did. Clive, then, was a writer, or clerk, in the East Indian Company's

service. It was not, apparently, a congenial employment. Quiet, reserved, somewhat stubborn, he led a very solitary life, knowing, he writes in one of his home letters, scarcely "any one family in the place." A friend tells a tale of him, characteristic, yet hardly sufficiently authenticated for history. He found young Clive sitting dejectedly at a table, on which lay a pistol. "Fire that thing out of the window, will you?" said the lad, and watched. "I suppose I must be good for something," he remarked despondently, when the pistol went off, "for I snapped it twice at my own head, and it missed fire both times."

Whether true or not true, the lad of whom such a story could even have been told must have been something out of the common.

He was rather a tall English lad, silent, with a long nose and a pleasant smile. He was barely one-and-twenty when Dupleix took Madras, and for the first time he found himself a soldier. He returned to his writership, however, for a time, but such a profession was manifestly impossible to his temperament--a temperament admirably illustrated by the following story. He accused an officer of cheating at cards. A duel ensued, in which Clive, with first shot, missed; whereupon his adversary, holding his pistol to Clive's head, bade him beg his life. This he did instantly with perfect coolness, but when asked also to retract his accusation, replied as calmly: "Fire, and be damned to you! I said you cheated, and you did. I'll never pay you."

The adversary, struck dumb by his--no doubt--righteous stubbornness, thereupon lowered his weapon.

Such was the young man who at six-and-twenty, in the absence on leave of Major Lawrence, set off as a captain to the relief of Trichinopoly with six hundred men. He was completely outclassed both in numbers and pecuniary resources, and feeling himself to be so, he returned to Fort St David and boldly proposed a complete _volte face_. The French were thoroughly engaged aiding their ally at Trichinopoly. If he and his small force made a detour to Arcot, the capital, they might find it unprepared. They did; Clive marched in, took possession of the fort before the very eyes of one hundred thousand astonished spectators, and finding over £50,000 worth of goods in the treasury, gave them back to their owners, and issued orders that not a thing in the town was to be touched; the result of such unusual consideration being that, when he finally had to defend his capture, not a soul in the town raised a hand against the strange young _sahib_ who seemed to have no fear, and certainly had no greed.

But young Clive had a Herculean task before him. With a mere handful of men--three hundred and twenty in all--he had to defend a ruinous, ill-constructed fort one mile in circumference--ditch choked, parapets too narrow for artillery--from the determined onslaught of ten thousand men. And he did so defend it. Despite failures due to inexperience, rebuffs due to rashness, despite hair's-breadth personal escapes, due to reckless, almost criminal courage, he won through to the end. There is something impish and boyish about the record of these six weeks' siege. How, more out of sheer bravado than anything else, the garrison crowned a ruined tower on the ramparts with earth, hoisted thereto an enormous old seventy-two-pounder cannon which had belonged to Aurungzebe! How they turned it on the palace which rose high above the intervening houses, and letting drive with thirty-two pounds of their best powder, sent the ball right through the palace, greatly to the alarm of the enemy's staff, which was quartered there! How once a day they fired off the old cannon, until on the fourth day it burst and nearly killed the gunners!

All this, and the thrilling story of the mason who--luckily for the garrison--knew of the secret aqueduct constructed so as to drain the fort of water, and stopped it up ere it could be used, would make a fine chapter for a boy's book of adventure. Here it is enough to record that on the 14th November, after a desperate and futile assault, the enemy--French allies and all--withdrew, and Clive found himself free to follow on their heels to Vellore, where he succeeded in giving those of them who were sufficiently brave to stand, a most satisfactory beating; in consequence of which numbers of the beaten sepoys, with the quick Oriental eye for vitality, deserted their colours. Clive enlisted six hundred of the best armed, and returned to Madras, where he was received with acclaim, for victory was then a new sensation to the Anglo-Indian. A month or two afterwards, however, he was out again on the war-path, giving the French-supported army of Chanda-Sâhib a good drubbing at Cauvery-pak. Whilst out, he received an urgent summons to go back to the Presidency town. Major Lawrence was returning from leave, and would resume command.

Despite the urgency, he found time, nevertheless, on his way back to go round by a certain town which Dupleix, in the first pride of victory, had founded under the name of Dupleix-Fattehabad, to commemorate--what surely had been better forgotten--his terrible act of treachery towards Nâsir-Jung in the matter of the ratified but delayed treaty which cost the latter his life. And here, with the same reckless hardihood which had characterised the whole campaign, he paused--though in the midst of an enemy's country--to batter to pieces the pretentious flamboyant column on which Dupleix had recorded his conquest in French, Persian, Mahratti, Hindi.

One can picture the scene, and one's heart warms to the English boy who watched with glee the hacking and hewing, while the natives stood by, their sympathy going forth inevitably to the strong young arm.

Three days afterwards Clive gave up his command, and here his first campaign ends. It was very straightforward, very clear; but what followed was complicated--very!

Trichinopoly was still besieged: the French backing Chanda-Sâhib, who claimed it as Nawâb of the Carnatic; the English backing Mahomed-Ali, who held it as Nawâb of Arcot. To the support of the latter Major Lawrence led his mercenaries, and for a time the siege was raised. By this time, however, the Directors in London were becoming restive over hostilities which interfered with the commerce of the Company. In order to bring the struggle for supremacy to a head, Clive proposed a division of forces, south and north. Whether he was actuated in making this bold proposal by any hope of getting a command over the heads of his seniors or not, certain it is that after agreeing to the proposal, Major Lawrence found it impossible to keep to seniority. The natives flatly refused to go north unless Clive led them.

Here, again, the personal equation--the only thing that has ever counted in India--stepped in. It was a genuine tribute to Clive's possession of that greatest attribute of a good general--_fortunæ_. It heartened him up, and he instantly began a second campaign of success, driving Dupleix to despair, since after every petty victory some of the beaten sepoys, following fortune, invariably deserted to the English side. Clive's army, in fact, was a snowball. It increased in size as it went, and after the big fight at Samiavêram, was joined by no less than two thousand horse and fifteen hundred sepoys. But the young man, for all his gloomy face, his silence, his stubbornness, had a curiously sympathetic personality to the natives. When Seringhâm was taken, and a thousand Râjputs shut themselves up in the celebrated pagoda swearing death ere it should be defiled, Clive "did not think it necessary to disturb them," but at Covelong he drove the frightened recruits back to battle at the point of the sword. After taking Chingleput, the campaign came to an abrupt conclusion. Clive, falling sick, had leave to go to England. This was in 1752.

Major Lawrence, meanwhile, in the south, had been fairly successful. The siege of Trichinopoly raised, the French, who had done all the artillery work, retreated to Pondicherry.

But complications arose. Mahomed-Ali, Nawâb of Arcot, showed indisposition to press his advantage, and to his great chagrin Major Lawrence discovered that Trichinopoly itself had been promised to the Mysore king, one of Mahomed-Ali's native allies. The Nawâb himself was ready to repudiate his promise; the English, it is to be feared, did not favour straightforward fulfilment. The result was a hollow compromise, which in its results showed that honesty would have been the best policy. For the next two years, therefore, Trichinopoly became the scene of constant warfare, and such was the stress of battle that raged round the unfortunate town, that in November 1753 not a tree was left standing near it, and the British detachment and convoy which finally relieved it was forced to go six or seven miles to get a stick of firewood.

The story of the final and futile assault of the French is a thrilling one, especially the incident of the night-attack frustrated by the falling into a disused well of a soldier, whose musket going off, alarmed the garrison, thus rendering of no avail a previous wholesale tampering with the guard. For the French had no hesitation in using underhand means; in this, indeed, lay the strength of Dupleix. On this occasion, anyhow, they suffered for it, since, pinned between the outer ramparts and an inner one, four hundred out of six hundred Frenchmen were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

The year 1740 brought a mutual fatigue of warfare both to the French and the English East India Company. They called a truce to assert that they had never really been at war, the hostile interlude being merely the amusements of mercenaries.

But the whole affair was comic. The Council-of-Negotiation which met at a neutral little Dutch settlement was as unreal as the patents produced on both sides in support of the claims of their puppets. There were seven on the French side for the murdered Muzaffar-Jung's successor, Sâlabut, including one from the Great Moghul. The English, too, had patents for their puppet Mahomed-Ali, also including one from the Great Moghul. Now it is possible that both these contradictory patents were genuine--anything was possible in the India of 1754--but the English one was not produced, and the French one had a wrong seal!

So the affair ended in added exasperation.

But in truth France and England's attention was now awakening to the unceasing hostilities in India. International conferences were held in London, where the Secretary of State, in order to be prepared for refusal of his terms, fitted out a fleet for Eastern waters. The menace proved successful. France, never greatly enamoured of her Eastern Company, gave away the game by sending out one Monsieur Godeheu to take over the Governorship from Dupleix.

It was a bolt out of the blue. Whatever his faults may have been, the latter had spent his life for, and risked his whole fortune in, the Company. He never recovered the blow, but went home, sought bare justice by a lawsuit, and died ruined, broken-hearted, ere his case was decided. So England has no monopoly in ingratitude to her public servants.

Monsieur Godeheu was peaceful, painstaking, praiseworthy. He produced an ill-considered but plausible treaty which rather knocked the wind out of Clive's sails when he returned to Bombay in 1755 with Admiral Watson's fleet, fully prepared to attack the Dekkan from the north. He had to content himself with a campaign against the pirate-king of Anghria, in the course of which a momentous quarrel arose between the English and their Mahratta allies. The latter claimed a share of the plunder, the former refused it, asserting with righteous indignation that deliberate treachery had been proved up to the hilt against their so-called allies, and that consequently they were entitled to nothing. A sordid quarrel at best, which bore bitter fruit in years to come.

From this, Clive sailed to take up command at Madras, where he was met by disastrous news from Calcutta.

Surâj-ud-daula, Nawâb of Bengal, had seized on it, suffocated a hundred and twenty-three of its inhabitants--many of them men in the best positions--in the Black Hole, and had returned to Murshidabad, whence he had issued orders for the destruction and confiscation of all English property in his dominions. Such was the ineptitude of England at that time in India, that two whole months elapsed ere Clive, in a fever of impatience, was allowed to start for retaliation.

While we can imagine him fretting and fuming, we shall have time for a glance back to see who Surâj-ud-daula was, and what was the cause of his action.

Ali-Verdi-Khân, who, it will be remembered, had ceded Orissa to the Mahrattas, had also snatched the Nawâbship from his master's son; a graceless youth, it must be admitted, while Ali-Verdi-Khân himself was, despite many horrid acts, a fairly just ruler. During his lifetime the English had no complaint; but at his death he committed a gross injustice on every soul in his dominions by appointing as his heir his grandson Surâj-ud-daula, a perfectly infamous young man. No one, apparently, had a good word to say for him, except those amongst whom he spent a vicious, depraved life.

His aunt, Ghasîta Begum, at any rate, nourished no illusions concerning him, and being an ambitious woman, anxious to preserve her great fortune for future occasions of conspiracy, took immediate precautions while Ali-Verdi lay dying against any confiscation of her treasures. She employed one Kishen-dâs, a pretended pilgrim to Juggernath, to carry them off in boats down the Ganges. Once on the river, Kishen steered, not for the sea, but for Calcutta. It is difficult to say whether the Governor and Council knew what they were harbouring, but the fact remains that the treasures sought and found British protection, one Omichand, a Hindu merchant, giving Kishen-dâs hospitality.

Surâj-ud-daula took the business very badly. He made a scene at his grandfather's death-bed, and accused the English of siding with the faction that was against his succession. Yet, when that succession was an accomplished fact, and the English agent appeared at his audience to apologise in set terms for a so-called mistake in turning away, as an impostor, from Calcutta, a spy who asserted he bore a letter from Surâj-ud-daula, the latter kept a calm countenance and said negligently that he had forgotten the incident. And yet it was no slight one; for there is little doubt that the Council were not quite satisfied with its own action.

