Part 54

"For some time past the Pindaris, a vast brotherhood of mounted freebooters, who were ready to fight under any standard for the chance of unbounded plunder, had been playing a more and more prominent part in the wars of native princes. As Free Lances, they had fought for the Peshwa at Panipat, had shared in the frequent struggles of the Sindhias and Holkars in Hindustan and Southern India, and made war on their own account with every native prince whose weakness at any moment seemed to invite attack. … From the hills and glens of Central India thousands of armed ruffians sallied forth year after year in quest of plunder, sparing no cruelty to gain their ends, and widening the circle of their ravages with each new raid, until in 1811 the smoke of their camp-fires could be seen from Gaya and Mirzapur. … To thwart Maratha intrigues and punish Pindari aggressions was the Governor-General's next aim. In spite of hindrances offered by his own council and the Court of Directors, he set himself to revive and extend Lord Wellesley's policy of securing peace and order throughout India by means of treaties, which placed one native prince after another in a kind of vassalage to the paramount power that ruled from Fort William. … By means of a little timely compulsion, the able and accomplished Elphinstone baffled for a while the plots which the Peshwa, Baji Rao, and his villainous accomplice, Trimbakji Danglia, had woven against their English allies. The treaty of June, 1817, left Lord Hastings master of Sagar and Bundalkhand, while it bound the Peshwa to renounce his friend Trimbakji, his own claims to the headship of the Maratha League, to make no treaties with any other native prince, and to accept in all things the counsel and control of the Company's Government. Hard as these terms may seem, there was no choice, averred Lord Hastings, between thus crippling a secret foe and depriving him of the crown he had fairly forfeited. Meanwhile Lord Hastings' fearless energy had already saved the Rajputs of Jaipur from further suffering at the hands of their Pathan oppressor, Amir Khan, and forced from Sindia himself a reluctant promise to aid in suppressing the Pindari hordes, whose fearful ravages had at length been felt by the peaceful villagers in the Northern Sarkars. In the autumn of 1817 Hastings took the field at the head of an army which, counting native contingents, mustered nearly 120,000 strong, with some 300 guns. From east, west, north, and south, a dozen columns set forth to hunt down the merciless ruffians who had so long been allowed to harry the fairest provinces of India. {1733} In spite of the havoc wrought among our troops by the great cholera outbreak of that year, and of a sudden rising among the Maratha princes for one last struggle with their former conquerors, our arms were everywhere successful against Marathas and Pindaris alike. The latter, hunted into the hills and jungles of Central India, found no safety anywhere except in small bodies and constant flight … and the famous robber-league passed into a tale of yore. Not less swift and sure was the punishment dealt upon the Maratha leaders who joined the Peshwa in his sudden uprising against the British power. His late submission had been nothing but a mask for renewed plottings. Elphinstone, however, saw through the mask which had taken in the confiding Malcolm. Before the end of October an English regiment, summoned in hot haste from Bombay, pitched its camp at Kirki, about two miles from Puna, beside the small Sepoy brigade already quartered there. In the first days of November Baji Rao began to assume a bolder tone as his plans grew ripe for instant execution. On the 5th, a body of Marathas attacked and destroyed the Residency, which Elphinstone had quitted in the nick of time. A great Maratha army then marched forth to overwhelm the little garrison at Kirki, before fresh troops could come up to its aid from Sirur. Elphinstone, however, who knew his foe, had no idea of awaiting the attack. Colonel Burr at once led out his men, not 3,000 all told. A brilliant charge of Maratha horse was heavily repulsed by a Sepoy regiment, and the English steadily advancing drove the enemy from the field. A few days later General Smith, at the head of a