- ing factories at Surat and Masulipatam, earning for himself the order of St. Michel from Louis XIV. as a reward for the rich cargoes he sent home. Em- boldened by his success he seized the Dutch settle- ment at Trinkamali in Ceylon, and took St. Thome from the Portuguese, only to find his adventurous career cut short by his recall on the news reaching Colbert that the Dutch had recaptured Trinkamali and ignominiously driven the French out of Ceylon. Caron, on his way home, heard that his failure had sealed his fate ; in endeavouring to escape, the ship in which he sailed foundered and he was drowned, thus escaping the ignominious fate of his successors La Bourdonnais and Dupleix who strove with all the power of their imaginative genius to accomplish a task foredoomed to failure — the foundation of French supremacy in India. It was not in the East but in Digitized by Microsoft® IVAJ? W/TM HOLLAND. 43 Europe that the real struggle took place between the Western nations for maritime supremacy on which command over the destinies of India could alone be based. In England the policy of weakening the commercial prosperity of the Dutch continued incessantly with a fixedness of purpose which seemed inevitably to work towards its result, success. Charles II. continued the commercial policy of Cromwell, enacting by his Navi- gation Act, which ruled the importation of goods into England down to 1849, that no goods of Turkey or Russia should be carried into England unless borne by British ships, while a long list of scheduled goods were absolutely forbidden, under any conditions, to be imported from Germany, Holland, or the Nether- lands. The commercial rivalries soon led to open hostilities, culminating, early in 1665, in a declaration of war between England and Holland. The English fleet beat the Dutch off Lowestoft, only to meet with a disastrous reverse in the famous four days' fight off Dover — a reverse retrieved by the defeat of the Dutch off the North Forelands and the burning of the Dutch ships in their harbours. Content with this suc- cess Charles II. neglected his navy, allowing many of his best ships to be paid off The day of awakening, however, came when De Ruyter appeared at Graves- end and in the Medway, burned the English ships at Chatham and seized Sheerness. The Plague and the Great Fire had already broken the spirit of the English nation ; the fires from the burning ships in the river completed the disasters. Digitized by Microsoft® 4\ JilSE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. Peace was restored by the Treaty of Breda in 1667, England gaining New York and New Jersey, the Dutch once more consenting to salute the English flag on the high seas. Holland too was glad to be at peace. Not only was her maritime power threatened but her very existence as a nation was at stake. Louis XIV. had finally rejected the statesmanlike policy of Colbert — a policy pressed on him by Leibnitz who, with prophetic insight, pointed out how the trade from the East would be held by the nation wise enough to com- mand the immediate and ancient route by way of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea — a route England is obliged to hold to-day in order to safeguard her own commercial supremacy. " The possession of Egypt,'' wrote Leibnitz, "' opens the way to con- quests worthy of Alexander ; the extreme weakness of the Orientals is no longer a secret. Whoever has Egypt will have all the coasts and islands of the Indian Ocean. It is in Egypt that Holland will be conquered ; it is there she \yill be despoiled of what alone renders her prosperous, the Treasures of the East." Louis XIV. thought otherwise. He longed for the territorial expansion of his dominions in Europe. He seized Tranche Comte and parts — now Belgium — of the Spanish Netherlands. In 1670 he induced Charles II. to enter into the Secret Treaty of Dover so that both nations might unite to crush Holland, whose people were detested by the English King, and whose commercial prosperity he would gladly see destroyed. The Dutch, under De Ruyter, showed in Southwold Digitized by Microsoft® tVAI? WITH FRANCE. 45 Bay that they could successfully resist the allied fleets, while on land William of Orange, afterwards William III. of England, accepted as Stadholder on the murder of the De Witt brothers at the Hague in 1672, successfully held Amsterdam by cutting the dykes and inundating South Holland. Louis had to retire baffled. In the next year Charles II., after the brilliant though indecisive attack made off the Texel by the Dutch fleet under Prince Rupert, was forced to make peace and withdraw his alliance from the French. Holland, in her efforts to preserve her independence, had been obliged to neglect her Eastern possessions and turn her attention from the increase of her navy and shipping to the strengthening of her army and land defences, while at the same time she was gradu- ally becoming more and more involved in debt. By the Treaty of Augsburg, in 1686, Holland had to join Sweden and Savoy in again opposing the over- weening ambition of Louis XIV. — an alliance joined by England in 1689, the year after William of Orange had landed at Torbay, driven out James II. and accepted the throne in hopes of seeing his lifelong ambition crowned by the crushing of his great rival, the French monarch. At Beachy Head Admiral Tourville succeeded in defeating the combijicd Dutch and English fleets in 1690, but two years later the crowning victory of Admiral Russell off Cape La Hogue again established the naval supremacy of England. By the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, Louis XIV. was forced to surrender all his conquests in the Netherlands and beyond the Rhine, receiving back Digitized by Microsoft® 46 RISE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, the French settlement at Pondicherry on the east coast of India which had been captured by the Dutch. Although England was thus gradually freed fronn all fear of Holland as a commercial rival in the East, France still struggled for mastery. Louis XIV., aiming at universal dominion, sought, in 1700, on the death of Charles II., the Spanish King, whose sister he had married, to unite in his own person the thrones of France and Spain. Against his pretensions Holland, Austria, and England com- bined. The French fleet was defeated in Vigo Bay ; Gibraltar was taken by Rorke ; the victories of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet followed, leaving Louis humbled and helpless, glad in 171 3 to sign the Peace of Utrecht, by which the defences of Dunkirk were to be razed to the ground, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland ceded to England, and Holland, now no longer a naval power to be feared, left in safe possession of her Spanish Nether- lands. England remained the supreme maritime power to pursue her career and gain, without chance of failure, the monopoly of the commerce of the East. Holland was crippled ; the subsequent efforts made by France are merely interesting as historical facts, for without a command of the seas she was powerless to compete with England in the East. In India itself the Com- pany had but little to fear. The Mughal Empire was falling to pieces, the people separated from each other by differences of race, religion, language, customs, and local tradition, lacked the essential elements where- with to combine in a national sentiment of opposition Digitized by Microsoft® THE UNITED COMPANY. 4/ to the invasion of a foreign power whose resources and strength were secured on the seas. In 1693 the Old English Company had lost its Charter, notwithstanding the fact that it had ex- pended ^^90,000 in efforts to bribe the Privy Council, for a new Company, known as the London Coaapany, had lent the Government two millions sterling at 8 per cent., and in return had been granted the exclusive, right of trading to the East. In 1702 a compro- mise was effected by the exertions of Godolphin, the two Companies being amalgamated under the title of the United Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies — a Cohipany better known as "The Honourable East India Company," under whose rule the British Empire was established in India and maintained down to the Mutiny when the Crown assumed direct control. -^^ Digitized by Microsoft® III. INDIA ON THE EVE OF CONQUEST. In India the reign of Aurangzi'b the Great Mughal had come to a close in 1707, the dying Emperor in his last hours pouring forth his lamentations over the ruin overshadowing the empire founded by his fore- fathers. " I have not done well by the country or its people," he cried, in despair, " the arrny is con- founded, and without heart or help even as I am." Into India the Mughal Emperors had come as foreigners. Two hundred years before the death of Aurangzi'b, at the time when Dom Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese Viceroy, reached India with twenty-two ships and 1,500 soldiers, Babar the Lion, the Chagatai Tartar, sixth in descent from Timur or Tamerlane at the head of his northern barbarians had descended through the passes of Afghanistan to found the Mughal Empire. Through the same passes from time immemorial warlike races had swept down on the sun-steeped plains of the Five Rivers and rich alluvial tracts of the Ganges and Jumna to conquer the effete dwellers therein and subdue 48 Digitized by Microsoft® EARLY INVASIONS. 49 them to their will. In India history repeats itself with monotonous sameness. In its enervating plains, far removed from the invigorating sea-breeze and the bracing cold of the mountain ranges, the keen eye, undaunted heart, and relentless arm of the successive hardy northern immigrants slowly but surely tend to change to the placid look, folded hands and brooding mind of the Eastern Sage, who, content to dream his dream of life, wearily turns from the conflict and dire struggle for existence, time after time introduced by the more. warlike northern conquerors ever coming and going like the monsoon storms. Who the first inhabitants of India were we know not. In primeval days, wild, savage people inhabited the land, wandering to and fro along the riversides in search of food. The only records they have left of their existence are the chipped flint or quartzite arrow-heads, scrapers, and axes, dug up to-day in the alluvial deposits of the great river valleys. By degrees these aboriginal inhabitants became more civilised. They learned to smooth and polish their rude stone implements, perforating them with holes so as to attach them to handles. As time went on they made gold and silver ornaments, and manu- factured earthen pots, which are still discovered in the strange tombs, constructed of upright stone slabs, wherein they buried their dead. From their homes in the river valleys, lowlands and open country, these primeval people of India were gradually driven by other invading races to the lofty mountain ranges, where, amid the dense forests, their descendants still live undisturbed, retaining all 5 Digitized by Microsoft® so INDIA ON THE EVE OP CONQUEST. their primitive simplicity, superstitions, beliefs, and habits. During the taking of the Census of 1872 it was ascertained that one-twelfth of the population of India, nearly twenty millions of human beings, consisted of these living fossils of primeval times. There they remain, a strange study to the historian and anthropologist : worshippers of spirits, ghosts and demons ; worshippers of snakes, trees, mountains, streams, and aught that inspires wonder, fear, or terror, but little affected by the efforts of their British rulers to inculcate the most primary elements of civilisation, except in so far as their grosser habits of human sacrifice, infanticide, and intertribal war and bloodshed have been sternly suppressed. Respecting the earliest invasions of India there exists but the vaguest and most unreliable evidence. The whole south of India is at present inhabited by a people speaking cognate languages which have been grouped together and called Dravidian. Inas- much as these languages show strong affinities with northern languages such as the Biluchi, the Ugrian of Siberia, the Finnish, and that used in the Behistun inscriptions of Media, it has been conjectured that the people of the south entered India from the north- west, and were gradually driven to their present habitat by stronger and more recent invaders. On the other hand, it has been contended that the Dravidians of South India are the sole surviving remnant of a great race originally inhabiting a wide continent now submerged, but once stretching from India to Madagascar, Africa, and Melanesia. Another race, designated as the Kolarian, is presumed, on even Digitized by Microsoft® THE ARYANS. 5 1 weaker evidence, to have entered India from the north-east and, checked in its conquering career by the Dravidians, to have been driven back to its present home in the north and north-east of the Deccan. Again, along the lower slopes of the Himalayas we find a people giving clear evidences of their descent from some early Chinese or Mongolian immigrants. The first invading race whose history we can trace with something approaching to accuracy was the Aryan, who entered India probably about the time of Abraham, some two thousand years before the Christian era. The language of these invaders was the ancient Sanskrit, from which, through two early vernaculars the Sauraseni and Magadhi, all the modern languages of North India are descended. It belongs to the same family as the Greek, Slavo-Lettic, Teutonic, Celtic, and Latin of the West. From this fact it has been contended that all these languages must have sprung from some original common parent language spoken by an united Aryan people once living to- gether in some common home. So far the evidence seems unassailable ; still the question as to where was the Early Home of the Aryans remains unanswered. Professor Max Mliller holds that it was somewhere in Asia ; Dr. Schrader says that it was in European Russia ; Herr Penka sees grounds for believing that it was somewhere in Scandinavia ; while Mr. Huxley asserts that it was in Europe, somewhere east of the Central Highlands and west of the Ural range of mountains. Wherever the Aryans came from it is certain that Digitized by Microsoft® 52 LVD! A O.V THE EVE OJf CONQUEST. they invaded India as foreigners, possessing all the rude vigour and determination to succeed in the struggle for life characteristic of dwellers in cool and northern climes. They found India inhabited by the descendants of the aboriginal races and later invaders on whom they looked down with haughty contempt. In their Vedic hymns, which they sang to their Divine Beings, the Devas, or Bright Ones, they have left the record of their wars, their victories, hopes, and aspira- tions. To their god Indra, the Indian Zeus, they sang their song of praise, for he it was who " flays the enemy of his black skin, he kills him, he reduces him to ashes." Wearing armour and helmets, with horses and chariots, armed with bows and arrows, swords and battle-axes, drinking their intoxicating Soma juice, and eating the flesh of buffaloes, bulls and cows, they drove before them their enemies whom they describe as scarcely human, black, no-nosed, godless, infidel, and eaters of raw flesh. They gradually conquered the land of the Five Rivers — the Indus, Jehlam, Chendb, Ravi, and Sutlej, advancing by the sixth century B.C. as far as the upper reaches of the Ganges and Jumna. In the holy land of Brahmavarta, lying between the Sarasvati and Drishadvati, the singers of the Vedic hymns, the priests, or Brahmans, as they came to be called, founded their chief schools of learning, whence to the south, and north, and further east, they spread the civilising influence of their high culture and moral force of character. In the days of the Lawgiver Manu it was held of Brahmavarta " that by a Brahman who has been born in that land Digitized by Microsoft® AJiYAN CONQUESTS. 53 shall all men on earth be instructed as to their cha- racter." To-day in every Hindu village of India the cultured BrAhman will be found, to move supreme, his learning to be honoured, the high ideas of morality he inculcates respected, his deep ponderings over the mystery of creation, the soul and Divine Essence revered and studied. From the earliest times these reciters of the Vedic hymns, who grew to be family priests or Brdhmans, offerers of the burned offerings to their deities, were held to be the first among men, the very mouthpiece of the gods, created by a special creation from the head of the Creator. Kings and warriors were but sprung from the arms of the Creator to conquer the unbelievers and subdue them to the will of the priestly legislators. The black aboriginal races were all sprung from the feet of the Creator for servile labour. Gradually the divisions of the people according to colour, race, occupation, or religion extended itself until each caste, or class, became rigidly separated from the other, its traditions and customs stereotyped for ever by the priestly ordinances enunciated, and believed in as though they were revealed to the Brdhmans from before all time. Even death itself could put no end to these caste distinctions between race and race, between occupation and occupation, between one religious sect and another. Let but the individual overstep the narrow limits allotted for his course of life and duty in this world, his soul or undying part would, after having reaped its punishment as awarded by the gods, return to earth to be reborn, sometimes in a man of a lower grade of society, sometimes as an Digitized by Microsoft® 54 INDIA O.V THE EVE OF CONQUEST. animal, or in case its transgressions were great, as a creeping or crawling insect, or as an evil spirit ever to roam without rest. The Aryans in their ancestral homes had wor- shipped the expanse of the heavens, the rosy-fingered Dawn, the Sun, the God of the Storms, and the good God the Giver of Fire to Mortals ; but in their new homes in the East they, for the first time, fully realised the exceeding might and majesty of Nature in all her varied manifestations. Slowly along with the growth of a belief that man was possessed of a Soul, an immortal undying principle within himself, grew the knowledge that behind all the phenomena of Nature lay the unchanging, omnipotent, and om- niscient principle, the eternal essence, Brdhman, ever manifesting itself in different places, times, and forms. Unfortunately the rude superstitions, savage customs, and primitive beliefs of the aboriginal inhabitants and despised servile classes were tolerated and accepted to a certain extent by a large portion of their more civilised conquerors. The influence of the teaching of Buddha, from the sixth century B.C. onward, made but small impression on the great mass of the people, for not only did he and his followers live apart from the general community, seeking out their own salva- tion by avowed renunciation of the world, but the subsequent worship of their relics and images spread far and wide an idolatry which in more or less debasing forms gradually enslaved the religious sentiments of the uneducated Hindus. The seventh century of our era saw a strange change come when the devastating wave of Muham- Digitized by Microsoft® THE MUHAMMADANS. 55 madan invasions commenced to sweep over North India. These new invaders, vowed by their creed to root out idolatry in the lands which they conquered, and to subdue disbelievers in the One True God and Muhammad as the Prophet of that God, not only desolated the land, but broke in pieces the Hindu idols, razed to the ground the magnificent temples MLUAMMADANS PRAYING. of North India, and slew, in their fanatic zeal, the Brdhman priests and Buddhist monks. Raid after raid, invasion after invasion, took place. Mahmud of Ghazni, after twenty-five years' fighting and seven- teen incursions, succeeded, in the year 1030, in subduing the western districts of the Punjab. The story is told how he was offered an enormous ransom Digitized by Microsoft® S6 INDIA ON THE EVE OF CONQUEST. if he would spare the sacred idol in the holy temple of Somnath. He scornfully replied that he was a breaker and not a seller of idols, and, cleaving the image asunder, was astonished to see pour out at his feet a vast store of jewels which had been con- cealed there by the priests. From the temple he carried back to Afghanistan the sandal-wood gates which Lord Ellenborough fondly, though erroneously, imagined he recovered and restored to the Hindus after the Afghanistan War in 1842. The first Muhammadan Emperor who firmly established his sway in India was Kutab ud dm, a Turki slave. He raised himself to power about 1206, and his own historian records that in his days " the realm was filled with friends and cleared of foes ; his bounty was continuous and so was his slaughter.'' More terrible were the woes and sufferings of the people under the Emperor Muhammad Tughlak, who ruled from the year 1325 to 1351. With fiendish cruelty, akin to the animal lust of a man- eating tiger, his fierce nature could only be appeased by deeds of inhuman wickedness. Enclosing large tracts of country he drove the inoffensive inhabitants towards the centre so that he and his favourite com- rades might revel in man-hunts, slaughtering human beings as though they were wild beasts. His nephew who rebelled against him, was flayed alive, and no one in the kingdom dared afterwards to dispute his dictates. / These terrors were but a prelude to the storm i which burst over the land in 1398, when Timur, or ; Tamerlane, collected together all the wild roving Digitized by Microsoft® THE MUGHALS. 57 bands of Tartary, and swept down through the north- west passes of Afghanistan across the PunjAb towards Delhi. The imperial city surrendered under a promise of safety, only to be given up to the flames and pillaged by the fierce horsemen who slew the inhabi- tants so that the streets were rendered impassable for the space of six days. Tamerlane and his savage soldiery retreated laden with the hoarded-up wealth of centuries, leaving naught behind them but the ruins and ashes of burned cities and the wailing of the desolate inhabitants. After his departure India was for a time left in peace. Muhammadan Emperors were enthroned at Delhi while local chieftains held independent sway in the more distant provinces. At length, in 1526, Babar the Lion marched down at the head of his hardy northern horsemen from the Afghanistan side of the mountains and established the rule of the Mughals. Nothing illustrates more forcibly the fact that the Mughals, as well as their successors, were foreigners in the land of India than the words in which BAbar records his first impressions on seeing the sunlit plains of India. " I had never before seen countries of w'arm temperature," he wrote, " nor the country of Hindustan. Immediately on reaching them I beheld a new world : the grass was different, the trees dif- ferent, the wild animals of a different sort, the birds of a different plumage. The manners and customs of the wandering tribes of a different kind. I was struck with astonishment, and indeed there was room for wonder." Digitized by Microsoft® 58 INDIA ON THE EVE OF CONQUEST. ' Again he writes in the same Memoirs : " Hindustan has but Httle to recommend it. The inhabitants are not good-looking, they have no idea of the pleasures of society, they have no genius or generalising talent, neither polish of manner, amiability or sympathetic feeling, neither ingenuity or mechanical invention, nor knowledge or skill in architecture, they have no decent houses, good fruit, ice or cold water, they have neither baths nor colleges, neither candles nor candle- sticks ; if you want to read or write by night you must have a filthy, half-naked fellow standing over you all the time with a glaring torch." Under the early Mughal Emperors the whole of India north of the Vindhya range of mountains was united into one great empire, its cities adorned with stately palaces, tombs, temples, and mosques, ranging frofn the Mausoleum of Humayiin, with its tall Persian dome and glazed tiles, on to Akbar's palace and fort at Agra, his fairy buildings and imposing mosque at Fatehpur Sikri, his own tomb, the most stately and graceful ever designed and erected by any monarch of the East, down to the gorgeous buildings such as the Tij Mahal, the fort, palaces, and Great Mosque at Delhi, and many others which the luxu- rious taste of Shah Jahan revelled in seeing grow up around him. ' The long and beneficent reign (1556 to 1605), of Akbar, an enlightened monarch whose fame rivals that of Louis XIV. and Elizabeth, saw not only the consolidation of the empire in the north, but also witnessed the gradual decay of the Portuguese settle- ments, and ended with the advent of the Dutch and Digitized by Microsoft® MUGHAL IiMFJ-_ROKS. 59 English merchants. Jahangi'r succeeded his father Akbar to an empire extending over Kandahar . and Kashmir in the north, over Mahva, Gujarat, and Sind in the west, to Orissa and Bengal in the east. Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador from King James I. to the Court of Jahangi'r, gives in his well-known letters a full and fairly accurate account of the countr)' and social life at this period. On all sides the English ambassador discerned signs of coming changes. " Beware," he wrote to the Company — "beware of scattering your goods in di\-ers parts and engaging )'our stocke and servants farre into the countr)', for the time will come when all in these king- domes will be in combustion, and a few yeares warre will not decide the inveterate malice laid up on all parts against a day of vengeance." At his first interview the am- bassador presented Jahangi'r with some presents, and unfortunate!}-, also, with a case of wine, whereon Jahangi'r immediately got so drunk that business had t(j be suspended. "In fact," as Sir Thomas Roe writes, " there is nothing more A\'elcome here, nor did I e\'er see men so fond of drink as the King and Prince are of red wine. . . . I think 4 or 5 casks \vill be more ^\■elcome than the richest gems in Cheapside." Although Jahangir indulged in nightly debauches with his nobles a strict silence was ever supposed to (From Holdcv's "Mogul Enipcyors.") Digitized by Microsoft® 6o INDIA ON THE EVE OP CONQUEST. reign in Court circles on the subject. The Emperor once being reminded by an incautious companion of a previous night's saturnalia, expressed extreme astonishment and made diligent inquiries respecting those \\ho were present, " fined some one, some two, some three thousand rupies, some lesse, and some that were neerer his person he caused to be whipped before him, receiving one hundred and thirtie stripes with a most terrible instruement, having at each end of foure cords, irons like Spurrowels, so that each stroke made foure wounds. When they lay for dead on the ground, he commanded the standers by to foot them, and after, the Porters to breake their staves upon them. Thus most cruelly mangled and bruised thej^ were carried out, of which one dyed in the place." Although Sir Thomas Roe was, like most Eng- lishmen, entirely out of sympathy with his Eastern surroundings and the modes of thought of the people with whom he came in contact, still his remarks are of historical value, as being those of a cultured man of shrewd, common sense, whose imagination never led him' into excesses of extravagant praise or vulgar abuse. His remarks may therefore be taken as giving an accurate though somewhat prosaic de- scription of the outward conditions of social life in India at the time he wrote. In one of his letters, dated from Ajmere, on January 27, 161 5, he says: " The buildings are all base, of mudde, one story high, except in Surat, where are some stone houses, but I know not by what policie the King seekes the ruine of all the ancient Cities which were bravely built and now lye desolate and ruined. His owne Digitized by Microsoft® S/Je THOMAS. ROM. 6l houses are of stone, both in good forme and faire, but his great men build not, for want of inheritance, but as farre as I have yet seene Hve in Tents, or houses worse then a cottager ; yet where the King affects, as at Agra, because it is a city erected by him, the Buildings are (as is reported) faire and of carved stone." Marching with the Emperor's retinue near Godah, which is described as a land fruitful in corn, cotton and cattle, he incidentally mentions that in the fields by the roadside he saw the bodies of one hundred naked men who had been slain for a crime then very common — highway robbery. Further on he passed an embassy carrying as a gift to the Emperor the heads of three hundred rebels who had been put to death in Kandahar. Godah he describes as the best town he had seen in India, " for that there were some houses two stories high, and such as a Pedler might not scorne to keepe shop in, all covered with tyle." Sir Thomas Roe, having wasted much time in fruitless endeavours to induce the Emperor to sign a treaty granting trading privileges to the Company in perpetuity, wrote home that in his opinion it was inadvisable to seek to acquire land in India, or even to erect forts along the sea coast, " by my consent you shall no way ingage yourselves but at sea where you are like to gaine as often as to lose. ... It is the beggering of the Portugall, notwithstanding his many rich residences and territories, that he keepes souldiers that spend it : yet his garrisons are meane. He never profited by the Indies, since he defended them. Observe this well." Digitized by Microsoft® 62 INDIA ON THE EVE OF CONQUEST. Finally the ambassador beseeches that never ajain should a gcn.leman of his rank be sent on an embassy to the Mughal Court : " A meaner agent would among these proud Moors better effect your business. My quality often for ceremonies either begets you enemies or suffers unworthily. ... I have moderated according to my discretion but with a swoln heart." It was not long before Sir Thomas Roe's fore- bodings as to the future perils and troubles which lay in store for the empire proved true. When, in 1658, the Emperor Shih Jahan, who had succeeded his father Jah^ngir in 1627, was reported to be dying, his four sons broke into open rebellion, declaring that the sword alone should determine the right of suc- cession. The city of Agra was panic-stricken, the inhabitants closed their shops and waited the issue in fear and trembling. At length Aurangzi'b, the third ^ son of the sick Emperor, who had diligently acquired the reputation of being a devout Muhammadan, Puritan, ascetic, and saintly in all his habits, defeated his brothers, two of whom, Dird and Murid-Bakhsh, he put to death, the third, ShujA, escaping to be never heard of more. Shih Jahan was placed in captivity, where for six long years he mourned his sad fate and that of his murdered sons. Aurangzib succeeded to the great Mughal Empire, then possessing an army of three hundred thousand horse and four hundred thousand foot, and a yearly income of nearly ninety millions sterling. Before he became Emperor he had subdued three of the five great independent kingdoms of the south, and before Digitized by Microsoft® THE MARATHAS. 63 him Still remained unaccomplished the task of uniting to the empire the two more southern kingdoms of Golconda and Bi'japur, then held by representatives of the Kutab Shahi and Adil ShdW dynasties. For twenty years he wasted bis resources in endeavouring to conquer these kingdoms, and when at length they fell he was obliged to remain at the head of his troops for twenty years longer endeavouring to keep order in his unwieldy dominions, and drive back his ever- increasing foes. With the Rijput princes of Rdjputana, whom he had alienated from the throne by his religious intole- rance, he was obliged to make treaties of peace ; with the Sikhs in the Punjdb, whom his persecutions had changed from a religious sect into a nation of fierce soldiers, sworn to die fighting in defence of their faith, he waged a war of extermination, torturing and slaying their captive leaders with fiendish cruel- ties ; while the Marithds, who under Sivaji had risen to power in the Deccan, harassed his armies, cut off his supplies, and forced him to yield them chauth, or one-fourth of the revenue which they claimed a right to levy by force of arms from all the kingdoms of the south. In 1664 Sivaji, at the head of his horsemen pillaged and burned Surat as far as the English factory, which was only saved from the flames by the heroic defence of the Governor, Sir George Oxindon. From the letters of the courtly French physician Dr. Francois Bernier, who travelled through North India from 1656 to 1668, it is easy to see how the distress of the people was daily increasing, and t'.ic Digitized by Microsoft® 64 INDIA ON THE RVE OP CONQUEST. power of the Emperor to preserve peace and order over his extended dominions was passing away, so that it needed but a firm hand to wrest the sceptre from out the feeble hold of the effete descendants of Babar. The keynote to the situation is to be found in the remark of Bernier : "The Great Mogol is a foreigner in Hindustan, a descendant of Tamerlane, chief of those Mogols from Tartary who, about the year 1401, overran and conquered the Indies. Con- sequently he finds himself in a hostile country con- taining hundreds of Gentiles to one Mogol, or even to one Mahometan." ,: As a matter of fact it was ascertained by the , Census of 1891 that while the population of India ;' amounts to 287,223,431, but 57,321,164 were classified i as Muhammadan, of whom it would be difficult to say how many are merely converted Hindus. It must be remembered, too, that the inevitable law of India, with its enervating climate, is that the land can never be long held or firmly governed by a race which does not periodically renew its strength and manhood by fresh recruits drawn from northern or temperate climes. Thus Bernier wrote : " It should be added, how- ever, that children of the third and fourth generation, who have the brown complexion and languid manner of this country of their nativity, are held in much less respect than new-comers, and are seldom invested with official situation." Equally important is the observation, with regard to the early European settlers, made by John Fryer, a surgeon to the Company, who travelled in India Digitized by Microsoft® PKANCOIS BERNIEk. 6$ during this period, "the Company have sent out EngHsh women, but they beget a sickly generation, ' and as the Dutch well observe those thrive best that come of an European Father and Indian mother." The whole history of the period is summed up by Sir W. Wilson Hunter as follows : " The ancestors of Aurangzib, who swooped down on India from the North, were ruddy men in boots ; the courtiers among whom Aurangzib grew up were pale persons in petti- coats. Bdbar, the founder of the empire, had swum every river which he met with during thirty years' campaigning : the luxurious nobles around the youthful Aurangzib wore skirts made of innumerable folds of finest white muslins, and went to war in palanquins." That the people themselves could suffer biit little from a change of their effete rulers may be seen from the description given by Bernier and other travellers in India of the general insecurity of life and property. " No adequate description can be conveyed," wrote Bernier, " of the sufferings of the people. The cudgel and the whip compel them to incessant labour for the benefit of others ; and, driven to despair by every kind of cruel .treatment, their revolt or their flight is only prevented by the presence of a military force." Again he remarks : " As the ground is seldom tilled otherwise than by compulsion, and as no person is found willing and able to repair the ditches and canals for the conveyance of water, it happens that the whole country is badly cultivated." More sweeping is his statement, " Itis owing to this miserable system of government that most towns in Hindustan are Digitized by Microsoft® 66 JNt)IA ON THE EVE OF CONQUEST. made up of earth, mud, and other wretched materials ; that there is no city or town which, if it be not already ruined and deserted, does not bear evident marks of approaching decay." Another French traveller, Tavernier, who made voyages to India from 1640 to 1667 says : " You may see in India whole provinces like deserts from whence the peasants have fled on account of the oppression of the Governors. Under cover of the fact that they are themselves Muhammadans they prosecute (?) these poor idolaters to the utmost, and if any of the latter become Muhammadans it is in order' not to work any more ; they become soldiers or Fakirs who are people who make a profession of having renounced the world and live upon alms, but in reality they are all great rascals." Dr. Fryer in his letters gives even a more dismal account of the people, who he says are " drudges to their Masters and Prince, who here as in all India is sole Proprietor of lands ; allowing the oc- cupiers no more than a bare subsistence, and not that when a bad year fills not the Publick granaries ; drubbing the poor Hindus till their bones rattle in their skins, they being forced often .to sell their children for rice.'' Even the Brihman priests suffered at the hands of those of their own faith, the Marithds, who, says Dr. Fryer, " have now in limbo several Brachmins, whose flesh they tear with pincers heated red hot, drub them on the shoulders to extreme anguish, though accord- ing to their law it is forbidden to strike a Brachmin." More important still is the account given by Digitized by Microsoft® WEAKNESS OP ORIENTALS. 