The Nawâb, however, was biding his time, and he soon found it. War was on the point of breaking out once more in Europe between France and England, and orders were, in consequence, sent out by the Directors of the Company to overhaul fortifications. Repairs were at once commenced. This was Surâj-ud-daula's opportunity. He first sent a haughty enquiry as to why, without leave, the English were building a new wall, and, pretending that the reply given was inadequate, followed up his first communication by marching to Kossimbazaar with his army, sending for Mr Watts the Governor, and with threats forcing him to sign an engagement to destroy, within fifteen days, all new works which had been begun at Calcutta, deliver up all the Nawâb's subjects he might call for, and refund any sums the Nawâb might have lost by passports of trade having been illegally granted.

Now, in dealing with these Indian disputes it is notoriously difficult to read through the written lines of the formulated plaint and counter-plaint, and reach the palimpsest below; that palimpsest of fine, complicated motive which invariably underlies the simplest plea, which makes even a petty debt case in India like an English A. B. C. scrawled over a Babylonian brick, covered closely with fly-foot stipplings. But here the stipulation regarding the Nawâb's subjects gives a clear clue. Whether Surâj-ud-daula had any just cause of complaint or not, his real grievance was the loss of his aunt's treasure.

This abject yielding of the English was fatal. Had any one of the type of Clive or John Nicholson been on the spot, events might have been very different; as it was, disaster and destruction followed. Surâj-ud-daula marched on Calcutta, receiving by the way the gift of two hundred barrels of gunpowder from our treaty-bound friends the French at Chandanagore! Reading the record of these few fateful days in June 1756 one knows not whether to laugh or to cry, to let pity or righteous wrath prevail, as the history of silly delay and still sillier activities unfolds itself. The feverish digging of absolutely untenable trenches, the three weeks' delay without any preparation whatever while letters were passing to and fro, the neglect to apply for reinforcements to other presidencies, the imprisonment of Omichand, the miserable fracas in his house, in which a Brahmin peon, mad with rage and professing fear lest high-caste women should be violated, rushed into his master's harem, killed a round dozen of innocent ladies, and then stabbed himself, reminds one of nothing but the fateful days of May a hundred years after, when Englishmen stood by and watched the Mutiny grow from a chance by-blow to a giant unrestrained. Calcutta was taken. Mr Drake, the governor, and Captain Minchin, the commandant, ran away. The ships weighed anchor and sailed out of gunshot, leaving one hundred and ninety deserted men in the fort. But if cowardice showed unabashed, courage was not lacking, and among those who showed it Mr Holwell deserves honourable mention. A civilian himself, he locked the gates of the fort to prevent further desertion, and final resistance being hopeless, did his best by diplomacy to avert absolute destruction. A hard task, for he lost twenty-five of his miserable garrison in one assault, and he lost the aid of more by drunkenness: for the soldiers got at the _arrack_ store.

Still, he might have succeeded but for the fact that the Nawâb lost his temper on finding that the treasury only contained £5,000! And he had imagined the English rich beyond dreams. He jumped to the conclusion that there must be treasure concealed, and when none was forthcoming, seems to have cared nothing for the personal safety he had guaranteed to Mr Holwell and his following of a hundred and forty men, women, and children.

The tale of the Black Hole of Calcutta is too well known to need repetition. The unfortunate company were herded at nightfall into a room eighteen feet square, and despite their agonising appeals for deliverance, left to suffocate. By daybreak only three-and-twenty remained alive.

And the ships which could have carried them off ere hostilities began, which even afterwards might have rescued them, were sailing merrily down the river, the full breeze of dawn bellying their sails.

It is an indelible disgrace!

Surâj-ud-daula, disappointed in plunder, retired to Murshidabad fulminating vain thunders against all things British, as he abandoned himself once more to infamous pleasures.

But Clive was on his track. Clive, filled-according to his letters--"with grief, horror, and resentment"; determined that the expedition should not "end with the retaking of Calcutta only, but that the Company's estate in these parts shall be settled in a better and more lasting condition than ever."

The story of his success is a long one, and is, unfortunately, marred by more than one doubtful, almost inexcusable act. But that he should utterly have escaped from the corruption of the whole atmosphere in India at this time is more than any one has any right to expect, even of a hero. He was but mortal, and from the time he was twenty, had had to steer his way through a perfect network of intrigue. Again, his complicity in much that happened is by no means assured, for we know that he was surrounded by enemies amongst his own countrymen, who, jealous of his success, angered with his blunt outspokenness, did not hesitate to injure him. Let us consider for a moment what Clive must have said to Captain Minchin, to Mr Drake, concerning their pleasure-trip down the Hooghly while their friends were suffocating in the Black Hole! We have his opinion of the "Bengal gentlemen" in his letters, which runs thus:--

"The loss of private property and the means of recovering it are the only objects which take up their attention. I would have you guard against everything these gentlemen can say; for, believe me, they are bad subjects and rotten at heart, and will stick at nothing to prejudice you and the gentlemen of the Committee. Indeed, how should they do otherwise when they have not spared one another? Their conduct at Calcutta finds no excuse even amongst themselves; the riches of Peru or Mexico should not induce me to dwell among them."

These are strong words, but they were written under strong emotion. Clive, arriving at Calcutta, after a most fatiguing march of skirmishes along the river, had been mortified by finding that Admiral Watson, who had sailed up it and captured the town after two hours' desultory cannonading, had already appointed a Captain Coote as military governor. This post, naturally, was Clive's by every right, and he objected strenuously. Matters went so far that the admiral threatened to fire on the fort if Clive refused to leave it, and though a compromise was effected, the affair shows the _animus_ against the young colonel.

He was hampered on all sides. We find him point-blank refusing to place himself under the orders of the Committee.

"I do not intend," he writes, "to make use of my power for acting separately from you, without you reduce me to the necessity for so doing; but as far as concerns the means of executing these powers, you will excuse me, gentlemen, if I refuse to give it up."

The very existence, therefore, of this friction makes caution necessary in judging of Clive's actions, since, except from his own admissions, we have nothing on which absolute reliance can be placed. He seems to have felt himself overmatched in every way. Certainly he proceeded with more caution than usual, except in regard to his attack on Surâj-ud-daula's camp outside the very walls of Calcutta.

Deputies had been sent overnight to interview the Nawâb with a view to negotiation, and had returned in confusion, lightless, by secret paths, convinced that they were to be assassinated. Huge eunuchs and attendants, made still more terrific by stuffed coats and monstrous turbans, had scowled at them--the Nawâb had been superciliously indifferent. Clive had about two thousand men under his command; the enemy, under Mir-Jâffar, Surâj-ud-daula's general, mustered forty thousand; but instant assault seemed necessary in face of that contemptuous discourtesy.

It began at dawn, and though, owing to fog, it was not so decisive as Clive had hoped, achieved its end, for the very next day the Nawâb proposed peace.

Now in this, again, we must read between the lines. The terms of peace which was duly signed--Clive feeling himself far too weak to continue war, for a time at any rate--were not acceptable to the Committee, for Clive refused to allow the claims of "private individuals to stand in the way of the interest of the Company." The treaty, in fact, was singularly easy on the Nawâb, but it must be remembered that Mr Holwell, who had himself been in the Black Hole, had exculpated Surâj-ud-daula from wilful participation in the ordering of it; indeed, there seems little doubt that it was due to the reckless indifference of subordinates. Thus we see here an honest endeavour on Clive's part to deal with Surâj-ud-daula fairly and squarely. He trusted him, disregarding Admiral Watson's warning that without a good thrashing _first_, treaties with natives were of no avail.

His subsequent disgust at finding this warning had been correct must be admitted in defence of his future actions. After endless intriguing, difficult to follow, and still more difficult when followed to understand--for the friction between Clive and his environment seems to obscure everything--the young colonel (he was but thirty) seems to have reverted to his desire to dislodge the French, with which his services had begun, and, war between the nations being opportunely declared, he attacked and took Chandanagore. This brought about, however, a complete revelation of the perfidy of Surâj-ud-daula, who in letters to the French governor (whom he calls "_Zubat-ul-Tujar_," the "Essence of Merchants"), abuses "_Sabut-Jung_" (the "Daring in War," by which name Clive is still known in India), and promises his heart-whole support. "Be confident," he writes, "look on my forces as your own."

Clive, conscious of having acted against general opinion in trusting the man, resented this personally. Then Surâj-ud-daula was practically a monster in human form. By twenty, his vices were hoary. So it may well have been honest disgust which made Clive first consider the possibility of deposing him in favour of Mîr-Jâffar. Pages have been written inveighing against the enormity of intriguing against a ruler with whom you have a treaty of peace. And it is mean according to Western ideals. Still, Clive did not shrink from it; his verdict is brief: "I am persuaded there can be neither peace nor security while such a monster reigns."

So he did not reign long. Mîr-Jâffar was deliberately nominated; a treaty, consisting of a preamble and thirteen articles, solemnly and secretly drawn up. In this Omichand, merchant, moneylender, spy, informer, a man of infinite influence at Murshidabad, was go-between. As reward for his services and silence--for otherwise he threatened to warn his real master Surâj-ud-daula--he insisted on receiving £200,000. But, in truth, this treaty reads like a huge bill, for in consideration of being made Nawâb, Mîr-Jâffar promised the Company to pay, as damages for the sacking of Calcutta, £1,000,000, to the English inhabitants thereof £500,000, to the natives £200,000, and to the Armenians £70,000.

These were immense sums, but they were the result of absurdly exaggerated estimates of the treasure in Murshidabad, which was currently reported to be at least £24,000,000.

So the farce of friendship went on with the Nawâb. It was a toss-up in the end whether Mîr-Jâffar would be faithful to his master or to the treaty, and on the very eve of the battle of Plassey, that is to say, 23rd June 1757, Clive was still undetermined whether to attempt the final blow or to refrain from it. His reputation would have benefited if he had; for England would have won in the end without subterfuge. Still, for all this excuse is to be found. Even the fact that Clive, in common with half the army and navy, was to receive a stipulated present--in his case a very large one--must not be counted, as it appears to be at the first blush, bribery and corruption. There was no law against the taking of douceurs; the employees of the Company, indeed, were ill paid because of such perquisites, without which they could not live. So, had he chosen to ask for a million of money, he could only have been counted extortionate in his demands. But the trick played upon Omichand with Clive's support and connivance seems--at least--despicable. Briefly, it comes to this. Englishmen were afraid of the scoundrel's blabbing, yet they were determined he should not have the £200,000 for which he stipulated. They therefore drew up two treaties, one with, one without, the stipulation. The one they showed to Omichand was forged; the other was really signed.

It seems almost incredible this should have been done by plain English gentlemen, let alone by one who in many ways was a hero; but so it was.

To avoid paying £200,000 out of revenues which did not belong to us, we resorted to fraud and forgery.

There is but one consolation in the case. Clive himself, the arch-actor, never regretted the act. When arraigned on this charge before the House of Commons he asserted proudly that he thought "it warrantable in such a case, and would do it again a hundred times. I had no interested motive in doing it, but did it with the design of disappointing the expectations of a rapacious man, for I think both art and policy warrantable in defeating the purposes of such a villain."

But was Omichand "the greatest villain upon earth" that Clive held him to be? Even this is doubtful, and our pity is his, no matter what he was, as we read the story, as told by Orme the historian, of the conference which was held the day after the battle.

"Clive and Scrafton went towards Omichand, who was waiting in full assurance of hearing the glad tidings.... Scrafton said to him in the Indostan language: 'Omichand! the red paper is a trick--you are to have nothing.' The words overpowered him like a blast of sulphur; he sank back fainting."

He did not recover the shock, but died a complete imbecile within the year.

No! Whatever way we look at this incident it offends eye and taste. For it was so needless. If Omichand was the double-dyed scoundrel he is said to have been, what more easy than to tell him when all was over: "Yes! the £200,000 is yours, but you shall not have it."

Clive, at any rate, was strong enough for that.