larger force, advanced on Puna, occupied the city, and pursued the frightened Peshwa from place to place. The heroic defence of Karigaum, a small village on the Bhima, by Captain Staunton and 800 Sepoys, with only two light guns, against 25,000 Marathas during a whole day, proved once more how nobly native troops could fight under English leading. Happily for Staunton's weary and diminished band, Smith came up the next morning, and the desponding Peshwa continued his retreat. Turn where he would, there was no rest for his jaded soldiers. Munro with a weak force, partly of his own raising, headed him on his way to the Carnatic, took several of his strong places, and drove him northwards within reach of General Smith. On the 19th February, 1818, that officer overtook and routed the flying foe at the village of Ashti. Bapu Gokla, the Peshwa's staunchest and ablest follower, perished in the field, while covering the retreat of his cowardly master. For some weeks longer Baji Rao fled hither and thither before his resolute pursuers. But at length all hope forsook him as the circle of escape grew daily narrower; and in the middle of May the great-grandson of Balaji Vishwanath yielded himself to Sir John Malcolm at Indor, on terms far more liberal than he had any reason to expect. Even for the faithful few who still shared his fortunes due provision was made at his request. He himself spent the rest of his days a princely pensioner at Bithur, near Cawnpore; but the sceptre which he and his sires had wielded for a hundred years passed into English hands, while the Rajah of Satara, the long-neglected heir of the house of Sivaji, was restored to the nominal headship of the Maratha power. Meanwhile Appa Sahib, the usurping Rajah of Berar, had no sooner heard of the outbreak at Puna, than he, too, like the Peshwa, threw off his mask. On the evening of the 24th November, 1817, his troops, to the number of 18,000, suddenly attacked the weak English and Sepoy force of 1,400 men with four guns, posted on the Sitabaldi Hills, outside Nagpur. A terrible fight for eighteen hours ended in the repulse of the assailants, with a loss to the victors of more than 300 men and twelve officers. A few weeks later Nagpur itself was occupied after another fight. Even then the Rajah might have kept his throne, for his conquerors were merciful and hoped the best. But they hoped in vain. It was not long before Appa Sahib, caught out in fresh intrigues, was sent off a prisoner towards Allahabad. Escaping from his captors, he wandered about the country for several years, and died at Lahor a pensioner on the bounty of Ranjit Singh. The house of Holkar had also paid the penalty of its rash resistance to our arms. … On the 6th January, 1818, the young Holkar was glad to sign a treaty which placed him and his heirs under English protection at the cost of his independence and of some part of his realm. Luckily for himself, Sindia had remained quiet, if not quite loyal, throughout this last struggle between the English and his Maratha kinsfolk. Thus in one short and decisive campaign, the great Maratha power, which had survived the slaughter of Panipat, fell shattered to pieces by the same blow which crushed the Pindaris, and raised an English merchant-company to the paramount lordship of all India. The last of the Peshwas had ceased to reign, the Rajah of Berar was a discrowned fugitive, the Rajah of Satara a king only in name, while Sindia, Holkar, and the Nizam were dependent princes who reigned only by sufferance of an English Governor-General at Calcutta. The Moghal Empire lingered only in the Palace of Dehli; its former viceroy, the Nawab of Audh, was our obedient vassal; the haughty princes of Rajputana bowed their necks, more or less cheerfully, to the yoke of masters merciful as Akbar and mightier than Aurangzib. Ranjit Singh himself cultivated the goodwill of those powerful neighbours who had sheltered the Sikhs of Sirhind from his ambitious inroads. With the final overthrow of the Marathas a new reign of peace, order, and general progress began for peoples who, during a hundred and fifty years, had lived in a ceaseless whirl of anarchy and armed strife. With the capture of Asirgarh in April, 1819, the fighting in Southern India came to an end."