6/ Bernier of the essential weakness of Oriental troops so soon to be pitted against armies disciplined and held together by English officers. This weakness was not only the very basis of the policy of Dupleix and Clive, it not only rendered the conquests of the English inevitable and certain so long as they could pursue their course free from European rivalry, but further it is the basis, at least the material basis, on which the stability of the British rule in India is to-day firmly established free from all fear of internal attack. " I could never see," wrote Bernier, "these soldiers destitute of order and marching with the irregularity of a herd of animals, without reflecting upon the ease with which 25,000 of our veterans from the army of Flanders . . . would overcome these armies, however numerous." " These immense armies," he continues, " frequently perform great feats, but when thrown into confusion it is impossible to restore them to discipline." In short, the time had come when some foreign power was destined to stand forth and fulfil the dream of Akbar as fashioned by the late Poet Laureate : — " I watch'd my son And those that foUow'd, loosen stone from stone All my fair work ; and from the ruin arose The shriek and curse of trampled millions, even As in times before ; but while I groan'd From out the sunset poured an alien race Who fitted stone to stone again, and Truth, Peace, Love, and Justice came and dwelt therein.'' Digitized by Microsoft® IV. FRENCH EFFORTS TO ESTABLISH AN EMPIRE IN INDIA. For long the Dutch, French, and English trading Companies had been content to restrict themselves to commerce ; their interests not travelling outside the limits of their settlements along the sea coast. Their servants were merchants engaged in trade, drawing but a poor salary. The English president of a factory such as Surat received i!^500 a year, the head merchants ^^40 a year after they had first served for five years as writers on a yearly salary of iJ^io, and then for three years as factors on ;£^20 a year. These merchants were for the most part unnoticed by the Mughal Emperors, though they were sometimes harassed by the native governors who ruled over the territories in the vicinity of their settlements. Neither the English nor Dutch ever dreamed of interfering in the internal politics of the country, or even of acquir- ing land more than sufficient for the defence and pro- tection of their trading stations. The English settlement started at Madras in 1639, on land granted by the ruler at Chandragiri, gradually Digitized by Microsoft® FRENCH IN SOUTH INDIA. 69 extended itself five miles along the coast and one mile inland. North and south of Madras from the river Kistna to Cape Comorin, the land was known as the Karndtik ruled by a native Governor or Nawib, subordinate to a Viceroy or Nizdm of the south, who held his oflfice direct from the Emperor at Delhi. Tanjore and Trichinopoli were under the charge of their native Rdjds, or Chieftains, who were accountable to the Nawib. In 1672 when the last native ruler of Bijapur, Sher Khdn Lodi, found himself in want of money, he borrowed it from the French, and, according to Oriental custom, gave them in return the right to collect the revenues arising from the district around Pondicherry. Here Francis Martin fortified his position, making it secure against the raids of wandering Mardthds who in 1677 swept past Madras and pillaged the interven- ing villages. In 1740 these Marithds to the number of ten thousand came swarming down on the south and slew the Nawdb of the Karnitik. Safdar All, his successor, deemed it wise in the disturbed state of affairs to send his mother and family to the safe keeping of the French at Pondicherry — a precaution also adopted by Chanda SAhib, Rdjd of Trichinopoli, who sent there his wife and property. The next year the Mardthds, on their annual raid, carried off Chanda Sihib to their northern fortress of Satira, leaving one of their own leaders, Mordri Rdo, with fourteen thousand picked troops in charge of his territories. The Viceroy of the south, Nizam-ul-Mulk, drove out Moriri Rao and in place of Safdar Ah' Digitized by Microsoft® •JO FRENCH EFFORTS IN INDIA. who had been assassinated, nominated in 1743, one Anwar-ud-Dm, a soldier of fortune, to the governor- ship of the Karndtik. When England became involved in war with France, on the death of Charles VI. of Austria, respecting the succession of Maria Theresa, the English ships appeared in 1745 off Pondicherry, then held by its new Governor, Joseph Frangois Dupleix. Anwar-ud-Di'n, remembering the services rendered by the French to the former Governor of the Karnitik, and to Chanda Sahib, in protecting their families from the Marathas, at once came to the rescue and threatened vengeance against the English unless their ships departed from before the factory of his friends and allies. The English ships sailed away, and on returning the next year found that the French Admiral La Bourdonnais had arrived from Madagascar with a fleet of nine ships having on board 3,342 men, including 720 blacks. After a fight at long range, lasting from four in the afternoon until seven in the evening, the English admiral deemed it advisable to retire to Ceylon, leaving the French fleet to sail for Madras, then held by some three hundred men, including two hundred so-called soldiers. The chief of Madras, Governor Morse, applied in vain to the native Governor of the Karnatik for protection. Forgetting the Eastern maxim that those seeking favours should not appear before kings or rulers with empty hands, his envoys carried no presents with them, nor did they bring, like the French, any record of set'vices rendered in the past, so they returned to Madras with their mission unaccom- Digitized by Microsoft® CAPTURE OP MADRAS. 7 1 pKshed. On September i8th the French batteries and ships opened fire, and Fort St. George sur- rendered on the 2 1 St after having lost five men. Dupleix had promised the Governor of the Karndtik to hand over to him Madras when taken. Unfortu- nately the French Admiral La Bourdonnais had agreed to restore Madras to the English for the sum of £/^2i,666, payable in Europe in six months, and, as it was afterwards alleged, for a personal present of ;^40,0CKD — a false charge of which he was acquitted by his own Government. The quarrel between the French admiral and French general waged fierce and long, Dupleix striving with all the tenacity, skill, and finesse of which he was so perfect a master, to oppose La Bourdonnais and prevent Madras being restored to the English. In the midst of their disputes the annual monsoon storm burst, on the night of October 13th, and of the admiral's eight ships four foundered, two were virtually destroyed, and two rendered un- seaworthy, while over twelve hundred of his men perished in the seas. The .plans of La Bourdonnais were wrecked. He hastened home to add his name to the long list of those whose fame and life have been sacrificed in their efforts to found their countries' fortunes in the East. He was cast into the Bastille, where he lay for three years in solitary confinement, dying shortly after his release of a broken heart. Dupleix was left with Madras to sell or to destroy. He tore the Treaty of La Bourdonnais in pieces, and sent the English garrison in captivity to Pondicherry, Digitized by Microsoft® "a Digitized by Microsoft® FRENCH SUCCESSES. 73 a few daring spirits escaping to find a refuge in Fort St. David — a weak fortress twelve miles south of Pondicherry — garrisoned by a handful of soldiers, one hundred Europeans, and one hundred sepoys. The Governor of the Karndtik was, however, de- termined that the French should not hold Madras. He advanced at the head of six thousand horse and three thousand foot to compel Dupleix to keep his promise, certain that the host he commanded was sufficient to drive all foes out of his territories. For one hundred years the foreigners had been overlooked by the native rulers. As traders they had come and gone peacefully. If they dared to transgress the will of the Emperor or disobey the dictates of his Viceroy in the south, there were ten thousand native soldiers, foot and horse, for every foreign soldier then in India. The rude awakening was now to come. Four hundred of the French garrison sallied out with two small field-pieces to meet the charge of the native cavalry. Slowly the French force opened out, and seventy of the foremost native troopers fell before the rapid fire of the French guns. The Nawib and his army turned and fled, leaving the French masters of the field without the loss of a single man. The weakness of native troops, when not under the discipline and firm rule of European officers, had been shown by the Portuguese in 1 504, when Pacheco, with a little over one hundred Europeans and a few hundred native soldiers of the King of Cannanore, defeated the Zamorin of Calicut, driving back an army of fifty Digitized by Microsoft® 74 FRENCH EFFORTS IN INDIA. thousand with heavy loss. It was pointed out by Leibnitz to Louis XIV.; it was known to Dupleix ; it was afterward recognised by De Boigne when he counselled Scindia's invincible Marathi infantry never to dare face the Company's troops ; it was seen later by Baron Htigel, who told Ranji't Singh that the Sikhs would inevitably fall back defeated before the English battalions. While the army of the Nawab halted on the banks of the Adyar river, wondering over its defeat, the brave but ill-fated Mens. Paradis marched forth against it from Pondicherry with two hundred and thirty Europeans and seven hundred sepoys. The French were now without guns, yet, rushing through the river, they drove the terror-stricken army before them, the pursuit continuing through the streets of St. Thome. Fresh troops from Madras appeared on the scene and completed the rout. Those left of the Nawab's forces found refuge behind the walls of Arcot, whence they spread the tidings far and wide of the newl)' discovered power of the foreign traders. There was none now to stay the advancing tide of French supremacy. The English entrenched at Fort St. David were but a few hundred in number, sup- ported by some hastily armed peons or servants. There they held out, although the French advanced against them four times, until Rear-xA.dmiral the Hon. E. Boscawen, who had arrived from England with fourteen hundred regular troops joined the fleet of Admiral Griiifin, and came to the rescue with thirty ships, of which thirteen \\cre ships of war. The English were now in turn able to lay siege to Pondi- Digitized by Microsoft® DUPLEIX. 75 cherry; but after an investment, lasting from Sep- tember 6th to October 17th, during which they lost one thousand and sixty-five men, and the French but two hundred Europeans and fifty natives, the mon- soon storm burst and the fleet had to sail away, leaving Pondicherry safe in the hands of the French. By the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle peace was restored, and, to the mortification of Dupleix, Madras was given back to the English in exchange for Cape St. Breton. In 1748 the Viceroy of the south died, leaving the succession to his son Nasi'r Jang — a succession disputed by Muzaffar Jang, a grandson of Nizam-ul-Mulk, Dupleix again played his game with consummate skill. Throwing in his lot with Muzafiar Jang, who had been joined by the Marithds and Chanda Sahib, freed from his imprisonment at Sdtdra, the combined army advanced against Anwar-ud-Din, Governor of the Karnitik. At Ambur Anwar-ud-Di'n was shot through the head by a stray bullet, his army scattered, his son, Muhammad Alt', escaping to Trichinopoli to seek the protection of the English. Chanda Sahib was im- mediately proclaimed at Arcot as Governor of the Karndtik, and the French were given as a reward for their aid eighty-one villages near Pondicherry. Dupleix had succeeded at length in gaining political influence over the internal affairs of the south, stand- ing forth as the friend and ally of the Viceroy, Muzaffar Jang, and the Nawdb Chanda Sahib. The English, on the other hand, had cast in their lot with the two defeated candidates, Nasi'r Jang and Mu- Digitized by Microsoft® •j6 FRENCH EFFORTS /.V INDIA. hammad All. Whichever side, French or EngHsh, would now succeed in successfully supporting their rival claimants might ultimately hope to reign supreme over the whole political affairs of the south of India. The French quickly followed up their success by capturing, in the night-time, with a loss of but twenty men, the fortress of Gingi, a stronghold of Nasi'r Jang, always held to be impregnable — a success which enabled them to induce most of the native troops to forsake the cause of Nasi'r Jang, who soon afterwards was shot through the heart by one of his own allies. Muzaffar Jang and Chanda Sahib were at once, amid a scene of Oriental pomp, respectively installed Vice- roy of the South, and Governor of the Karnatik, Dupleix receiving in return the title of Commander of Seven Hundred Horse and the right to coin money current all over the south. The French were now dictators over the affairs of the Karndtik, ruling in the name of Chanda Sahib. As the new Viceroy Muzaffar Jang was being escorted by Mons. Bussy and three hundred French soldiers to his capital at Aurangdbad he was attacked by some opposing fiative forces and slain, pierced by a javelin in the forehead. The position was at once retrieved by Bussy. Saldbat Jang, a son of Nizdm-ul-Miilk, was proclaimed Viceroy, Bussy re- maining with his troops at Aurangabdd to support the new administration. The policy of Dupleix had succeeded beyond expectation ; the English were left without allies, their only friend, Muhammad Ali, aided by six hundred Englishmen, was closely besieged at Tri- Digitized by Microsoft® POSITION HOPELESS. 77 chinopoli by nine hundred Frenchmen and the army of Chanda Sdhib. The position seemed hopeless. There was, however, one Englishman forthcoming who, by his reckless daring, dogged tenacity, and stubborn perseverance, not only sjc- ceeded in thwarting the diplomatic ingenuity by which Dupleix had made the French influence supreme in the native states but in establishing, for the first time, the prestige of the English in India. This man was the ill-fated Robert Clive. Digitized by Microsoft® V. ROBERT CLIVE. Clive was born on the 29th of September, 1725, near Market Drayton in Shropshire. Wayward and reckless as a schoolboy, he early showed signs of those talents which he afterwards so conspicuously exercised. Legend loves to tell how he climbed the high steeple of Market Drayton, and there, to terrify the townspeople, seated himself on the edge of a projecting stone. The story is also well known how he levied blackmail on the shopkeepers, threatening to break their windows unless they submitted to his demands and those of his schoolfellows. In the year 1744 he landed at Madras as a writer in the service of the East India Company. There he listened in gloomy silence to the empty talk of his brother writers whose lives were wasted in idle folly and reckless dissipation. In bitter grief he wrote home, " I have not enjoyed one happy day since I left my native land." At length his proud spirit, finding no relief from its surging thoughts, sought refuge from inaction in death. The pistol, well loaded and primed, was twice pointed at his 78 Digitized by Microsoft® CLIVE IN MADRAS. 79 head, twice it missed fire ; a moment afterwards a friend entered the room, and seeing Chve sitting ROBERT, LORD CLIVE. {From Malcolm's " Life ofClive.") morose and silent, raised the pistol and discharged it from the window at the first touch of the trigger. From that day Clive woke to life. He was well Digitized by Microsoft® 8o ROBERT CLIVR. assured in his own mind that he had been spared for some great purpose, to take some great part in the history of his people — a part he afterwards played with a recklessness which can only be accounted for on the supposition that he believed he bore a charmed life. In Malcolm's " Life of Clive " it is told how, during a duel with an officer whom he had accused of cheating at cards, he missed his antagonist, who thereupon advanced, and holding his pistol to Clive's head threatened to fire unless an apology was at once made. " Fire and be d d," said Clive ; " I said you cheated, and I say so still." During the siege of Pondicherry, having obtained a temporary commission as ensign, he greatly distin- guished himself, but on the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had to return to the uncongenial employment of measuring cloth and checking office accounts. A welcome relief soon came. The native ruler of Tanjore, Raja S^huji', being deposed, appealed to the English to reinstate him. As a reward for this service he offered to bear all the expenses of the war and on reinstatement to surrender to the Company the fort and lands around Devikota. The English failed in their efforts to restore Sahuji ; still, they determined to have their promised reward. Major Lawrence, with six ships, fifteen hundred native troops and eight hundred Europeans, sailed up the Coleroon and having breached the fort directed Clive, who had again obtained a temporary commission as lieutenant, to advance with the native troops and thirty-four Europeans across a deep rivulet to storm the breach and capture the fort. Clive charged at the head of Digitized by Microsoft® TRICHINOPOLI. 8 1 his. troops; the sepoys held back, and of the Europeans twenty-six were cut to pieces by the enemy's horse- men. Clive, however, escaped, having, in the words of Lawrence, behaved with " a cool courage and a presence of mind which never left him in the greatest danger. Born a soldier, for without a military education of any sort or much conversing with any of the profession, from his judgment and good sense, he led an army like an experienced officer and brave soldier." The fort was afterwards taken and with the sur- rounding lands, which brought in a revenue of 36,000 rupees, given over to the Company. Clive was next directed to proceed from Madras with one hundred English and fifty sepoys, to the relief of the force at Trichinopoli where Muhammad All, was hemmed in by the French and the army of Chanda Sihib. For this duty Clive was nominated by the Governor, Mr. Saunders, the order in Council stating, " We will give him (Mr. Robert Clive) a brevet to entitle him to the rank of Captain, as he was an officer at the siege of Pondicherry and almost the whole time of the war distinguished himself on many occasions, it is conceived that this officer may be of some service." The genius of Clive shone ever brightest in times of extreme danger and in situations where others might well deem all was lost, when by a clear and quick perception of all surrounding facts he rapidly evolved plans for safety or victory which his calm courage and inflexible determination sooner or later enabled him to carry into execution. He saw that the 7 Digitized by Microsoft® 8 3 >, Digitized by Microsoft® DEFB.NC& OP A a COT. §3 Situation at Trichinopoli was hopeless, but he noticed that Chanda Sdhib, in over-eagerness to crush the Enghsh, had summoned all the troops from the capital at Arcot, leaving its weak fortifications de- fended by only i,ioo sepoys. Clive at once deter- mined to make a bold dash for the capture of Arcot, intending to hold it until Chanda Sdhib and the French should be compelled to come to its rescue and raise the siege of Trichinopoli. Hurrying back to Madras, he persuaded the Governor to place at his disposal all the available troops, two hundred English and three hundred sepoys, with whom and three small guns he set out on his heroic enter- prise. At Arcot, sixty-nine miles from Madras, consterna- tion reigned. Travellers brought in word that Clive and the English soldiers were advancing ; that they had been seen marching unconcerned through a fearful storm of thunder, rain, and lightning. On receipt of the news the garrison fled, leaving the fort to Clive and his small band of Europeans and sepoys. For fifty days Clive held out against the allied troops sent against him. He repelled assault after assault ; he led charges to drive the enemy from their advanced entrenchments; he even marched out to protect some new guns coming to his aid from Madras. The sepoys, in this memorable de- fence of the fort of Arcot, stood side by side with the English soldiers to whom they gave their scanty portion of boiled rice, saying that they could live on the water in which it had been boiled. The brilliant stratagem conceived by the master- Digitized by Microsoft® 84 ROBERT CLIVB. mind of Clive succeeded : Chanda Sahib and his French allies were obliged to send troops to aid in the siege of Arcot, thereby weakening the forces before Trichinopoli and infusing fresh courage into Muhammad All and his dispirited supporters. The fort was breached, by aid -of the newly arrived troops, and Clive was left with but eighty Europeans and one hundred and thirty sepoys to defend the dis- mantled walls one mile in circumference. On November 14th the enemy, intoxicated with bhang and drunk with the fury of their religious fanaticism, advanced in four divisions ; two divisions headed by elephants with iron plates on their fore- heads to break in the gates, two divisions to mount the breaches. Clive and his handful of heroes fought for their lives along the crumbling walls. From post to post they hurried, driving back the swarming foe, Clive, with his own hands working the guns, at one shot clearing seventy men off a raft on which they strove to cross the moat. After an hour's fight the besiegers were driven back, having lost four hundred killed and wounded in their attack, while of the defenders only four Europeans and two sepoys fell. Clive was reinforced from Fort St. David with two hundred Europeans and seven hundred sepoys, and at once marched out from behind his ramparts, captured the fort of Timeri, joined a band of one thousand Marithas under Mordri Rao, and fought his first decisive battle against the French and their allies, beating a force double his own in numbers at Arni, seventeen miles south of Arcot. He then drove the French from Conjeveram, reinforced Arcot, and Digitized by Microsoft® kAveripAk. 85 returned victorious to Fort St. David to receive the congratulations of the Governor and Council. The French and their allies followed, raiding the country up to St. Thomas' Mount, but when Clive sallied forth against them from Madras at the head of 380 Europeans and 1,000 sepoys, with three field- pieces, they retreated to Kaveripak, a village lying ten miles east of Arcot. There they concealed their artillery and cavalry in a dense grove of mango-trees by the side of the main road, along which they knew Clive must advance, and in a deep channel on the other side they hid away their infantry. As Clive and his troops marched leisurely down the road, in easy confidence, they were suddenly met by a fire from a battery of nine guns, which swept their ranks at not more than 250 yards' distance. Clive, undoubtedly, over and over again led his troops with reckless carelessness into positions such as this, from which nothing but his own genius, which seemed to draw inspiration from the very presence of danger, could have ever extricated them. It is easy to cavil at his conduct and tell the tale of disaster that might have followed if he had failed ; but fail he never did, for with a charmed life he faced his enemies amid the smoke and hurry of battle with the same cool determination with which he afterwards faced his opponents in the Council Chamber. It was late in the afternoon when Clive and his troops marched into the midst of their enemies at Kdveripdk, and little time remained for action. With a small body of infantry and two guns he held back Digitized by Microsoft® 86 ROBERT CLIVE. the enemy's cavalry, directing the rest of his troops to seek shelter from the guns in the water-channel by the roadside, and thence keep up a fire on the French infantry. For two hours the artillery fire continued, the cavalry repeatedly charging Clive's guns and bag- gage. At length it was discovered that the French had neglected to defend the back of the grove where their guns were posted. Clive secretly despatched two hundred Europeans and four hundred sepoys to within thirty yards of the French battery, whence they poured in a volley among the gunners, who fled, leaving their guns behind them. The victory, though decisive, was dearly won ; forty of Clive's European troops and thirty sepoys lay dead. The newly won prestige of the French in the south had, however, been shattered. Clive, before he returned to Madras razed to the ground a city Dupleix had founded and called after his own name, overturning the triumphal column therein erected, on which was emblazoned in many lang;jages a full record of the French victories. From Trichinopoli the French, heedless of the remonstrances of Dupleix, retreated to the neigh- bouring island of Sn'rangam, leaving Chanda Sahib to his fate. To cut off their retreat and to prevent reinforcements reaching them, Clive took up a posi- tion in the village of Samiiveram, eleven miles north of the island, where now the French were practically isolated. On the night of April 14, 1752, Clive, wearied from a long day's operations he had carried out in order Digitized by Microsoft® NIGHT ATTACK ON CLIVE. 8/ to prevent a relieving force from Pondicherry break- ing through the English and joining the French, lay dov^rn to sleep in a rest-house near the entrance gateway of the village temple. The camp was quiet : the English soldiers, Marathi troopers, and allied sepoys were sleeping uneasily in and near the temple, while close at hand the sentinels, but half awake, paced to and fro. In the dead of night seven hundred of the enemy's sepoys and eighty Euro- peans stole silently towards the camp, guided by a band of deserters from the English. The drowsy inquiries of the sentinels were answered by whispers that the force was a relief sent from Lawrence. Silently making their way to the front of the temple gate, the enemy first gave notice of their presence by pouring volley after volley amid the sleeping soldiers. In an instant the camp awoke in startled surprise. Moans from the dying and confused cries from the awakened soldiers were mingled with the clatter of arms and heavy boom of the enemy's muskets. Through the shed where Clive lay sleeping, the bullets flew ; a soldier by his side was shot dead, and a box at the foot of his cot was shattered to fragments. Deeming that the firing close at hand came from his own troops, blindly repelling some imaginary attack, Clive rushed forward and beat down the guns with his hands, commanding the firing to cease. He was attacked by six Frenchmen, seriously wounded, and summoned to surrender. Wounded and faint though he was, he grasped the situation in a moment. Raising himself, he cried out to the French soldiers that they were surrounded, and Digitized by Microsoft® 88 ROBERT CLIVE. ■ ordered them to surrender. His tone and manner carried instant conviction ; the six Frenchmen in the confusion gave up their arms. The native troops broke away to fly from the vengeance of the fierce Marathas, who were afterwards heard to declare that not a single sepoy who entered the camp that night escaped with his life. The remaining French soldiers with the European deserters sought refuge in the temple where, as it was found impossible to dislodge them, they were shut in till dawn. In the morning the temple was stormed, and after the French had lost twelve men, Clive, weak and faint from his wound, was led to the temple gate by two sergeants who stood by his side supporting him. As he stood swaying to and fro offering terms one of the deserters fired ; the shot missed Clive, slaying . the two ser- geants who were standing slightly in front. Horrified by the treacherous act the French threw down their arms and capitulated. Shortly after the entire French troops under Captain Law surrendered to Lawrence, and the re- lieving force under d'Auteuil to Clive, who, now completely broken down by the arduous campaign, returned home in 1753. Dupleix remained still striving to re-establish the French influence with the native rulers of the south. But the French Company realised not the value of his acquisitions, and knew not the meaning of his policy. Traders they were, and their profits were now falling fast. Acquisition of territory or bearing of Eastern titles by their Governors in the East had for them no interest. In vain Dupleix pleaded for time ; in vain, Digitized by Microsoft® DUPLEIX AND CLIVE. 89 in order to carry out his designs, he expended the wealth he had accumulated by private trade or gained from foreign princes ; he was ignominiously recalled, and his successor Godeheu, who arrived in 1754, re- signed the exclusive right over the rich and fertile Northern Circdrs which Dupleix had succeeded in gaining for the French, and gave up all claim to the sounding titles so eagerly sought after by his prede- cessor. Insulted and laughed at at home as an impostor when he pressed his claims for the return of the money he had spent in the service of his country, Dupleix sank deeper and deeper into poverty and dejection, until at length, three days before his death, he wrote in the bitterness of despair, " My services are treated as fables, my demand is denounced as ridiculous ; I am treated as the vilest of mankind ; I am in the most deplorable indigence." Clive, on the other hand, had been feasted and toasted by the Court of Directors, and presented with a diamond-hilted sword, " as a token of their esteem and of their sense of his singular services," which he refused to receive until his old friend and commander. Major Lawrence, was also likewise honoured. Clive soon grew tired of an inactive life in England. The excitement of a contested election led to nothing but loss of time, patience, and money, so in 1755 he sailed again for India, having accepted a commission of lieutenant-colonel in the British Army, the ap- pointment of Governor of Fort St. David and the succession to the Governorship of Madras. He reached Fort St. David on the 20th of June, 1756, Digitized by Microsoft® go ROBERT CLIl'E. the day of the dire tragedy of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Siraj-ud-Dauld, Viceroy of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, had long watched, with growing distrust and haughty anger, the dominant position gradually acquired by the English and French traders in his dominions. Forts had been built, fortifications raised, refuge given to those flying from his wrath or cupidity, while round Calcutta the famed Marathd ditch had been laboriously dug, though never completed, to keep out the Mardthas, who levied chauth from all villages in reach of their flying cohorts. Not satisfied with the assurances given him by the Governor of Calcutta that the new fortifications had not been' raised against the native powers, but in view of the coming war between France and England, Siraj-ud-Dauld first captured the English factory at KasimbazAr, and then marched for Calcutta at the head of his forces, followed by the robber-bands in the neighbourhood to the number of some forty thousand, all eager to share in the sack of the rich city of the English traders. Of riches there were but little at Calcutta, and of defences virtually none. There were obsolete shells and fuses, dismantled guns, walls too weak to support cannon, and warehouses built in the line of fire to the south. The garrison consisted of one hundred and eight)- men, of whom only one-third were Europeans. Gallant!)- the handful of English- men set to work to erect outlying batteries, and dig trenches, they were even reduced to seek ammunition and help from the French and Dutch factories — an aid, however, withheld. The women and children Digitized by Microsoft® CAPTURE OF CALCUTTA. 9I took refuge in the ships lying in the river, two Members of Council, officers of militia earning un- dying infamy, and subsequent dismissal for desertion, by volunteering to accompany the fugitives and re- fusing to return even when taunted for their cowardice. The Commandant, Captain Minchin, likewise fled, accompanied by the Governor, Mr. Drake, who un- luckily escaped the parting shots fired after him by his comrades, with whom he lacked courage to re- main as they slowly turned to meet the foe. Well might it be imagined that history could never hand down a tale of fouler shame and infamy. So might the garrison have thought were it not for the fact that as they turned, with despair in their hearts, to meet their swarming foes, they saw the last of the ships sail out of sight. Captain Young of the Dodolay finding courage sufficient to declare that it would be dangerous to wait near or even to send a boat to take off his countrymen. Prayed to return and bear away the wounded, he refused ; prayed to send a boat with ammunition, for that in the fort was all but exhausted, he refused ; prayed to throw a cable to the Prince George, which had stranded in endeavouring to return, he refused, saying he needed all he had for the safety of his own ship. For five days the garrison, headed by the famed civilian, Mr. Holwell, held out until out of one hundred and seventy men fifty were wounded and twenty-five killed. At length Holwell had to sur- render, delivering up his sword to Sirdj-ud-Daula on a promise that no harm should befall his followers. To those who have not lived in the burning plains Digitized by Microsoft® 12 ROBERT CLIVE. of India during the long months, when the brazen rays of the sun pass away towards the close of evening, and the blasts of the hot winds cease, only to be succeeded by the dead, stifling heat when even the birds fall to the ground gasping with open beaks for breath, no pen can ever convey an idea of the suffer- ings of those who died in agony on that night of the 20th of June, when Calcutta was surrendered to SirAj-ud-Daula. As the night approached the prisoners, one hundred and forty-six in number, all wearied and many wounded, were gathered together in the fort. In the guard-room a space of eighteen feet square had been walled in to form a prison cell. It had but two small iron-barred windows, opening into a low verandah. Into this cell, known to history as " The Black Hole of Calcutta," the prisoners were driven at the point of the bayonet. Holwell has told the story of that night, which, once read, ever haunts the memory, like the wild imaginings of a fevered nightmare, with vivid pictures of unutterable woes and fearful sufferings. The first words of Holwell, advising the struggling crowd to make more room by removing their gar- ments, were drowned by the cries of the weak and moans of the wounded. After some time the com- mand to sit down was obeyed, but many had no strength to rise again, and were soon trampled to death. With frantic shrieks the living cried for air ; with frenzied struggles they fought for the water their guards held out, the few drops that reached their parched lips but increasing their raging thirst. The Digitized by Microsoft® SLACK HOLE OP CALCUTTA. 