The incident prevents the remembrance of Plassey being a pure pleasure. It was victory complete so far as it went, and by the treaty with Mîr-Jâffar Clive's hope "that the Company's estate in these parts shall be settled in a better and more lasting condition than before" was fully justified; for not only was Calcutta given to it freehold, but also the land to the south of the town, as a _zemindari_ subject to the payment of revenue.

England had a real hold on Indian soil at last, and Clive had given it to her.

ROBERT CLIVE

A.D. 1757 TO A.D. 1767

It was in the year 1757, just one hundred years before the Mutiny, that the battle of Plassey was fought, and that by the enthronement of a Nawâb who owed everything to English arms the East India Company became practically lords paramount in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa.

It was in the same year that Upper India was once more disturbed by the inroad of Ahmed-Shâh, the Durrâni king of Kandahâr. Mahomed-Shâh, the Moghul emperor, had once repulsed him, and Ahmed-Shâh, the Afghân's namesake, son and successor of the Great Moghul, had, for the six years of his reign, watched the north-western frontier nervously.

But he died in 1754 without signs of the dread invasion.

It came, however, in Alamgîr the Second's time, through no fault of that distressful puppet, but owing to the arrogance of Ghâzi-ud-din, Grand Vizier, and eldest son of the old fox Asaf-Jâh. Heredity is strong. In his lifetime there was not a political pie in all India into which the latter's wily old finger did not dip, and now his descendants carried on the same game. Sâlabut-Jung, his son, was French nominee for the Nizâmship; Muzaffar-Jung, grandson, for the Nawâbship of the Carnatic. Nâzir-Jung, who perished miserably through the treachery of Dupleix, had been another candidate, and at the effete court of Delhi, Ghâzi-ud-din was virtually king. He chose to insult the widow of an Afghân governor of Lahôre, and Ahmed-Shâh, Durrâni, marched to avenge it.

The vengeance was deep and bitter. Delhi was laid waste; the horrors of Nâdir-Shâh being repeated and excelled, for the Durrâni had not the Persian's hold upon his troops. He also penetrated further down-country than did Nâdir, and harried the Gangetic plain as far as Muttra. The news of his raid, indeed, was one of the many factors in the problem of action or inaction which Clive had had to decide. But the heat drove the hardy northmen back to their hills, and Upper India reverted once more to its old peaceful life, Delhi to dreams. It was a drugged city in those days, winking sleepily in the sunlight, enduring ravishment patiently, returning when the stress was over to watch its pageant king sitting on his pinchbeck peacock throne, pretending to be all-powerful, looking out haughtily, with opium-dimmed eyes, upon a subject world, that in reality cared not one jot for the so-called descendants of the Great Moghul.

In Bengal the English had been king-makers without one reference to the sovereign power. In the very Punjâb itself, the Mahrattas, invited to his aid by Ghâzi-ud-din, came and mastered the length and breadth of the land. In truth, their star was in its zenith. Even in the Dekkan, despite the help of a French force under Monsieur Bussy-by far the ablest commander France ever sent to the East--Sâlabut-Jung could with difficulty keep in the field against them.

And France was beginning to find her hands full. War had been declared in Europe between her and England, and in 1758 the Comte de Lally, a man of great reputation, was sent out avowedly with the intention of breaking the English power in the East.

A bit of a braggadocio was Lally, and all unversed in Oriental likes and dislikes. He began ill by ousting Bussy, in whom the French allies believed utterly, much as the English allies believed in Clive. The secret of this belief may be evolved from the tale of the taking of Bobbili. It was an old fort held by an old family of Râjputs, and Bussy called on it to yield, assaulted it for three days, and finally, on the third night, sounded "cease firing," and waited for the morning to deliver his final blow.

Not a sound disturbed the silence of the night. The primrose dawn showed pale, the old fort rising stern against it. But the gates were open. Bussy entered with caution. The sentries at their posts were dead, the streets were empty, but in the arcades men lay sleeping their last sleep.

The palace doorkeepers were on duty--dead! As he and his staff hurried through the narrow passages, they could see through dark archways women lying huddled up in each other's arms--dead! The Hall of Audience was reached at last; and there, each in his place, the courtiers had drawn their last breath. But the chief was not on the throne; that was occupied by a year-old boy-baby, the beloved heir, playing unconcernedly with the heron's plume of his dead father, who, with his sword through his heart, lay with his head at the feet of his little son. Beside him was the only other living soul in Bobbili, the oldest inhabitant of the town.

Youth and age! The lesson was not unlearnt by Bussy, and Bobbili remains a chieftainship to this day.

Lally, however, was of different mettle. To him, surrounded by well-born, fashionable French officers, all things Eastern were beneath contempt. What was a Brahmin that he should not do what he was told to do, even though the order involved his being yoked cart-fellow with a sweeper?

It was not conducive to anything but discipline; and discipline in India is limited, like all other things, by caste.

Small wonder, then, that, opposed to such a leader as Captain, afterwards Sir Eyre Coote (for Clive could not leave Bengal), the French fortunes gradually failed, until in 1761 all hold on India was lost by the taking of Pondicherry. Poor Lally! He had pitted himself against Orientalism, and he failed miserably. Yet, once again, he did not deserve to be dragged to execution on a dung-cart for having been "insolent to His Majesty King Louis XVth's other officers" (which was a true count), "and for treason to His Majesty himself" (which was false). Of how many reputations has not India unjustly been the grave? Truly one can echo Lally's last words: "Tell my judges that God has given me grace to pardon them: but if I were to see them again, that grace might go."

It is a wonderfully human speech. One can forgive him much for it, but one cannot forgive his judges as he did; deep down, their meanness, their lack of wide outlook, rankles.

While Eyre Coote, however, was bringing the French power to its end for ever, Clive was consolidating the British hold in Bengal; and still under the stress of utterly uncongenial coadjutors.

"I cannot help feeling," he writes to the Select Committee, "that had the expedition miscarried you would have laid the whole blame upon me." And this was true.

The influx into Calcutta of close on £800,000, paid according to treaty from Surâj-ud-daula's treasure chest--which after all only contained, revenues counted, something under £7,000,000--seems to have roused rapacity on all sides. It is worthy of note, however, that Clive's part in the squabble which ensued is invariably on the side of justice. When Admiral Watson claimed his share of the loot as an actual, though not a formal member of the Select Committee, Clive at once saw the reasonableness of the claim, and set an example--which was not followed--of handing over his share of the additional portion which had to be made up. He also fought strenuously, and overcame, an attempt on the part of the military to exclude the navy from any share in the plunder. Indeed, his reply to the "Remonstrance and Protest" sent him by the soldiers is worthy of quotation.

"How comes it," he asks, "that a promise of money from the Nawâb _entirely negotiated by me_ can be deemed by you a matter of right and property?... It is now in my power to return to the Nawâb the money already advanced, and leave it to his option whether he will perform his promise or not. You have stormed no town and found no money there; neither did you find it on the plain of Plassey. In short, gentlemen, it pains me to remind you that what you are to receive is entirely owing to the care I took of your interests."

So, after pointing out that, but for this care, the Company would only have awarded them at the outside six months' pay, he finishes by upbraiding them with their disrespect and ingratitude, and placing the officers who brought him the remonstrance under arrest.

Now this letter, frank and straightforward, enables us to see the position as Clive saw it. The army was purely a mercenary army. From the day on which the English had sided with the Nawâb of Arcot it always had been mercenary. The natives had paid their allies. The question as to the advisability of this did not come in; the fact remained. Therefore, on the supposition that Surâj-ud-daula's wealth was enormous, enormous fees had been asked.

Blame, therefore, could only be given for rapacity, not for the actual taking of any fee. And the advantage to the Company of what had been accomplished was so incalculable that no complaint from _it_ was possible.

It had been an easy task to place Mîr-Jâffar on the throne, but it required all Clive's will-power to induce him to do as he was bid. The spoliation of Surâj-ud-daula's treasury had left the former in comparative poverty, and he resented being made by Clive to fulfil his engagements under the treaty. Still, he could not afford to quarrel with one who maintained the peace by crushing rebellion, apparently, by his mere presence.

Just, however, as he was hesitating over an attempt at independence, news came that the Wazîr of Oude was marching upon Bengal, and at the same time an envoy of the Mahrattas appeared, demanding £240,000 arrears of tribute. Fear threw him again into Clive's arms, who, however, had by this time come to see that in choosing Mîr-Jâffar as Nawâb, he had chosen one who would always be a thorn in the side of good government.

"He has no talent," he writes, "for gaining the love and confidence of his officers. His mismanagement of the country ... might have proved fatal ... no less than three rebellions were on foot at one time."

Still, by unceasing efforts, Clive is able to report in 1758 that the Nawâb seems now "so well fixed in his government as to be able, with a small degree of prudence, to maintain himself quietly in it." Under better management, money was flowing in, and the general outlook seemed bright. In the same year Clive was by popular acclaim appointed Governor of Bengal.

The Directors in London had unaccountably overlooked him, possibly because he ought really to have returned to Madras, but the Council in India felt that, without his personal influence with Mîr-Jâffar, their position was critical. The whole English position was, in truth, at this time dubious. The French had been at this period successful on the Coromandel Coast, and the prince-royal of Delhi, having quarrelled with his father, had left the court, and was on his way with a large army to claim the viceroyalty of Bengal. Now, open defiance of the claims of the Great Moghul family was rank sacrilege. Mîr-Jâffar, with a half-eye to ridding himself somehow of British influence, professed horror. Clive's thumb, however, was over him, and escape impossible. The prince-royal was curtly told that, as rebel to his father, he had no authority, and when the Wazîr of Oude arrived in support of the claim, both he and the prince were as curtly and decidedly beaten.

Mîr-Jâffar was now full of gratitude, and determined to give Clive (who, as a recognised official of the Court, ought to have had one) a _jaghir_, or grant of land for services done. No high official of any native ruler is without one. But Mîr-Jâffar was cunning. The _zemindari_, or land subject to revenue, which, under pressure, he had given to the Company was, he saw, really a screw which might be used against him at any time by refusal to pay the just dues.

He therefore hit on the happy idea of killing two birds with one stone. He would give the quit-rent of this to Clive, and leave him and his Company to fight it out between themselves! It really was very ingenious, very acute, as the opposition the plan aroused in the Council clearly proved. It is, in fact, amusing to read the many arguments advanced against it; all of which are in reality founded on the Company's inward determination to use the quit-rent as a set-off against the Nawâb.

He, however, had a perfect right to do as he did, and Clive himself is not to be blamed for sticking to a bargain which gave him some hold of his enemies and detractors. And yet when, after annihilating a Dutch expedition, and forcing on the promoters as conditions of peace that they should never again introduce or enlist troops or raise fortifications in India, Clive announced his intention of going to England on leave, the best part of Calcutta was on its knees to him begging him to reconsider his resolution.

Without him Mîr-Jâffar was a broken reed.

And the Nawâb himself was as urgent in appeal. Without Clive's help, how could he hope to keep the constant encroachments of the Company's servants within bounds?

But Clive was obdurate. He was clear-sighted, and he saw beyond the present. He saw, as he himself writes, that what the future might bring "was too extensive for a mere mercantile company," and he was eager to get home to impress England with his belief, and induce her to stretch out her right hand and take the rich heritage which might be hers. Whether in strict morality she had a right to do this is another matter. Clive thought she had, and in determining the point there can be no doubt whatever that (as he himself writes, "with a thorough knowledge of this country's Government, and of the genius of its people, acquired by two years' experience") one of the chief factors which weighed with him was his conviction that the people themselves "would rejoice in so happy an exchange as that of a mild for a despotic Government."

And that the British Government would be mild was by every evidence part of Clive's faith in himself and in his country. The natives loved him. Nowhere in all his history is there one hint of cruelty in his treatment of them, unless (as in the case of Omichand) hot anger at treachery rose up in him.

"He was the greatest villain upon earth--I would do it again a hundred times over."