_L. J. Trotter, History of India, book 5, chapters 2-3._

ALSO IN: _W. M. Torrens, Empire in Asia: How we came by it, chapters 19-20._

_J. G. Duff, History of the Mahrattas, volume 3, chapters 17-20._

_Major Ross-of-Bladensburg, The Marquess of Hastings, chapters 4-7._

INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833. The first Burmese War. English acquisition of Assam and Aracan. Suppression of Suttee and Thuggee. Rechartering of the East India Company. It is deprived of its last trading monopoly.

"On Hastings' retirement, in 1823, the choice of the ministry fell upon Canning. … Canning ultimately resigning the Governor-Generalship, the choice of the authorities fell upon Lord Amherst. The new Governor-General reached India at a time when the authorities in London had a right to expect a long period of peace. {1734} In fact, both in Hindostan and in the Deccan, the victories of Hastings had left the Company no more enemies to conquer. Unfortunately, however, for the prospects of peace, nature, which had given India an impenetrable boundary on the north, had left her with an undefined and open frontier on the east. On the shores of the Bay of Bengal, opposite Calcutta, a struggle had raged during the eighteenth century between the inhabitants of Ava and Pegu. The former, known as Burmans or Burmese, had the good fortune to find a capable leader, who rapidly ensured their own victory and founded a Burmese Empire. The successful competitors were not satisfied with their own predominance in Pegu—they conquered Aracan, they overran Assam, and they wrested from Siam a considerable territory on the Tenasserim coast. The conquest of Aracan brought the Burmese to the confines of the Company's dominions in Chittagong. The conquered people, disliking the severe rule of the conquerors, crossed the frontier and settled in British territory. Many of them used their new home as a secure basis for hostile raids on the Burmese. … The river Naf ran for a portion of its course between the possessions of the British in Chittagong and those of the Burmese in Aracan. With the object of preventing the repetition of outrages, which had occurred on the river, a small British guard was stationed on a little island, called Shaporee, near its mouth. The Burmese, claiming the island as their own, attacked the guard and drove it from the post. It was impossible to ignore such a challenge. The island was reoccupied; but the Governor-General, still anxious for peace, offered to treat its occupation by the Burmese as an action unauthorised by the Burmese Government. The Burmese Court, however, instead of accepting this offer, sent an army to reoccupy the island; collisions almost simultaneously occurred between the British and the Burmese on other parts of the frontier, and in February 1824 the first Burmese war began. … If the war of 1824 may be excused as inevitable, its conduct must be condemned as careless. No pains were taken to ascertain the nature of the country which it was requisite to invade, or the strength of the enemy whom it was decided to encounter. … Burma is watered by two great rivers, the Irawaddy and the Salwen. … In its upper waters the Irawaddy is a rapid stream; in its lower waters it flows through alluvial plains, and finds its way through a delta with nine mouths into the Bay of Bengal. On one of its western mouths is the town of Bassein, on one of its eastern mouths the great commercial port of Rangoon. The banks of the river are clothed with jungle and with forest; and malaria, the curse of all low-lying tropical lands, always lingers in the marshes. The authorities decided on invading Burma through the Rangoon branch of the river. They gave Sir Archibald Campbell, an officer who had won distinction in the Peninsula, the command of the expedition, and, as a preliminary measure, they determined to seize Rangoon. Its capture was accomplished with ease, and the Burmese retired from the town. But the victory was the precursor of difficulty. The troops dared not advance in an unhealthy season; the supplies which they had brought with them proved insufficient for their support; and the men perished by scores during their period of forced inaction. … When more favourable weather returned with the autumn, Campbell was again able to advance. Burma was then attacked from three separate bases. A force under Colonel Richards, moving along the valley of the Bramaputra, conquered Assam; an expedition under General Morrison, marching from Chittagong, occupied Aracan; while Campbell himself, dividing his army into two divisions, one moving by water, the other by land, passed up the Irawaddy and captured Donabue and Prome. The climate improved as the troops ascended the river, and the hot weather of 1825 proved less injurious than the summer of 1824. … The operations in 1825-6 drove home the lesson which the campaign of 1824-5 had already taught. The Burmese realised their impotence to resist, and consented to accept the terms which the British were still ready to offer them. Assam, Aracan, and the Tenasserim Coast were ceded to the Company; the King of Burma consented to receive a Resident at his capital, and to pay a very large sum of money—£1,000,000—towards the expenses of the war. … The increasing credit which the Company thus acquired did not add to the reputation of the Governor-General. … The Company complained of the vast additions which his rule had made to expenditure, and they doubted the expediency of acquiring new and unnecessary territory beyond the confines of India itself. The ministry thought that these acquisitions were opposed to the policy which Parliament had laid down, and to the true interests of the empire. It decided on his recall. … William Bentinck, whom Canning selected as Amherst's successor, was no stranger to Indian soil. More than twenty years before he had served as Governor of Madras. … Bentinck arrived in Calcutta in difficult times. Amherst's war had saddled the Government with a debt, and