93 guards came close with lanterns to watch the scene, but no words of foul abuse could rouse them to shoot their victims, nor promises of reward induce them to unbar the door, or even remove the dying. The narrative ends before the full tale of suffering was complete, for the narrator, Mr. Holwell, tells nothing after 2 a.m., when he wrote, " I found a stupor corning on apace, and laid myself down by that gallant old man, the Rev. Mr. Jervas Bellamy, who lay dead with his son the Lieutenant hand in hand." In the morning twenty-three survivors were carried out of the " Black Hole," amongst them one woman, Mrs. Carey, whose husband had perished. From out the whole dark history there comes but one ray of consolation, for, from the evidence collected by Dr. Busteed in his " Echoes from Old Calcutta," it is clear that Mrs. Carey was spared the ignominous fate it was long believed she suffered, as narrated by Hol- well, Orme, Macaulay, and other historians. It seems now certain that she was released and lived in honour, down to the year 1801, among- her own people. It is possible that Sirij-ud-Dauld may have known nothing of the events that transpired during the night, but when details of the slaughter were brought to him in the morning he displayed neither emotion nor regret, venting his rage at finding but £^,000 in the Treasury by ordering that Holwell and the European survivors should at once quit Calcutta under pain of having their noses and ears cut off. On news of the disaster reaching Madras Clive was directed to hasten with all available troops to Bengal, accompanied by the English fleet under Admiral Digitized by Microsoft® §4 ROBERT CLIVM. Watson. It was not until the end of the year that the ships sailed up the Hugh and landed Clive and his troops at Maiipur. After a weary march of fifteen hours over swampy land the force arrived late at night within one mile and a half of the fort of Baj-baj, twelve miles from Calcutta, where, weary and tired, they lay down to rest in the bed of a dried-up lake, intending to attack the fort in the morning. They were here surrounded by the enemy, who, as soon as all were sleeping in the camp, opened fire and seized the guns, which had been left unpro- tected and unguarded. Clive had again, with careless indifference, marched straight into the midst of the enemy, but again his presence of mind saved him. Advancing his soldiers the guns were recovered, the foe driven off with heavy slaughter, and in his own words, " the skirmish in all lasted about half an hour, in which time ... 9 private men were killed and 8 wounded." In the meantime the guns from Admiral Watson's fleet breached the fort, and a body of sailors landed to co-operate with Clive. One of the sailors, named Strahan, being intoxicated, lost his way, and stumbled about until he reached the fort, which he entered through one of the breaches. Finding him- self alone in the midst of the garrison he fired his pistol, and cut right and left with his cutlass, crying lustily that he had captured the fort. The sepoys, deeming they had been surprised, seized their arms, fired random shots in all directions, and then fled. The English troops, hearing the strange commotion, came to the rescue and took possession of the fort. So the night of strange accidents closed, and, on Digitized by Microsoft® CLIVE AT CALCUTTA. $5 Strahan being ordered up for punishment in the morning, he indignantly swore that if he was flogged, he would never again so long as he lived, take another fort by himself The fort at Hugh' was captured by Captain Eyre Coote with a loss of two Europeans and ten sepoys, after which the avenging force raided the surroundkig country, returning to Calcutta with a booty of some ;£■ 1 50,000. Sirdj-ud-Daula, raging at the insult offered to his power, at once collected together troops to the number of 40,000, and marched again towards Calcutta, his course being marked by the smoke and flames from the villages his followers burned and plundered. Clive collected together all his troops — 650 European soldiers, 600 sailors from Watson's fleet, 14 field- pieces, with 1 50 European artillery, and 800 sepoys — and started on February 4th, at three o'clock in the morning to drive Siraj-ud-DauM's immense army from before Calcutta. In a dense fog he marched on, his troops pausing now and then to fire, they knew not where, to their right and left. A rocket from the enemy's outposts exploded the ammunition in the cartouche-box of one of Clive's sepoys, and was followed by explosions from the ammunition of other sepoys close by. Still they pressed on, the guns in the rear mowing down their own troops in front, none recognising friend or foe in the dense mist. The cavalry of Siraj-ud-Daula, riding close up to Clive's troops, broke back when met by a volley fired at random in the direction of the charging horses. In the early morning, on the fog rising, Clive retired Digitized by Microsoft® 96 ROBERT CLIVE. and reached Calcutta towards noon, having lost two field-pieces, twenty Europeans, and one hundred sepoj's in his daring assault. The enemy was thoroughly cowed. Siraj-ud-Dauli withdrew his troops and sued for peace, for not only did he fear the next move of Clive, but from the north came the dreaded news that the Afghans, under Ahmad Shah Durani, had invaded the land and captured the imperial city of Delhi. Clive was nothing loth to enter into a truce. War had been declared between Great Britain and France, and he was anxious to obtain the aid and consent of Sirij-ud-DaulA to an attack on the French settlement at Chandranagar. A treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, against all common foes, was accordingly entered into. Sirij-ud-Dauld agreed to give up all the factories and property he had taken. The Company was granted permission to fortify Calcutta, to coin money at their own mint, and to carry their merchandise through native territory without payment of tolls. The treaty signed,, the Viceroy wavered in his promise to aid the English in their attack on the French settlement. The fame of the troops of Bussy had reached his ears, and it was whispered abroad that a great French army was advancing from Haidardbad to drive the English out of India. Admiral Watson was, however, not to be thus trifled with. He at once demanded that Siraj-ud- Dauli should keep his word, else, as he wrote, " I will kindle such a flame in your country as all the water of the Ganges shall not be able to extinguish. Digitized by Microsoft® FRENCH LOSSES. 97 Farewell ; remember that he who promises you this never yet broke his word with you or with any man whatsoever." With or without the consent or aid of the Viceroy it was at length decided that Chandranagar should be attacked before Bussy could come to the rescue. At Chandranagar the French had but a feeble garrison of 146 Europeans and 360 sepoys, supple- mented by 300 civilians and sailors hastily armed. Against these Admiral Watson brought up his fleet — T/ie Kent, of 64 guns ; The Tiger, of 60 guns ; and The Salisbury, of 50 guns — while Clive advanced by land with 700 Europeans, 1,500 sepoys and artillery. Defence was not long possible ; treachery showed Watson a safe passage for his ships, the bastions were swept of their defenders, 100 of the garrison were slain, and on the 23rd of March, 1757, the fort surrendered. This success of the English so roused the fear and anger of Sirij-ud-Dauli, that he wrote to Bussy, praying him to march from the Deccan to his aid. The letters fell into the hands of Clive, who summed up the situation by declaring " the Nawdb is a villair. and cannot be trusted ; he must be overset or we must fall." Mi'r Jafar, the Commander of Sirij-ud-Daula's force, was bribed with the promise of being made Viceroy if he could succeed in bringing over his troops to the side of the English and aid in deposing Sirdj-ud-Daula. The contemplated treachery of Mir Jafar was known to many, but the secret was well kept, Amin- 8 Digitized by Microsoft® 98 ROBERT CLIVE. chand, a wealthy Hindu banker, being the chief agent in carrying out the negotiations. At the last moment Clive found his carefully laid plans likely to fail, for Aminchand suddenly declared that he would reveal the plot to Siraj-ud-Daula unless he received a promise that his share of the spoil should be 5 per cent, on all the treasures at Murshiddbad, or a sum of 30 lakhs of rupees, more than ^^300,000. Clive bought the silence of Aminchand, promising to give him all he desired, and to sign a deed to that effect. To Watts, Resident at the Viceroy's Court, and chief agent in the revolution, Clive wrote : "Omichund is the greatest villain upon earth . . . to counter-plot the scoundrel and at the same time to give him no room to suspect our intentions enclosed you will receive two forms of agreement, the one real to be strictly kept by us, the other fictitious." The real treaty, signed by all the allies, was on white paper, the fictitious treaty was on red paper, similarly signed, with the exception of the signature of Admiral Watson, which was forged when he bluntly refused to have anything to do with the intrigue. Clive, when afterwards asked before the House of Commons to defend his action, haughtily replied that he thought " it warrantable in such a case, and would do it again one hundred times." The announcement of the forgery was, after the battle, made by Clive in the following words : " Omichund, the red paper is a trick ; you are to have nothing." In after years, when the Duke of Wellington traced out on the field of Plassey the lines on which was fought the first great battle, establishing the Digitized by Microsoft® PLASSEY. 99 supremacy of the English in India, his admiration for the genius of Clive must have been mingled with feelings of sorrow that the fame of the great General would ever be tarnished by that one act of calculated deceit. At Plassey Clive stood with nine small guns and a band of 3,000 men, of whom 2,100 were native troops, surrounded by 35,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry of fierce and warlike Pathdns, 53 pieces of artillery, and a body of Frenchmen forty to fifty in number. Clive paused long before venturing to attack, for he knew that if Mi'r Jafar again turned traitor and joined his forces to those of the Viceroy none among the British troops would escape to tell the tale. The danger of the situation is seen from the fact that Clive for the first time called together a council of his officers, to whom he proposed the question, " Whether, in our present position, without assistance, and on our own bottom, it would be prudent to attack, or whether we should wait till joined by some native power ? " Clive's own name heads the list of those who voted for no further advance. Eyre Coote's name heads the list of those who voted for immediate attack. When the Council broke up Clive wandered apart by him- self, and after some hours spent in solitary meditation beneath the shade of the trees by the river bank he returned to tell his officers to prepare their men to cross the river on the following morning, for he had determined to risk all in one great effort to establish the supremacy of the English in India. On the 23rd of June, 1757, as the first rays of the hot morning Digitized by Microsoft® lOO ROBERT CUVE. sun blazed across the wide field of Plassey, Clive ascended to the roof of a small hunting hut in which he had lain without sleep during the night. To his right were the troops of the wavering traitor, Mi'r Jafar, now biding his time to cast in his lot with the side likely to win. Should Clive be defeated, Mi'r Jafar's cavalry were ready to sweep down on his rear and pillage his baggage ; should the hosts of Siraj- ud-Dauli fall back, the troops of his trusted Com- mander-in-Chief would range themselves beside those of Clive. From where stood the camp of Mi'r Jafar, 38,000 of the enemy, with the French and their guns in the centre, stretched in a semicircle round the soldiers of Clive, still sleeping quietly in a large mango grove guarded by a ditch and strong mud banks. As Clive watched the scene in front of him the first shot from the French guns woke the English and laid low two of their number. Soon the heavy artillery of the enemy was in full play, answered back by Clive's six light guns. Eagerly the serried masses of SirAj-ud-Dauli pressed forward to drive the handful of English into the deep BhAgi'rathi, but Clive's soldiers lay safe behind the shelter of the mud banks, and the shells and shot sang harmlessly over- head amid the branches of the mango-trees. By noon the rain came down in torrents, and the enemy's ammunition, soaked through and through, was ren- dered useless, so that their fire gradually slackened, while Clive's guns and ammunition had been covered up and kept dry. Mi'r Madan, chief of the native cavalry, loved and trusted by Siraj-ud-Daula, determined in one brave Digitized by Microsoft® PLASSEY. lOI effort to silence the English gunners, but as he charged at the head of his cavalry he fell dead before the flying grape-shot. With frantic hajste Sirdj-ud- Daula gave orders for the troops to fall back. He called Mir Jafar to his side, told him; of his loss, and casting his turban at the traitor's! feet, prayed him to fight against the foreign foe. Ml'r Jafar, vow- ing that he would bring up. his troops and defend his chief, hastened away to send word to Clive to advance and win the day. The English charged from their entrenchments, taking care to fire now and then on the treacherous troops of Mir Jafar to make them keep their distance. By five o'clock the whole army of Sirdj-ud-DauM was in full retreat, the brave band of Frenchmen in the centre standing firm until Clive drove them from their position and captured their guns. The Viceroy fled, leaving behind his wealth, baggage, cattle, elephants, and artillery, and five hundred of his troops dead and wounded on the field. After the battle of Plassey, in which the English lost seven Europeans and sixteen sepoys, Mi'r Jafar presented himself to receive the reward of his treachery. As the English soldiers presented amis he started back in alarm at the rattle of the muskets, but his coward heart took courage when Clive advanced and saluted him as Viceroy of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. At Murshidibad, the capital of the Viceroy, the rich merchants and bankers came forward and bowed down in lowly supplication before their conquerors, praying that their city might be spared the horrors Digitized by Microsoft® r02 ROBERT CLIVE. of rapine and plunder. To the right and left of Clive was stored up the long-accumulated wealth of the richest provinces of India. In the treasure-house of Sirdj-ud-Daula gold and silver were heaped high. The custodians came forward and crowned Clive's head with jewels. In after years, when he was charged before the House of Commons with over-greed, he boldly exclaimed, " By God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation ! " For the Company he claimed the right to hold all the lands south of Calcutta, 882 square miles, on payment of the usual rent. He claimed a sum of 10,000,000 rupees as compensation for previous losses and for the expenses of the campaign. For those who had suffered during the capture of Calcutta by Siraj-ud-DaulA he claimed 8,000,000 rupees. For the army 2,500,000 rupees, for the navy 2,500,000 rupees, and other large sums for the Governor and Select Committee at Calcutta. For himself he demanded besides 280,000 rupees as Member of the Committee, 200,000 rupees as Commander-in-Chief, and 1,600,000 rupees as a private donation — in all, 2,080,000 rupees. Be it remembered that at the time when these awards were made the rupee was worth two shillings and sixpence. Mi'r Jafar, who had put Sirij-ud-Dauli cruelly to death, was left to raise these sums from his subjects as best he could. The result was a rebellion, to quell which Clive was called on for aid, and in return received further rights for the Company. It was not lor. J before the n.,,v Viceroy had again to plead for Digitized by Microsoft® DUTCH AND FRENCH. IO3 the assistance of the Company's troops in repelling a threatened invasion of his dominions by the son of the Emperor of Delhi and the Nawib Wazi'r of Oudh. In return Clive was granted a right to retain in his own hands the rent of the lands south of Calcutta which, according to the agreement after Plassey, had been annually paid by the English to the Viceroy. By this agreement Clive virtually became landlord to the East India Company. The amount, some ;£^30,000 yearly, was paid to him from 1765 until his death in 1774, when the right to collect and keep the rent passed to the Company. The supremacy of the Company firmly established in Bengal, the richest province in India, needed but to be maintained and supported by the care- ful husbanding of the resources and revenues of the newly-acquired lands, so that it might finally grow powerful enough to triumph over all rivals. The Dutch still had their settlement at Chinsurah, twenty miles above Calcutta, and in the Deccan the French under Bussy supported the Nizam, or Viceroy, Salibat Jang, the revenues of the " Northern Circars," or districts of Ganjdm, Vizagapatam, Godavari, and Kistnd, some seventeen thousand square miles in extent, having been assigned to them for the main- tenance of their troops. On Bussy being summoned south for the purpose of joining in a French attack on Madras, Clive entered into an alliance with the local Raja of Vizianagram, and sent a force under Colonel Forde, to the Northern Circdrs. Masulipatam fell, position after position was speedily captured, and the French Digitized by Microsoft® I04 ROBERT CLIVE. driven out of the Northern Circars and deprived of their main source of revenue. The Dutch at Chinsurah, finding Clive's forces weakened by the absence of Forde and his troops, demanded that their ships should be allowed to pass Calcutta without being searched and placed under t"ie charge of an English pilot as was the custom, and that the trade in saltpetre, then kept exclusively in the hands of the English Company, should be thrown open. Receiving no satisfactory reply to their demands, the Dutch openly declared war by capturing some English ships in the river. Clive at once collected together a body of armed volunteers, hastily recalled Forde -from the Northern Circirs, while Admiral Cornish, with three men-of-war, sailed up the river, and destroyed six of the Dutch ships, the last of the squadron being captured at the mouth of the river. As soon as Colonel Forde reached Calcutta he marched out with 320 Europeans, 800 sepoys, and 50 European volunteers. At Biderra, near Chinsurah, he found himself opposed by a Dutch force of 700 Europeans and 800 Malays. Seeing the force assembled against him he wrote to Clive for advice. Clive, who was playing whist, sent back a hurried message in pencil, " Dear Forde, fight them immediately, I will send you the order in Council to- morrow.'' Forde fought on November 25, 1759, only 50 Dutch and 250 Malays escaped, and the struggle by the Dutch for supremacy in India was ended. The French were now alone left to struggle for a short time longer against the growing power of the English, Digitized by Microsoft® LALLY. 105 Fort St. David had fallen before Count Lally, Baron de Tollendal. Madras held out, though closely invested by the French troops from December, 1758, to February, 1759. Enraged at the long resistance, out of patience with the incompetence and ignorance of his officers, the overbearing and haughty spirit of Lally at length broke forth. He threatened to har- ness the members of the Council at Pondicherry to his waggons when they delayed in sending him sup- plies or money. Knowing nothing of the country, he rejected with contempt the advice, founded on long experience, of Bussy, estranging all by his hot temper and hasty measures. Ignorant of the ways of the people of India, and caring nothing for their offended pride, he drove the high caste merchants and Brdhmans to carry on menial works in his camp. By February, 1759, his supplies had almost failed, his native troops were fast deserting, and his Euro- pean soldiers making overtures to join the enemy, so when the English ileet under Admiral Pocock appeared in sight he was reluctantly obliged to raise the siege of Madras, leave behind him his sick and wounded, his artillery and ammunition, and retire to Pondicherry, where the news of his failure was received with unconcealed joy. In September of the same year the French Admiral Comte d'Achd, with eleven ships of the line, after two hours' cannonade with the English fleet of nine ships under Admiral Pocock, finally sailed away from the coast, leaving Lally to his fate, an abandonment in the words of Captain Mahan, "which necessarily led to the fall of the French Digitized by Microsoft® I06 ROBERT CLIVE. power in India, never again to rise." In January, 1760, Count Lilly was finally defeated by Eyre Coote at the battlfe of Wandewash ; Bussy was taken prisoner, the French retreating to Pondicherry, which capitulated in January of the next year. Dupleix and La Bourdonnais had been already sacrificed as a reward for their endeavours to work out a future for their country in the East ; now Lally the brave, the impetuous hero of many a fight, thanked on the field of battle by Marshal Saxe, and rewarded by Louis XV. with a colonelcy in the Irish Brigade of Dillon, was to fall the last victim. Sent to accomplish a task, impossible so long as the French power was not secured on the seas, in European as well as Eastern waters, he failed, as Dupleix and La Bourdonnais had failed, and for his failure, on returning to France, was thrown into the Bastille, con- victed of having betrayed the interests of his king "and as a reward for 35 years' service," as he bitterly moaned, brought forth gagged and bound, driven on a cart used for refuse, to the Place de Greve, where he was executed. Through all these contests Clive had the sea-power of England to support him. With unerring insight he had turned from the south, where no advance into the heart of India was possible, and firmly established the British power in the rich, alluvial tracts of Bengal amid a tame and law-abiding populace, where the Company might in peace consolidate its strength, make surer its foothold, and slowly, at its own chosen time, advance further and further, each step being secured before the next was attempted, until finally Digitized by Microsoft® CLIVE LFAVF.S BENGAL. lO/ their power had crept all over the land, up the Ganges to Benares, further on to the Himalayas, gaining wealth, power, and strength, to raise armies to subdue the south and west, plant the British standard by the Indus, sweep in the garnered wealth of Oudh, and then hand over the dominions and trade its servants had won and fostered to the safe-keeping of the Queen-Empress. On the 25th of February, 1760, at the age of thirty- five, Clive sailed for England, where he received from George III. an Irish Peerage as Lord Clive, Baron Plassey, as a reward for the services he had rendered to his country, for, in the words of Earl Stanhope, " Whatever gratitude Spain owes to her Cortes, or Portugal to her Albuquerque, this — and in its results more than this — is due from England to Clive. Had he never been born, I do not believe that we should — at least in that generation — have conquered Hindoo- stan ; had he lived longer, I doubt if we should — at least in that generation — have lost North America." Clive remained in England, and the Government of Bengal passed into the hands of Mr. Vansittart. The French were still fighting in the south. The sums Mi'r Jafar had agreed to pay after the battle of Plassey had not been fully paid, and the money was wanted. English writers on ;^5 a year, factors on £1$ s. year, junior and senior merchants on £2,0 and £4.0 a year, a president on ;^300 a year, his coun- sellors on from £^0 to ;^iOO, were engaged in trade, all determined, more or less, to make a speedy fortune and return to England, while the army was growing, and the pay of the soldiers in arrears. Some Digitized by Microsoft® I08 ROBERT CLIVE. method to meet the growing expenses had to be found. Accordingly Mr. Vansittart wrote to the Court of Proprietors that in consequence of " the general confusion and disaffection of the country, and the very low state of the Company's treasury, one or other of these resolutions was immediately necessary — either to drop our connexions with the country Government and withdraw our assistance : or to insist on more ample as well as more certain provision for the support of the Company's expense." The Viceroy was old, said to be debauched and indolent, while his son-in-law, Mir Muhammed Kdsim bid high for the post. In the dead of night, Mi'r Jafar was removed and Mir Kasim installed on condition that he should pay the arrears due to the Company, grant the revenues of Bardwan, Midnapur, and Chittagong, and 50 lakhs of rupees towards the expenses of the war in the south. The Governor, Mr. Vansittart, was to receive ;^30,ooo, Mr. Holwell, ii^27,ooo, others sums of ;^2 5,000, i^20,ooo, and ;^i 3,000. The revenues of the whole of Bengal were now in the hands of the servants of the Company. Having the right of free passage, without payment of tax or toll, for the inland produce, in which they traded, they commenced for a consideration to smuggle the goods of native traders ; they even forced the villagers to buy and sell at prices fixed by themselves. The new Viceroy daily became more alarmed. Unable to obtain redress, and unwilling to allow the power to pass from his hands without a struggle, he commenced to prepare for war, now inevitable by Digitized by Microsoft® MALADMINISTRATION. lOQ organising his troops under two soldiers of fortune, Reinhardt an Alsatian, and Markar an Armenian. When two ships from Calcutta appeared at Mungi'r carrying arms for the English troops at Patnd, he detained the ships and placed the officers in charge under guard. Mr. Ellis, the English Governor, re- torted by seizing the city. The Viceroy's troops under Reinhardt and Markar came to the rescue. Ellis and his followers were hemmed in, cap- tured and placed in imprisonment. War was at once proclaimed. Mir Kasim's forces were defeated by Major John Adams at Kditwa and Gheria, forty thousand of them being driven back with fearful slaughter from the fortress at the gorge of Undwd Nala. Mir Kdsim, incensed at the success of the Company, gave orders that Mr. Ellis and the prisoners should be instantly executed. Oh the 5th of October, 1763, Walter Reinhardt, sur- named Sambre by his companions, and Samru by the natives, forced two companies of his sepoys to carry out the order, and Ellis, with two hundred unarmed men, women, and children, were foully massacred. Patnd. was soon afterwards cap- tured by Major Adams ; but Mi'r Kasim escaping, under the escort of Samru, sought protection in Allahibdd with Shujd-ud-Daula, Nawab Wazir of Oudh, where the Emperor, Shah Alam, driven from Delhi by the Afghans, had also taken refuge. Between the three, an alliance offensive and de- fensive against the English was entered into, and with fifty thousand followers they advanced to Baksar near Patnd. From here Mir Kasim was Digitized by Microsoft® no ROBERT CLIVE. driven forth by his allies, weary of his cowardice and inability to raise the funds he had promised towards the expenses of the war. He died soon afterwards in abject poverty. Hector Munro, having with prompt and unrelent- ing severity quelled the first Sepoy Mutiny in India by blowing from the guns twenty-four of his mutinous troops, advanced against the allied forces whom he defeated with terrible slaughter in the decisive battle of Baksar on the 23rd of October, 1764. Benares immediately surrendered, and Allahdbdd capitulated to Sir Robert Fletcher, leaving the Nawdb Wazi'r of Oudh, deserted by Samru, no alternative but to sue for peace on terms to be dictated by the English. The result of this decisive victory, second only to Plassey,was fully recognised by Clive,who wrote to Pitt, in 1766, " It is scarcely hyperbole to say, to- morrow the whole Mogul Empire is in our power." Mir Jafar, again installed as viceroy, died soon after- wards, and left a legacy of 5 lakhs of rupees to Clive, who handed the amount over to the treasury at Calcutta to form a fund for the relief of officers and soldiers invalided or disabled during service, as well as for widows of officers and soldiers dying on service — a fund known for over a century as " Lord Clive's Fund," which reverted to the heirs of Clive v/hen India was transferred from the East India Company to the Crown. On the death of the Viceroy, Mr. Vansittart and his Council, in direct contravention of a recent order from the Court of Directors prohibiting their servants from receiving any presents, installed the illegitimate son of Digitized by Microsoft® CLIVE RESTORES ORDER. Ill Mi'r Kdsim on receiving a sum of lO lakhs of rupees to be divided among them as they should elect. The Court of Directors in London was now thoroughly alarmed at these arbitrary proceedings of the Calcutta Council, as well as at the rapacity and private trade of their servants which threatened financial ruin to the Company's own affairs. They accordingly wrote to the Governor of Bengal : " One grand source of the disputes, misunderstandings, and difficulties which have occurred with the Country Government appears evidently to have taken its rise from the unwarrantable and licentious manner of carrying on private trade of the Company's servants. ... In order, therefore, to remedy all these disorders, we do hereby positively order and direct, — That from the receipt of this letter, a final and effectual end be forthwith put to the Inland Trade in Salt, beetle nut and tobacco, and all other articles whatsoever produced and consumed in the Country." Fearing that this order would not be effectually carried out, the Court of Directors supplemented it in 1764 by praying Clive to proceed to India and place their affairs in order. This determination was conveyed to the Council at Bengal in the following words : — " The General Court of Proprietors having, on account of the critical situation of the Company's affairs in Bengal, requested Lord Clive to take upon him the station of President, and the Command of the Company's Military forces there, his Lordship has been appointed President and Governor accordingly." Clive landed at Calcutta on the 3rd of May, 1765, having full power to act with a Select Committee of Digitized by Microsoft® 112 ROBERT CLIVE. four members independent of the Bengal Council. When one member of the old Council, Mr. Johnstone, ventured to ask some questions respecting the new power of the committee, Clive, as he himself writes, haughtily asked him " if he would dare to dispute our authority ? Mr. Johnstone replied, that he never had the least intention of doing such a thing ; upon which there was an appearance of very long and pale countenances, and not one of the Council uttered another syllable.'' Within two days of Clive's arrival every act of the Council, especially their indecent haste in installing a new Viceroy, and their reception of presents, had been censured by Clive, who sums up his judgment on their procedure by writing, "Alas! how is the English name sunk ! I could not avoid paying the tribute of a few tears to the departed and lost fame of the British Nation (irrecoverably so, I fear)." Clive landed on Tuesday ; the following Monday the Select Committee directed that a covenant not to take bribes or presents for the future should be signed by all Members of Council, and by all the Company's servants, who, as Clive writes, " after many idle and evasive arguments, and being given to understand that they must either sign or be suspended the service, executed the covenants upon the spot." Soon after Clive was able to write respecting the future of the Company's affairs in India, and his words are as applicable to-day as they were then : " I am persuaded that nothing can prove fatal, but a renewal of licentiousness among your servants here, or intestine divisions among yourselves at home." Digitized by Microsoft® HSFORMS. 1 1 3 How far the general corruption and laxity had spread during his absence may be judged from one of his letters home, in which he declares, " I fear the Military as well as Civil are so far gone in luxury and debauchery, that it will require the utmost exertion of our united Committee to save the Company from destruction.'' Noteworthy are his words as he viewed with alarm the position which he was sent out to face : " If ideas of conquest were to be the rule of our conduct, I foresee that we should by necessity be led from acquisition to acquisition until we had the whole Empire up in arms against us.'' He dwells carefully on the great danger that may arise if once the natives throw off their " natural indolence," combined to carry on a " war against us in a much more soldierly manner than they ever thought of." Having placed the internal affairs of the Company on a firm basis, Clive proceeded to conclude peace with the Nawdb Wazir of Oudh, for, at that period, he conceived it essential, as he wrote, " to conciliate the affections of the country powers, to remove any jealousy they may entertain of our unbounded ambition, and to convince them that we aim not at conquest and dominion, but security in carrying on a free trade." The territories of the Nawib Wazi'r of Oudh were restored on his paying half a million sterling for the expenses of the war. Allahdbad and Kora, yielding a revenue of 2,8oo,(X>0 rupees yearly, were retained and given to the Emperor Shdh Alam in exchange for the perpetual right, or Diwinship, over the entire 9 Digitized by Microsoft® 114 ROBERT CLIVB. revenues of Bengal, Behar, Orissa, and the Northern Circars, the Emperor receiving in exchange an annual tribute of ^^260,000, and the new Viceroy an annual allowance of iJ^6oo,ooo wherewith to pay his dancing girls. The collection of the revenues in these districts was left in the hands of the native agents, for, as the Directors wrote, they were aware " how unfit an Englishman is to conduct the collection of revenues and to follow the subtle native thought, all his art is to conceal the real value of his country, to perplex and elude the payment." By this arrange- ment Bengal, Behar, and Orissa virtually became the property of the Company — a property likely, in the opinion of Clive, to yield a yearly revenue of two millions sterling. The acquisition, in fact, exceeded everything that could have been conceived by the wildest imagination of Dupleix and in the words of Clive, " To go further is, in my opinion, a scheme so extravagantly ambitious, that no Governor and Council in their senses can accept it unless the whole system of the Company's interests be first entirely new remodelled." As a barrier between the limits of the Company's territories and the north of India, the puppet sovereign of Oudh was left in power, while the Emperor held the strong fortress of Allahabad, to keep in check all Marithi and Pathan invaders. Nothing remained for the Company but to consolidate their position, secure themselves in their own pos- sessions, conciliate the natives, train, discipline, and augment their army, hoard their resources, and be prepared for what the future might bring forth. Digitized by Microsoft® DISCONTENT. 