Surely if ever Clive gains his deserved memorial, these words of his should find some place upon it in palliation of the offence which tarnished his reputation. An offence which, when all is said and done, has something of the nature of an unreasoning, impish, boyish trick about it which is reminiscent of other incidents in Clive's career, notably the firing of Aurungzebe's old gun at Arcot, and the _détour_ to smash up the victory-pillar of Dupleix.

So Clive went home, and, arriving at an opportune moment of national depression after a series of rebuffs abroad, was honoured as something of which England could be proud. He was given an Irish barony. "I could have bought an English one (which is usual), but that I was above," he writes. And yet, apparently, he was not above holding his tongue on many matters of national importance, because he was afraid of irritating the Court of Directors who had the payment of his _jâghir_ money. But Clive was ambitious, extraordinarily ambitious, at this time of his career.

"We must be nabobs ourselves," is a phrase which occurs in one of his letters; also this: "My future power, my future grandeur, all depend upon the receipt of the _jâghir_ money."

What scheme lay hidden in his brain? One thing is certain. He scrupled at little which would help him to its realisation. He failed, however, in getting a majority in the Council of Directors, though to do so he employed the discreditable tactics of his adversaries by manufacturing votes. In his defence it must be remembered that he was fighting single-handed against a corrupt monopoly, and that throughout the whole quarrel he never flinched from his purpose.

He took the question of his _jâghir_, which the Company refused to pay, into Chancery, but ere the case was investigated, news of so serious a nature was received from India that a sudden and imperious call for Clive to return arose on all sides. He had made our dominion in the East. Only he could save it from destruction.

The story of what had happened during his four years' absence may be briefly epitomised.

Alamgîr II., emperor at Delhi, had been murdered by his minister Ghâzi-ud-din from fear of his intriguing with Ahmed-Shâh, Durrâni, who was once more marching on the Punjâb. Backed by his Mahrattas, the minister thought himself secure; in this he was mistaken. True, the Mahrattas were in the zenith of their power, their artillery surpassed that of the Moghuls, the discipline of their army was better than it had ever been before, but they had in consequence lost something of their lightness, their alertness.

And they were too numerous. When they finally found themselves entrenched on the old historic battle-plain of Pâniput awaiting Ahmed-Shâh's advance, they numbered no less than three hundred thousand. Excellent foragers though they were, supplies soon ran short. On the other hand, Ahmed-Shâh, with the confederacy of Mahomed princes which had joined forces with him, mustered but a third of that number. He saw his advantage, and waited, replying to his Indian allies' importunities to attack: "This is a matter of war; leave it to me." Night after night his small red tent was pitched in front of his entrenchments, whence he watched his enemy. "Do you sleep," he would say contemptuously to the Indian chiefs; "I will see no harm befalls you."

So the day came at last when the Mahrattas were forced by hunger to attack. They fought well; but by eventide two hundred thousand of them lay dead in heaps on the Pâniput plain. Nearly all the great chiefs were slain or wounded, and Bâla-ji, the Peishwa, himself died on the way back to Poona, it is said from a broken heart. Ahmed-Shâh, Durrâni, returned to Kandahâr and did not again enter India.

In consequence of his father's murder the prince-royal, in natural succession, became the Great Moghul. As such it became impossible to further ignore his claims. But he could be, and was, again beaten, together with his ally the Nawâb of Oude. Matters at Murshidabad, however, deprived of Clive's guidance, had gone from bad to worse. Mr Vansittart, Clive's successor in the Governorship, seems to have been weak, and in addition could count on no support in his council save that of Warren Hastings. The end being that Mîr-Jâffar was virtually deposed for misgovernment, and his son-in-law Mîr-Kâssim placed on the throne. It was not a clean business, and Mîr-Jâffar, full of resentment, retired to live in Calcutta on a pension.

Things, however, did not improve under Mîr-Kâssim, though the Prince-Royal-Emperor, who was still hovering on the frontiers, was interviewed by Mr Carnac (doubtless bearing a satisfactory present), and an arrangement entered into by which, in consideration of being confirmed in the Nawâbship, Mîr Kâssim should pay an annual tribute of £240,000. It is easy to be generous with other folks' money!

Thus secured from invasion, Mîr-Kâssim began to try and fill his treasuries, and instantly complained, as Mîr-Jâffar had complained, of the injury done to him and his subjects by the rule which permitted private trade to the servants of the Company, who, not satisfied with using their public position to assist them, claimed the right to be free of all duties, thus ousting the native trader from all markets.

It was manifest, gross injustice; but here again Mr Vansittart and Warren Hastings were alone in condemning it.

Afraid to strike at the root of the evil, while continuing the absolutely indefensible right to private trade, they agreed with the Nawâb that the usual duty should be paid.

This raised a storm in Calcutta, where a full meeting of Council decided by ten to two that the agreement should not stand.

The Nawâb retaliated in kind. Since the Council persisted in their claim, he would extend its bearings to his own subjects. All could now trade free, and let the devil take the hindmost!

It was a fair retort. They tried to intimidate him, but he had the bit between his teeth. Diplomacy had had its day; it was now war to the knife!

Within a month or two the massacre at Patna took place, in which two hundred Englishmen lost their lives in cold blood; but not before the Presidency troops had entered Murshidabad, deposed Mîr-Kâssim, who fled, and reinstated Mîr-Jâffar.

It was a tissue of mistakes from beginning to end, which Major Munro's subsequent victory at Buxar over the combined forces of the Prince-Royal-Emperor (who had not yet managed to recover his capital Delhi), the Wazîr of Oude, and Mîr-Kâssim did little to rectify. For Mîr-Jâffar died shortly after of old age, and the Council was left without a Nawâb to squeeze! After much discussion, however, they decided on putting up Nujâm-ad-daula, an illegitimate son of Mîr-Jâffar's.

Such was the state of affairs when Clive, to whom, in view of the painful state of disorder in Bengal, absolute power had been given, arrived in Calcutta on his second period of Governorship in the beginning of May 1765.

His first act was to decline discussion.

"I was determined," he writes, "to do my duty to the public, though I should incur the odium of the whole settlement. The welfare of the Company required a vigorous exertion, and I took the resolution of cleansing the Augean stable."

He began the work at once, and, undeterred by opposition, did not rest till he had placed the Indian Civil Service on the upward path to its present honoured and honourable position. Perquisites and presents were swept away; unbiassed authority given in exchange.

The only real political work of the next two years was his treatment of, and treaty with, the Prince-Royal-Emperor, Shâh-Âlam, who was more than ever a puppet king after the victory at Buxar, when he had thrown himself on the protection of the English. So anxious, indeed, was he to secure this, that before the answer to his petition was received from Calcutta, he encamped every night as close to the British army as he could for safety!

The treaty into which he then entered contained an important stipulation that the Company should assist him to recover the territories usurped by his late ally Sûjah-daula, Wazîr of Oude.

Hearing of this the Wazîr immediately prepared for resistance by joining forces with Ghâzi-ud-din, the murderous minister at Delhi, and with some bands of Rohillas and Mahrattas.

But they were poor allies, and Clive, coming to the problem with his clear head, proceeded to settle it with a high hand. Sûjah-daula was left with his territories, save for the district around Allahabâd, which was ceded to Shâh-Âlam, the so-called emperor, who was also to receive £260,000 a year as the revenue of Bengal. This was to be payable, not as in the past, by the Nawâb, but by the East India Company itself, who thus became the real masters of the country, and so responsible for its administration, its defences; the Nawâb, Nujâm-ud-daula, reverting to the position of pensioner, a position which he accepted gladly with the remark: "Thank God! I shall now have as many dancing-girls as I please!"

That the bargains were hard all round none can deny, but it is difficult to see, as has been stated, that Clive derived any pecuniary benefit from them.

On the contrary, it may be observed that special precautions were taken to ensure the legality of the compromise which Clive had entered into with the Directors regarding his _jâghir_, when the public interests, by recalling him to duty, had made some quicker settlement of the question than that of a Chancery suit necessary. Now this compromise, which gave him the revenues for ten years only, or till his death, whichever was the shortest period, was not very favourable to Clive. Its continuance, therefore, should not be urged, as it often is, as proof of his rapacity.

The problem which next employed him was one of extreme difficulty. It was an enquiry into the conduct of officers in regard to their new covenants which prohibited the receiving of presents. As a result of this, ten officials who were dismissed for corruption went naturally to join the ranks of Clive's many enemies.

The question of private trade still remained, and was more difficult of settlement. For the salary of a member of Council was but £350, and he could not keep up the dignity of his position on less than £3,000.

Clive settled this in a somewhat makeshift way, but it is worthy of note that though as governor his pay was largely enhanced by the new scheme, he did not personally take one penny of it, for he had declared his intention of not deriving any pecuniary advantage from his position. The money was spent in augmenting the salaries of his office. All this caused much indignation; many of the Council retired, and to fill their places Clive had the temerity to import outsiders. No sooner was this over than almost every officer of the army mutinied over the withdrawal of double _batta_, or war allowances. No less than two hundred commissions were resigned, and the outlook was black.

Clive set his teeth, and though one of the brigades sent in their resignations _en bloc_ in the very face of an enemy, he won through by indomitable firmness, unending patience. The officers of the European regiment at Allahabâd gave most trouble, but a battalion of sepoys, marching 104 miles in fifty-four hours, brought them to reason sharply.

So, when the fight was over, and the ringleaders--only six officers--were tried and punished most leniently (the Mutiny Act of the Company's service proving defective), Clive founded the military fund which still goes by his name, and which has been, and is still, a boon to many a poor widow. Its nucleus was Clive's gift of £63,000.

But his health was failing. His last act ere leaving for England--never to return--in 1767 was to attend a conference between Shâh-Âlam's representatives, Sûjah-daula, now the Nawâb of Oude, and some Mahratta deputies. The question was a proposal to regain Delhi for the emperor, with the aid of the Company's troops.

Clive at once negatived it. He saw the Mahrattas were now the only possible enemies to peace from whom danger was to be apprehended, and he declined to aid them in any way. On the contrary, he urged the foundation of a confederacy to repel their incursions.

This was his last attempt at diplomacy. He left for England, to find disgrace and disillusionment awaiting him. He had made hundreds, almost thousands of enemies by his just reforms, and with a British public ready, as ever, to be gulled, they had their opportunity. There is no more pitiful and pitiable reading than these records--and in the case of Burke's famous impeachment of Warren Hastings they run to volumes--of these tortuous attempts to twist Western standards of ethics to fit Oriental actions. Putting aside the _animus_, the devilish desire for revenge which inspires most of them, the absolute ignorance of what may be called the atmospheric conditions of India in them remains appalling.

True, Clive had taken £180,000 as his share, when Mîr-Jâffar was enthroned. What then? It was a trifle in comparison with the _sunnuds_ gifted to _omrahs_ of the court by many a native principality and power to those who served it well. And there was no rule against the reception of honours or presents. Certainly, also, as one follows Clive through all his great services, one can but say that rapacity shows far less in him than in his compeers; one can but echo the words in which the Company, at the time of his departure, summed up those services.

"Your own example has been the principal means of restraining the general rapaciousness and corruption which had brought our affairs to the brink of ruin."

Now, however, by the machinations of those whom he had checked, he was brought to plead for bare honour before the bar of the House of Lords.

"Before I sit down I have one request to make this Assembly, and that is, that when they come to decide upon my honour they will not forget their own."

So he appealed, and the appeal was not fruitless: England was spared the disgrace which France had brought on herself by her treatment of Labourdonnais, Dupleix, and Lally.

But the verdict, that "Robert, Lord Clive, as Commander-in-Chief, had taken a sum of £280,000," but that "at the same time he had rendered great and meritorious services to his country," was not one to satisfy Robert Clive.

He was ill; he suffered from an excruciating disease which opium alleviated, and he ended all his troubles by an overdose of the drug a few months after the day when, with an intolerable sense of injustice at his heart, he quitted the tribunal before which he had been so maliciously arraigned.