his successor with a deficit. … Retrenchment, in the opinion of every one qualified to judge, was absolutely indispensable, and Bentinck, as a matter of fact, brought out specific instructions to retrench. … In two other matters … Bentinck effected a change which deserves to be recollected with gratitude. He had the courage to abolish flogging in the native Indian army; he had the still higher courage to abolish suttee. … In Bengal the suttee, or 'the pure and virtuous woman,' who became a widow, was required to show her devotion to her husband by sacrificing herself on his funeral pile. … Successive Governors-General, whose attention had been directed to this barbarous practice, had feared to incur the unpopularity of abolishing it. … Cornwallis and Wellesley, Hastings and Amherst, were all afraid to prohibit murder which was identified with religion, and it was accordingly reserved to Bentinck to remove the reproach of its existence. With the consent of his Council, suttee was declared illegal. The danger which others had apprehended from its prohibition proved a mere phantom. The Hindoos complied with the order without attempting to resist it, and the horrible rite which had disgraced the soil of India for centuries became entirely unknown. For these humane regulations Bentinck deserves to be remembered with gratitude. Yet it should not be forgotten that these reforms were as much the work of his age as of himself. … One other great abuse was terminated under Bentinck. {1735} In Central India life was made unsafe and travelling dangerous by the establishment of a secret band of robbers known as Thugs. The Thugs mingled with any travellers whom they met, disarmed them by their conversation and courtesy, and availed themselves of the first convenient spot in their journey to strangle them with a rope and to rob them of their money. The burial of the victim usually concealed all traces of the crime; the secrecy of the confederates made its revelation unlikely; and, to make treachery more improbable, the Thugs usually consecrated their murders with religious rites, and claimed their god as the patron of their misdoings. Bentinck selected an active officer, Major Sleeman, whom he charged to put down Thuggee. Sleeman's exertions were rewarded by a gratifying success. The Thugs, like all secret societies, were assailable in one way. The first discovery of crime always produces an approver. The timid conspirator, conscious of his guilt, is glad to purchase his own safety by sacrificing his associates, and when one man turns traitor every member of the band is anxious to secure the rewards and immunity of treachery. Hence the first clue towards the practices of the Thugs led to the unveiling of the whole organisation; and the same statesman, who had the merit of forbidding suttee, succeeded in extirpating Thuggee from the dominions over which he ruled. Social reforms of this character occupy the greater portion of the history of Bentinck's government. In politics he almost always pursued a policy of non-intervention. The British during his rule made few additions to their possessions; they rarely interfered in the affairs of Native states. … The privileges which the East India, Company enjoyed had from time to time been renewed by the British Parliament. The charter of the Company had been extended for a period of twenty years in 1773, in 1793, and in 1813. But the conditions on which it was continued in 1813 were very different from those on which it had been originally granted. Instead of maintaining its exclusive right of trade, Parliament decided on throwing open the trade with India to all British subjects. It left the Company a monopoly of the China trade alone. The Act of 1813 of course excited the strenuous opposition of the Company. The highest authorities were brought forward to prove that the trade with India would not be increased by a termination of the monopoly. Their views, however, were proved false by the result, and the stern logic of facts consequently pointed in 1833 to the further extension of the policy of 1813 [see CHINA: A. D. 1839-1842]. … The inclination towards free trade was, in fact, so prevalent, that it is doubtful whether, even if the Tories had remained in office, they would have consented to preserve the monopoly. … The fall of the Wellington administration made its termination a certainty [see ENGLAND: A. D. 1832-1833]. … The Government consented to compensate the Company for the loss of its monopoly by an annuity of £630,000 charged on the territorial revenues of India. It is a remarkable circumstance that the change of ministry which deprived the Company of its trade possibly preserved its political power for nearly a quarter of a century. … The Whig ministry shrank from proposing an alteration for which the country was not prepared, and which might have aroused the opposition by which the Coalition of 1783 had been destroyed. Though, however, it left the rule with Leadenhall Street, it altered the machinery of government. The Governor-General of Bengal was made Governor-General of India. A fourth member—an English jurist—was added to his Council, and the Governor-General in Council was authorised to legislate for the whole of India. At the same time the disabilities which still clung to the natives were in theory swept away, and Europeans were for the first time allowed to hold land in India. These important proposals were carried at the close of the first session of the first reformed Parliament."

_S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 25 (volume 5)._

ALSO IN: _J. W. Kaye, Administration of the East India Company, parts 3-4._

Sir C. Trevelyan, The Thugs (Edin. Review, January, 1837).

_Illustrations of the History of the Thugs._

_M. Taylor, Confessions of a Thug, introduction._

_D. C. Boulger, Lord William Bentinck, chapters 4-6._

INDIA: A. D. 1836-1845. The first Afghan war and its catastrophe. Conquest and annexation of Scinde. Threatened trouble with the Sikhs.