1 1 J In order to carry out the policy of the Directors, CHve reorganised the entire system of the inland trade. The sale of salt had been virtually monopo- lised by the Company's servants, who paid neither duty nor toll, or at most a small one of 2\ per cent. That this was a lucrative business may be seen from the fact that with good management it paid ovQr 200 per cent, on the capital ex- pended. It was, however, declared illegal as well as the trade in betel nut, tobacco, and all articles not intended for import or export. Some effort at compensation, to the senior military and civil officers, was made by Clive, who formed a fund to carry on the trade under public management in the profits of which they were to participate in fixed proportions according to their rank — a system, however, not finally approved of by the Directors. This measure, and the curtailment of a special allowance made to military officers when on active service or away from headquarters — a privilege en- joyed since the days of Plassey — resulted in open mutiny, two hundred officers threatening to resign their commissions on the same day unless this allowance was restored. Sir Robert Fletcher, Commandant at Mungi'r, secretly encouraged the movement, while the civil officers at Calcutta subscribed a sum of ;^ 16,000 for the benefit of any officers who might be cashiered. Clive was not to be intimidated in his efforts to carry out the Directors' instructions. Sir Robert Fletcher was cashiered, new officers were ordered up from Madras, those who had combined were tried Digitized by Microsoft® Il6 ROBERT CLIVE.. by martial law, six were convicted of mutiny, the rest allowed to recall their resignations only on their fully recognising that they were permitted to continue in the service as an act of extreme grace and favour. Clive remained in India one year and a half, during which time, in the words of Macaulay, he " effected one of the most extensive, difficult and salutary reforms that ever was accomplished by any statesman.'' His health breaking down he determined to return home, notwithstanding that the Directors urged him to remain, for as they wrote : " The general voice of the Proprietors, indeed, we may say, of every man, will be to join in our request, that your Lordship will continue another year in India,'' their opinion being: " Your own example has been the principal means of restraining the general rapaciousness and corrup- tion which had brought our affairs so near the brink of ruin." Clive, however, could not be induced to remain. He left India finally on the 29th of January, 1767, at a time when, in consequence of brilliant hopes held out for the future trade of the Company, the price of Stock had gone up to 263, and the dividends had risen from 6 to 10, and even to \2\ per cent. In 1698 the Company had advanced to the Crown two millions sterling at 8 per cent, interest; in 1702, one million; in 1730, four millions sterling without interest; in 1744, on extension of their Charter, one million sterling at 3 per cent; so that by 1758 a total debt of ;^4,20o,ooo at 3 per cent, was owed them, while, on the other hand, they had to pay Digitized by Microsoft® PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY. WJ ;^400,000 to the Exchequer j'early, on account of the revenue derived from their newly acquired position in India. These fair hopes of prosperity, however, did not last long. In the south of India Haidar All had risen to power, extended his kingdom of Mysore as far north as the Kistn^, established a maritime force on the west coast at Mangalore, and by 1769 had ravaged the country round Madras up to St. Thomas' Mount, impoverishing the Madras Government. In 1770 Bengal was devastated by a fearful famine during the course of which one-third to one-half of its inhabitants died, the trade becoming totally dis- organised, and the revenues remaining uncollected. By 1773 the Company were virtually bankrupt. Although their shares paid a dividend of 6 per cent, the year before, they had been obliged to borrow to the extent of ;£' 1, 290,000, their Capital Stock, amount- ing to ;£'4,ooo,ooo, being represented by effects and credits in England, China, India, St. Helena, and on the sea, by a sum of ;^2,930,658 los. lod. An application to the Government for a loan of iT 1, 000,000 to enable them to carry on their business led to an inquiry into the whole affairs of the Com- pany, and an impeachment of Clive's administration, particularly his dealings with Sirij-ud-Dauld and Mi'r Jafar. As a result it was ruled by the Commons that all the acquisitions made by military force in India, or acquired by treaty with foreign powers, did by right belong to the State, while, with regard to Clive, they left the question unvoted on as to whether or not he Digitized by Microsoft® Il8 ROBERT CUVE. had " abused the power with which he was entrusted, to the evil example of the servants of the pubHc, and to the dishonour and detriment of the State,'' con- tenting themselves with passing a resolution that " Robert, Lord Clive, did render great and meritorious services to his country " — a resolution which did little to soothe the worn-out spirit of the victor of Plassey, who died by his own hand, after great physical suffering, at his house in Berkeley Square in 1774- The Company was released from the annual pay- ment of the i^400,ooo, it was lent ;^i, 500,000 for four years, being, however, debarred from declaring T. dividend of more than 6 per cent, on their business Jll the loan was repaid. Lord North's Regulating Act of 1773 at the same time definitely established Parliamentary control over the whole affairs of the Company. Copies of all papers respecting civil or military affairs in India were to be sent to the Secretaries of State and Lords of the Treasury within fourteen days of receipt. The Governor- General in India was to be nominated by Parliament, he was to hold office for five }'ears, and to have a casting vote in a new Council of four members. A Supreme Court of Justice was established for Cal- cutta, with a Chief Justice and four Puisne Judges, who, with the aid of a jury of British subjects, were to try all offences except petty trade disputes, which were left to the former, or Mayor's, Court. The first Council appointed under the Act con- sisted of Richard Barwell, General Clavering, the Hon. Colonel Tvlonson, and Philip Francis, the first Governor-General being Warren Hastings. Digitized by Microsoft® VI. WARREN HASTINGS. No Governor-General of India has ever been called on to undertake a task more complex in all its details than that undertaken by Warren Hastings when he wras summoned by the Directors of the East India Company to assume charge of their affairs in Bengal. No Governor-General has had more difficulties to encounter, not only from opposition in .his own Council Chamber, but also from those at home whom he served, and from whom he might have hoped for encouragement and some amount of loyal support ; no Governor-General has been so traduced, maligned, and misrepresented by those whose enmity he had roused by thwarting their self-interested intrigues or by an' exposure of their frauds and incapacities, as well as by those who had full opportunities of judging the full value of his public services, but who deemed it well to sacrifice him for private or party purposes. Recent impartial and judicial research has done much to clear the character of Hastings from mai;iy wildly reckless and even false charges. Still, no sober Digitized by Microsoft® I20 WARREN HAST/NGS. inquiries or calm decisions will ever blot away the memory of the words of impassioned eloquence and dramatic force with which nearly every official action of his life was denounced by the greatest orators of his time, who used all their unrivalled powers to impress the imagination of their audience with the enormity of the offences charged against him by the malice of his enemies. Of Hastings it can be truly said that all he accom- plished — and it was much — was done because he saw, with a foresight vouchsafed only to a genius such as his, what the interests of the Company, and those of his country, demanded for the extension of commerce and the firm establishment of the British rule in the East whereon that commerce could alone be based. Arriving in India at the age of nineteen, in October, 1750, Hastings, like Clive, was first employed in the ordinary clerical duties attached to the office of a writer in the East India Company's service. In the year 1754 he was transferred to the factory at Kasimbazar, on the Ganges. There his chief occupation seems to have been the making of bargains with the native traders for the supply of silk stuffs to be sent home to enrich the London merchants. In 1756 happened the dire catastrophe of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Hastings, in the confusion, escaped from Kasimbazar and made his way down the Ganges, joining the refugees, and afterwards took part as a volunteer in Clive's campaigns. Pathetic as is much in the history of Hastings, no more pathetic fact is recorded, in all its meagre details, than that his first wife, the widow of a Captain Campbell, whom he married in Digitized by Microsoft® EARLY SERVICE. 121 1756, died in 1759, leaving two children, who did not long survive. On the return of Clive to England, Hastings, then in his twenty-ninth year, was appointed Member of Council at Calcutta. In the years of deplorable mismanagement which followed, Hastings, in the words of Macaulay, " was never charged with having borne a share in the worst abuses which ensued, and it is almost equally certain that, if he had borne a share in those abuses, the able and bitter enemies who afterwards persecuted him would not have failed to discover and proclaim his guilt." After ten years' service in the enervating climate of Bengal he returned home with but a comparatively small income. His generosity to his relatives and financial losses soon left him no option but to apply once again to the Court of Directors for employ- ment in their service in the East — an application at once acceded to, for Hastings had, as the Directors recorded in their order appointing him second Member of Council at Madras, " served us many years upon the Bengal establishment with great ability and unblemished character." Borrow- ing money wherewith to buy an outfit, he sailed, in 1769, from Dover, to build anew his fortunes in a life of exile in the East. On the long voyage out a romantic attachment sprang up between him and Mrs. Imhoff, whom he afterwards married on a divorce being obtained from her husband, a German baron. At Madras, in ad- dition to his duties as Member of Council, he acted as export warehouse keeper until the year 1772, \,hen Digitized by Microsoft® 122 WARREN HASTINGS. he was directed to proceed to Calcutta to assume charge of the Government, and, if possible, evolve order out of the chaos into which the affairs of the Company had lapsed. From Clive he received a letter of advice, beseech- ing him to " be impartial and just to the public, regardless of the interest of individuals, where the honour of the nation and the real advantage of the Company are at stake, and resolute in carrying into execution your determination, which I hope will at all times be rather founded upon your own opinion than that of others," and at the same time " always flattering yourself that time and perseverance will get the better of everything." The problem before Hastings was how to secure from attacks by native powers the territories won by Clive, how to raise revenue from them sufficient to satisfy the expenses of administration, the demands of the Directors, as well as the heavy and sudden liabilities to be incurred for wars which he knew must inevitably occur in the near future. In order to effect these objects " it is impossible," as he wrote in a letter to Sir George Colebrooke, " to avoid errors ; and there are cases ... in which it may be necessary to adopt expedients which are not to be justified on such principles as the public can be judges of." A great power had arisen in the west and north of India which for a time seemed as though it would succeed in founding a Hindu dominion on the ruins of the Mughal Empire, and dictate its orders to the servants of the Company. The Mardthas had from Digitized by Microsoft® marAthAs. 123 the seventeenth century — when first as predatory bands of raiding and robbing horsemen they were led forth annually from their mountain homes lying amid the highlands of the west by their great leader Sivaji — grown to be an organised force of fighting soldiers, who under their chieftains levied contribu- tions far and wide over all the rich villages lying outside the Company's possessions at Bombay, Cal- cutta, and Madras. As the successors of Sivaji became weak and effeminate their power passed to the hands of their astute Brdhman ministers, or Peshwds, who fixed their headquarters at Poona. At the same time successful leaders gathered around themselves bands of horsemen who claimed the right to pillage and levy contributions over defined districts, all, however, rendering a more or less loyal allegiance to the Peshwis. Holkar, descendant of a shepherd, assumed sovereignty around his capital at Indore. Sindhla, whose ancestors were hereditary slipper-bearers to the proud PeshwAs, established himself in power at Gwalior, while Baroda fell to the GaekwArs, and Nagpur to the Bhonslas. One final effort to break this great rising Hindu nationality and restore the sway of the Mughals was made by the Muhammadan ruler of Afghdnistdn, when Ahmad Shdh Durdni, at the head of his Turkoman cavalry, came riding through the north-west passes to chastise the idola- trous Mardthas for their insolence in driving the Emperor from Delhi and conquering the neigh- bouring lands of the Punjib. On the fatal field of Pdm'pat Ahmad Shah Durdni Digitized by Microsoft® 124 U'ARREX HASTINGS. cut to pieces 200,000 of the light Maratha horsemen, slew the bravest of their chieftains, including the son and cousin of their Peshwa — or, as the news was wailed amid their mountain homes, "Two pearls have been dissolved, twenty-seven gold mohurs have been lost, and of the silver and copper the total cannot be cast up." Terrible though the calamity was that had fallen on the Marathas, they soon gathered themselves together to dispute the sovereignty with the East India Company. In 1769 they raided south, de- \'astating the territories of the fierce Haidar All, and by 1771 they had once again in their power the Emperor at Delhi, forcing him to surrender to them the districts of Kora and Allahabad, handed to him in 1765 by Clive, in return for the grant of the Governorship over Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. In consequence of this defection of the Emperor from the side of the English, Hastings not only resumed possession of the districts of Kora and Allahabad, but withheld the annual tribute of ^^300,000 which it had been customary to pay him from the revenues of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Hastings, so far as the Company's possessions and interests were concerned, had brilliantly succeeded in counterplotting the wily Mardtha stratagems whereby they hoped to rule through the permission of the Emperor. He had now to play a bolder game re- quiring all the insight his genius could inspire — to carry to a successful conclusion. The Company's possessions in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa had been won by Clive ; it yet remained to place them under Digitized by Microsoft® ROHrtLAS. 125 a firm and wise administration ; it yet remained to secure them from all possibility of Maratha invasion, so that the Company might have time to secure its position and gain strength and power for its ultimate expansion. Between the Company's possessions and the Marathas it was necessary to build up a strong and friendly native state which might receive, and if possible break, the first rude shock of an invading army. To the west of Bengal and Behar lay Oudh, ruled by its Nawab Wazi'r. Beyond Oudh, stretching north- east to the Himalayas, lay the land of the Rohillas, a fierce race of Pathan warriors who came originally from beyond the Indus, conquered the rich, fertile plains, and subdued the effete Hindu peasantry. With the Rohillas the Marathas had a deadly feud, not only because they were of different nationality and religion, but because the Rohillas had stood by and allowed the Afghans to slaughter the Marithd chieftains at Pin/pat. The Marithds did not wait long for vengeance. In 1772 they swarmed down on the Rohillas, who were obliged to turn in their distress to Shuja-ud-Daula, the Nawab Wazi'r of Oudh, to whom they offered 40 lakhs of rupees if he would come to their aid and drive back the maraud- ing invaders. With the assistance of the forces from Oudh, strengthened by an English brigade under Sir Robert Baker, the Mardthas were driven from Rohilkhand ; but, as might have been expected, Hafiz Rahmat Khin, beloved chief of the Rohillas, refused to pay the Nawab Wazir of Oudh the promised subsidy of 40 lakhs of rupees. When Digitized by Microsoft® 126 WARREN HASTINGS. the demand was pressed he threatened to join his forces to those of his former foes, the Marathis, and raid the territories of Oudh and those of the Company. Hastings at once summoned the Nawib Wazi'r to meet him at Benares, so that they might concert measures for the future defence of their possessions. At the meeting which ensued it was decided that the Rohillas should be driven from Rohilkhand by a united force of Oudh and the Company ; that the Nawib Wazi'r should, after the campaign, take pos- session of the outlying districts of Rohilkhand, as well as Kora and Allahabad held to have been ceded by the Emperor ; and that the Company in return should receive the 40 lakhs of rupees, as well as a further sum of 210,000 rupees monthly, during the time its troops were engaged in the field, for war expenses. By the victories of Plassey and Baksai Clive won a foothold for the Company in India ; by this treaty, as Hastings wrote, the Nawdb Wazi'r would obtain " a complete compact state shut in effectually from the frontiers of Behar to the mountains of Thibet, while he would remain equally accessible to our forces from the above provinces either for hostilities or for protection. It would give him wealth, of which \\c should partake, and give him security without any dangerous increase of power. It would undoubtedly, by bringing his frontier nearer to the Marathas, for whom singly he would be no match, render him more dependent on us, and cement the union more firmly between us." As to the essential morality of these colossal in- Digitized by Microsoft® somtLA WAfi. 127 trigues of Hastings, neither his age nor our age, in a compulsory struggle for existence, can judge. The same problem, differing in none of its essential details, lies before us to-day in our determination to hold our possessions in Africa as a field for the outlet of our productions, as well as in the consistent efforts of Russia to gain seaports in the Mediterranean or in the North Pacific, so as to establish a commercial prosperity for herself in the future, by means which are inevitably destined to end in success. All we are concerned with is the fact that Hastings in his deal- ings with the native powers had but one main ideal before him — that of serving the interests of the East India Company, and establishing on a secure basis the foundation of the British Empire in India, so that the commercial enterprise of the London merchants should have its necessary development. If in this there be discovered any taint of turpitude, not by Hastings alone but by the nation at large must the blame be borne. Rohilkhand was conquered, Hafi'z Rihmat Khin died bravely fighting, along with two thousand of his troops, while the remaining Rohillas were sent forth, across the Ganges, to seek new settlements for them- selves in the districts round Meerut. The usual horrors of war accompanied the campaign, but in the pillaging and burning of villages which ensued neither did the British troops take part nor was Hastings cognisant of them. By all means in his power he reprobated and sternly suppressed vin4ictive violence to the conquered and oppression of the peaceful Hindu peasantry. Digitized by Microsoft® 128 WARREN HASTINGS. The Company's territories once rendered secure from all fear of invasion, their administration was inaugurated on a system which in its essential details has lasted down to our own days. Up to the time of Hastings the administration of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and the collection of the land revenue had been left in the hands of the native officials, Mu- hammad Raza Khan being placed in charge of Bengal, and Shitdb Rai — a brave soldier who had fought for the Company during the outbreak at Patna — in charge of the local government at Behar. Rumours had, however, reached the Court of Directors that the revenues were being misappropriated by these two officials and their native subordinates. The care of their revenues, as well as their trade, had now become a matter of vital importance to the London merchants, who accordingly sent notice to Hastings that they deemed it full time " to take upon themselves, by the agency of their o^\'n servants, the entire con- trol and administration of the revenues." The govern- ment was to be directed from Calcutta, English officials were to proceed to the local headquarters and, aided by the subordinate native officers, com- mence as collectors, the administration and collec- tion of the land revenues, Muhammad Raza Khan and Shitab Rai were to be removed from their posts, sent to Calcutta, and there tried for peculation and past misdeeds. This change from native to Euro- pean supervision over the collection of the revenues, one sooner or later inevitable, was primarily due to the intrigues of a Brdhman of high caste and ancient lineage. He, Nanda Kumar, had blazoned forth the Digitized by Microsoft® NANDA KUMAR. 1 29 alleged peculations and maladministration of Mu- hammad Raza Khan and Shitab Rdi, hoping that by their downfall he would rise to power, and be placed in supreme revenue control. Ever has the cunning of a BrAhman swayed the councils of rulers and princes in India, but now for the first time in history the astute Brahman's intrigues had travelled beyond the land of his birth, and worked their way among the simple London merchants. In vain Hastings told the Court of Directors that "From the year 1759 to the time when I left Bengal in 1764, I was engaged in a continued opposition to the interests and designs of that man, because I judged him to be adverse to the welfare of my employers.'' By the Directors Hastings was exhorted to listen to the words of their trusted adviser, Nanda KumAr, and bring Mu- hammad Raza KhAn and Shitdb Rdi to trial. Knowing well that the mind of a Brahman is like a mirror in which only the face of the fool who looks therein is reflected, Hastings, who could read all events and all the ways of men, bowed his head and ventured no further to tell the Directors how Nanda Kumar had deceived them. His loyal obedience to the dictates of the Directors was received by them with extreme gratification, for, as they wrote, it was "a great satisfaction to find that you could at once determine to suppress all penal resentment when the public welfare seemed to clash with your private sentiment with regard to Nundcoomar." Muhammad Raza Khdn and Shitab Rdi were arrested, tried, and acquitted of the charges brought against them. Nanda Kumar was left brooding in 10 Digitized by Microsoft® I30 WARRE!^ HASTINGS. silent rage over his thwarted plans, for the men he sought to ruin had been declared innocent of the charges brought against them, and their offices given to English officials. To him one concession was made. His son, R^jd Gurdis, was appointed manager to the affairs of the minor Viceroy of Bengal, whose guar- dian was the Manni Begam, widow of the late Vice- roy. Nanda Kumar remained silent, hoping that the power of a Brihman could in time work all things to his will. Three of the new Council appointed under the Regulating Act of Lord North arrived in India, and Hastings became the first Governor-General with a yearly salary o{ £2.^,000. General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Philip Francis, all men of strong pre- judices, and totally unacquainted with the ways of India, came to aid Hastings with advice, while Sir Elijah Impey and three judges were to form a new Court of Justice. The fourth Member- of Council, Mr. Richard Barwell, was already a member of the Government of Bengal. It cannot fairly be said that Philip Francis, the most remarkable among the newly landed councillors, is the most contemptible character in Indian history, for India is a land in which intrigue and slow-witted cunning have given scope for the talents of many men more ignoble than Francis. If he had remained in England he might probably in those scurrilous days have risen to some position of despicable notoriety. If he were not Junius he was capable of being a Junius. His character is summed up by Macaulay: "He must also have been a man in the highest degree Digitized by Microsoft® PHILIP FRANCIS. I3I arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public virtue." But a character such as his was doomed to failure in India, though unfortunately it found full scope in venting its malevolence in after days against Hastings in England. Such a character is common in the East. It could be read by the natives and by Hastings who was saturated with Oriental feelings, just as a learned man reads a book written in a language to him well known. The three new Members of Council, headed by Philip Francis, commenced on their arrival a sys- tematic, hostile investigation into the past adminis- tration of Hastings. The Treaty of Benares was condemned, the Rohilla war declared unjust, and the mode in which it had been carried on denounced as sanguinary and vindictive. The newly appointed agent at Lucknow was removed, the troops recalled from Rohilkhand, and the Nawib Wazi'r ordered to pay up all the arrears due to the Company under the treaty. On the death of the Nawdb Wazir, on the 6th of February, 1775, the majority of the Council forced on the young Nawab Wazi'r, Asaf-ud-Dauld, a new treaty. A sum of one crore and a half of rupees was to be paid at once on account of the arrears due by the State, an increased monthly subsidy of 50,000 rupees was demanded for the pay of the Company's troops quartered in Oudh, while the revenue from the territories surrounding Benares was annexed by the Company to whom the Rijd of Benares, Chait Singh, became feudatory. Digitized by Microsoft® 132 WARREN HASTINGS. The news went forth among the natives that Hastings was no longer supreme ; that his power had been usurped by agents of the Company sent from England to depose him. Nanda Kumir at the same time took note that Philip Francis was eager to gain the Governor-Generalship, and more than willing to listen to any lying words that would aid him in ruining Hastings. On the nth of March, 1775, Francis appeared before the Council, and presented a letter from Nanda Kumir, accusing Hastings of having re- ceived bribes of ^100,000 and ^40,000 from Mu- hammad Raza Khan and Shitdb Rii for releas- ing them from the charges of embezzlement and malpractices. In the same letter Hastings was further charged with having received bribes of 3 lakhs and 54,000 rupees from the writer, Nanda Kumir, and from the Manni Begam for the appoint- ments of Nanda Kumdr's son and the Manni Begam to the Viceroy's establishment. Hastings having pro- tested at the insult offered to him at his own Council table, withdrew with indignation, and was followed by his sole supporter, Richard Barwell. An inquiry was held by the remaining three ; Nanda Kumar was examined, the documents were impounded, arid the entire evidence submitted to the judges, by whom it was sent home to the Directors. The evidence remained unnoticed till the famous trial of Hastings ten years afterwards, when it was produced in support of the seventh article of impeachment of which he was found not guilty. Nanda Kumar might well tremble when he found Digitized by Microsoft® TRIAL OF NANDA KUMAR. 1 33 that his cunning could not compass the downfall of the Governor-General. He himself had been guilty of forgery, a forgery of a bond purporting to be the acknowledgment of a debt due by a Hindu banker, on whose death in 1769 he had presented the forged bond, and been paid the money mentioned therein. The bond, torn to show that it had been paid and cancelled, was filed in the Mayor's Court. To many the secret of this forgery was known, but it had been found impossible to get possession of the docu- ment from the Mayor's Court. At length, after more than a year's efforts the document was surrendered in April, 1775, and Nanda Kumdr was arrested on a charge of forgery. He was tried by the Chief Justice, three puisne judges, and an English jury. The trial lasted seven days, and, according to Sir James Stephen, who exhaustively examined the whole of the evidence, " no man ever had, or could have, a fairer trial." Nanda Kumdr was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. In vain he looked round for help. In vain he prayed Francis to inter- vene, and save from pollution the sacred body of a Brdhman, so that " I shall not accuse you in the day of judgment of neglecting to assist me in the ex- tremity I am now in." Francis knew too well there was no hope for his former ally. Of Nanda Kumar's guilt there could be no doubt. Justice, stern and unrelenting, must be meted out, equally to high caste Brdhman and to low caste worker with his hands. Nanda Kumdr was hanged before his own people on the 5th of August, 177S, and as Francis wrote, "After the death of Nundcoomar, the Governor, I Digitized by Microsoft® 134 WARREN HASTINGS. believe, is well assured that no man who regards his own safety will venture to stand forth as his accuser." The death of Colonel Monson in September, 1776, left Hastings, with the vote of Barwell, strong enough in the Council to revoke a resignation he had sent home some time previously, while the death of Clavering, in August, 1777, set him free to carry out a line of consistent policy towards the native states, the true bearings and tendencies of which he alone could understand. Dangers which threatened the very existence of the newly founded British Empire in India were now crowding in from all sides. In 1773, when the English Parliament lent the East India Company the sum of j^i, 500,000 in order to save the credit of the Directors, it became necessary that Lord North should devise some means whereby the Company might in time repay the loan. The Company at that time had 17,000,000 pounds of tea lying unsold in its warehouses. This tea was liable to a duty of 25 per cent, on exportation. In order to assist the Company in selling this tea the export duty was remitted, and in its place a duty of 3 per cent, exacted on its sale in America. The tea was thrown into Boston Harbour, and on the 4th of July, 1776, the "Declaration of Independence" was issued by Congress, the thirteen colonies throwing off their allegiance to England. The news soon reached India that General Bur- goyne and 5,000 English troops had, on the 17th of October, 1777, surrendered to General Gates at Sara- toga, news, followed, a month later, by the intelligence Digitized by Microsoft® THE DUEL. 135 that France had declared war against England. Not only was France to be dreaded in the Eastern seas, but the armies of the Mardthds were threatening Bengal, and the Nizdm and Haidar AH were preparing to crush the English in the Deccan and in the south. Hastings had to be prepared to meet these dangers, and to find means for defraying all the expenditure and extraordinary outlay that would necessarily have to be incurred. As he wrote at the time, " If it be really true that the British troops and influence have suffered so severe a check in the Western world, it is the more incumbent on those who are charged with the interest of Great Britain in the East to exert themselves for the retrieval of the national losses." Francis, " mistaking his own malevolence for public virtue" still opposed, still demanded explanations, still wrote long minutes in order to expose what he considered the weakness, dishonesty, or impolicy of all Hastings' preparations for the coming struggle. Believing in a promise of neutrality held out by Francis, Hastings had allowed his friend Barwell to leave India, and now, to his astonishment, found the opposition of Francis more aggressive than ever. His slow wrath at last burst forth. In a letter to Francis he charged him with being guilty both in his private and public life of conduct " devoid of truth and honour." A duel ensued ; Francis received a bullet in his side, and soon after, on the 17th of August, 1780, deemed it advisable to leave India for England, there to carry on his rancorous opposition to the policy of the Governor-General. Digitized by Microsoft® WARKEN' HASTINGS. (FroiH "Memoirs by Warren Hastmgs, 1786.") Digitized by Microsoft® CHAIT SINGH. 137 In India Hastings was now unfettered ; he but needed funds for the pressing pubHc necessities. Chait Singh, Rdja of Benares, had become feudatory to the Company, undoubtedly bound to render, in addition to his annual tribute of 22 lakhs of rupees, service and aid in case of war. The time had come when he should join in the general defence of the ruling power, so Hastings called on him to pay a contribution of 5 lakhs of rupees for aid against their common enemies. On the demand being repeated in the following year, Chait Singh strove to evade pay- ment by sending 2 lakhs of rupees privately to the Governor-General as a bribe to abstain from further demands. After some delay Hastings paid the money into the public treasury and peremptorily called on Chait Singh to pay up in full all arrears, and further to supply a force of 2,000 cavalry for general defence. Chait Singh pleaded his inability to provide either troops or more money, whereon Hastings imposed on him a fine of 50 lakhs of rupees for delay, and proceeded himself to Benares to collect the amount. The subsequent impeachment of Hastings by the House of Commons before the House of Lords was due to the amount of this fine inflicted by Hastings on Chait Singh. When the motion for the impeachment of Hastings was before the House of Commons, Pitt astounded friends and opponents alike by unexpectedly declaring that he would vote for the impeachment because he con- sidered the fine unjust. " I therefore,'' he said, " shall agree to the motion before the House. But I confine myself solely to the exorbitancy of the fine, approving Digitized by Microsoft® 138 WARREN HASTINGS. every preceding as well as subsequent part of Mr. Hastings' conduct, throughout the whole transaction." It still remains one of the mysteries of history why Pitt should have thus sacrificed Hastings to the malignity of his enemies. Pitt, when goaded into anger by the universal condemnation of his logic, rose and said, " I think the fine of five hundred thousand pounds imposed by the Governor-General on Cheyt Sing exorbitant. My honourable and noble friends think otherwise." No wonder that Mr. Dempster, according to Wroxall, " one of the most conscientious men who ever sate in Parliament," retorted, " Mr. Hastings has been the saviour of our possessions in the East ; and if he merits impeach- ment for any act of his whole life, it is for having been so weak a man as to return to this country with a very limited fortune.'' When Chait Singh would not pay the fine he was placed under arrest by Hastings and two companies of sepoys were directed to guard him. The holy city of Benares rose in fanatic alarm. Its narrow streets swarmed with bands of armed men loudly calling for the release of their RAji. The sepoy guards, unprovided with ammunition, were all ruthlessly massacred. Reinforcements hurrying to the rescue were fired on and driven back. Hastings in the confusion escaped to the fortress of Chanir on the south of the Ganges, some thirty miles distant from Benares, whence with evident indifference to the emeute which surged around he proceeded to issue directions respecting the more important affairs of the Mardtha movements. The disturbance was soon Digitized by Microsoft® BEGAMS OF OUDH. 139 quelled : Chait Singh fled, carrying off his treasures, leaving behind a nephew who was installed as R^j^, the tribute being raised by the addition of some ;£'200,000. Oudh had next to be forced to contribute to the general defence of peace and security against the threatened storm of anarchy. From Oudh a sum of over one million sterling (one and a half crores of rupees) was due to the Company for military and civil charges. When the NawAb Wazi'r died, in 1775, he left treasures amounting to some two millions sterling, which were seized by his wife and mother, known to history as the Begams of Oudh, who also possessed lands yielding a yearly income of ;^5o,ooo. By an agreement between the new Nawab Wazi'r, Asaf-ud-Dauli, and Hastings it was decided that the landed estates of the Begams should be resumed by the Nawib in consequence of their undoubted partici- pation in the insurrection at Benares, but that the revenues accruing from the estates should be con- tinued to them for life. The debts due to the Com- pany were to be paid from the treasures left by the deceased Nawib Wazi'r. The residence of the Begams was surrounded by British troops, and the custodians forced to surrender upwards of one million sterling of the late Nawdb Wazi'r's hoarded wealth. The Company was enriched, Asaf-ud-Dauld obtained the lands held by the Begams, and in return presented Hastings with a gift of 10 lakhs of rupees. This gift, according to the custom of the times, might have been retained by Hastings as a private donation. Digitized by Microsoft® I40 WARREN HASTINGS. He, however, reported the circumstance to the Directors, asking if he might be allowed to keep the money — a request to which the Directors curtly declined to accede. At this time the affairs of the Company were in a condition from which Hastings could alone retrieve them. As he wrote, " I much fear, that it is not understood as it ought to be, how near the Company's existence has on many occasions vibrated to the edge of perdition, and that it has at all times been suspended by a thread so fine that the touch of chance might break, or the breath of opinion dis- solve it : and instarltaneous will be its fall whenever it shall happen. May God in His mercy long avert it." Hastings had secured Bengal and Behar, but round Bombay the Mardthas held sway, and Haidar All was threatening the south. At Poona Ragunath Rao, commonly known as Raghuba, had assassinated his nephew, the ruling Peshwa, and assumed the sovereignty for himself His hopes were, however, dashed to the ground when the widow of the pre- ceding Peshwi was declared to have given birth to an heir, brother to the prince whom Rdghuba had removed from his path. Raghuba was driven forth from Poona, and fled to the English at Bombay, promising them, in return for their aid in re- storing him to the Peshwaship or hereditary rule over the MarithAs, the harbour of Bassein and the island of Salsette, possessions the English had long coveted. The bribe was too tempting to resist, so the Government of Bombay determined to become King-makers on its own account. At the fatal field Digitized by Microsoft® WARGAON. 