For, as he said in his defence, sixteen long years had passed since the offence--if offence there had been--was committed; sixteen long years of silence, of confidence well repaid by faithful service.

HYDER-ALI ET ALIA

A.D. 1767 TO A.D. 1773

While Clive was laying the foundation-stones both of the Indian Empire and the Indian Civil Service in Bengal, Madras had had its share of wars and rumours of wars. It will be impossible, however, to treat of them in detail. All that can be done is to pick out of the seething mass of intrigue, of incident, those things which are necessary to be known, in order that future events shall find their proper pigeon-hole.

The Peace of Paris, signed in 1763, gave back to France her possessions on the Coromandel Coast, and further stipulated that the English nominee, Mahomed-Ali, Nawâb of Arcot, should be recognised by both parties as lawful Nawâb of the Carnatic, and Sâlabut-Jung, the French nominee, as Nizâm of the Dekkan.

Regarding the latter, there is grim humour in the fact, that three years before the Peace was signed poor Sâlabut had been ousted and imprisoned by his brother Nizâm-Ali, and that he was promptly murdered by him the moment news of the treaty reached India! It is not always safe to have the support of the ignorant!

But the Treaty of Paris did more mischief than the murder of the poor prince. It put wind into Mahomed-Ali's head, embroiled him with the Nizâm, led to complications with the Madras Company, which in the year 1765 found itself in the unenviable position of having to pay £900,000 to the Nizâm as tribute for the Northern Circars, instead of holding them rent free from the Great Moghul, as arranged for by Lord Clive. It was a gross piece of mismanagement, and carried with it the perfectly monstrous provision that the Company should furnish troops ready to "settle, in everything right and proper, the affairs of His Highness's government." That is to say, the Nizâm had the right to call the tune without paying the piper!

[Map: India to A.D. 1757]

The very first thing he did was to involve England in a war with Hyder-Ali, an adventurer _pur et simple_ who, beginning by being an uncontrolled youth divided between licentious pleasure and life in the woods, free, untamed as any wild creature, forced himself up from one position to another till he held half the territories of the Râjah of Mysore, and had usurped the whole government of that country. Lawless, fierce, without any scruples of any kind, he sided first with one ally then with another, until finally, in 1766, he found himself faced with the fact that Mâhdu Rao the Mahratta, the Nizâm, and the Company, were leagued together for his destruction. The latter had, some time previously, tried to bribe him to proper behaviour, but had failed; for he was, briefly, quite untamable.

Hyder-Ali set to work with his usual fierce energy. He first deliberately bought off the Mahratta mercenaries by parting with certain outlying portions of his stolen territories, and the gift of £350,000 out of his bursting treasures. It was a big bribe, but Hyder-Ali's finances could stand it; for he was a super-excellent robber, with a well-organised army of free-lances for backers.

Meanwhile, the Nizâm's forces and those of the Company under Colonel Smith were approaching Mysore from different sides. It was agreed, however, that the two armies should, when they reached fighting distance, join forces in one camp, so as to show their inviolable unity. But alas! when this happy consummation was reached, the English troops had the mortification of seeing the Nizâm's troops march out as they marched in!

Hyder had been successful with his money-bags once more, and after an absurd and futile farce of palavering on the part of the Company, Colonel Smith prepared to face the enemy's seventy thousand men and one hundred and nine guns with his own meagre seven thousand and sixteen guns. It is astonishing to think how he won his battle and managed to retreat in safety, though he had against his poor thousand of cavalry over forty-two thousand of mounted men, pure freebooters by trade. He seems to have had mettle, this almost unheard-of Colonel Smith, for immediately he received reinforcements he resumed the offensive, and after a time completely defeated Hyder and the Nizâm at Trincomalee. Concerning this battle a nice little story is told. The Nizâm, as is the custom of Eastern potentates, had taken his favourite women with him to the fight mounted on elephants, which stood in line at the rear. The Nizâm, seeing the tide of war going against him, gave orders for the elephants to turn and retire, when from one howdah arose a clear, scornful, feminine voice: "This elephant has not been taught so to turn; he follows the standard of Empire."

And follow it he did, standing alone amid shot and shell, till the royal standards, flying in hot haste, gave him the lead.

But not even this sort of thing could avail. And Hyder's money-bags failed him also in an attempt to suborn an English commandant, who replied to the second flag of truce sent in with a bribe, that if Hyder-Ali wished to spare the lives of his ambassadors, he had better refrain from sending more, as they would be hanged in his sight.

Still, bursting money-bags do much, and ever since the sacking of Bednore, an ancient Hindu city where he had found treasures worth over £12,000,000, Hyder had never been crippled by any lack of gold. Nothing held him. He was here, there, everywhere. Recovering lost territory one day, losing it the next, fighting everybody, even the Mahrattas, like a wild cat, and inwardly raging at his failure to crush the English, who had just entered into a new treaty with his former ally the Nizâm, by which the latter again acknowledged the rights of the Company to the Northern Circars, and further ceded to it, for the annual payment of £700,000, the whole district of Mysore. Thus Madras gained its _diwâni_ as well as Bengal.

There is something almost ludicrous in the ease with which territory changed hands in those days, and we are left with the picture in our mind's eye of a be-jewelled potentate and a be-stocked officer hobnobbing over bags of rupees, silk-paper documents, and large seals.

This treaty was a bitter pill to Hyder, who retaliated in every possible way, until one day, by deft stratagem, he took his enemies in the rear, appeared by forced marches before the very walls of Madras, so, with the pleasure-gardens and houses of the councillors at his mercy, almost compelled a treaty of mutual aid and defence.

A _volte face_ indeed! Small wonder that the Directors at home, who had been complaining ineffectively of the expenses of the war, became bewildered by the sudden change of _venue_. The general public also, seeing the price of East India stock go down 60 per cent., became uneasy; there is nothing like a drop in Trust-Securities for rousing the national conscience! Dividends were declining, debts were increasing, the glorious hopes of unbounded riches from India had faded; actuaries, nicely balancing debit and credit against the Company, discovered that no less than one and a quarter million of the original stock of four and a quarter of millions had gone, disappeared!

Fateful disclosures these! Public outcry rose loud; voices that had kept discreet silence while profit seemed the certain result of wars, and treaties, and giftings, were now uplifted against rapacity, misconduct, corruption; in the midst of which the alarming discovery was made that the Company required a loan of £1,000,000 from this same public in order to carry on the business. Yet, unless the business was carried on, how could the yearly payments of £400,000 to the royal exchequer, on which the public had insisted, be continued?

Could mismanagement further go?

So three supervisors, vested with full powers, were appointed, and set sail for India in one of His Majesty's frigates. But Fate intervened. They passed the Cape in safety, but were never heard of again.

This was too much. A victim must be found. Therefore Clive was arraigned. That story has already been told, so we can pass on to the mutual recriminations in Parliament, the growing determination on the part of John Bull, honest and dishonest, that something must be done, which found fruit in the first Regulating Act "for the better management of the affairs of the East India Company as well in India as in Europe." By this Act a governor-generalship with a salary of £25,000 was created, together with four councillorships of £8,000. Bombay and Madras were made subordinate to Calcutta, and a Supreme Court of Judicature, appointed by the Crown, was established at the latter place. All the other appointments were to be subject to the confirmation of Parliament, and all the holders of these offices were excluded from commercial pursuits.

The scheme sounded well, but it provided very little aid in reforming the abuses which undoubtedly existed.

It increased the charges upon revenues already overburdened, and the attempt to introduce English ideas of law was calculated to produce more injustice, more oppression, and rouse more alarm and distrust than the previous absence of it had done.

But the dividend for the year 1773 had sunk to 6 per cent.

It was manifestly time to be up and doing--something!

WARREN HASTINGS

A.D. 1773 TO A.D. 1784

It will be remembered that Warren Hastings was the only Member of Council who supported Clive in his decision that all servants of the Company engaging in private trade were bound to pay duty.

Thus, undoubtedly, Clive's enemies must have been his enemies. He had, however, risen with reputation through the various stages of his Indian career; in 1772 he was made President-of-the-Council in Bengal, and immediately set to work to remedy the existing abuses in the collection of the revenue and the whole general administration; a task which was not likely to bring him an addition of friends. While this great revolution in system, which involved the letting of land by public auction, was in full swing, the native potentates beyond Bengal were as usual in a seething state of intrigue. The Prince-Royal-Emperor Shâh-Âlam had at last succeeded in getting the Mahrattas to aid him in recovering Delhi, though he had had to pay a huge price for their help, amongst other things the cession to them of his grant from the English of Allahabad. Consequently, the rich country of the Rohillas (an Afghân race who had settled in India), which reached up from the Delhi plains to the Sivâlik hills, attracted him as a means of again filling his treasury. The Mahrattas were, naturally, nothing loth; so the combined forces marched on Rohilkund, despite the fact that its people were friendly. In the general catch-who-catch-can of India in these days, friendship, honour, truth, counted for nothing it is to be feared, neither with East nor West.

For the tall price of £400,000 the Nawâb of Oude promised to rid the Rohillas of the Mahratta hordes; but being recalled southward by internal dissensions, the Mahrattas, it is said, left of their own accord, and the Rohillas repudiated the bargain. Nothing had been done, they averred, therefore nothing was to be paid.

This gave the Nawâb Sûjah-ud-daula an excellent pretext for war. He had long been anxious to annex Rohilkund, but he needed help to cope with its warlike race. He naturally turned to the English, who had come to aid him (for they were--and small wonder--incensed at the thought of a Mahratta garrison at Allahabad) in repelling a threatened invasion of the Emperor and his allies. So the Treaty of Benares came to be signed, in which, for a payment of £500,000 yearly, Allahabad was once more ceded by the Company (who had promptly repudiated its cession to the Mahrattas) to its original and rightful owner, the Nawâb of Oude. It was also agreed that for a sum of £21,000 a month the said Nawâb should have the right to the services of a British brigade.

So much is certain. Beyond this, unreliability invades the whole business of the Rohilla war. It has been so distorted, by both sides, in the controversy which arose out of the famous impeachment of Warren Hastings, that the truth is now beyond reach.

Undoubtedly, the British troops were mercenaries; but so they had been from the very beginning, and the exchequer of the Company was at the time very low, whilst behind everything was the great company of British shareholders clamouring for a dividend. Blame may be poured as vitriol on the reputations of many men, but the great offender was the general greed of gold _in England_.

Hastings, however, was already on his defence for this apparently unnecessary war (which yet brought in grist to the mill) when he was appointed the first Governor-General of India under the New Act.

This same Act, however, brought out from England his and Clive's bitterest enemy, Philip, afterwards Sir Philip Francis, as one of the four councillors.

So, from the very beginning, Hastings' hands were tied, for General Clavering and Mr Monson had come out in the same ship with Mr Francis, and were led by the nose by him, leaving only Mr Barwell to form an ineffectual minority with the Governor-General.

It was as if the desire at home had been to stultify reform, since quarrel began at once. Warren Hastings declined even to consider the recall of the Resident in Oude, who had been appointed by him under the old rules. The Triumvirate not only recalled him--a man of whom they knew nothing good, bad, or indifferent--by their majority of one, but appointed in his stead a Colonel Champion of whom they knew less, save that he was the author of various highly-coloured, sensational, almost hysterical letters on the iniquities of the Rohilla war; the appointment, therefore, tells its own tale of bias. The instructions given to the Colonel were incredibly foolish. He was to call for instant payment (within fourteen days) of the £400,000 the Nawâb had promised to pay on the conclusion of the war, failing which he was to withdraw the brigade at all costs. Anything more unscrupulous than this demand for what the Triumvirate was pleased to call "blood money," while appearances were to be saved by, possibly, withdrawing aid at a critical moment, could not be imagined. But despite Warren Hastings' vehement opposition, the instructions were issued, though Fate intervened in the cause of common-sense ere they could be carried out, by the news that the war was over!