141 of Arras the Mardthds and English met for the first time in their long series of conflicts ; Colonel Keating winning the day but losing 222 of his men. Bombay was, however, subordinated to Calcutta, so Francis — who had not yet been removed from the path of Hastings — and his supporters directed that the war should be suspended, Bassein surrendered, and 12 lakh's of rupees paid to the MardthAs for the expenses they had incurred. The truce did not last long. The Mardthas sought French aid, and the Bombay Government again espoused the cause of Rdghuba. Four thousand men and six hundred Europeans were despatched from Bombay under Colonels Egerton, Cockburn, and Camac to force the English alliance and Rdghuba on the Poona regency, while Hastings sent an envoy to win the Bhonsla ruler of Nagpur from joining the Western Mardthds. By slow marches the Bombay troops arrived within eighteen miles of Poona, were there surrounded and obliged to retreat. At Wargion, an unconditional surrender was made, the English commanders agreeing to give back all their acquisitions and surrender two hostages for the carrying out of this disgraceful convention. The Bombay Government had framed their policy and shown their incapacity to carry it to a successful conclusion ; the Marathds had easily triumphed over them in diplomacy and warfare. Removed though Hastings was from the scene of action by over one thousand miles, he resolved to venture on the most brilliant military movement ever conceived, up to that time, by the English in India. Collecting together Digitized by Microsoft® 142 WARREN HASThVar. nine battalions of native troops, composed of 6,234 men, a body of sepoy cavalry from Oudh, and artillery, he placed them in charge of Colonel Leslie and 103 English officers, and bade them march across India, accompanied by some 30,000 camp-followers, to the aid of the Bombay Government. Colonel Leslie was soon replaced by an abler officer. General Goddard, who, hearing of the defeat of Egerton, made his way to Surat, avoiding the Maratha force at Poona. This march might well have been considered impossible, or, in Hastings' own words, " astonishing and impracticable " ; it, however, as he said, " has shown what the British are capable of effecting." The force marched on into Gujarit, took possession of its capital Ahmadibid, and then falling unexpectedly on the Maratha camp put it to rout. Through Central India Captain Popham had been directed to march towards Gwalior, a fortress of the Rina of Gohad held by the Mardthas under Sindhia, deemed so safe from assault that Sir Eyre Coote declared it would be little less than insanity to advance to its attack. For two months Popham watched the precipitous rock on which the fort was built, devising means whereby he might assault it. On the night of the 3rd of August, 1780, two companies of sepoys, led by Captain Bnice, brother of the Abyssinian explorer, and four lieutenants, sup- ported by twenty Europeans and two battalions of native troops, advanced to the foot of the fortress. Their feet were wrapped in cotton, and by means of ladders they silently scaled the first defence, a solid Digitized by Microsoft® CAPtURB OP GWALlOR. I43 wall of smooth rock, sixteen feet high. Above, a steep ascent of forty yards was cUmbed. A few of the sepoys were then drawn up a scarped wall thirty feet .high by ropes let down by some spies, and when joined by the rest rushed forward and overpowered the garrison, gaining possession of the famed fortress. The fall of his stronghold dismayed Sindhia, and for the first time taught the Mardthds that their efforts to found their fortunes on the break up of the Mughal Empire were futile, for a foe was in their midst whom they could never hope to overcome. Colonel Camac had in the west retreated through Malwi before Sindhia, only to double back, on the night of the 24th of March, fall on the Mardtha camp, which he utterly routed, slaying numbers, seizing the standards, thirteen guns, and all the enemy's camels and ele- phants. Goddard's troops had, however, been driven from Poona down the Bore Ghit with a loss of nearly five hundred men, including eighteen European officers, by an overwhelming force of sixty thousand Mardthis. Sindhia was, however, anxious to make peace, so that he might stand forth as leader of the Marathi confederacy, assured of the goodwill of the English with whom he negotiated terms. The Bombay Government obtained the islands of Salsette and Elephanta, the Mardthds agreed to make no alliances or friendships with any European nation except the English, the Giekwar received back Gujarit, Sindhia retained all his possessions west cf the Jumna, the fortress of Gwalior was sur- rendered to the Rdna of Gohad and Righuba set Digitized by Microsoft® 144 WARREN HASTINGS. aside with a pension of 25,000 rupees per moqth. The English influence was thus estabhshed by Hastings across the whole of India from Calcutta to Bombay, the general pacification being concluded in May, 1782, by the Treaty of Salbai. In the meantime Haidar All in the south — enraged by the neglect of the Madras Government to defend him, according to an agreement of 1769, from the attacks of the Marithis — had increased his arrqy, oflicered it with French and European soldiers of fortune, waiting his time for revenge on his faithless allies. On the outbreak of the war between France and England, Hastings seized not only the French settlements at Chandranagar and Pondicherry, but also Mahe on the west coast. From Mahe Haidar All had drawn his supplies, from Mahd came the French officers who trained his troops and the French soldiers who manned his artillery. His wrath was further raised from the fact that Mah6 was within his territories, and he had vowed to sweep into the sea any of the English who dared to interfere either with it or with his allies the French. Collecting together a huge army of 1 5,000 infantry, 2,800 cavalry, 4,000 armed retainers, and accompanied by the strongest artillery then in India, and 400 French and European officers, he hastened down from the Highlands of Mysore to spread over the peaceful villages of the lowland plains a devastating war with all the suddenness and violence of a monsoon storm. The Madras Government had no money, and but 6,000 troops to oppose the fierce Mysore monarch. From the fort of St. George Digitized by Microsoft® HAIDAR ALL I4S the English merchants saw in the night-time the sky reddened for miles around with the flames from burning villages and their own residences. A force of 3,700 men, marching down along the coast from Guntur under Colonel Baillie, was surrounded at Perambikam and slaughtered, only 300 officers and soldiers escaping to meet with a worse fate in the dungeons of the implacable Mysore chieftain. In chains and misery they fretted out their lives ; the mother of Sir David Baird, remembering the irascibility of her captive son, is famed for having remarked, with Spartan simplicity, on hearing of his fate, that she was sorry for the man who was chained to " our Davie." Sir Hector Munro, the hero of Baksar, who, on hearing of the defeat, marched out from Madras with five thousand troops, had to throw his guns into a tank and find safety in flight back to Fort St. George. Lieutenant Flint, emulating the fame of Clive at Arcot, held the fort of Wandewash with three hundred sepoys against the victorious forces of Haidar All. Not only had Hastings extricated the Bombay 'Government from its difficulties with the Mardthds, but now in the south he had to uphold the effete Madras authorities by sending men and money from Bengal. Just as in 1780 he had despatched Colonel Goddard at the head of an army to fight the Mardthds in the west, so now he sent- Colonel Pearse to march, even further, at the head of five thousand men, to fight Haidar All in the south, while by sea he sent the funds he had gathered together and the one man II Digitized by Microsoft® 146 WARREN HASTINGS. he could trust, the veteran Commander Sir Eyre Coote who had succeeded General Clavering in the Council. Flint was relieved at Wandewash, and the stores landed at Pondicherry by the French admiral for the use of Haidar All were destroyed. Coote then moved with his small force to Cud- dalore, where he was hemmed in on the sea-coast between the overwhelming army of Haidar All and the ships of the French. In vain Haidar All prayed the French to stand by and strike an annihilating blow at the outwitted English com- mander ; the admiral, Count d'Orves, sailed away, losing his final chance of establishing the influence of France in South India. Amid the sand-heaps, at Porto Novo, Coote won his glorious victory over the Mysore troops, of whom upwards of ten thousand were slain. By August, 1 78 1, Coote was joined by the forces from the north, under Colonel Pearse, whose sepoys suffered terribly from cholera on their journey through the coast districts. At Pollilur, near the scene of Colonel Baillie's defeat, Haidar All was again defeated, driven from the pass of Sholinghar and obliged to raise the siege of Vellore, which important fortress Coote had relieved. A terrible disaster befel the English troops at the beginning of the year 1782. A force under Colonel Braithwaite of 100 English and 1,800 sepoys was surrounded by an army under Tipii, the son of Haidar All, assisted by 400 Frenchmen. All would have perished were it not that the French gallantly rushed forward and saved Digitized by Microsoft® S/J? EYRE COOTE. 1 47 some of the English officers from the fierce slaughter of the Mysore soldiers. On the 8th of April of the same year Bussy landed at Porto Novo with 1,200 new French troops, seized Cuddalore and there entrenched himself, giving the veteran Coote an opportunity of fighting his last fight against Haidar All and Tipu, whom he drove back from their chief arsenal in the plains, the fort of Arni. The end was, however, at hand. On the 7th of December, 1782, the fierce and brave Haidar AU died, in his last words praying his son Tipu to make peace with the English, whose power neither the defeat of Baillie nor of Braithwaite could lessen. Coote had repaired to Calcutta to recruit his health, and on his return the ship in which he sailed was chased by four French frigates. Worn out by fatigue and anxiety the brave old general fell paralysed as he watched the chase, and died two days after he reached Madras. On the seas duel after duel had taken place between the French Admiral Suffrerf, and the English Admiral Sir Edward Hughes. In one of the engagements the French had twelve ships and the English but nine, in another the English had eighteen and the French fifteen. Were it not that Admiral Suffren's skilful tactics were frustrated by his incompetent and disloyal captains, the English admiral's dogged tenacity and determination to fight his ships till they sank would scarcely have saved the greater part of his fleet from disaster. As it was the French admiral was weary Digitized by Microsoft® 148 WARREN HASTINGS. of the war, and when the news of the Peace of Versailles reached him in September, 1783, it was with a sigh of rehef that he exclaimed, " God be praised for the peace ! for it was clear that in India, though we had the means to impose the law, all would have been lost." On the shore the French, under Bussy, were still entrenched at Cuddalore, where the English had lost heavily and were in want of provisions. On the 1st of July the welcome flag of truce was hung out by the French, announcing the Peace and proclaiming that they could no longer fight for Tipii against the English. Tipii had been winning back the territories of his father on the west coast ; he had captured Manga- lore, gallantly held for nine months by Captain Campbell, and sent the English officers and men in chains to Seringapatam, deporting some thirty thousand of the inhabitants of Kanara and Malabar to Mysore, where they were forciby made Muham- madans. Colonel Fullerton had, however, approached with an overwhelming force within reach of Seringapatam, when Lord Macartney directed all hostilities to be suspended, and sent envoys to negotiate a peace with Tipu. On the nth of March, 1784, the Mysore monarch consented to sign a treaty whereby a mutual restoration of all conquests made during the w^r was agreed to, Tipii further promising to surrender upwards of one thousand Englishmen and one thou- sand sepoys held chained in his mountain prisons in Mysore. Digitized by Microsoft® HASTINGS LEAVES INDIA. 1 49 The work of Hastings was accomplished. Bom- bay was saved, the Marathds held in check, Sindhia reconciled, the Nizam made an ally, and the Madras Government supported in its weakness. As he said before the House of Commons, in proud disdain of its censures, " I enlarged and gave shape and consistency to the dominion you held there ; I preserved it ; I sent forth its armies with an effectual but economical hand, through unknown and hostile regions, to the support of your other possessions ; to the retrieval of one from degradation and dishonour ; and of the other from utter loss and subjection. I maintained the wars which were of your formation, or that of others, not of mine." And this at a time when all from whom he might have expected some measure of support, sedulously laboured to " weaken my authority, to destroy my influence and to embarrass all my measures." Yet in 1782 the Directors had resolved to recall him, alleging that " he had acted in a manner repugnant to the honour and policy of this nation, and thereby brought great calamities on India and enormous expenses on the Company," a resolution with which, however, the pro- prietors refused to agree. After the general pacification, Hastings waited but to place the financial affairs of Benares and Oudh on a satisfactory basis before he finally determined to return home and join his wife, whom, next to the honour and welfare of his country, he dreamed of hourly. His determination was quickened when, on the 20th of December, 1784, he received a draft of Pitt's Digitized by Microsoft® ISO lVAJ?/fEJV HASTINGS. new India Bill, curtailing the power of the Governor- General, and vesting the entire civil, military, and revenue affairs of the Company in the hands of six commissioners appointed by the Crown. The sad story yet remains to be fairly and ade- quately told of how Hastings was sacrificed by Pitt, delivered over to the malignity of Francis and those whose self-seeking intrigues and narrow-witted policy he had so sternly repressed and so proudly ignored. It remains to be told by some writer with the accuracy of to-day, yet with all the imagination of a Macaulay, how unjustly he suffered under the per- fervid eloquence of Burke and melodramatic rhetoric of Sheridan, how nobly he bore the disgrace of seven years of criminal trial before an incompetent tribunal which perfunctorily pronounced him not guilty of the charges conjured up against him by the malice of his enemies. His life, his heroism, his proud reserve, and confident assurance that all his failings and faults arose from a single-minded desire to carry out the intentions of his time, are summed up in the words by which he declared his own vindication and his accusers' con- demnation : " I gave you all ; and you have rewarded me with confiscation, disgrace, and a life of impeach- ment." Digitized by Microsoft® VII. LORD COR'NWALLIS .AND SIR JOHN SHORE. In 1782 Lord Cornwallis, then a prisoner of war on parole, after the capitulation of Yorktown to Washington, was asked by Lord Shelburne if he would proceed to India as Governor-General. Lord Corn- wallis curtly refused, for, as he said, he saw no reason why he should run the risk of being " disgraced to all eternity" in efforts "to fight Nabob princes, his own Council, and the Supreme Government, whatever it may be." When the India Bill of Pitt placed the chief power in the handa of the Governor-General and three Councillors, and a subsequent Act gave the Governor- General authority to act in cases of emergency with- out the concurrence, or even in opposition to the opinion of his Council, Lord Cornwallis consented to assume the office. One very important limitation of his powers had, however, been laid down by Parlia- ment. It had been enacted that British rule in India should not be extended further than over the terri- tories acquired by Clive and consolidated by Hastings. The wording of the Act was peremptory : " Whereas 151 Digitized by Microsoft® I 52 LORD CORNWALLIS AND SIR JOHN SHORE. to pursue schemes of Conquest and Extension of Dominion in India, are measures repugnant to the Wish, the Honour, and the Policy of this Nation . . . it shall not be lawful for the Governor-General and Council of Fort William, without the express com- mand and authority of the said Court of Directors, or of the Secret Committee of the said Court of Directors, in any case, except where hostilities have actually been commenced or preparations made for the commencement of hostilities, against the British Nation in India, or against some of the Princes or States dependent thereon, or whose territories the said united Company shall be at such time engaged by any subsisting Treaty to defend or guaranty, either to declare War or commence hostilities, or enter into any Treaty for making War against any of the Country Princes or States in India.'' This Act had but little effect in checking war or in staying the extension of the Company's possessions. By the Treaty of Mangalore, the Raja of Travancore had become an ally of the English, consequently, on his being attacked, in 1790, by Tipii Sultan, Lord Cornwallis considered that the terms of the Act justified him in declaring war against the common enem}-, the Mysore ruler. The Nizam of Haidarabad was summoned to send aid ; the Marathas, hoping to recover the territories lying between the Kistna and Tungabhadra which Raghuba had surrendered to Haidar All, expressed their eagerness to join in the fray. In January, 1791, Lord Cornwallis, as Commander- in-Chief, took command of the assembled troops before Digitized by Microsoft® "tippoo sultahn." (FroefiBeatson's " War with Tippoo Sultaun.") Digitized by Microsoft® 154 LORD CORNWALUS AND SIR JOHN SHORE. the fort of Vellore. Bangalore was first captured, whereon Tipu put to death nineteen EngHsh youths whom he still held captive in contravention of the treaty of 1 784. Cornwallis, not waiting for his Maratha allies, hurried on to Seringapatam, the inland capital of Mysore. There his supplies gradually failed, and, his communications being cut off, he was obliged to destroy his siege trains, throw his shot into a river, and retreat to Bangalore. General Abercromby, who was advancing from the Malabar coast, had to abandon his guns at the top of the mountain passes and save his contingent by retreating to the plains. So far fortune had favoured Tipii, but the next year Corn- wallis captured the important fortress of Nandidriig, situated thirty miles from Bangalore, on the summit of a steep fortified hill, 5,000 feet above the sea level. The equally important fortress of Savandrug, 4,000 feet above the sea level, next fell. , The united forces of the Nizim and Cornwallis then laid siege to Seringapatam ; the Marithas occupying themselves in the congenial task of raiding the Mysore dominions on the north and north-east. Hemmed in on all sides, Tipii Sultan had to capitulate, agree to surrender half his territories to .be divided among the allies, pay a war indemnity of 3,000,000 rupees, release all the prisoners he still retained, and deliver up his two sons as hostages for the due observance of the treaty. Far more important than this war with Mysore was the Permanent Settlement of the land revenues of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. When first the direct control of the collection of Digitized by Microsoft® PERMANENT SETTLEMENT. I 55 the land revenue in the Company's possessions was assumed by the Government, in 1772, it was ascer- tained that the rayats, or cultivators, had been in the habit of paying a fixed share of the produce, either in grain or in money value, to local landholders called Zamindars. Under the rule of the Mughals these Zaminddrs paid the Emperor nine-tenths of what they received, retaining one-tenth for themselves, being obliged to render true accounts of their receipts. They possessed the power of levying local cesses, they could transfer their title by gift or sale, and on death their right to collect the revenue passed to the heir on payment of a fine or present to the Emperor. In all cases where it was deemed advisable to set aside the Zaminddr he received lands or money by way of compensation for the loss of his rights. Hastings, on undertaking the management, had leased out the right to collect the land revenues for terms of five and ten years to the Zami'nddrs or to others who bid for the office. He had further made the Company's writers collectors of the Government share, and placed controlling officers or supervisors over them, while local Revenue Councils were gradu- ally formed for the chief centres, such as Dacca, Murshiddbdd and Patnd. Finally the chief super- vising revenue authority was centralised at Calcutta, in a Board of Revenue of which the Governor- General was a member. From 1777 to 1780 the Zami'nddrs were granted annual leases to collect the revenue at rates calcu- lated on those previously paid. These rapid changes did not recommend them- Digitized by Microsoft® IS6 LORD CORNWALLIS AND SIR JOHN SHORE. selves to an English Parliament anxious to preserve the rights of the ZamindArs, which they looked upon as similar to those of British landlords. Accordingly, in 1784, by 24 Geo. cap. 25, it was enacted that, whereas " divers Rajahs, Zami'ndars, Polygars, Talookdars, and other native landholders within the British territories in India, have been unjustly de- prived of, or compelled to abandon or relinquish, their respective Lands, Jurisdictions, Rights and Privileges," the Court of Directors should take measures, for " establishing, upon principles of Moderation and Justice, the permanent Rules by which their respective Tributes, Rents, and Services shall be in future rendered and paid to the said United Company by the said Rajahs, Zami'ndars, &c." The Court of Directors in their Despatch of the 1 2th of April, 1786, went no further than to direct that a ten years' settlement should be made with the local Zamindirs. Lord Cornwallis, with the assistance of Mr. John Shore, a Bengal civilian, afterwards Lord Teign- mouth, studied closely, from 1786 to 1790, the whole question of land revenue in Bengal. In 1789 a pre- liminary ten years' settlement was made with the Zami'ndars, the amount to be paid by them to the Company being determined from an examination of the old accounts and the payments previously made. In 1793 this settlement waS made permanent, and the amount to be paid by the Zami'ndars fixed in per- petuity at a total sum of about three millions sterling. While the Zami'ndars were thus allowed to gain the full benefit of the increased rental accruing from im- Digitized by Microsoft® PERMANENT SETTLEMENT. 1 57 proved cultivation and from new lands being brought under tillage, as well as from advances in price of produce due to improved means of communication and other causes, the State was for ever debarred from participating in the gain from this increasing unearned increment. On the other hand, only such cultivators as could prove an hereditary right were granted the security of holding at a fixed rental, while the Zami'ndars were empowered to raise the customary rates paid by others by means of a civil suit. The loss to the State can be estimated from the fact that at present, while the Zami'nddrs pay a revenue of but three and a quarter millions, the annual rental is upwards of thirteen millions sterling. The immediate result to the Zami'ndars was disastrous, for, possessing insufficient powers to re- cover the rent from the cultivators, they were unable to pay the State demands, and their rights to collect the revenue were sold wholesale in order that the amounts they had guaranteed might be realised. As a matter of fact, in a very short space of time the former hereditary right to collect the land revenue was sold away from the ancient Zami'nddrs into the hands of new leaseholders. The tenants suffered more than all. Those who could not show an hereditary right to hold at the old rate of assessment had little remedy against being rack-rented, while on failure to pay the rent de- manded, their property was liable to distraint and they themselves to be thrust into prison. This deplor- able state of affairs continued until the Bengal Land Act of 1859 removed some of the evils, though the Digitized by Microsoft® IjS LORD CORNWALLIS AND SIR JOHN SHORE. main faults of the system continue to the present day. By this Act cuhivators holding land since 1793 were to possess their tenements without the Zamindars having power to raise the rental ; all cultivators holding land for twenty years were to be presumed to have held since 1793, unless the Zamindar could prove the contrary ; while all those holding for less than twelve years were left to form contracts respecting their rental as best they could with the Zami'ndirs. This last class of tenants — those holding for less than twelve years — were, by the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885, allowed to claim compensation for improvements they had made in their holdings, as well as for loss by disturbance in case they were obliged to relinquish their lands in consequence of excessive advancement of rent. This first essay of the British in India in the making of land-laws, cannot be held to have been particularly successful. It has excluded the Govern- ment from participating in the ever-increasing pros- perity accruing from peace and the development of the chief source of wealth of the country, its agricultural produce ; it has not secured to the cultivators their full share of these benefits, whereby a contented and prosperous community might have been reared, while the Zammdirs have gained an enormous in- crease of wealth without any exertion on their part and without any incentive to apply it to the welfare of their tenants or the general prosperity of the com- munity. More successful were the efforts made by Com- wallis to establish on a new basis the entire judicial Digitized by Microsoft® EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS OF THE COMPANY. 159 system in force in the Company's dominions. In each district, or chief city, Civil Courts were estab- lished, presided over by one of the Company's senior writers, assisted by a junior writer and a registrar. Four Appellate or Provincial Courts were established in Calcutta, Patni, Dacca, and Mur- shidabdd, presided over by three judges and two junior European assistants, learned Hindu and Muhammadan lawyers being attached to expound the native law. From these local courts appeals were heard by the Sadr Diwdni Addlat, or Presidency Court, presided over by a Chief Justice and Puisne Judges. For the administration of criminal justice the judges of the Provincial Courts went on periodical circuits of jail delivery, appeals being allowed to a Central Appellate Court, or Nizdmat Addlat, presided over by three judges, assisted by natives who ex- pounded the Hindu and Muhammadan law. For these labours Lord Cornwallis was allotted, on his retirement from India in 1793, a pension of iJ^5,000 a year, and the Directors ordered that his statue should be placed in the India House, so that " his great services might ever be held in remem- brance." In the same year the exclusive trading rights of the Company to the East were extended for a further period of twenty years, with the important proviso that private individuals might be allowed to trade to the extent of 3,000 tons of shipping. Sir John Shore, the successor of Lord Cornwallis ruled as Governor-General from 1793 to 1798. Durirlg his tenure of office the troops of the Nizdm Digitized by Microsoft® l6o LORD CORNWALLIS AND SIR JOHN SHORE. of Haidardbdd met with an overwhelming defeat from the Mardthis on the fatal field of Kurdla. As a result the Nizam once more commenced to enlist French troops whom he placed under the command of the famed Raymond, with permission to carry the colours of the French Republic, and bear the cap of liberty on their regimental buttons. In Oudh the reigning Nawab Wazi'r died and a new claimant, Saidut All, was installed. The annual subsidy to the Company was r'aised to £^60,000 and a special donation of 2 lakhs of rupees claimed, notwithstanding the fact that, two years before, the Nawab Wazi'r had agreed to pay for four regiments of cavalry instead of the two he was previously obliged to retain. All these events were but preparatory to the many changes that took place during the administration of the Great Proconsul, the Marquess Wellesley, who succeeded Sir John Shore as Governor-General in 1798 and ruled until 1805. Digitized by Microsoft® VIII. ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY — MARQUESS WELLESLEY. (1798— i8os.) With the advent of Lord Mornington — or, as he is better known, the Marquess Wellesley — the cold touch of the iron hand of the British rule was felt for the first time by the native princes who still held sway in the land of their forefathers surrounded by all the glamour and pomp of an Oriental despotism. The insanely vaunting Sultan of Mysore, the proud Nizam of Haidardbid, the puppet Nawab Wazi'r of Oudh, the fierce Mardthd chiefs Sindhia, Holkar, the Bhonsla, the Gaekwar, and the Peshwa, were one and all forced to bow their heads before the imperious dictates of the new Governor-General. The aged Emperor Shdh Alam, deprived of his eyesight by the savage stab from the dagger of the insurgent Rohilla barbarian Ghulam KAdir Khan, was glad to hide himself away as a pensioner of a race his ancestors were wont to desp'se as low-caste traders. On the foundations of the British Empire in India, 12 ''^ Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® TIPU SULTAN. 163 laid by Clive and secured by Hastings, the stately structure of British supremacy over all the native powers in India was now to be built. The new Governor-General, assured of the support of a strong war ministry at home, and certain of the friendship of Pitt, was able, without fear of impeachment, to carry out his policy of making every ruling prince in India subordinate to, and dependent on, the one supreme British Power. This policy he carried out ener- getically and consistently, notwithstanding the many remonstrances and rebukes he received from the Court of Directors, all of which he treated with un- concealed contempt. " No additional outrage, injury, or insult," he wrote, " which can issue ^rom the most loathsome den of the India House will accelerate my departure when the public safety shall appear to require my aid." The first to fall beneath the heavy hand of the new Governor-General was Tipii Sultin, the Tiger of Mysore. Lord Mornington landed at Calcutta on the 17th of May, and on the 8th of June he received a paper the contents of which sealed the fate of the ruler of Mysore. It was a proclamation from the French Governor of Mauritius, or Isle of France, announcing that ambassadors had been received from Tipii asking for French aid to drive the English out of India and calling for volunteers to join in the enterprise. This proclamation, added to the fear that Buonaparte, wearied of the West, would, after the conquest of Egypt, seek to emulate the fame of Alexander the Great and attempt the conquest of India, determined Lord Mornington to break the Digitized by Microsoft® 164 ESTABLISHMEI T OP BRITISH SUPREMACY. power of Tipu and make the native states disband their French soldiers and dismiss their French officers. In order to carry out his policy the Governor-General had many difficulties to overcome. In the south the Madras Government, dreading to rouse the wrath of Tipii by making any effort to prepare for the coming war, reported that it would be fully six months before they could equip an army and place it in the field, while the new Nawdb of the Karnatik, not only refused aid but opened up a treasonable correspon- dence with Tipii. At Haidarabid the forces of the Nizam consisted of fourteen thousand mutinous troops, disciplined by French officers, who held lands as security for their pay. Captain, afterwards Sir John, Malcolm, induced the Nizdm to enter into a secret agreement, whereby these French troops were to be replaced by six thousand sepoys and artillery commanded by English officers, paid for by a subsidy of 201,425 rupees. The French officers were then forced to surrender, and were ultimately sent home to France. The terri- tories of the Nizdm remained safe under the protec- tion of the Company, and the Haidaribdd Subsidiary Force, raised to twelve thousand in i8cxD, has since been maintained by the Nizam, who ceded lands for its pay and maintenance. All fear of a French invasion was removed when the news reached India that the French fleet had been defeated off the mouth of the Nile by Nelson, nevertheless the Governor-General was determined to deprive the native states of their French officers and to continue his preparations against Mysore. Tipii, Digitized by Microsoft® MYSORE WAR. l6S who was vainly seeking aid from the Sultan of Turkey, the Afghdns, and Mardthds, replied to all the letters of the Governor-General by evasive and flippant answers until war was formally declared against him on the 22nd of February, 1799. Assisted by his brother. Colonel Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, who had arrived in India in 1796, and loyally supported by Lord Clive, the Governor of Madras and son of the Victor of Plassey, the Governor-General gathered together in the south an army, under General Harris, better equipped, disciplined, and supplied than any force that had yet taken the field in India. ' From Madras General Harris, with the main army and a contingent from the Nizam, marched on Seringapatam. General Stewart, with a force of 6,400 men, marched from Bombay through the coast districts, and after an obstinate fight of six hours drove back Tipii's army of 12,000 troops with heavy losses from the Siddeshwir Pass. The news of the victory was conveyed to the Governor-General by the friendly Rij4 of Coorg in the following words : " A severe action ensued, in which I was present . . . the discipline, valour, strength, and magnanimity of the troops, the courageous attack upon the army of Tipii, sur- passes all examples in this world. In our Shasters and Parana's battles . . . have been much cele- brated, but they are unequal to this battle ; it exceeds my ability to describe the action at length to your Lordship." Tipu, smarting from his defeat, hastened to oppose Digitized by Microsoft® l66 ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY. the main army, now slowly advancing on his capital at the rate of less than six miles daily. At Mal- villi he met with a terrible reverse, General Harris slaying upwards of i,ooo of his troops. Beaten in the field, Tipii retreated to his defences of Seringapatam, which he and his officers had sworn to die together defending. The siege commenced on the 5th of April, its opening operations being memorable for the defeat sustained by the "Iron Duke" in the grove of Sul- tdnpet. This .grove, cut up by water-channels and trenches, was held by an advanced body of Tipu's outposts securely entrenched. To drive them from their position Colonel Arthur Wellesley advanced on the night of the 5th of April, at the head of his own regiment, the 33rd. As they drew near under cover of the darkness, they were suddenly met by a fierce fire of musketry and rockets. The ranks were thrown into confusion, and many of the men killed, whereon the rest broke and retreated, Wellesley receiving a wound in the knee from a spent bullet. The next morning he advanced again to the attack, and with the 94th Regiment, two battalions of sepoys, and five guns drove the enemy from the grove. By the 4th of May the fort of Seringapatam was breached, and the honour of storming it allotted to General Baird, one of the unfortunate officers taken prisoner on the defeat of Colonel Baillie at Peram- bakam, and for four long years kept a close prisoner in chains in the dungeons of Mysore. The oppor- tunity had come when he was to undertake the congenial task of "paying off old scores" for all the Digitized by Microsoft® CAPTURE OF SERINGAPATAM. I67 terrible sufferings he and his fellow-prisoners had undergone. At ten minutes past one o'clock in the afternoon the signal to advance was given. The attacking party of 2,494 Europeans and 1,882 sepoys waited bfeathless, in the trenches, until General Baird rose up and, waving his sword, cried out, " Now, my brave fellows ! follow me, and prove yourselves worthy of the name of British soldiers.'' Amid a shower of bullets which swept their ranks, the troops dashed across the intervening river, and within seven minutes from the time of leaving the trenches the British flag was planted on the summit of the breach. Beyond lay a deep ditch still to be crossed. The inner ramparts were crowded with the soldiery of Mysore, in the midst of whom stood Tipu, dressed in a light-coloured jacket, wide trousers of flowered chintz, a dark red silk sash and jewelled turban, firing at his advancing foes from guns loaded and handed to him by his attendants. At length, being wounded, he mounted his horse and endea- voured to make his way towards his palace through the crowd of retreating soldiers. As he neared the narrow gateway leading from the inner ramparts he received a second wound and again a third, his Jiorse was shot dead, and he fell to the ground. Being abandoned, he lay weak and faint. A passing soldier, seeing his richly jewelled belt, strove to snatch it from him, whereon the fierce Tiger of Mysore raised himself and struck wildly, only to fall back shot through the temple. Amid the dead and dying the monarch was found, robbed of his jacket, turban, and sword-belt. Digitized by Microsoft® l68 ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY. The body, borne by his personal attendants and escorted by a guard of Europeans, was carried through the thronged streets of his capital, where were gathered together the sorrowing inhabitants of the town. By the side of his father Haidar All he was laid to rest in the Mausoleum of the Lil Bagh; the chief Kazi came forward to perform the funeral rites, and alms were given to the holy men and to the poor who crowded round. As the mourners stood by his grave bewailing the downfall of their dreaded chieftain a wild storm burst forth, the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, many in the town and in the camp were injured or struck dead — an event held by the natives as proclaiming that the independent rule of their prince had passed away and the rule of the English Raj taken its place. Seringapatam and all the passes leading down to the plains, as well as the entire western sea-coast and the districts of Koimbatur, Darapuram, and Mujnad on the south and east, were held by British troops, and to the Niz^m, the districts on the south of his territories were allotted. , The descendant of the last Hindu rulers of Mysore, an infant of five years, Krishna Raj, was taken from the lowly position into which his family had fallen after Haidar All had usurped the power, and placed on the throne, where until 1810 he ruled over the curtailed dominions under the guidance of the able Marithd Brahman Purnaiya. On becoming inde- pendent the new Mysore Raja so misgoverned the state that he was deposed in 1831, and the manage- ment placed in charge of British officials. In 1881 Digitized by Microsoft® OUDH. 169 the native rule was restored in the person of his adopted son, Chdma Rdjendra Wodigar, an en- hghtened prince who ruled the destinies of his people up to his death in 1894. To Lord Mornington the Company allotted an annuity of ;£'5,ooo for twenty years. By the Crown he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in India and to his ill-concealed annoyance he was further honoured by being raised one step in the Irish Peerage, so that henceforth he became the Marquess of Wellesley instead of Lord Mornington. One result of the war was the removal of the Nawab of the Karnatik from the civil and mili- tary control of his dominions on account of the treasonable correspondence he had carried on with Tipii, full evidence of which was discovered in the archives of Seringapatam. His revenues were placed under British control, one -fifth allotted for his pension, and the remainder set aside to pay his private debts and those due to the Company. Tanjore was also taken under the administration of the Company on the 26th of November, 1799, on the occasion of the installation of Sarboji^ a son of the late Rdja. Oudh had next to be dealt with : by a treaty made by Sir John Shore, in 1797, with the Nawab Wazir, the latter had agreed to receive three thousand Eng- lish troops, for the protection of his frontiers, and to guarantee a sum of £'j(iOfxyo yearly for their pay. By the Governor-General it was soon considered advisable that additional British troops should be sent to Oudh to defend its frontiers from Mar^thd raids Digitized by Microsoft® 170 ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY. and to ward off attacks likely to occur in consequence of a threatened invasion of the north of India from Afghanistan by Zemdn Shdh, ruler at Kabul. The Nawdb Wazi'r was called on to guarantee the pay of these troops. In vain he pleaded his inability to pay even for the troops already entertained by the former treaty with Sir John Shore. In vain he pointed out his inability to pay the amount he owed to the European traders and adventurers who carried on a lucrative business in his dominions by lending him money at exorbitant rates of interest to relieve his more pressing necessities. Sooner than guarantee the pay of the extra troops he offered to resign his ruler- ship, leave his own country and go on a pilgrimage. The Marquess of Wellesley was not to be thus trifled with. The Nawdb Wazi'r was informed that the European moneylenders would be removed from Oudh, but that if he resigned his high office his territories would be annexed by the Company, as it was impossible to hand over the government to the eldest, or any of the Naw^b's sons, for as the Governor- General wrote : " What rational hope could be entertained that any of these young princes would be competent to the correction of those evils which his Excellency himself, aided by all his knowledge and experience of public affairs, has confessed himself unable to remedy." For the Nawab Wazi'r there was no course open but to entertain a subsidiary treaty. Accordingly, in July, 1801, by the Treaty of Luck- now, the Nawib Wazi'r agreed to cede, in lieu of a subsidy, for the expenses of the perpetual defence of Digitized by Microsoft® TREATY OF LUCK NOW. 171 his dominions by the Company, the whole of the fertile lands lying between the Ganges and Jumna known as the DoAb, as well as Rohilkhand and the district of Gorakhpur. For the administration of these new acquisitions the ablest of the revenue and judicial officers in the Company's service were formed into a Board, presided over by the Hon. Mr. Henry Welles- ley, afterwards Lord Cowley, " to whose discretion, address, and firmness," as the Governor-General wrote to the Directors, they were " principally indebted for the early and tranquil settlement of these extensive and fertile territories." The answer of the Directors was characteristic. First they resented the patronage of a lucrative appointment being taken out of their hands, and directed " that Mr. Wellesley be forthwith removed," an order which was not carried out by the Board of Control. They then voted that the new acquisitions of the Company had been wrested from the Nawib Wazi'r " violently and compulsorily," that his consent had been extorted and that the treaty was in direct violation of existing treaties. The Governor-General was, however, too busy in endeavouring to frustrate the efforts of the Mardthd princes to found sovereignties for themselves on the ruins of the Mughal Empire either to care for or to resent this rebuke. From Berar to Orissa the Bhonsla of Nagpur held sway. The rich plains of Gujardt were claimed by the Gdekwar of Baroda. Sindhia of Gwalior held possession of the blind Emperor Shdh A lam at Delhi, while his powerful rival, Holkar of Indore, had gained for himself the chief place among Digitized by Microsoft® 1/2 ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY. the Maratha chieftains by driving forth Sindhia's troops and the Peshwa, Baji Rao, from Poena and installing there his own nominee. Bajf Rao fled to the protection of the English, and on the 6th of December, 1802, entered into the Subsidiary Treaty of Bassein, which virtually placed the Company at the head of the Marathi Confederacy. The Peshwa, acknowledged over-lord among the Mardthas, agreed to abide by the advice of the Governor-General in all things, to cede territories yielding a revenue of 26 lakhs of rupees yearly for the pay of a permanent British force for the protection of his dominions, and to dismiss his own French and foreign officers. Both in England and in India the treaty was vehemently attacked by those who held that it must inevitably result in war. By others it was held that the treaty was absolutely necessary — even if followed by war — to check the growing power of the Marathas and the influence of their French commanders, especially that of General Count de Boigne. War was not long delayed, but when it broke out the Marithas had lost their chief strength. In former days the hardy Mardthis, mounted on their swift ponies, swept like a swarm of locusts down from their mountain homes on the fertile plains, devastated the villages of the peace- ful lowland cultivators, burned and laid waste all they could not carry off to their forest homes. No army could long follow their swift course and rapid retreat, for behind them they left no forage for cattle nor grain for the troops ; the tanks they breached and the wells they filled up or poisoned. If attacked in their strongholds they had but to hold out till their Digitized by Microsoft® MARATHAS. 173 foes \\'ere exhausted for want of provisions and obliged t(_i retire, when they could again sally forth, cut up the harassed troops, and wage a guerilla warfare, in the tactics of which they had no rivals. Seeing the success of the Company's disciplined infantry sepoys, they deemed that if they submitted DE BOIGNE. {From Compioii's " Military Ailvt'ntnres of Hindustan " — T. FiAt:}' r inciii.) to be formed into battalions of foot-soldiers supported by artillery they would be able to meet the Company's troops on equal terms and in overwhelming numbers. In 17S4 Sindhia had summoned the Savoyard Benoit de Boigne to the command of his troops, and for eleven years the name of the commander was a terror among the opposing native powers, the batta- Digitized by Microsoft® 1/4 ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY lions he raised and drilled becoming renowned as invincible. Vet no one knew better than De Boigne the inherent weakness of the system he had succeeded in founding. His constant advice to Sindhia was that it would be better to disband the whole of the battalions rather than venture to place them in the field to face the Company's troops. When the inevitable fight did take place it was found that the system De Boigne had organised, though, as he foretold, it did break down, was no contemptible one. After the battle of Laswari which the Mardthis had to fight without the aid of their French officers, General Lake in a secret despatch to General Arthur Wellesley, wrote : " The sepoys of the enemy behaved exceedingly well, and if they had been commanded by French officers, the affair would, I fear, have been extremely doubtful." The main faults of the new system were evident. The French officers in the pay of the native princes had neither the authority nor the power over their semi-independent and often mutinous levies that was possessed by the Company's officers over their well-paid and systematic- ally recruited sepoys. Further, when once the batta- lions raised by the French officers were defeated and scattered, the loss was complete and irretrievable, for there existed neither means nor resources to raise fresh battalions to replace the soldiers swept away. When, after the Treaty of Bassein, the Peshwd was triumphantly escorted back to Poona by a force under General Arthur Wellesley, Sindhia viewed the situa- tion with undisguised alarm, and summoned his brother chieftains to join him in striking a final blow Digitized by Microsoft® ASS AYE. 17s for Maratha freedom. The Bhonsla hurried up his levies, but Holkar held sullenly aloof, waiting to see how events would develope. The' united armies of Sindhia and the Bhonsla amounted to some 100,000 men, well drilled, and supported by hundreds of cannon ; General Wellesley and Colonel Stevenson had an army of 15,000 men ready to march at a moment's notice ; while in the north General Lake had 10,000 men, and in Gujardt General Murray commanded 7,000 more troops. A demand made by General Wellesley that Sindhia should withdraw his troops within his own territories was ignored, whereon war was declared on the 3rd of August, 1 803. The campaign was opened by Wellesley, who in four days captured the fortress of Ahmad- nagar, and on the 23rd of September, at the head of 4,500 men, came up with the combined armies of Sindhia and the Bhonsla numbering 50,000 men, 30,000 being cavalry, with 100 guns, at the famed field of Assaye. When Wellesley saw the vast army stretched out before him he determined to attack at once without waiting for the arrival of the remainder of his forces under Colonel Stevenson. As the British infantry advanced a withering fire from the enemy's guns held them back until 360 men of the 19th Dragoons and the 4th Native Cavalry charged and sabred the Mardthd gunners. In this charge the horse of Lieutenant Alexander Grant was wedged between the wheel of a carriage and its gun which the artillery- man fired before Grant could cut him down. The guns once silenced the infantry advanced, the Mard- thds were chased from the field with enormous losses, Digitized by Microsoft® 176 ESTABLISHMENT OP BRITISH SUPREMACY. ninety-eight guns were left behind, the cavalry having ridden off at the first signs of reverse. In this battle of Assaye, the most daring and brilliant ever fought against the Marathas, General Arthur Wellesley lost over one-third of his force in killed and wounded. The fort of Ali'garh was taken by General Lake, who defeated Sindhia's troops under their French commander Perron, Delhi was then captured and afterwards Agra with its treasures, arsenal, and 162 pieces of cannon. At the crowning victory of Laswari Lake with three regiments of dragoons and five regiments of native cavalry charged again and again through Sindhia's invincible battalions who valiantly stood their ground, " the fellows " as Lake wrote, " fought like devils or rather heroes. Pray God I may never be in such a situation again." It was not till the British infantry came up and charged with bayonets that the field was won. Fourteen of De Boigne's battalions were destroyed, and 7,000 men out of the total strength of 9,000 picked Marathis were slain, while the English loss was only 824 men killed and wounded. On the east coast Colonel Harcourt drove the forces from Nagpur out of Orissa, captured Masuli- patam, and received from its hereditary guardians the custody of the famed temple of Jagannath. In the west the Bhonsla's troops were totally defeated on the wide plain in front of the village of Argaon, and the campaign closed on the 29th of November with the capture of the stronghold of Gawilgarh. On the 17th of December the Treaty of Deogaon was Digitized by Microsoft® MoLkAk. 177 signed, by which the Bhonsla of Berar agreed to submit in future all his war disputes to the arbitration of the Governor-General, to dismiss his French and American officers, to cede Cuttack to the Company, and other lands to the Nizdm, over whose villages he for ever relinquished claim to exact "chauth." Sindhia, with his boasted battalions destroyed, and his chief strongholds captured, signed the Treaty of Surgi Arjangaon on the 30th of December, by which he yielded not only his rich lands lying between the Ganges and Jumna, but all those north of the Rijput states of Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Gohad, renounced his claims on the Emperor, on the Nizam, and on the Gdekwar, delivered up Ahmadnagar to the Peshwd, and, to complete his humiliation, agreed to employ no more French or American officers in his armies. A storm of controversy, congratulation, and con- demnation arose in England and in India over these rapid wars and bewildering treaties, but amid it all the Governor-General proudly stood unmoved, complacently surveying the vast territories across which he had advanced the British rule. Of the Mardthd rulers Jeswant Rdo Holkar alone remained independent. Raging with fury at the successes of the Governor-General, he hurried up from Mdlw4 calling on the RAjpiits, Rohillas and Sikhs to join their troops with his in one mighty effort to roll back the wave of conquest now sweep- ing on towards their lands and principalities. He wisely abstained from taking the open field, where he knew that his troops would be swept away by the well-drilled and disciplined Company's soldiers. He 13 Digitized by Microsoft® 178 ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY. saw that his best policy was to avoid a general action and retreat before the slow-moving British troops until they were worn out and deprived of supplies, and then harass their outposts, and attack them in detail. On the advance of General Lake and General Monson he fell back, and allowed them to capture his stronghold of Rampura. On the approach of the rains Lake was compelled to move into cantonments, leaving to Monson the seemingly simple task of following up the retreating army. With five batta- lions of sepoys and four thousand irregular horse Monson pursued Holkar through the Mahandwara Pass, across the Chambal River. He carried with him no stock of provisions, and in his hurry neglected to secure his communications o\''er the many river- channels and watercourses he rapidly crossed. His supplies soon failed, the rain fell incessantly, the roads became mud tracks through which it was well-nigh impossible to drag the native carts crowded with camp-followers and the wives and children of the sepoys, who always accompany native troops on the march. In the rear the rivers were so swollen as to be unfordable, and no boats had been collected and left in readiness in case of need, the soldiers were dispirited, and it was impossible to drag the guns or ammunition A\'aggons further. The one chance of safety, and that a doubtful one, was to attack Holkar, who seemed not unwilling to fight. Monson hesitated for a moment, then turned and commenced his disastrous retreat, not staying to answer the insulting messages of the Mardthis, who called on him to fight or surrender. The retreat- Digitized by Microsoft® RETREAT OF MONSON. 1 79 ing troops, in want of food, wet and cold from the incessant rain, marched wearily on through the heavy mud, pausing only to fire on the Mardthd cavalry, who swept down every now and then to slay belated stragglers or to cut up the sepoys guarding the baggage. The guns, sunk deep in the mud, had to be spiked and left behind, and the ammunition destroyed. The deep rivers had to be crossed on elephants or rafts, or else a halt .called until some ford was discovered. Holkar's wild cavalry daily grew bolder, while from the neighbour- ing mountains the savage Bhils crept down to plunder and slay the wounded and carry off before the very eyes of the sepoys the unprotected women and children. MSny of Monson's native soldiers and irregular cavalry sought safety in flight, the remainder, their last gun left behind, struggled on, halting now and then for a few hours' rest. Wearied, hungry, and dazed from want of sleep, the dejected band at last formed themselves into a square, where they were mowed down in hundreds by the Maritha guns. The remnant in endeavouring to escape were cut down by Holkar's swordsmen, a few of the sepoys escaping to Agra, there to spread abroad the news of the retreat of Monson and the glorious victory of Holkar — a story still sung in the villages of Central India in the long, hot evenings. The full extent of the disaster was expressed by Lord Lake in the words he wrote : " I have lost five battalions and six companies, the flower of the army, and how they are to be replaced at this day, God only knows." Digitized by Microsoft® l8o F.STAPUSHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY. Arthur Wellesley, surveying the whole campaign, the reckless advance without supplies into a hostile country where no efforts had been made to keep open communications, summed up the situation by rejoining : " In my mind . . . the detachment must have been lost, even if Holkar had not attacked them with his infantry and artillery." Holkar had but a short-lived success. Driven, along with his ally the R^j^ of Bhartpur, from before Delhi by Lord Lake, he fled down the Doab, burning the Company's villages. From before Dig he was driven by General Frazer, who fell mortally wounded along with twenty-two of his officers and 623 of his men, leaving to Lord Lake the capture of the citadel and final defeat of Holkar, who escaped to the Punjib, where he was forced to accept a treaty. Before the impregnable fortress of Bhartpur Lake lost three thousand of his men in futile and obstinate efforts to reduce it, and was finally obliged to retire on an assurance from its RAji that the alliance with Holkar would be renounced and an indemnity of 20 lakhs of rupees paid towards the expenses of the war. The London merchants, who feared to accept the responsibility of administering the vast extent of territory they had acquired, and who were goaded into anger by the contemptuous indifference with which the Governor-General treated their remonstrances, dreaded to speak out boldly their opinions to the haughty Napoleon of India. They had congratu- lated him on the early results of his operations against Digitized by Microsoft® RECALL OF WELLESLEY. l8l the Mardthas, but had cautiously reserved to them- selves the right of fuJly irr^uiring into, and expressing their mature judgment on, the justice and policy of entering on the war. They, however, showed their personal resentment at his conduct by ordering the aboHtion of a college he had founded at Calcutta for the training of junior civil servants, a scheme after- wards carried out in its intent by the establishment, in 1805, of the East India College at Haileybury. Above all things the Directors were alarmed at the state of the finances. The Company's debt at home and in India had risen from ;£'i7,oS9,i92 in 1797 to ;£'3 1,638,827 in 1806, while their expenses and interest on debt amounted to ^17,672,017, with a revenue of ;£■ 15,403,409. With relief they heard of the defeat of Monson, and gladly seized what they had long sought, the opportunity of recalling a Governor-General whom they feared, and of whose power they were jealous. The services rendered them by the Marquess Wellesley could not be overlooked, so in 1841 it was agreed to erect a statue to him as a " permanent mark of the admiration and gratitude of the East India Com- pany." Lord Cornwallis, who came out a second time to India to succeed the Marquess Wellesley, died shortly after taking up his appointment, and was succeeded by a Bengal civilian. Sir George Barlow, who held office until the arrival, in 1 807, of the next Governor- General, Lord Minto. The interval was marked by the sepoy mutiny at the fort of Vellore, eighty-eight miles from Madras. Digitized by Microsoft® 1 82 ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY. There the family of Tipu had been allotted apart- ments and allowed to live in semi-regal state, kept under a more or less strict surveillance by a guard of 370 European troops and 1,500 sepoys, under the command of Colonel Fancourt. In the south it had been considered necessary, in order to produce an appearance of military uniformity among the Company's troops, that all the sepoys should dress alike, shave their beards, cut their moustaches, bear no caste marks, and wear a tall glazed hat instead of their usual turbans. The sepoys, sus- picious by nature, saw in these new regulations some deep underlying purpose — some insidious attack upon their religion, or an attempt to break through the hereditary customs of caste, so that the Company's soldiers might grow to be all of one faith, and of one race, severed for ever from their kinsmen in the villages of their forefathers. The rumours of discontent and warnings that secret meetings were being held at night-time among the sepoys were received by the European officers with disbelief, or else ignored. At dawn on the loth of July, 1806, the pent-up feelings of the sepoys burst forth in open mutiny. Colonel Fancourt was shot down on the threshold of his own house in the fort, volley after volley was poured into the barracks where the unarmed Euro- pean soldiers vainly endeavoured to screen them- selves behind their beds and scanty furniture. A few survivors, officers and men, made their escape to the ramparts of the fort, pulled down the green flag of Tipu, there planted by the mutineers, drove back their assailants at the point of the bayonet, and Digitized by Microsoft® VELLORE MUTINY. 1 83 entrenched themselves in one of the bastions, where they waited for help. On the news reaching Arcot, nine miles distant, Colonel Gillespie galloped to the rescue at the head of his dragoons and native cavalry, followed close by his guns. Reaching Vellore, he was drawn up to the ramparts of the fort by the defenders, the gates were opened for his cavalry, who charged in and cut down from 300 to 400 qf the mutineers, the rest of whom were captured, and, after trial by court-martial, shot or punished according to their guilt, the number of the regiment being erased from the Army List. Lord Minto, who succeeded Sir George Barlow, landed at Calcutta in 1807. Pledged though the new Governor-General was to a policy of retrenchment and non-interference with the independent or semi-independent states, he soon found that the time had not yet come when the sword might be sheathed and the lands of the Company rest safe from invasion or internal disturbances. Beyond the Company's territories lay the lands of the warlike Sikhs in the Punjab, ruled over by Ranji't Singh, the Lion of Lahore. Beyond were the un- known mountains and valleys of Afghanistan, where Shdh Shujd reigned, and further still lay Persia. It was known that Napoleon, thwarted in his ambitious schemes of diverting the trade from the East, round the Cape of Good Hope, to its ancient route through Egypt to the Mediterranean, had, in 1807, at the Conference of Tilsit, sought the aid of the Russian Emperor Alexander in a final effort to extend his conquests over Asia to the far-off Ganges. Above Digitized by Microsoft® Io4 ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY. all things it was therefore deemed necessary that Lord Minto should, if possible, gain the friendship of the Ruler of the Punjab, the Amir of Afghanistan, and the Shah of Persia, so that the Company's territories might be safeguarded in case of an invasion from the West. Although this threatened danger passed away when Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, and made war against Russia in 181 2, still, in the meantime, the Governor-General had sent envoys to enter into friendly negotiations with the outlying powers : Metcalfe to Lahore, Elphinstone to Peshawar, and Malcolm to Teheran. Though little immediate benefit resulted from these negotiations, save that Ranji't Singh renounced all claims over the Sikh chieftains on the Company's side of the Sutlej, they form the connecting link between the policy of the times of Clive, Hastings, and Wellesley, and that of to-day, when it is considered necessary to exhaust almost all the available resources of India in extend- ing the frontier defences, and making them strong enough to withstand any possible attack from Russia, whose conquering career towards the East first com- menced some seventy years ago. Though Lord Minto captured Java in 18 10, and Abercromby freed the Eastern seas from the depre- dations of French ships by the capture of Mauritius, the Directors of the Company were more interested in securing the financial prosperity of their possessions than in seeking new annexations. In the last three years of Lord Minto's administration the Company's affairs were so prosperous that there was a balance Digitized by Microsoft® LORD MINTO. 185 of ;^ 1 0,000,000 over investments, of which nearly ;£^2,ooo,ooo was sent home in bullion. As a result of this increasing prosperity the Directors were enabled to convert their debt of ^^^27,000,000 from a loan of 12 per cent, to a new one at 6 per cent, saving by the conversion an annual payment of ;^S92,ooo. Digitized by Microsoft® IX. MARQUESS OF HASTINGS (1814 — 1 82 3). — EXTEN- SION OF INFLUENCE OVER NATIVE STATES. By a cynical fate Lord Moira, who in Parliament had consistently denounced what he called the injustice whereby British rule had been established in India, and had vehemently opposed the encroachments of Wellesley, was forced, when he himself became Governor-General, to continue the very policy he had so strenuously condemned, in order to evolve peace and prosperity out of the chaos of anarchy into which the land had drifted since the removal of the firm hand of the Great Proconsul. Lord Moira, in fact, saw that by the sword alone could the disbanded Maratha and marauding free lances of Central and Northern India be held in subjection. Anarchy, civil war, fire, rapine, and ensuing famine may be held by some, who know not of them, to be less baneful than the slow, grinding exactions of a civilised government. But those who have seen in India the burning remains of once peaceful villages ; heard the tales of the fiendish and unutterable tor- Digitized by Microsoft® pindar/s. .187 ture.s meted out to unoffending peasants to make them disclose their wealth or from sheer lust ; viewed with senses stayed the bodies of once-loved women and lisping children done to death by foul outrage, or slaughtered to satiate the savage fierceness of bands of roaming robbers, must ever hope that, so long as the British rule holds sway in India, the sword may never be hidden till the unrestrained passions of man have learned to submit themselves to the dictates of a civilised government. Nine years of timid evasion of the responsibilities of ruling the territories handed over to the Company by Clive, Hastings, and Wellesley had gone far to plunge the whole centre of India into a state of chronic civil war. Robber bands of Mardthds, Pindan's, Ghurkas from Nepdl, and fierce Pathdns from beyond the frontiers roamed far and wide, raided the villages, and even exacted contributions from those in British territories. The Pinddn's, some fifty thousand in number, rode out yearly, from their safe retreats in the valleys of the Narbadd, to rob and plunder amid the villages of RijputAna, away to the east across the sacred lands of Piiri, south over the deep flowing waters of the Kistni, where they devas- tated and burned all they could not carry away. On their approach the unarmed folk fled from their villages and left them at the mercy of the robbers. When the villages were surrounded and flight found to be impossible, the inhabitants sought refuge in death, grouping themselves together with their wives and children in their leaf-thatched huts which they fired, preferring to perish in the flames rather than Digitized by Microsoft® 1 88 MARQUESS OF HASTINGS. submit to the wanton insults and fiendish cruelties of their relentless foes. Through Central India the unwieldy and ill-paid armies of Sindhia and Holkar roamed, and laid waste the land for miles on either side of their marches, until the inhabitants, bereft of grain and food, were driven to follow the camp, and beg the soldiers to buy their children so that they should not starve. Not a single ray of heroism, of chivalry, or even of vulgar bravery illuminates the dark page of history recording the progress of the Marithd troops. The soldiers, when unpaid, lived by pillage ; their chiefs squandered their time in debauchery and drunken orgies ; a civilised government determined and strong enough to enforce law and order could alone have saved the land and the people from the grievous burden and miseries untold. Nepal, the hill country stretching for seven hundred miles along the southern slopes of. the Himalayas, north of Oudh and Rohilkand — occupied by the Ghurkas, a race of Rajput descent, who had assumed sovereignty over the aboriginal inhabitants of the land — first bid open defiance to the British Govern- ment. Shut in from the lowland plains by the feverish and almost impenetrable forests stretching along the base of the Himala.yas, known as the Tardi, they had gradually extended their influence to the south, east, and west, organising and disciplining their forces, descending on the Company's villages, carrying off the cattle, demanding tribute, and asserting their right by force of arms to encroach on British territory. When ordered to retire and remain within their own Digitized by Microsoft® GHURKA WAR. 189 limits or else accept the alternative of war, the brave and hardy mountaineers haughtily replied that the soldiers of the Company had already failed to take the lowland fortress of Bhartpur — " how, then, was it likely that they should storm the mountain fastnesses constructed by the hand of God ? " Though the Ghurkas numbered but i2,(Xio fighting men, yet their prowess was so renowned that the Governor-General deemed it necessary to despatch 24,000 men and 64 guns in four divisions to reduce them to submission. Against their stronghold of Kalanga, or Nalapini, an open enclosure surrounded with stone walls, General Gillespie, the suppressor of the Mutiny of Vellore, advanced with 1,000 Europeans, 2,500 sepoys, and 1 1 guns. The fort was gallantly defended by 600 Ghurkas, who repeatedly drove back their assailants, the brave General Gillespie falling shot through the heart. The garrison held out, and not till there were but 70 survivors left did the fort surrender, its defence having delayed the expedition for over a month. From the west a detachment under General Ochterlony dragged their guns up the mountain- sides, over almost inaccessible paths covered with snow, secured each pass and occupied post after post until the Ghurkas consented to accept the terms imposed on them. The British troops were no sooner withdrawn than the Ghurkas repented of their submission and refused to carry out the treaty. Lord Moira, now created Marquis of Hastings, had again to despatch General Ochterlony, created a baronet for his previous suc- Digitized by Microsoft® 1 90 MARQUESS OF HASTINGS. cesses, at the head of twenty thousand men, including three European regiments, to tame the hardy hill-men, who knew not what it was to be defeated. The expedition started in February, 1816, and, after a series of swift and brilliant operations, the hill-men were obliged to recognise the futility of further resistance. By the Treaty of Segauli the Company obtained possession of the hill stations of Simla, Masiiri, and Naini T41, and the limits of the Ghurka rule were marked out by stone pillars, so that the two powers might rest side by side in peace without fear of further encroachments. Since the Treaty of Segauli the brave little Ghurkas have enlisted in our native army, forming some of its finest fighting regiments, and have followed the fortunes of the Company and of the Crown in many a battlefield, and taken part in many a heroic defence. Far different from the hardy hill Ghurkas were the fierce Marathds and robber Pindiris who had now to be reclaimed from their predatory habits. Under their leaders, Kan'm, Chi'tu, and Wasi'l Muhammad, the Pindiris raided the lands of Rajputana, of the Nizam, and of the Company, destroyed the crops, and tortured with horrible refinement of cruelty the unarmed and panic-stricken inhabitants. As the wild Pindaris passed swiftly over the land they were followed by a noted soldier of fortune. Amir Khan, who had gathered round him an army of well-paid Pathans amounting in number to up- wards of 10,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry supported by artillery, by whose aid he exacted from the chieftains Digitized by Microsoft® pindarIs. 