The dissensions in the Council soon became notorious; the natives--time-servers by nature, and quick to seize on any opportunity of ingratiating themselves with those who have the whiphand--lost no time in trumping up charges against Warren Hastings. These, even one which alleged that out of a bribe of £90,000, only £1,500 fell to the Governor-General's share--a charge which refutes itself by sheer absurdity--were enquired into with reckless, indecent animosity.

Finally, the complaint of one Râjah Nuncomâr brought matters to a crisis. In this matter it is almost impossible to blame sufficiently the conduct of the Triumvirate, who used their wretched majority of one, not for any public purpose, but simply to gratify private spite. Small wonder was it that, confronted with such absolutely unscrupulous animosity, Warren Hastings took up the glove and fought fairly enough, but with every weapon he could lay his hands upon.

There was a Supreme Court in Calcutta, and Nuncomâr had, amongst other and many villainies (for he was known to be a desperate and unprincipled intriguer), a bad habit of forgery.

He had been on trial for this once before, and Hastings had interfered for his release. Now he let the law take its course, and Râjah Nuncomâr, duly tried and sentenced, suffered the extreme penalty, for forgery was then in England a hanging matter.

The execution had immediate effect. The crowd of native informers ready to pour their lies into the ears of the Triumvirate disappeared as if by magic, but the animosity remained; and in the years to come the death of Nuncomâr was used with immense effect in the great impeachment.

Meanwhile, the Nawâb of Oude had died, and his son reigned in his stead. Out of this arose fresh disputes on the Council. The Triumvirate being all for imposing exceedingly harsh terms on the new Nawâb, Asaf-daula; Mr Hastings refusing to sanction what was "no equitable construction of the treaty with the late Nawâb," and was indeed an extortion which the new ruler had "no power to fulfil."

The Directors at home, however, continuing their career of persistent greed, after first refusing to agree with the Triumvirate on the ground that "their treaties with Oude did not expire with the death of Sûjah-daula," suddenly changed their opinion when they realised the immense pecuniary advantage to be derived from the new arrangement. The extortion, therefore, was carried out, Mr Hastings protesting. And now two new problems arose: one in Madras, one in Bombay, both presidencies being subordinate to that of Calcutta. The first concerned the re-installing of the Râjah of Tanjore, which country had been made over to the Nawâb of the Carnatic. This was a quarrel which, like a snowball, grew as it went along, and ended in most extraordinary fashion, by the arrest and imprisonment of Lord Pigot, the Governor of Madras, at the hands of a vice-admiral of the Fleet! The bewildering complexity of complication in the whole case would take pages to unravel, and the result--the death of one poor old man (for Lord Pigot succumbed to the ignominious treatment meted out to him)--would no doubt, in the opinion of the Directors, scarcely justify the expenditure of so much pen and paper.

The trouble in Bombay arose out of the taking of Salsette, and involved conflict with the Mahrattas, who had persisted in refusing possession of it to the English.

The state of affairs amongst the Mahrattas was at this time confusion itself. Râgonâth-Rao had been made regent by Bâji-Rao, who, it will be remembered, had died during his son's minority of grief, after the fatal day of Pânipat. The boy Peishwa had since been murdered; conspirators had declared that his wife had borne a son; claims and counterclaims, intrigue and counter-intrigue, had reduced the Mahratta Government to an invertebrate condition, which the Bombay Council considered favourable to their earnest desire to keep the Portuguese from again acquiring the peninsula (or island) of Salsette, which virtually commands the harbour at Bombay. They therefore temporarily annexed Salsette, and made its cession the foundation of an offer to aid Râgonâth-Rao (commonly called Râgoba), who was then in very low water, against the opposite faction. The temptation was great; a treaty was signed, by which the East India Company, in addition to gaining Salsette and Bassein, were to be paid £225,000.

But here the Supreme Council at Calcutta intervened--why, it is impossible to say--declared in one breath that the treaty with Râgoba was "unpolitic, unreasonable, unjust, and unauthorised," and advised one with the opposite faction.

The quarrel, as usual, becomes complicated in the extreme, and is rendered more confused than it need have been, even in those days of bewilderment, by the double interference from Calcutta and from England. Considering that about six months was necessary to secure a reply from the former place, and about two years from the latter, it is marvellous how any action at all could be decided upon. In the end, however, a treaty was signed with Râgoba's enemies, which raised great indignation in Bombay, not because it involved any breach of honour, but because it brought in less to the Treasury.

Warren Hastings, however, was now busy over financial reforms, and despite the quibbling and captious criticism of the Triumvirate, evolved a scheme which showed real grip of the problem at issue, as indeed might have been expected from a man of his intelligence and vast Indian experience. It was, however, rejected by the Three, who at the same time excused themselves from suggesting any other scheme, because they were not "sufficiently qualified by local observation and experience to undertake so difficult a task."

Surely fatuousness could no farther go? We have here men who consider themselves qualified to criticise, while they admit total ignorance of the subject criticised!

Stung, no doubt, by this obvious retort, Mr Francis finally produced a scheme--a scheme which, containing as it does the very first inception of the "Great Mistake" which has dogged the footsteps of England in her dealings with India, had better have been hanged like a millstone round its promulgator's neck, and he drowned in the sea, than that it should ever have seen the light.

For amid quotations, no doubt, from Adam Smith and Mirabeau--the latter in French, after his usual wont--Philip Francis, mastertype of the self-satisfied Western mind--the mind which degenerates so easily into that of the crank, the faddist--started the cardinal error of all errors in India; that is, the statement that the property of the land is not vested in the Sovereign power, but belonged to the people.

Looking down the years, seeing the manifold evils which this pernicious engrafting of Western ideals on Eastern actions has produced; the alienation of the land, the hopeless slavery of the cultivator to the money-lender, the harsh evictions rendered necessary by the loss of the tenant's credit (which had ever been due to his _unalterable_ hold on the land, combined with his _inability to sell it_), one can but wish that the millstone had done its work!

The evil, however, was scotched for the moment. Colonel Monson died, and Warren Hastings, by his casting vote as Governor, now ceased to be in the minority.

He immediately used his newly-acquired ascendency to appoint what was practically the first Settlement Commission in India. That is to say, a body of tried and experienced officers, who should "furnish accurate statements of the values of lands, uniform in design, and of authority in the execution," which should serve as a basis for revenue, and would also "assure the ryots (peasants) against arbitrary exactions," and "give them perpetual and undisturbed possessions of their lands."

"This," he goes on to say in his Minute, "is not to be done by proclamations and edicts, nor by indulgences to _zemindars_ (large proprietors) or farmers. The former will not be obeyed unless enforced by regulations so framed as to produce their own effect without requiring the hand of Government to interpose its support; and the latter, though they may feed the luxury of the _zemindars_ or the rapacity of the farmers, will prove no relief to the cultivator, _whose welfare ought to be the immediate and primary care of Government_."

Bravo, Warren Hastings! If there was anything to forgive, one would forgive much for the sake of such a creed.

His success spread consternation amongst his enemies. Something must be done, and done quickly.

One Colonel Macleane had gone home, arriving in February 1776. In a moment of great depression in the previous year, Warren Hastings had entrusted him with a letter of instruction to be conveyed to the Directors, in which he declared that he "would not continue in the Government of Bengal unless certain conditions" were accepted.

No use was made of this letter till the 10th October, when, after a stormy attempt on the part of the Company to oust Warren Hastings, Colonel Macleane wrote announcing that he held the Governor-General's resignation!

These are the bald facts. Eager to catch at any excuse for the removal of an opponent, the resignation, absolutely unauthorised, wholly tentative, was accepted without any discussion of the conditions, and a Mr Wheler appointed as successor.

The English mail of the 19th of June 1777 which conveyed this astounding piece of news to Calcutta took almost every one by surprise; except, apparently, General Clavering and Mr Francis. At any rate, on the very next day the former boldly issued orders signed "Clavering, Governor-General," and requested delivery from Mr Hastings of the keys.

A free fight indeed! That day _two_ councils were held: one by General Clavering, with Mr Francis as sole supporter; one by Warren Hastings and the ever faithful Mr Barwell.

Could animosity, pitiful squabbling, disreputable intrigue, further go?

Luckily, there was another power in Calcutta capable of deciding the rival claims, and to it Mr Hastings, ever inclined to toleration, appealed.

The Supreme Court decided unanimously in favour of Warren Hastings, and so the matter ended for a time; Mr Wheler, who had come out to be Governor-General, taking Colonel Monson's place, and, naturally, restoring the Triumvirate, which, however, after a brief interval, dwindled again by the death of General Clavering.

All this is very petty, very uninteresting, in the face of the vast questions which were surging up for settlement all over India, but it is instructive as showing the absolute futility of the India House in its attempts at control, in its inept shilly-shallying between greed of gold and its desire to implant Western ethics on the East. So the quarrel went on, involving amongst other things a duel between Warren Hastings and Mr Francis, in which the latter was badly wounded and had to go home!

Meanwhile, the Mahrattas were more than ever at loggerheads amongst themselves. Râgoba's claims were readmitted by a large number of the faction who had formerly been against him, and with whom a treaty had been made. They applied for help under that treaty (to reinstate Râgoba this time!) and received it; no doubt all the more readily because that gentleman had been the Bombay Council's original nominee. Also because, about this time, the arrival of a French ship at Bombay with a mission purporting to be from Louis XVI. to the Mahratta Court at Poona caused some alarm. For hostilities seemed not far off in Europe between France and England, and the chief member of the so-called embassy was one Chevalier St Lubin, who was known to have previously been with the Mahratta forces.

And here followeth a welter of confused incidents, claims, and counterclaims, which pages would not suffice to unravel.

The Triumvirate, reduced to two, opposed help. Warren Hastings with his casting vote carried it, but ere the brigade sent from Calcutta arrived at the seat of war, Râgoba's half of the Poona court had whacked the other half, and having gained ascendency, proposed to do without their candidate!

Here was an _impasse_ for people whose Western minds could not follow such mental somersaults. To add to their confusion, war had been again declared between France and England, and before the Council had had time to recover from their surprise, the victorious Poona party had been again overthrown, and the now ascendant one of Nuna Furnavese was known to harbour Chevalier St Lubin, and to have French proclivities!

There seemed to be nothing for it now save once more to make Râgoba a figurehead.

In truth, as one follows in the maelstrom of Indian intrigue, even as briefly as is possible here, the efforts of these harassed, distracted Western diplomatists to keep their honour above water, one is filled with pity for them. It would have been better not to fight at all, if their code of ethics forbade them the full use of the weapons used against them.

So the weary Mahratta war dragged on and on, backed at first by the hearty approval of the Court of Directors, who pointed out "the necessity of counteracting the views of the French at Poona."

This same war was full of incident. Scindiah and Holkar flash over its horizon, now in alliance, now in defiance; territories and towns were taken, and lost, and retaken; the whole wide, central plain of India and all the western coast-line was perambulated by soldiery; and in the end, in 1782, a treaty was entered into at Sâlbai which was utterly disadvantageous to the English, and which wrung from the Bombay presidency the despairing cry that it must "henceforward require from the Bengal treasury a large and annual supply of money" to carry on the concern.

Meanwhile, in Madras, affairs had not been much more happy. During the war with France, Pondicherry had been assaulted and had capitulated with the honours of war, but in all other ways success was absent. Friction arose between the presidency and the Nizâm over the question of a French garrison, and though the matter was outwardly smoothed over and friendly alliance continued, it formed the basis of a confederation between the Mahrattas, Hyder-Ali, and the Nizâm, having for object the _total expulsion of the English from India_.

Hyder-Ali, whose sword had been rusting in its scabbard since the Peace of 1763, had his own private grievance of help promised by treaty and withheld, because the object for which it was asked was deemed unworthy. This was a constant cause of the endless dissensions between the British and the native princes, and shows clearly the absolute folly of attempting, as the Company did, to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; that is to say, to compound a treaty on one ethical basis, and carry it out on another.