191 of Rdjputina contribution and tri'bute. For long the Governor-General pleaded with his Council and with the Directors for permission to put an end to the horrors perpetrated by these robber bands. Woe- fully he lamented that he feared the indifference of the Company arose from the fact that he had " been culpably deficient in pointing out to the authorities at home the brutal and atrocious qualities of these wretches." At length, in 18 16, the long-delayed permission came. That there should be no failure the largest army up to then assembled in India under the Company's rule was drawn round the haunts of the Pinddris. From October, 18 17, a force of 120,000 men and 300 guns closed in from Bengal on the north-east, from the Deccan on the south, and from Gujardt on the west. Amir Khin, seeing that all was lost, surrendered, and was allowed to retire to his principality, now known as Tonk. The Pinddn's vainly strove to escape in detach- ments through the steel fence that surrounded them ;' by the end of January, 181 8, they were all captured, dispersed, or annihilated. Kdri'm surrendered, and was allotted lands in Gorakhpur whereon to live peaceably and recount to admiring hearers the glories of his past days. Wasil Muhammad was captured, and, thwarted in an attempt to escape, committed suicide. The last of the famed freebooters of Central India, Chi'tu, was deserted by his followers and after- wards found mangled by a tiger in the jungle, his sole remaining friend being his horse, which stayed grazing by his side. Digitized by Microsoft® 192 MARQUESS OF HAStlMCS. The Marathd armies still passed to and fro gather- ing strength, hoping that they might yet throw off the yoke of the foreigner. In Milwi Jeswant Rao Holkar, debauched and drunken, had died in 1811, raving mad from his excesses. His widow, Tulsi BAi, and one of her lovers. Amir Khan, had assumed the regency during the infancy of Malkir Rao, son of the late chieftain. To the east were the dominions of the powerful Daulat Rao Sindhia, who, curbed by the Governor-General in his raids on the territories of Bhopal and Nagpur, now fretted over his wrongs, and watched with interest the brave resistance of the Ghiirkas, and extended his protection to the Pindaris. Baji Rao II., the Peshwd who reigned at Poona, was the acknowledged head of the whole Marathd Confederacy. Dissolute, ambitious, weak, and fickle, yet outwardly sanctimonious and ever engaged in pious deeds, he waited but for the time when, with the aid of Holkar and Sindhia, of the Bhonsia and the Gaekwir of Baroda, he would be strong enough to repudiate his engagements with the Company and once again stand forth as ■ hereditary leader among the Mardthas. With the Gaekwar of Baroda the Pe.shwa found it impossible to open up negotiations, for the English there held sway, through the Resi- dent, Colonel Walker, during the imbecility of the reigning prince. The Prime Minister of Baroda was a high Brahman named Gangadhar Sistri, whom the Peshwa dreamed he might bend to his will and by bribes seduce into an offensive alliance against the English. An opportunity soon arose. The Gaekwar rented certain villages from the -PeshwA, who prayed Digitized by Microsoft® THE PESHWA. 193 Gangadhar Sistri to come to Poena to settle out- standing accounts and the financial affairs of the two states. The astute Brdhman minister, however, knew too well the mind and cunning of the Peshwd, so refused to travel to Poona until the British Resident consented to guarantee his safety. The guarantee was given, and Gangadhar Sdstri went to Poona, where he was feasted and honoured, wealth and alliances promised him if he would agree to join in the coming war against the English. When it was found that the Brihman would not turn traitor or receive the proffered bribes, the Peshwd determined that at least he should not be allowed to carry back the secrets he had learned to the ears of the English Resident at Baroda. The Peshwd had a low favourite, one Trimbakji, willing, in order to gain his master's favour, to violate ail the traditions and ordinances of his forefathers and commit the unpardonable sin of killing a Brdhman. On a day holy to the Hindus, Gangadhar Sistri was prayed by the PeshwA and by Trimbakji to visit a famed temple at Pandar- pur, and there offer up his prayers to the gods and present holy offerings to the temple priests. The pilgrimage was made, the religious rites performed, but as the unsuspecting Brihman left the temple the swords of the hirelings of Trimbakji hewed him to pieces. When the news reached the Governor-General the Peshwi was ordered to deliver up Trimbakji to justice, and, as a punishment for his part in the crime, to cede territories yielding an income of 34 lakhs 14 Digitized by Microsoft® 194 AtAliQUE.SS OF HASTINGS. of rupees, and to pay for new troops quartered in his dominions. Still firm in his belief in the power of his intrigues, and enraged at his losses — especially at that of his favourite, who had escaped to lead an outlawed life — the Peshwd determined to resist the demands. With his wealth he strove to spread sedition among the soldiers of the Company and gain them over to his side ; he levied troops from his feudatories, hoping to hide his designs from the vigilant eyes of the Company's Resident at his capital. The Resident, Mountstuart Elphinstone, discerned danger when he saw the Peshwi's troops gathering round his cantonments. He had scarcely time to remove the English garrison to Kirki, some three miles distant from Poona, and send for aid to Bombay, when the storm burst. The Residency and European houses were first given up to flames, and then the Peshw^'s army of 18,000 cavalry and 8,000 foot swarmed out of Poona to annihilate the small Kirki garrison who bravely marched out to meet the advancing hosts. Between the two armies lay a deep morass. Eight thousand picked Marathd horsemen charged down on Elphinstone's force, plunged into the deep mud, and there, as they rode over each other in their confusion, were shot down in hundreds. The infantry turned and fled in disastrous retreat to Poona, leaving their guns and the field to the victorious garrison of Kirki. On reinforcements arriving from Bombay, the Peshwa, at the head of his troops, was driven from Poona and forced to retreat into Khdndesh. There he was turned back by British troops and obliged to Digitized by Microsoft® DEFEAT OF THE PESHtvA. 1 95 retreat south towards Poona. Colonel Staunton, at the head of 500 men, 300 irregular horse, and two guns manned by twenty-four Europeans, was at once directed to march from Sirur to assist in the defence of the capital. This force, after a long night's journey, suddenly found itself, in the early morning, surrounded by the whole Maratha army of the Peshwd, 20,000 horsemen and 8,000 foot, most of them fierce Arab mercenaries. Ahead lay the village of Koragdon, the shelter of whose mud walls was gained by Staunton and his handful of men, but not before many of the Arabs had seized the best positions. Without sleep, without food or water, the defenders held out all day, repelled attack after attack, and at times sallied out to meet the masses hurled against their slender defence. Five out of eight of the British officers were killed or wounded, 271 of the devoted 800 were dead or disabled, and towards- night-time one of their guns was captured. Lieutenant Pattinson, a giant six feet seven inches in height, was lying on the ground wounded, shot through the body ; but on hearing the news he rose, rushed forward, and with the butt of his musket knocked over right and left the Arabs who held the gun. Pattinson fell shot once again, and was carried away to die. The gun for which he had given his life was recaptured, the garrison saved, and the Marithds sullenly retired, their whole army unable to subdue a single regiment of British troops. The Maratha army was pursued, hunted down, and dispersed, the Peshwi ultimately deeming it wise to enter into negotiations with Sir John Malcolm for Digitized by Microsoft® 196 MARQUESS OF HASTINGS. surrender. Deprived of his sovereignty, granted a pension of ^80,000 annually, with permission to reside at Bithiir, near Cawnpur, his name disappeared from history, and his personal property passed, on his death, to his adopted son, Nana Sahib. In Malwa, Tulsi BAi had placed herself and the young Holkar under British protection, only to be soon afterwards murdered by her own troops. General Hislop and Sir John Malcolm at once advanced against the mutinous army, which they found, on the 21st of December, 1817, strongly posted on the far side of the Sipri River, near Mehidpur. Having crossed by a ford in the face of the enemy, the British cavalry charged under a heavy fire. In the fierce fight which ensued thirty-five of Hislop's officers were wounded — three fatally — and eight hundred of his troops lost ; the Maratha force of Malwa lost three thousand men, all their artillery and stores, while the remainder retreated in disas- trous fliight. Holkar was forced to accept a subsidiary treaty and alliance with the English, and resign all his claims for tribute over the chiefs of Rdjputdna, his estates in MAlwa being restored to him considerably curtailed. In Nagpur the Marathd Prince, Apd Sihib, who had risen to power by strangling the former Bhonsla, his idiot cousin, showed signs of hostility towards the Company when news reached him that the Peshwa had broken loose at Poona. Undismayed by the successes of the British troops elsewhere, the Bhonsla Digitized by Microsoft® sItabAldL 197 still continued his preparations for war. At length affairs became so threatening that the British Resi- dent deemed it wise to move his force of fourteen thousand men to two peaks of the isolated Si'taMldi Hills lying between NAgpur and the Residency. Twenty thousand Marithds and four thousand Arab mercenaries laid siege to the position, and succeeded in driving a British guard from the peak nearest the city. Captain Fitzgerald prayed again and again to be allowed to charge, at the head of his three troops of Bengal cavalry, into the midst of the Mardthds, now crowding round on the level plain at the base of the hill. His commanding ofificer, angered at the repeated demands, at length sent back the answer, " Tell him to charge at his peril." " At my peril be it," cried Fitzgerald, as he gave the order to charge, with the result that the enemy was put to rout and the Arabs driven from the hill. When British reinforcements advanced to the assistance of the Resident the Bhonsla surren- dered, and consented to place all his military power under the control of the Company, to cede Berar and the lands lying near the Narbada. Peace was restored all over Central India, the Pindan's and Pathdn freebooters dispersed, the Mardthd armies defeated, and their chieftains re- duced to subjection ; the Sikhs alone remained in the Punjdb to try their strength against the ever- victorious arms of the Company. Hastings had been made a G.C.B. in 18 19, granted a sum of ^60,000, to relieve the pressing necessities due to his reckless generosity, and received a vote Digitized by Microsoft® igS MARQUESS OF HASTINGS. of thanks from both Houses of Parhament, only to fall at the very summit of his fame and popularity. His ward had married Sir William Rumbold, partner in the banking firm of Palmer & Co., at Haidardbid — a fact used by the firm as showing that the sanction, or countenance, of the Governor- General had been given to their lending nearly a million sterling at exorbitant rates of interest to the Nizim's Government, where the money was squan- dered and misapplied, instead of being devoted to public purposes. Stung by the aspersions made on his good faith. Lord Hastings resigned the govern- ment of India, and returned home to receive the appointment of Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Malta. During the time of Lord Hastings' administration many changes had taken place in the affairs of the Company. In 1808 a Secret Committee of the House of Commons inquired into the whole business of the Indian trade, and sat for four years. The Charter of the Company, which had in 1793 been renewed for a period of twenty years, expired in 18 14. By Parliament the Charter was again continued for a further period of twenty years, with very important and noteworthy alterations. The principles of free trade had gained so rapidly in England that the Company was only allowed to retain the monopoly of trading to China, but the whole of the Indian markets, with certain restrictions, Ax-ere thrown open to competition. A great expansion of trade im- mediately took place ; the price of cotton fell one- half, pepper one-quarter, while the rates of freight Digitized by Microsoft® S/J? THOMAS MUNRO. 1 99 fell from nearly £2^, to less than £1 the ton. In fact, as Mill writes in his " History of British India " : " The Government of India overcame all its temporary financial difficulties, and upon the restora- tion of peace was provided with ample means to meet every demand. At no previous period in the history of the country was the credit of the British Government more firmly established, or was the prospect of financial prosperity more promising than at the commencement of the year 1823, when the Marquis of Hastings retired from the guidance of the pecuniary interests of India." Notwithstanding the heavy war charges of upwards of 9 millions sterling yearly, the surplus of revenue over expenditure and interest on debt amounted in the last year of Lord Hastings' administration to over 3^ millions sterling. The most permanent memorial of these years of prosperity was the revenue settlement made by Sir Thomas Munro in Madras. Under this system each cultivator became a direct holder of the land, paying to the Government its share of the produce, calculated in money, on the average output estimated from a comparison of the actual yield of each field during a normal year and the past accounts. This settle- ment was made permanent for a period of thirty years, when it became liable to revision, the rates of revenue demanded from each cultivator varying according to the lands held at from sixpence to twenty-five shillings an acre. The same period is signalised by the long debate in Parliament on the subject of Christianity in India Digitized by Microsoft® 200 MARQUESS OF HASTINGS. and the dangers or advisability of the State con- trolling the work of the missionaries and chaplains sent out from home. A bishop was ultimately appointed to Calcutta, and three archdeacons for the control and superintendence of the Company's chaplains. Digitized by Microsoft® X. LORD AMHERST (1823 — 1828).- WAR. -FIRST BURMESE The five years of Lord Amherst's Government saw the expansion of the Company's possessions towards the East over Assam, Arakan, and Tenas- serim. To the east of the Bay of Bengal the land of Burma was inhabited by a people of Tibeto-Chinese origin, possessing Mongolian features with a fair or yellow complexion. The Burmese proper — the Burmese of Ava — -dwelt along the upper reaches of the Irawadi, held in its lower courses by the Talaings of Pegu. Incessant warfare between rival princes was broken by devastating waves of invasion from the barbarians of China on the north or incursions of the armies of Siam on the south. About the middle of the eighteenth century a renowned adventurer, Alompra the Hunter, rose to power in the north, drove out the invading Talaings from Ava, and then advancing south, conquered Pegu, and founded the city of Rangoon near the mouth of the river. The successors of Alompra spread their Digitized by Microsoft® 202 LORD AMHERST. rule over Arakan, invaded Assam, Manipur, and Cachar, and at length, growing bold, encroached on the Company's territories. When the King of Ava was remonstrated with his fury knew no bounds at the insult he conceived he had received. The Viceroy of Pegu received orders to proceed to Calcutta, arregt the Governor-General, and bring him to Ava, bound in golden fetters, for execution. War was proclaimed by Lord Amherst on the 24th of February, 1824. At that time Burma was an unknown land ; nothing of its history, geography, or powers of resistance could be learned from even the most experienced of Indian authorities. On the declaration of war the Bengal sepoys alleged that their caste rules prevented them from travelling by sea, so the troops from the north had to be sent overland from Chittagong to Arakan, and up the Brahmaputra to Assam, Madras being called on to send her less scrupulous sepoys by sea to Rangoon. When Rangoon was reached it was found that the Burmese fighting men had disappeared into the surrounding jungles, and that the inhabitants had fled, leaving the town empty of provisions. The advance of the invading force, through the dense and fever-laden jungles that covered the land, was delayed by the Burmese who defended each posi- tion with stockades of interlaced trees and bamboos, twenty feet high, against which artillery was use- less. For two years the weary war dragged on, the Burmese, driven from post to post, at length became so demoralised that they fled in their thousands from behind their stockades if a single English soldier appeared in sight. It was not until Digitized by Microsoft® FIRST BURMESE WAR. 2O3 20,000 British troops had been lost, through disease or while fighting, and 14 millions sterling expended, that the King of Ava, in 1826, sued for peace, granted him on condition that he relinquished all his claims to Assam, ceded Arakan and Tenas- serim, paid a war indemnity of one million sterling, agreed to accept a British Resident and enter into a commercial treaty. Rumours of the disastrous campaign had spread, full of exaggeration, throughout North India. The Marathds, Pinddris, and Jits once again showed signs of insubordination. The Jdt chieftain of Bhartpur, in Central India, openly defied the authority of the Governor-General, and placed his infant cousin, the rightful heir, whose succession had been recog- nised by the British authorities, in prison. Lord Amherst hesitated to give orders for an attack on the impregnable fort, so Sir David Ochterlony, who, on receiving news of the revolt, had marched against it from Delhi, was peremptorily ordered to retire. The rebuff sank deep into the heart of the brave old general who had fought under Warren Hastings and Sir Eyre Coote, and served for fifty years in the Company's service. He resigned his appointment as agent in Mdlwd and Rajputdna, and died two months afterwards in deep dejection. The news had now travelled through the bazaars of Central India that the Company's troops were obliged to halt in their conquering career before the famed fortress, and that there were still hopes of the Mardthas being able to defy the dictates of the Governor-General. Dread- ing the effect of these rumours on the half-subdued Digitized by Microsofi® 204 LORD AMHERST. chieftains of Central India the Governor-General at length directed the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Com- bermere, to capture the fort, bring the defiant R^ja to submission, and thus check the spread of a threatened outbreak among the Marathas. By the 23rd of December, 1825, 25,000 men were assembled before Bhartpur, and 130 heavy guns poured forth an incessant fire on the citadel. The artillery failing to make an impression or effect a breach on the sun-baked walls, upwards of sixty feet thick, a mine was driven under the main battery of the fortress, filled with ten thousand pounds of powder and exploded. Slowly the whole bastion, crowded with the unsuspecting infantry and artillerymen, rose in the air. A mighty roar held the onlookers spellbound, the flames and smoke leaped forth, and the rising mass was hurled to pieces, dealing death among both besieged and besiegers. In the morning the breach was gained, and after a desperate fight the strongest fort in India, which had so long defied the Company's soldiers and sepoys, was captured. Its defences were razed to the ground, its name is now almost forgotten in Europe, save that it is borne on the colours of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, who had marched sixty miles in eighteen hours to be present at the final assault, the fifth in which they had taken part. Many were the reforms which pressed for attention during the administration of Lord Amherst, none of which could be fully carried out till the time of Lord William Bentinck, during Axhose rule (1828-1835) commenced what ma)- be fitly called the Modern History of British Administration in India. Digitized by Microsoft® XL LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK (1828 — 1 83 5). — COM- MENCEMENT OF MODERN HISTORY OF BRITISH INDIA. The first task taken in hand by the new Governor- General was the invidious one of restoring the financial equilibrium disturbed by the late Burmese war. For the five years ending 1829 the annual extraordinary charges had amounted to ;£'2,878,ooo, the expenditure in 1828 exceeding the income by one million sterling. The first saving of ;^20,000 annually, effected by abolishing the extra allowance granted to the Com- pany's officers when on duty in districts far removed from headquarters or when engaged in war, brought down such a storm of censure and indignant remon- strance on the Governor-General that he found it advisable in 1830 to restrict the Press from all dis- cussion of the reduction which had been approved by the Court of Directors. A further annual saving of if millions sterling was carried out by a reduction of the military forces in the three Presidencies, while civil expend i- 203 Digitized by Microsoft® 2o6 LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK. ture was curtailed by the employment, as far as possible, of natives in the public service. In the North-west Provinces Robert Mertins Bird inaugurated the system of collecting the land revenue from the village community as a whole — a system essentially different from that established in Bengal by the Permanent Settlement with the Zamindars, or that carried into effect in Madras by Sir Thomas Munro. The most striking of all the reforms made during the administration of Lord William Bentinck was the abolition of the custom whereby high-caste Hindu widows deemed it their sacred duty to burn them- selves on the funeral pyre of their deceased husbands, a custom especially in vogue in Lower Bengal. The custom was a barbarous one of very ancient times, its later revival in India being due to special and localised causes. Long before the time of Lord W. Bentinck efforts had been made to suppress this outrage against every feeling of humanity and reason. In the time of Akbar, the great Mughal Emperor, laws had been enacted to prevent the rite being carried out by the Hindus, it being absolutely for- bidden to burn widows unless permission was granted by the local Governors at the request of the widow. In the Portuguese dominions it is recorded, in the Commentaries of Alfonso de Albuquerque, as pub- lished by the Hakluyt Society, that : " If any Hindu died his wife had to burn herself of her own free will, and when she was proceeding to this self-sacrifice it was with great merry-making and blowing of music, saying that she desired to accompany her husband to Digitized by Microsoft® S'^ I" Digitized by Microsoft® 2o8 LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK. the other world. . . . However, when Alfonso de Albu- querque took the city of Goa he forbade from tjiat time forth that any more women should be burned, and though to change one's customs is equal to death itself, nevertheless they were happy to save their lives, and spake very highly of him because he had ordered that there should be no more burning." The widow who burned herself on the death of her husband was called a Sati, a feminine noun derived from a Sanskrit verb, " sad," meaning " to be," so that a Sati expresses the idea of " a woman who is " — a woman deemed to exist above all others, a woman virtuous, brave and religious enough to obey the ordinances handed down from of old, and sacrifice herself on her husband's tomb. In India, it must be remembered that social customs and religious duties are so interwoven one with the other that the breach of even the most unimportant detail of family life, habits of eating, drinking, or ablution become the subject of religious sanction, bringing down on the defaulter the Divine wrath. Though the primary reasons for widow-burning can be found in the primitive elements of savage society, and in the desire of the husband that the wife may have no interest in his decease, still, in India there were special reasons for its survival and encouragement, especially in the lower provinces of Bengal, where it was most pre- valent, the number of widows annually burned, some voluntarily, some driven by force to the funeral pyre, or led stupefied with opium or intoxicating drugs, amounting to upwards of 600 to 800. In Lower Bengal the law-books most in use or- Digitized by Microsoft® WWOW BURmNG. 209 dained from of old that a widow, if childless, should be entitled to the use of her husband's property after his decease, but that she had no power to dispose of such property by gift, sale, or mortgage. It was therefore impossible for the childless widow to spend the property on the periodical performance of the numerous and costly religious rites which the Hindu religion and the Brdhman priesthood had ordained to propitiate the soul of the deceased and hasten its journey through the realms where punishment was awarded for its evil deeds. It therefore became necessary to free the property from the possession of the widow, so that it might pass into the hands of other heirs competent to distribute it to the Brah- man priesthood for the presumed benefit of the deceased. The custom of burning widows was in vogue among ruder races with whom the Aryans in India had come in contact, as indeed it had been a custom among the Aryans themselves in very old times in their primeval homes in the west. Still nowhere in the Vedas — the writings held by all Hindus to declare the revealed Will of God — could any direc- tion for the unholy rite be found. When efforts were made to finally put an end to the custom in British India, the difficulty was speedily surmounted by the astute Brihman priesthood. One text in the Rig Veda gave directions for the conduct of the widow on the decease of her husband. It told her that she should array herself with jewels and then without tears and without sorrow " go up to the altar first." The Sanskrit word for " first " is " agre," which by a slight clerical alteration was made to read 15 Digitized by Microsoft® 2IO LORD WILUAM BENTINCK. " agneh," " of the fire." Having thus mutilated the text the Brahman priests declared that the rite of widow-burning was a custom inculcated on all high- caste Hindu widows by a Divine ordinance, and that the intention of the Governor-General to suppress the custom was a direct attack on the Hindu religion. The Government of Lord William Bentinck, with the concurrence of all civilised natives, passed an Act on December 4, 1829, declaring that the "practice of burning or burying alive the widows of Hindus be illegal and punishable by the Criminal Courts." One unforeseen result followed on the passing of this Act. The high-caste widow was left alive, but with no future. A girl of high caste in India is betrothed at the age of three or four. Though this early form of marriage is imperfect and revocable until the final ceremony takes place, some time afterwards, when the bride and bridegroom take seven steps round the family altar, still if the husband die in the mean- time, or afterwards, the girl becomes a widow, to whose relations the very idea of her remarriage is abhorrent, for she is considered for ever spiritually united to the deceased, whose future existence depends in part on his wife's good or evil deeds. It was not till the Act XV. of 1856 was passed that an effort was made to encourage the remarriage of these Hindu widows, by enacting that " no marriage contracted with Hindus shall be invalid by reason of the woman having been previously married or be- trothed." That this Act had but slight effect may be seen Digitized by Microsoft® THAGS. 211 from the last Census Returns, where it is shown that there are 23,000,000 widows in India, 10,165 of them under four years of age, and 51,876 of them between five and nine. For those who are of respectable families, there is but little alleviation from the dull routine of a life which is deemed to have failed in its primary purposes, that of being a wife and mother, for we find from the same Census Returns that in India there are but 543,495 women who can read or write, the number of those who can neither read nor write being 127,726,768, while there are but r8 per cent, of girls of school-going age attending school. An equally important service rendered to India during the administration of Lord William Bentinck was the rooting out of the Thags, or professional robbers, whose hereditary occupation was the poison- ing or strangling of travellers. Some estimate of the widespread operations of these criminals can be obtained from the fact that between the years 1826 and 1834, 1,562 of the members of this strange sect were tried, 1,404 of them being convicted and sentenced to be hanged or else transported for life. The existence of Thags in India had been known for a long time. In the days of Akbar, it is recorded that five hundred of them were hanged, while the accounts of early travellers are full of stories respecting the insecurity of the roads and dangers of travelling on account of the atrocities of these professional murderers. Thevenot, a French traveller in India in the seven- teenth century, gives a detailed account of the opera- tions of the Thags, as carried on between Agra and Digitized by Microsoft® 212 LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK. Delhi. He quaintly details how " the cunningest robbers in the world are in that country. They use a certain slip, with a running noose, which they can cast with so much sleight about a man's neck, when they are within reach of him, that they never fail, so that they strangle him in a trice. They have another cunning trick also to catch travellers ; they send out a handsome woman upon the road, who, with her hair dishevelled, seems to be all in tears, sighing and com- plaining of some misfortune, which she pretends has befallen her. Now, as she takes the same way that the traveller goes, he easily falls into conversation with her, and finding her beautiful, offers her his assistance, which she accepts ; but he hath no sooner taken her up behind him on horseback than she throws the snare about his neck and strangles him." These Thags wandered to and fro by road and river, disguised as travellers or rich merchants, wait- ing for an opportunit)* to ingratiate themselves into the company of unsuspecting wayfarers, with whom they journeyed till they found a suitable place and time to murder them and carry off their valuables. The strangest fact about these stranglers was that they travelled about in bands all bound together by the strictest vows. Their operations were carried on with the utmost secrecy, no traveller whom they had ever met being allowed to escape to tell the tale of his adventures. All their deeds were supposed to be carried out in honour of the dread Goddess Kali or Bhavani. To her the pickaxe, which they always carried with them to dig the graves of their victims, was consecrated, even the noose with which they Digitized by Microsoft® THAGS. 213 strangled their victims was held sacred. After each successful raid, offerings were made in the temples of the goddess. Their terrible profession was, unknown to the British rule, openly recognised by the native land- holders and heads of villages, who shared in their booty or purchased their blood-stained and ill-gotten gains. On being captured and brought before the English Officers of Justice, the Thags did not hesitate to proudly recount the full number of the fearful murders they had perpetrated, never evincing the slightest signs of repentance or remorse or in any way giving evidence that they considered their undertakings as aught but holy and blameless. The story of their deeds, as detailed by themselves, is now preserved in manuscript in the archives of the India Office at Whitehall, and form the weirdest record of human depravity and wayward wickedness that could possibly be found in the history of any people laying claim to be considered sane and reasoning beings. Yet when these savages were not engaged in their so-called sacred and lucrative employment they settled down as peaceful cultivators till the season arrived, and the omens were propitious, for their operations. The writings of two semi-orientalised and astute administrators. Colonel Sleeman and Colonel Meadows Taylor, at length drew public attention to the subject, whereon a special department for the suppression of the Thags was inaugurated. Within six years nearly all the members of the fraternity were hanged, transported, or else sent to the Central Jail at Jabal- piir to end their days in carpet-making or some other useful and harmless occupation. Digitized by Microsoft® 214 LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK. In isolated parts of India cases of murder still occur similar to those perpetrated by the Thags, and no ■officer who has moved among the more ignorant classes of the natives and read their thoughts would venture to assert that if once the strong hand of a civilising power were removed, crimes, equally savage and unreasoning, would not again spring to life and be casually ignored by the dreamy dwellers in the soothing plains of India. The Charter of the Company was renewed in 1833 for a further period of twenty years, but the exclu- sive right of trading with China was abolished, while the' Proprietors' dividend of some ^^^630,000 was in the future to be paid by an annuity on the revenue. Lord Macaulay was sent out as an additional or law member of the Governor-General's Council to stamp the impress of his imaginative and versatile genius on the administration, legislation, and history of India. The first question he had to consider was whether the higher education of the natives of India, and the official correspondence, should be carried on in the classical languages of the East or in English. His opinion has become historical more for the vigour and brilliancy of the language in which it was expressed than for any knowledge he possessed of, or new light he threw on, the facts he was called on to consider. Although he confessed that he knew nothing of the classical languages of the East, still he held " that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia," and further, " that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Digitized by Microsoft® MACAULAY. 215 Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgment used at pre- paratory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same.'' By the Resolution of 1835 it was decided that the official language of India should be English and that for the future it should be the medium through which the higher education of the natives should be-imparted, for as Macaulay urged : " Whoever knows that lan- guage has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety genera- tions. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which 300 years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It is likely to become the language of commerce through- out the seas of the East. It is the language of two great European Communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Australasia ; communities which are every year becoming more important and more closely connected with our Indian Empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature or at the particular situation of thic country we shall see the strongest reason to think that of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects." Digitized by Microsoft® XII. LORD AUCKLAND (1836 — 1 842). — LORD ELLEN- BOROUGII (1842 — 1844). — AFGHANISTAN. Beyond the Company's dominions the Punjab, ruled over by Ranjit Singh, still remained unannexed. Further to the west was the wide-flowing Indus, a river the glories of which had from of old been sung by the Vedic Rishis. It was to the ancient poets the boundary of the Holy Land of the Five Rivers separating the Aryan people from the wild, fierce tribes beyond. It was the unconquered, mighty, swift as a young horse, fair as a maiden, clothed in rich garments, gems, and sweet flowers. Like a king of battle it roared with the roar of a bull, leading its tributaries to the front ; from before all times its path had been dug out by the gods so that their worshippers might be protected by its sea of waters. Beyond lay the boundaries of the world, precipitous mountain ranges, bleak and almost trackless, weird and forbidding, raising their peaks higher and higher towards the lofty barriers of the Hindu Kush and lonely solitudes of th? Pamirs closing in Afghanistan from Central Asia. 2x6 Digitized by Microsoft® RUSSIA AND AFGHANISTAN. 2\J In 1809 ShujA-ul-Miilk, grandson of the first Saduzai King of Afghanistan, Ahmad ShAh, had been driven forth from his kingdom, and came bearing with him the famed Koh-i-nur diamond wherewith to bid for the alliance of Ranji't Singh, the Lion of Lahore. Shah Shuja returned to Afghanistan without the Koh-i-nur. In exchange for it he received from Ranji't Singh some Sikh warriors, by whose aid he hoped to take Kandahdr. Dost Muhammad Khan, a rugged, honest, self-taught, and self-reliant soldier of the Barakzai clan, who had assumed sway in Afghanistan, again drove out the weak and distrusted Shah Shuji, only to find to his rage and mortification that the crafty ruler of the Punjab had in the mean- time seized the adjoining province of Peshdwar, the most prized of all the possessions of Afghdnistdn. He immediately applied to Lord Auckland for assist- ance in recovering his lost territories from Ranji't Singh. To Lord Auckland the situation was perplexing. He dared not make an enemy of Ranji't Singh, yet he was anxious to gain the alliance of Afghdnistdn, for it was important that a series of friendly independent or semi-independent states should be interposed between the Company's possessions and the rapidly advancing armies of Russia. By the Treaty of Turkmanchi, in 1828, Russia had wrested from Persia some of her districts on the north-west, and received over 3I millions sterling as an indemnity for the war expenses as well as an acknowledgment of a right to keep an armed fleet on the Caspian. To counterplot this extension of Russia's influence, Lieu- Digitized by Microsoft® 2l8 LORD AUCKLAND. tenant Alexander Burnes was sent in 1830 on an embassy to Ranji't Singh, in 1832 to Bokhara, and in 1836 to Afghanistan. The Amir was wiUing to agree to resist all Russian intrigues, and remain the firm ally of the Indian Government if Lord Auckland would but consent to assist him in the recovery of Peshawar. To this Lord Auckland would not con- sent. Dost Muhammad was informed that it had never been the custom of the British Government to interfere in the affairs or disputes of independent states. The Persian troops, led by a Russian General, and assisted by Russian officers, had laid siege to Herat, the gateway to Afghanistan and India, where the garrison held out under the command of Eldred Pottinger. An expedition was at once sent from Bombay up the Persian Gulf, and landed on the island of Kar&k which so frightened the Shdh of Persia that he at once withdrew his troops from before Herat. The siege was raised on the 8th of September, 1838, and India was left free from all Russian intrigues in that direction. A graver danger threatened from Kabul. Dost Muhammad, weary of the demands of Lord Auckland, who would give no promise of support in return, had dismissed Burnes on the 26th of April, 1838, and received the Russian envoy Captain Viktevitch. It was at once determined by the Governor-General and his advisers that Dost Muhammad should be deposed, and that a King, friendly to the English, should be placed on the throne of Afghanistan. On the ist of October, 1838, a proclamation was issued from Digitized by Microsoft® INVASION OF AFGHANISTAN. 219 Simla announcing that the Supreme Council had directed the assemblage of a British force for service beyond the Indus, in order " to gain for the British nation in Central Asia that legitimate influence which an interchange of benefits would naturally produce." The new King had, however, to be found to replace the self-willed Dost Muhammad. Shah Shujd, who had been thrust forth from Afghdnistdn by his own people, resided at Ludhiina, a pensioner of the East India Company, and was willing to promise all things, to remain a firm ally of the English, to banish the Russians, and leave Pesh4war safe in the keeping of Ranji't Singh. It was therefore further proclaimed by the Governor-General that " His Majesty, Shujd-ul-Mulk, will enter Afghinistdn surrounded by his own troops, and will be supported against foreign interference and factious opposition by a British army. The Governor- General confidently hopes that the Shdh will be speedily replaced on his throne by his own subjects and adherents, and when he shall be secured in power, and the independence and integrity of Afghanistan established, the British army will be withdrawn." Under Sir Willoughby Cotton, an army of 9,500 picked men, and four times the number of camp followers, crossed the Indus at Rohri, while Sir John Keane, with 5,600 men from Bombay, advanced along the Indus to join the main body from Bengal, our " ancient and faithful ally," Ranji't Singh, refusing to allow a large force to pass through his dominions towards the direct route to Afghanistan by way of the Digitized by Microsoft® 220 LORD AUCICLAXD. Khafbar Pass. As the expedition passed through Sind, held to be a tributary of Afghanistan, its chief- tains were reduced to submission and made to pay tribute, the Pohtical Agent having been directed to inform them that if they resisted, "neither the ready power to crush and annihilate them, nor the will to call it into action were wanting if it appeared requisite, however remotely, for the safety and integrity of the Anglo-Indian Empire and frontier." After a long and weary journey through unknown deserts where neither supplies nor water could be obtained, the expedition under Cotton reached the Bolan Pass on the loth of March. It had already suffered heavy losses in horses, camels, and camp followers, the baggage having been plundered on the route by the uncouth Baluchi robbers who came swarm- ing round. Through the bleak Bolin Pass the dis- pirited, cold, and half-fed soldiers held on their way till they reached Ouetta, where Sir John Keane assumed command, and led them on through the Khojak Pass towards Kandahdr. On the 8th of May his Majesty ShdhShujd was paraded through the streets of Kandahdr at the head of the combined British troops to receive the homage of his wondering subjects who turned awa)- in sullen indifference from their new King, those alone remain- ing whom British gold had won, or hopes of future favours held subservient. On the 2ist of July the British army carried Shah Shuja on to Ghazni with but two days' supplies in the camp and no prospect of obtaining more in a hostile land. The gates of Ghazni were blown open by Lieutenant Durand,and in Digitized by Microsoft® OUTKAII. Digitized by Microsoft® J 23 LORD AUCKLAND. the desperate struggle which ensued for the possession of the fortress Colonel Sale was cut across the face with a tulwar, two hundred of the British troops fell, killed and wounded, and the fierce Afghdn defenders lost five hundred of their number before they sur- rendered their stronghold and its supplies to the hated foreigners and their puppet King. On the fall of Ghazni the Governor-General obtained an Earldom, Sir John Keane a Peerage, Macnaghten and Pottinger Baronetcies. Dost Muhammad, on hearing the news of the fall of Ghazni fled from Kabul across the Hindu Kush, accompanied by his son, Akbar Khdn. For six days and nights the brave James Outram and George Lawrence, with one hundred followers, rode after the flying monarch, past the fortified Afghan villages, over the steep passes of the Hiadii Kush to Bamian, but their guides had been bribed to delay on the road, so the exiled King escaped to seek aid far away. Shah Shuja, brilliantly arrayed and decked with jewels, was led on a white charger through the bazaars of Kibul, where the people rose not to salaam before him, but sat scowling beneath their shaggy eyebrows at the foreigners who had come to seek out the secrets of their homes and rule them with a rod of iron. The Governor-General had proclaimed that when the King of Afghanistan " shall be secured in power, and the independence and integrity of Afghanistan established, the British Army will be withdrawn." The King who could alone be established in power in Afghanistan was the able ruler. Dost Muhammad, who had for a time fled, and the British army sub- Digitized by Microsoft® SHAH SHUJA. 223 sequently withdrawn was not the army that paraded Shah Shuja through the streets of Kabul as their chosen ally, but the army that came to avenge its slaughter and acknowledge the right of Dost Mu- hammad to reign. Ten thousand British soldiers remained in Afghan- istan during the winter of 1839 to support the weak Shah Shuji. To conciliate the fierce Pathdn hill robbers of the passes lying between K^bul and the Punjdb a yearly subsidy was promised them by the British envoy, while to the Ghilzai tribesmen an annual allowance of ii'3,000 was meted out in order to induce them to abstain from raiding the convoys travelling to and from Ghazni and Kandahdr. The winter passed away in ominous quiet. At the request of Shdh Shjijd the British troops were removed from the spacious and well-fortified citadel, the Bild Hissar, which commanded the city from the west, and lodged in an open space, surrounded by weak mud walls, known as the cantonments, a position well within range of the neighbouring forts and hills. Still no one dreamed of danger. Dost Muhammad was an exile in Bokhara, where the British envoys, Connolly and Stoddart were kept in cruel captivity and afterwards murdered. D'Arcy Todd was sup- posed to have won by his gold the friendship of the ruler of Herdt, while, in November, 1839, the Russians had fallen back with fearful loss to Orenburg after their disastrous effort to penetrate the sandy deserts lying round Khiva. Peace seemed assured from the Indus to the Oxus. Shih Shuja listened with becoming submission to the Digitized by Microsoft® 224 LORD AUCKLAND. advice of Sir William Macnaghten, the British envoy, while Dr. Lord ruled and raided the chieftains round Bamiin, beyond the Hindu Kush, as though he were King over the lands of the weak Shah Shuja. Wise men had declared before the war began that the difficulties would only commence when the army had fully occupied the land, and that not a man would return alive to tell the tale of Afghan treachery and vengeance. All these gloomy forebodings were forgotten, and the envoy rode through the streets of Kabul in fancied security. The English officers brought their wives from India, the nobles of Afghanistin came to visit the gardens in the canton- ments, bringing presents of grapes, melons, and peaches, eager to learn how to grow potatoes, peas, and other vegetables. None seemed to note, or if they did, to care, how the rage daily burned in the hearts of the wild, fierce Afghans, as the hated foreigners wandered through their villages and passed down their streets, treating with haughty contempt their jealous looks. A tremor of unrest ran through the garrison, and the guns were hastily mounted within the mud walls of the cantonments when the news came that Dost Muhammad had been released by the Khin of Bokhara, and was advancing towards Bamian at the head of an army of Uzbek and Hazara cavalry. Later on came the tidings that the Bengal cavalry had refused to charge against the advancing foe and had looked on while Dr. Lord was slain, and their officers, Fraser and Ponsonby, driven back, wounded and disabled, to carry the news of tlieir defeat to Sir Robert Sale. It waj but a shadow Digitized by Microsoft® DOST MUHAMMAD. 225 that had fallen across the path of the British envoy. On the evening of the 4th of November, 1840, Sir William Macnaghten was riding home sad and dejected by the side of George Lawrence, when " a robust, powerful man, with a sharp aquiline nose, highly arched eyebrows, and a grey beard and moustache which evidently had not been trimmed for a long time," rode rapidly up to them, dismounted from his horse and seized the stirrup of the envoy, bowing down in submissive salutation. It was the unfortunate Dost Muhammad who, weary of his exile and know- ing that he could no longer resist his fate, had ridden in to surrender. He was escorted into India by Sir Willoughby Cotton, where he was allowed to reside, being granted a pension of ;^2o,ooo a year, his free and open manners, his strength of character and honesty making his former foes regret that they had ever quarrelled with him. ShAh Shuja, on the other hand, is bluntly described by General Nott as " certainly as great a scoundrel as ever lived." He was despised and hated by his own subjects, his British allies would have been glad if they could have honestly abandoned him. The occupation of Afghanistan was costing the Indian Government over I J millions sterling annually ; the military officers, chafing at the secret intrigues and vacillating policy of the political officers, were weary of the whole business, and contented themselves with prognosti- cating ultimate failure and disaster. Her^t had been abandoned when it was found that its ruler had only pretended friendship so long as he could obtain money from the British envoy stationed 16 Digitized by Microsoft® 226 LORD AUCKLAND. there. On Sir William Macnaghten the Governor- General impressed the necessity of making all possible financial retrenchments : consequently the yearly subsidy to the hill tribesmen was withheld, whereon they once again commenced their old guerilla war- fare, and had to be bought off by Sale, who, while endeavouring to return to India, was attacked by them in the defiles of the Khurd Kibul passes. In the midst of all the uncertainties and dangers gathering round, the Governor-General appointed General Elphinstone to the command of the army of occu- pation, notwithstanding the brave old soldier's remon- strances that he was physically unsuited for the post, for as he wrote " if anything were to turn up I am unfit for it, done up in body and mind." Not only was the Commander-in-Chief incompetent to command the army, not only were the cantonments practically defenceless, but the envoy. Sir William Macnaghten, was pledged to see nothing but success follow from all his negotiations, notwithstanding the fact that he had received reliable news that the Afghdns had sworn that not a foreigner would leave the country alive, and his destined successor. Sir Alexander Burnes, lived in the city, carrying on in fancied security his own intrigues in the midst of bitter foes, who met nightly to discuss how they might avenge the insults he had showered on them. Sudden and swift as a raging cyclonic storm the devious course of the pent-up fury of the Afghan race burst on the unsuspecting garrison, guilty and innocent alike. No pen has dared to fully tell the tale of insult the Afghdns may ha\e had to avenge ; Digitized by Microsoft® " SIKANDAS'' BURNES. 22/ the terrible vengeance they poured forth on the in- vaders of their land and homes will ever overshadow and obliterate the memory of the acts and deeds they so savagely and indiscriminately punished. On the 1st of November, 1841, Sir William Mac- naghten wrote that all was well, that the land " was perfectly quiet from Dan to Beersheba." Early the next morning the bazaars of Kabul were filled with excited crowds of armed Afghans, who surged to and fro calling for the blood of " Sikandar " Burnes and the gold in the British Treasury. As' Sir Alexander Burnes looked forth from the house where he had chosen to live in the midst of the city, he heard the angry roar and saw the Treasury in flames and his own stables burning. Well he must have known what the outbreak meant, well he must have felt that he of all men could hope for no mercy. As he came forth to speak the bullets flew past him, and below, the wild eyes of the Afghans told their hate and savage determination to reap a fearful 'vengeance for all past wrongs. The brave Broadfoot fell by his side ; still the crowd called for the life of " Sikandar " Burnes. Burnes and his brother, disguised as natives, essayed to escape unnoticed through the surrounding crowd, but as they stole out they were cut to pieces by the cruel, sharp, heavy knives of the infuriated Afghans Shah Shujd's sepoy guards tried to make their way through the crowded streets, where they were fired at from the housetops and forced to retreat. From the city, where the Treasury and house of Burnes were in flames, guns opened fire on the King's palace. From Digitized by Microsoft® 228 LORD AUCKLAND. the British force of five thousand fighting men at the cantonments no help came. George Lawrence, who rode to the King for orders, was cut at by an Afghin, one of his escort was wounded, and he had to flee for his life. Captain Sturt of the Engineers, son-in-law of Sir Robert Sale, was stabbed at the palace gates and KABUL. (From "Joiinial of an Aff^Iuitiisfun Prisoner" l>y Liait. Vincent Eyre.) carried back senseless to the cantonments. The King, pallid with fear, not knowing whom to trust, gave orders and then countermanded them, kept the British force, which had arrived about noon from the Siya Sang heights, waiting so long that there was nothing left for them to do but cover the retreat of the sepoy Digitized by Microsoft® FLIGHT. 229 guards from the city. In the cantonments Mac- naghten rode sadly to and fro, wondering how they would receive the news in India, trying to persuade himself that the outbreak would soon be over, while Brigadier Shelton declared his willingness to fight, but his belief that there was no hope for the army of occupation but instant flight from the land so full of ill-fate to the British. The day wore on and nothing was done. Inaction was followed by despondency, soon to give way to sullen indifference. From the surrounding villages the tribesmen thronged into the city. From JalAlibid to Kabul, and from Kabul to Kandahar the land was full of fierce foes. The fort holding all the supplies, stores, and pro- visions for the army of occupation was abandoned to the enemy, leaving but two days' food in the cantonment for a garrison of five thousand men and over twelve thousand camp followers. The British position was untenable. From the neighbouring hills and surrounding forts the Afghans picked off the garrison with unerring aim, firing from rests their long Jazails or guns, which carried further than the English muskets. There was no course open to the envoy but to make the best terms he could with the enemy and secure his retreat to India. On the 1 1 th of December he promised to give back to the chiefs their chosen King Dost Muhammad, and to abandon Shah Shuja if the British army were allowed to march in safety out of Afghanistan. The treaty once made, Macnaghten repented. He could not bear to think that his long-hoped march of triumph would be turned to an ignominious retreat, and all his Digitized by Microsoft® 230 LORD AUCKLAND. bombastic boast over the success of his mission to be silenced for ever. He determined to make one final struggle to extricate himself from his difficulties before he surrendered. Secret negotiations were opened up with some of the treacherous Afghan chiefs to see if they could be bribed to take the side of the English and abandon the national cause and Dost Muhammad. To Akbar Khin, son of Dost Muhammad, the envoy offered the sum of ;^300,ooo, a pension of ^400,000, and to make him Prime Minister if he would yet stay his hand and support the still reigning sovereign, Shdh Shuja. To all Akbar Khan feigned to agree. He asked Mac- naghten to come out from the cantonments and meet him on the neighbouring slopes of the Siyi Sang hills, where the new treaty might in secret be ratified. The envoy, though warned not to trust himself within the power of the Afghan, would not listen. Perhaps he still trusted in his own diplomatic powers, or it may be he resolved to stake his life in a final effort to retrieve the situation. With George Lawrence, Captain Colin Mackenzie, and Captain Trevor he rode forth on the 23rd of December to meet Akbar Khdn, who sat waiting on a mound not three hundred yards from the cantonments, surrounded by his chieftains and guards. As they drew near the Afghans closed round, Akbar Khan seized Sir William Macnaghten by the left wrist, and as the envoy struggled and cried out, " For the love of God ! " Akbar Khdn in a sudden fury of passion drew a pistol from his waist and fired. Macnaghten fell, and in an instant was hewn to pieces by the sharp Digitized by Microsoft® THE RETREAT. 23 I knives of the guards. The envoy's head was carried to Kdbul, paraded through the city, and then hung up in the market-place for the crowd to jeer at. Lawrence and Mackenzie were seized and carried away on horseback, Trevor was cut down as he struggled to escape. The garrison watched the affray from the cantonments, in their consternation crowding round Macnaghten's escort as it rode back, to learn full details of the disaster. The cry was for an immediate retreat on JalAlAbdd, where Sir Robert Sale was entrenched. On New Year's Day of 1842 all the enemy's demands were acceded to. Hostages were given for the immediate evacuation of the country- The spare guns, arms, and ammunition were delivered up, the army retaining only six field-pieces. All the money in the military chest was paid over to the Afghan chiefs, 6\ lakhs of rupees being promised to them when the retreating force was again safe on Indian soil. All around, the frozen ground lay buried a foot deep beneath the falling snow. In the cantonments the sullen British soldiers, the cowering sepoys, the half-starved camp followers as they crouched round their flickering fires made up of stolen furniture, the women — some with new-born children — all heard with weary indifference the order given for the march across the bleak mountains for JalAlab^d. By many the words which Lady Sale, in those sad hours, kept repeating to herself must have been remembered with an equally woful significance : — " Few, few shall part where many meet, The snow shall be their winding sheet ; And every turf beneath their feet Shall be a soldier's sepulchre." Digitized by Microsoft® 232 LORD AUCKLAND. On the morning of the 6th of January 4,500 fighting men, enough in fair fight to have hurled the cowardly Afghans back to their dens, 12,000 camp followers, men, women, and children passed over the razed cantonment walls on the long march which few survived to tell of Before the rear-guard had joined in, the deserted houses in the cantonments were pillaged and burned, the baggage and spare stores carried away. As the half-frozen camp followers sank weary by the roadside, they were slain by the marauding Afghans who followed up their retreating foe, firing with their long-ranged Jazails into the straggling ranks. Through deep snow, through icy rivers, brooks, and rivulets the band marched on, their clothes frozen and stiff, to reach their camp, only five miles out from Kibul, where neither food nor tents awaited them. That night many sank to sleep who never woke. The survivors needed no bugle-call to summon them in the early morning to rise and once again face death. The guns were spiked and left behind, the numbed sepoys threw away the muskets they could no longer carry. In front lay the long journey of one hundred miles to Jaldlabad over precipitous mountain-peaks. From the hillsides the Ghilzai mountaineers rolled down rocks, and fired into the crowded mass of soldiers and camp followers. Before five miles' march was accomplished 500 soldiers and 2,500 followers had fallen. Women carrying infant children struggled on ; Lady Sale, with a bullet in her arm and three bullet-holes through her mantle, had to remain behind and comfort her daughter, who sat Digitized by Microsoft® DR. BRYDON. 233 weeping by the side of her husband, the gallant Engineer officer Sturt, now wounded to death by the stroke from an Afghdn knife. The end was close at hand. On the next day, the 9th, the surviving women and children, along with Lawrence, Pottinger, and Mackenzie, were given up as hostages to Akbar Kh^n. Not a single sepoy of those who left KAbul on the 6th of January lived to reach the Haft Kotal Pass on the morning of the loth, and by night-time of the same day only 250 white men reached the Tazin Valley, 8,200 feet above the sea level. The next day two hundred fought their way on to the Jagdalak Pass, where Elphinstone and Shelton were detained as hostages by Akbar Khdn. The remainder still fought with all the desperation of despair, tore down the barricades of stone and interlaced trees that blocked their path, and turned again and again to face their relentless foes. Step by step death marched by the side of the last few remaining victims. The hill clansmen had sworn to let no foreign foe escape alive through their mountain passes, of which they held themselves the hereditary guardians. With calm patience they followed the dwindling band of heroes. On the road to Gandamak the last survivors fell one by one. At Fathdbdd six officers, all that re- mained, stayed to beg for food, and but three escaped to ride on towards Jalilabad. Two were cut down when within two miles of safety, and Dr. Brydon alone remained, except those left behind as hostages, out of the 16,500 who had marched out of Kibul. By his side rode a fierce Afghdn horseman, waiting for an opportunity to rush in and slay the last of the Digitized by Microsoft® 234 LORD AUCKLAND. foreigners. Dr. Brydon's wearied horse made one fatal stumble, the AfghAn rode in and Brydon's sword was severed at tlie handle and his knee deep wounded. As Brydon learned forward in pain, the Afghan, fear- ing the Englishman was about to draw a pistol, rode away in haste, leaving the sole survivor to carry the news of the fatal retreat to JalAlabad, where the garrison gazed forth from the walls, wondering what strange fate brought the jaded horseman from the lonely hnountains across the desert valley. All night the beacon fires blazed forth, and the clarion note of the trumpet sent forth by the sentinels on the walls of Jalilibad died away to a moan up the mountain-sides, as if in mournful lament that there was no one left to steal forth from the long valley of death. From trembling lip to trembling lip the tale of woe was whispered among the defenders of Jalaldbid, but along the bleak hillsides of the Khurd KAbul Pass the fallen bodies of the soldiers lay wrapt around with deep silence, where they remained, the sole memorials of the disastrous advance of the British army into Afghanistan. Of those that left Kibul 120, including Lady Sale and Lady Macnaghten, remained alive in the hands of Akbar Khan, while a few sepoys escaped to Peshawar to spread the story of retreat through the villages of the Punjib. The garrison at Ghazni had surrendered, the officers, including John Nicholson, who afterwards fell at the siege of Delhi during the Mutiny, being taken prisoners to Kabul. At Kandahdr Nott and Raw- linson — afterwards Sir Henry — held out ; at Jala- Digitized by Microsoft® IVITHDRAWAL. 235 labdd Sale, Broadfoot, and Lawrence remained entrenched. Lord Auckland sank beneath the crushing weight of the " unparalleled errors " and " unparalleled disas- ters " which had signalised his Governor-Generalship, and he returned home, to leave to other hands the rescue of the prisoners and relief of the garrisons still bravely holding out at Kandahar and JaldMbad. Lord Ellenborough reached Calcutta as the new Governor-General on the 28th of February, 1842, the herald of a new policy according to which Sale was to be relieved at Jalalabdd, and Nott at Kandahdr, after which the troops were to be " withdrawn ulti- mately from Afghanistan, not from any deficiency of means to maintain our position, but because we are all satisfied that the King we have set up has not, as we were erroneously led to imagine, the support of the nation over which he has been placed." Shih Shuji, as a matter of fact, was killed at Kdbul on the 5th of April, and Lis body thrown into a ditch, Akbar Khdn having assumed the sovereignty in the absence of his father, Dost Muhammad. Not till the same month was General Pollock, aided by George Clerk and Henry Havelock, able to restore heart to the sepoys of the relieving force who had lost all confidence in their officers, and lead them through the Khaibar Pass. Jalalabdd once relieved, Lord Ellenborough was reluctantly obliged to consent that the garrison from Kandahar should join the troops under Pollock and Sale at Kabul and rescue the prisoners from the hands of Akbar Khan. Digitized by Microsoft® 236 LORD AUCKLAND. Ghazni was accordingly taken and razed to the ground by Nott, and the Khurd Kabul passes cleared of the opposing tribesmen by General Pollock. By the 14th of September the British colours were flying ofice more over the citadel at Kabul, and the prisoners, with the exception of General Elphinstone, who had died regretted by all, safe among their friends and relations. The Great Bazaar was blown up, and unfortunately much of the city was given over to indiscriminate pillage and plunder. On the 1st of October, 1842, exactly four years after Lord Auckland's unfortunate declaration of war the future policy of the Governor-General was declared by proclamation from Simla by the Secret Depart- ment of the Indian Council in the following high- sounding words : — " Disasters unparalleled in their extent, unless by the errors in which they originated, and by the treachery by which they were completed have in one short campaign been avenged upon every scene of past misfortune ; and repeated victories in the field . . . have again attached the opinion of invincibility to the British rule. " The British Army in possession of Afghanistan will now be withdrawn to the Satledge. The Governor-General will leave it to the Afghans themselves to create a government amidst the anarchy which is the consequence of their crimes. " Content with the limits nature appears to have assigned to its empire, the government of India will devote all its efforts to the establishment and maintenance of general peace, to the protection of the Sovereigns and Chiefs its allies, and to Digitized by Microsoft® S/XD. 237 the prosperity and happiness of its own faithful subjects. "The rivers of the Punjab and the Indus, and the mountain passes, and the barbarous tribes of Afghan- istan, will be placed between the British army and an enemy approaching from the west — if, indeed, such an enemy there can be — and no longer between the army and its supplies." The army returned to India in triumph ; Dost Muhammad went back to Afghanistan to establish his rule firmer than it had ever been, his last per- plexing remark to the Governor-General being that he could not understand why he had been deprived of his " poor and barren country." The answer to the question lies in the future. As long as the ruler of Afghanistan holds his state independent from foreign influence and is able to preserve internal peace and prosperity, it will be to the interests of British rule in India to court his alliance, support his administration, and by all pos- sible means strengthen his position. In 1842 the lesson was learned that Afghanistan held the elements out of which an independent and united nationality might possibly in time be evolved, and that, notwithstanding the vast distance of the British army from its basis, and the follies of its com- manders, its power could not ultimately be resisted by any state surrounding its borders. One immediate result of the war with Afghanistan was the conquest of Sind by Sir Charles Napier. Sind was originally subordinate to Afghanistan, its ■Rluhammadan rulers, or Amirs, holding a semi-inde- Digitized by Microsoft® 238 LORD AUCKLAND. pendent authority along the lower valleys of the Indus. After the retreat of the British army from Kabul some of the Amirs became refractory, as was their wont when occasion offered, and repudiated the treaties they had made to preserve peace. Lord Ellenborough thereupon resolved to declare war with them and annex their country. The political morality of this resolution was tersely summed up by Sir Charles Napier, who wrote, " We have no right to seize Sind, yet we shall do so, and a very advanta- geous, useful, and humane piece of rascality it will be.' Sir Charles Napier marched with 2,700 men against the army of Sind, consisting of over 20,000 Baluchi's, whom he completely defeated at the battle of Miani. The final result of the victory was telegraphed by Sir Charles Napier to the Governor-General in the following words : " I have Sind (sinned)." One last war occupied Lord Ellenborough before he was recalled, in June, 1843, by the Directors who were more than dissatisfied with his erratic policy and fondness for military display. On the death of Jhankuji Sindhia, in 1843, his widow, Tara Bhai, a girl of twelve, adopted a relative aged eight as son and heir, whom she succeeded in having enthroned at Gwalior as Jaiaji Rao Sindhia. The Governor- General and Tara Bhai disagreed on the choice of a regent, a disagreement which ultimately resulted in a declaration of war. The army of Gwalior, which had reached upwards of 30,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, was defeated by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Gough, at MaharAjpur, both sides losing heavily. Digitized by Microsoft® marathAs. 239 In a final battle at Panniar on the same date, December 29, 1843, the Marithas were finally over- thrown. The Governor-General forced his terms on the state, the Mardtha army was reduced in num- bers, and the English contingent raised to a disciplined force of 10,000 sepoys, a force which afterwards caused considerable trouble and anxiety during the Mutiny of 1857. Digitized by Microsoft® XIII. LORD HARDINGE (1844— 1848).— THE SIKHS AND ANNEXATION OF THE PUNJAB. Probably the most marvellous character in Indian history is Ranji't Singh, the Lion of Lahore, who for nearly fifty years held the Punjab in the hollow of his hand. In 1836 Baron Hiigel, who was then travelling in the Punjab, writes : " Ranji't Singh is now 54 years old. The small-pox deprived him, when a child, of his left eye, whence he gained the surname of Kdna, one eye, and his face is scarred by the same malady. His beard is thin and grey, with a few dark hairs in it ; according to the Sikh religious custom, it reaches a little below his chin and is untrimmed. His head is square and large for his stature, which, though naturally short, is now considerably bowed by disease ; his forehead is remarkably broad. His shoulders are wide, though his arms and hands are quite shrunk ; he is the most forbidding human being I have ever seen. His large, brown, unsteady, and suspicious eye seems driving into the thoughts of the person with whom he converses, and his straightforward 240 Digitized by Microsoft® kANjir siNGti. 241 questions are put incessantly and in the most laconic terms. His speech is so much affected by paralysis that it is no easy matter to understand him." Such was Ranjft Singh, the craftiest if not the ablest sovereign who ever founded an empire in India. Drunken, dissipated, avaricious, cruel, and debauched, he yet, in the words of Sir Lepel Griffin, " possessed in an extraordinary degree the qualities without which the highest success cannot be attained. Men obeyed him by instinct and because they had no power to disobey." Illiterate, unable to write, signing his orders with the impress of his hand dipped in saffron, he read all men, noble or mean, as if their thoughts were spread out before him. Though he deemed that his hospitality had not been fully extended to Gover- nors-General or British envoys unless he reeled from their presence intoxicated with his favourite beverage of " brandy prepared for him, in which were the strongest sauces compounded from the flesh of every kind of animal, beef excepted, pearls and jewels, musk opium," yet no man found him otherwise than fasci- natingly courteous and clever, able to overreach all in the subtle finesse of diplomatic intrigue. Callous, selfish, cold, and false, outrager of all laws of morality and even decency, deformed, paralysed, with fiendish cynicism acknowledging the children of his many wives as his own, he was yet followed to the funeral pyre by the tears and lamentations of his subjects. Four of his Rani's, veiled and clothed in white silk, held his hands ; seven of his fair and beauteous slave girls, some not fourteen years of age, barefooted and calm, sat at his feet, while the flames from the sandal- Digitized by Microsoft® '■^.m-^rrnjyt^f -p-/'ry- y . i»-ra?77>77Tf?^^OTrfx^-Tr»^