He instantly commenced operations in the Carnatic, and, though the Nizâm was bought off by the conciliatory measures of the Bengal Council, continued his attack with unhesitating ferocity. He was, frankly, a murderous madman, who, as the phrase runs, "saw red" on the slightest provocation. But even _his_ excesses were no warrant for Edmund Burke's blatant rhetoric in his celebrated impeachment, where "menacing meteors blacken horizons," and "burst to pour down contents (?) on peaceful plains" (?). Where "storms of universal fire blast every field," and "fleeing from their flaming villages, miserable inhabitants are swept by whirlwinds of cavalry into captivity in unknown and hostile lands."

What dictionary did Burke use, one wonders, and how comes it that his cheap rhodomontade passes for eloquence?

Hyder-Ali, however, made himself very disagreeable, and in the short space of twenty-nine days brought one disaster after another to the British arms. They began to look on defeat as their portion.

Madras being, apparently, unable to grapple with its enemy, Sir Eyre Coote was sent from Bengal to take command. But he found every military equipment faulty. The commissariat was beneath contempt, and for months the British force was kept stationary, unable to close with Hyder, who, aided by French officers, flashed here and there at his pleasure. But the day of reckoning came on the 1st July 1781, when Hyder-Ali lost ten thousand men, and the English but three hundred and sixty.

Though fortune continued to waver between the combatants, this was practically the turning-point in the war. France, it is true, sent a fleet to interfere on the native side; England sent one to checkmate it; but it was death which finally intervened--death who conquered wild, untamable, almost irresponsible Hyder. He died suddenly, at the age of eighty, from a carbuncle on the neck.

He left a worthy tiger cub behind him, and Tippoo-Sultân continued his father's fierce fighting with unvarying ferocity and varying success, helped in all ways by the French, so long as that nation continued at war with England. When that ended, he fought still, off his own bat, and the war, which completely crippled Madras, dragged on with markedly increasing arrogance on the one side, and increasing submission on the other, until in 1784, in spite of Tippoo-Sultân's many vile crimes, his shameless murderings of English officers, his still more terrible offences towards women and children, peace was concluded with him; a peace, certainly, without honour. To the minds of some it may seem the most indelible stain on the reputation of the British in India.

Warren Hastings, at the time the treaty was signed by the other members of the Supreme Council, was in Lucknow, whither he had gone by way of Benares.

The Râjah of this place had in 1775, it will be remembered, found British protection by the treaty with Asaf-daula, Nawâb of Oude, which Warren Hastings had condemned as unfair, and of which one of the articles was the cession of Benares. As usual, an immediate dispute arose as to what revenue and charges were to be paid; a dispute which waxed and waned until 1781. There can be no doubt but that on the English side increasing impecuniosity prompted growing demands, while on the Râjah's side was as constant a desire for the evasion even of just claims.

That Warren Hastings considered his position unassailable is evidenced by the fact that, when, in 1781, on his way to Oude he paused at Benares, he placed the Râjah (who, it may be said, was a man of no family whatever) under arrest in his palace to await further explanations, in the charge of some companies of sepoys who did not even _carry_ ball-cartridge. Palpably, therefore, no violence was intended. It could not have been, since Hastings had but a small escort. Rescue, however, was immediately resolved on by the populace; a general rush was made for the palace, the sepoys were cut to pieces, and the Râjah made good his escape. Almost immediately afterwards, in consequence of the annihilation of a small British relief force from Mirzapore, the whole countryside rose in the Râjah's interest, and some time elapsed ere a force sufficient to cope with the insurrection could be gathered together. Finally, the Râjah (who had throughout protested his desire for peace, even while preparing at all points for war) fled to a fort, whither he had previously conveyed most of his treasures. Warren Hastings, therefore, at once began to form a new Government. A grandson was selected as successor, the tribute payable was increased, and the whole criminal jurisdiction of the province (which had been wretchedly administered) vested in Bengal. After this the late Râjah was pursued to his fort, whence he fled, leaving his women behind. His mother attempted defence, but finally capitulated on the promise of personal safety and freedom from search; the latter stipulation was, however, undoubtedly violated, as the payment of "10 rupees each to the four female searchers" occurs in the accounts of the incident. But this in no way implicates Warren Hastings, who asserts his great regret that the breach of faith should have occurred. It may be mentioned that some £300,000 was found in the fort, which, with the amount that the Râjah had, doubtless, carried away with him, effectually disposes of a poverty which prevented a payment of £50,000. (These details are necessary because of the great stress laid by Mr Burke in the impeachment on this Benares incident.)

The Governor-General had intended passing on to Lucknow, but the Nawâb Asaf-daula, put out by the delay at Benares, was in a hurry, and met Warren Hastings at Chunar.

Here a new treaty was signed. It will be remembered that when the last one was entered into on the occasion of Asaf-daula's accession, Warren Hastings had protested against it as unfair. He now, therefore, exempted the Nawâb from all expenses of the English army quartered on him, with the exception of the single brigade arranged for by his father, Sûjah-daula, and from all other expenses to English gentlemen excepting the charges of the Resident and his office.

As a set-off to this nothing was exacted; but leave was given to the Nawâb to resume certain _jâgkirs_, on condition that in all cases where such grants were guaranteed by the Company, equivalent value to the annual revenue should be given yearly. Not an unfair arrangement, since a fixed revenue, though uncertain through the mutability of the person who has to pay it, is less uncertain than one dependent on fluctuating crops.

But there were two _jâghirs_ which, so to speak, filled the Nawâb's eye: they were those held, and illegally held, by his mother and his grandmother. In addition to the vast stretches of land, the revenues of which made these two princesses not only independent, but as possessors of small armies, dangerous factors for strife in internal politics, they were known to possess, and wrongfully possess, the treasure, estimated at £3,000,000, of the late Nawâb. To all this they had no possible claim. Under Mahomedan law the widow takes one-eighth only of her husband's personal possessions, the mother nothing. There is no possibility of will, no possible over-riding of the law. They were, therefore, robbers, and that the Nawâb should have refrained from violence for so long is to his credit. This, however, was due to an unwarrantable interference on the part of the British. Mr Bristow, the Resident appointed by the Triumvirate, had, with their consent, and despite Hastings' dissent, guaranteed immunity to Asaf-daula's mother. As a matter of fact, no foreign power was admissible in a family dispute; in addition, the Begum was in the wrong.

There can be no doubt that Warren Hastings knew the justice of Asaf-daula's claim to the treasure, or that English troops accompanied the Nawâb to Fyzabad, where the Begum resided.

Beyond this, we have "diabolical expedients," "torturing processes," "works of spoliation," besides a variety of rhetorical and eloquent abuse, on the one side; on the other, unconvincing affidavits of the Begum's complicity in the Benares insurrection and a matter-of-fact and apparently credible denial _in toto_ of diabolical expedients _et hoc genus omne_.

And behind all we have a very virtuous, very greedy British public, which insisted on being paid £400,000 a year by a bankrupt and overburdened concern.

For that was now the condition of the Honourable East India Company. It had attempted too much, or rather its servants had done these things which ought to have been done, without regard to dividends. At the close of Warren Hastings' administration--he resigned his office on the 8th February 1785, practically compelled thereto by the action of the Board of Directors--the revenues of India were not equal to the ordinary expense of Government.

A terrible indictment, truly! For which, however, some excuse may be found in the following short chapter on administrations and impeachments.

ADMINISTRATIONS AND IMPEACHMENTS

A.D. 1761 TO A.D. 1785

Clive and Warren Hastings need to be bracketed together in the history of India. They were the men who made our Empire, and they were both impeached for their methods by their countrymen.

And both were acquitted. How came this about?

There is a little sentence in the History of India by James Mill the historian (father to John Stuart Mill), a man presumably above sordid considerations, a man whom one would never suspect of commercialism, which answers the question:--

"_In India the true test of the Government as affecting the interest of the English nation is found in its financial results_."

This is not intended as blame. On the contrary, Mill goes on to make the deliberate but not quite accurate statement that Warren Hastings' administration _must_ have been bad, because, though in 1772, when that administration began, the revenue was but £2,373,750, as against £5,315,197 in 1785, the additional income did not provide for 5 per cent. interest on the additional debt incurred.

That and that only was the _fons et origo mali_. England wanted gold.

Doubtless the expenses of the ruinous wars which devastated India during the latter half of the eighteenth century were a terrible charge upon the revenues; but the revenues increased during the same time, and were more than equal to current expenses, only they did not provide for £400,000 a year tax, and the payment of more than 5 per cent. interest.

In truth, England had not yet grasped the significance of the White Man's burden; she wanted to be paid for carrying it. That is the bitter truth.

But during the administrations of both Clive and Warren Hastings an effort, at least, was made to make that administration worthy of Englishmen. Clive spent his whole force against corruption; Warren Hastings spent his in an attempt to govern the people peacefully and righteously. So much attention is absorbed, as a rule, by the question of his guilt or innocence in regard to certain specific charges, that none is given to the masterly way in which he turned his brief ascendency in the Council, caused by Colonel Monson's death, not to any scheme for personal aggrandisement or even to public money-getting, but to the passing of a revenue settlement which should protect the peasant. In the course of the argument against Mr Francis' views (which necessarily formed part of the scheme) Mr Hastings made a remark which deserves quotation, if only because it seems to have roused no denial, not even from the irrepressible Francis.

"It is a fact which will with difficulty obtain credit in England, though the notoriety of it here justifies me in asserting it, that much the greatest part of the _zemindars_" (big proprietors, petty Râjahs, and Nawâbs, etc.) "are incapable of judging or acting for themselves, being either minors, or men of weak understanding, or absolute idiots."

This is a sweeping indictment which, had it not been incapable of denial or mitigation, must certainly have met with censure. But even Mr Francis acquiesces. He admits that "many of the _zemindars_ will at first be incapable of managing their lands themselves."

Now we have here a most ominous admission which gives us the clue by which we can unravel much more in this tangled web of eighteenth-century India.

It was the upper class which was corrupt, which was degenerate utterly. Long centuries of unpunished crime, of depravity without one check, had done their work. The scions of the small nobility were born decrepid; they died early, outworn by vice, leaving heirs as degenerate as themselves. In lesser--ever, thank Heaven!--in lessening degree this has remained the great problem in India: how to give freedom to its hereditary rulers, and yet to ensure that the race shall not suffer, yet to give it freedom from hereditary evils.

In the eighteenth century the men of courts and cities were, as a rule, vicious to the core. If evidence be needed on this point, go to Delhi, go to Lucknow, and there, in the dregs, and lees, and off-scourings of what was once a dynasty, you will still find some of the meanest specimens of humanity on God's earth.

It was with the far-away ancestors of these off-scourings of dead courts, full, then, of pride and power, that men like Clive and Hastings often had to deal. Small wonder, then, if they often dealt with them unwisely, harshly, angered by their hopeless treachery.

But the great factor in all the many oppressions which, undoubtedly, formed part of English annexation in India was not private rapacity, it was public greed.

What, for instance, was even Clive's asserted £300,000 of plunder beside the £400,000 of yearly tribute to the English Exchequer? As for Warren Hastings' fortune, he left India an impoverished man, with scarce enough wherewithal to pay the expenses of defending himself from the charge brought against him by his country for unbridled peculation.

Both Clive and Hastings had hard parts to play, and, considering the difficulties against which they had to contend, they played them well. Though, perhaps, neither of them realised (and certainly no one else did) that the times in which they lived were transitional, that the very existence of the East India Company as a purely mercantile concern was fast drawing to a close, and that a new life of responsibility--the life of true empire--was opening before it, they acted as if they had so realised it. They flung rupees behind them to stay the gold-grubbing multitude, careless, over-careless of how they gained them; but--but they took their own way! Hastings especially identified himself with the people of India; he learnt their language, knew their hoarded wisdom, and often appealed to the lessons of their past history.

This in itself was an offence to the self-sufficient West, which failed, and often still fails, to find excuse for a breach of its own laws in the different ethical standards of the East.

Take Clive's rapacity. There was no law forbidding the reception of presents. He did great things, very great things for Mîr Jâffar, and under the same misconception of enormous wealth which made the country itself claim one million of money as compensation for a loss of £5,000, he accepted a fee of £180,000.

Regarding the Omichand incident--the only other accusation formulated against him which is of any importance--it is, at least, arguable that when bare existence for your countrymen depends on outwitting a traitor, an informer, a villain, any weapon is legal.

In like manner, if it is possible to disentangle the actual charges made against Warren Hastings from the network of words in which Sheridan and Burke caught the unwary minds of many ignorant people, it will be found that in every charge which went up to trial a simple excuse bars the way of blame.

The charge concerning his responsibility for the extermination of the Rohillas, of which he was acquitted even by the House of Commons, finds answer in his vehement dissent from the treaty forced on him by the Triumvirate, and by which he was bound to provide the Nawâb of Oude with troops.

That concerning his cruelty to the Râjah of Benares is met by the undoubted fact that no article in the treaty with the latter gives colour to the contention that the tribute payable was a fixed and unalterable sum, while the fact that £300,000 worth of treasure was discovered in the possession of the Râjah's women, disposes effectually of the plea that poverty prevented payment.

Against the accusation of his having aided and abetted the Nawâb of Oude in seizing and confiscating the personal property of the Begums, stands the undoubted fact that these ladies could not, by the laws of India, possess such property; while the charge of undue cruelty in the treatment of these same ladies is absolutely unprovable, by reason of the conflicting evidence on both sides.

Then the charge of having, during his administration, raised the cost of the civil establishment some £5,000,000, is more than met by his undenied efforts to place the Government of India on a basis worthy of England, and by the necessity for either accepting and carrying through new responsibilities, or allowing the Company to sink back into its former state, when a paltry £20 a year was all the salary it could afford to pay men whom it yet vested with almost unlimited power of extortion.

The eighth and last count--for it is as well to confine refutation to what actually went up for trial--his personal rapacity and corruption is answered conclusively by the undoubted fact that when he retired, the sum of some £72,000 represented his entire fortune.

Truly, there was some justification for the bitter cry with which he ended his defence--a defence which lies practically in denouncing English greed for gold:--

"I gave you all, and you have rewarded me with confiscation, disgrace, and a life of impeachment."

He was on his trial for no less than nine years.

These two great men left India a very different place from what they had found it. The East India Company was trying now to govern, as well as to make money. There was scarcely a district throughout the length and breadth of the land into which the thought of England had not entered; few in which the lives of Englishmen did not form a not always wholesome example. In Lucknow, however, Claude Martin, soldier of both France and England, quaint admixture of honour and dishonour, while he aided and abetted the Nawâb in cock-fighting, drew the line at debaucheries, though he kept a considerable number of wives. This, however, was forced on him by his own merits, since the courtly, good-looking, middle-aged Frenchman's favourite charity was the educating of orphans, and the girls for whom he performed this kindly office had a trick of refusing the eligible _partis_ offered them, and electing to remain with their guardian!

Walter Reinhardt, nicknamed the "Sombre," was not so estimable a creature. He was, undoubtedly, the murderer, while in the Nawâb of Bengal's service, of the English at Patna in 1763, and the arch-factor in many other crimes. But he met his dues by marrying one of the most remarkable women of India. It was no light task to be the husband of the Begum Sumroo, who buried a laughing girl at whom the blue-eyed German from Luxembourg had cast an approving glance, under her chair of state; buried her alive, and sat on her for three days. Four was not necessary; Walter the Sombre had learnt his lesson in three!

After his death she ruled her state of Sirdhâna, not very far from Delhi, until she died in 1838, a very old woman, who possibly, despite her conversion to Roman Catholicism, looked back on her youth as a dancing-girl in Delhi with a vague regret.

Then there was George Thomas, an Irishman, whilom favourite of the aforesaid Begum, who cherished the hope--so he says--"of attempting the conquest of the Punjaub, and aspired to the honour of placing the British Standard on the Attock." He only succeeded in establishing for himself an independent principality near Hânsi, which he yielded to Lord Lake in 1803.

But all over India, in almost every town of import, Englishmen were to be found in positions of trust under native rulers. Briefly, they had come to stay; and no amount of legislation by Parliament, no prohibition of diplomacy, no exhortation to refrain from treaties or from meddling in native politics, could now avail to prevent England from becoming first factor in India.

It may be worth while to glance round that India and gain, as it were, a pictorial view of it at the time when England and the English Parliament first assumed political responsibility in regard to it by the establishment of a Board-of-Control appointed by the Crown.

In the far north, Kandahâr and Kâbul were, as ever, engaged in petty warfare, the sons and grandsons of Ahmed-Shâh Durrâni each striving for the mastery. The Punjâb was held by the Sikhs so far as the Sutlej. What are now called the Cis Sutlej States including the great battlefield of Pânipat, being under Mahratta influence. This influence had also made itself felt at Delhi, where the Great Moghul, Star-of-the-Universe and Defender-of-the-Faith, Shâh-Âlam by name, led the life of a pensioner, a prisoner, his authority gone save as a watchword to rouse strife. Oude was in the hands of the British debauchee Asaf-daula. Thence passing through Benares lay the English-held Bengal, Behar, Orissa. Westward was Poona, Guzerât, almost all Râjputana, Agra, and a great part of Central India; these were strongholds of the Mahrattas. Mysore, headquarters of the man-monster Tippoo-Sultân, murderer-in-chief after his father Hyder-Ali's death, marched with Central India the Dekkan fief of that half-hearted ally the Nizâm. Below that, again, came the Carnatic, held by that most troublesome and expensive of potentates the Nawâb of Arcot, tame bear (and bore) to the Madras Presidency, which must have wished its _protégé_ at the bottom of the sea many and many a time.

And under all these broad classifications, such a welter of proud, poor principalities and grasping, vicious courts as surely this world's history shows nowhere else. The horrid outcome of unlimited, unbridled power in the past.

And below this again?

Below this, again, the dreaming heart of India, unchanged, unchangeable.

THE BOARD OF CONTROL

A.D. 1786 TO A.D. 1811

The heroic age of the history of British India is now past. Forced by Fate and by the strong right hand of two strong men, England, with one eye still fixed on gold, had had to turn the other on the duties of empire. So the Company was, as it were, split in twain. The old commercial interests were dealt with, as heretofore, by the Board of Directors, but the control "of all acts, operations, or concerns, which in any wise relate to the civil or military government or revenues of the British possessions of the East Indies," was vested in a Board of six members, all appointed by the Crown.

The word "British" is noteworthy in conjunction with possessions, and shows the ease with which the English nation, while still loudly condemning the action of the East India Company, availed itself of the result of such actions. The chief point of interest in the New Act was the power given to Parliament to pay the salaries, charges, and expenses of the Board of Control out of the revenues of India, provided this charge did not exceed £16,000. This was the nucleus of the present payment of £144,000 in the India Office alone.

As regards the Constitution in India few changes were made, and, after a brief tenure of office on the part of Mr Macpherson, Lord Cornwallis went out to India as Governor-General. He had served successfully in Ireland, but with disaster in America. Considering his entire ignorance of even the first conditions of Eastern life, his Governor-Generalship was much less disastrous than it might have been, though it was marred by the crystallisation of the Great Mistake which Mr Francis had first presented in nebulous form; that is to say, the engrafting on India of the Western idea that the land cannot possibly belong to the State, but that some proprietor most be found for it.

But ere this was embodied in the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, Lord Cornwallis found his hands full of minor diplomacies. Tippoo-Sultân was at war with the Mahrattas, and the latter had foolishly been given promise of assistance by the British.

"An awkward, foolish scrape," writes the Governor-General. "How we shall get out of it with honour, God knows; but out of it we must get somehow, and give no troops."

That, practically, was the first charge on his administration. How to get out of minor squabbles, and leave the prime movers to fight it out amongst themselves. Hitherto the British troops had been mercenaries. As such they had made their influence felt in every corner of India. Now all was changed. England was a power in the East, hostile or friendly as she chose, not to be bribed to the support of any one. His next task was to interview the Nawâb of Oude on the subject of the protection of _his_ state, and in so doing rather to sidewalk round this firm non-mercenary position adopted by the Board of Control. For £500,000 was taken yearly as payment for two brigades which were to bring "the blessings of peace" under the ægis "of the most formidable power in Hindustan." Asaf-daula, however, was hardly worth protecting. He extorted every penny he could get from everybody in order to spend it on debauchery, and allowed his ministers to cheat and plunder both him and his country.

Another and a more worthy visitor pleaded for an interview, and was refused the favour. This was Jîwan Bakht, the heir-apparent to the Emperor Shâh-Âlam. He had been received by Warren Hastings, who, possibly because he saw in him a promise not often to be found in the Indian potentates of those days, allowed him £40,000 a year as maintenance. "Gentle, lively, possessed of a high sense of honour, of a sound judgment, an uncommon quick penetration, a well-cultivated understanding, with a spirit of resignation and an equanimity almost exceeding any within reach of knowledge or recollection."

Such was the character given by the great Proconsul after six months of daily intercourse; but caution was now the order of the day.

"The whole political use that may be derived" (from an interview) "is at present uncertain, but there may arise _some future advantage_ if we can gain his affection and attachment ... but I have already prepared his mind not to expect many of the outward ceremonials usually paid in this country to the princes of the House of Timur, as they would not only be extremely irksome to me personally, but also, in my opinion, improper to be submitted to by the Governor-General at the seat of your Government."

So wrote Lord Cornwallis, and Jiwan Bakht, with spirit _and_ resignation, contented himself finally with a request that he might be allowed at least asylum under British protection. He died of fever shortly after at Benares. Poor, proud prince of the blood royal! Was he really next-of-kin, as it were, to the Great Moghuls? If we had given him a chance, as we gave it to the monster Tippoo, to half-a-hundred scoundrels all over India, would he have regained the empire of Akbar? Who knows? He vanishes into the "might-have-been" with his high sense of honour, his spirit, and his resignation.

After this, Lord Cornwallis with a light heart took in hand the abuses of both the civil and the military services, and managed, by "making it a complete opposition question" which "brought forth all the secret foes and lukewarm friends of Government," to obtain higher salaries and better positions for both soldiers and civilians.

So far well. Then once more Tippoo-Sultân intervened, and in a trice India was back in the old days of intrigue, secret treaties, allies, and war. Even Lord Cornwallis, the Liberal pillar of upright, straightforward policy, fell before the peculiar temptations of Oriental diplomacy. There is much to be said for him. Tippoo was an unwarrantable survival. He ought long before to have been hanged, drawn, and quartered. As it was, he burst in upon the coming civilisation and culture, as Mr Burke's 'meteor' burst upon the 'peaceful fields.'

It would take too long to tell the tale of the four years' war during which the Mahrattas, the Dekkanites, and the English, hunted Tippoo ineffectively from pillar to post, and he retaliated in kind. Finally, in 1792, he was cornered at Seringapatam, and once more peace was concluded with a man who deserved nothing but the death of a mad dog.

Then ensued a partition of spoil after the old style; each ally receiving so many lakhs of money, so much territory. After which Lord Cornwallis, covered with glory, found leisure to address himself towards crystallising into our rule for ever--unless some Government arises strong enough to put the wheel back and start afresh--the Fundamental Error, the Great Mistake of the British Empire in India.

In 1793 Mr Dundas and Mr Pitt, neither of them possessing a scrap of first-hand knowledge of their subject, "shut themselves up for ten days at Wimbledon" (Heaven save the mark!) and evolved out of their inner consciousness the Permanent Settlement; thus once and for ever--unless for the forlorn hope of a strong Government--alienating from the Sovereign power of India a possession which had been the Crown's by right beyond the memory of man--in all probability for over five thousand years.

As usual with all overwhelming errors, it was done from the purest motives of truth and honour, mercy and judgment; that is to say, from the Western definitions of these virtues. As Lord Cornwallis writes, he was restoring the rightful landowners

"to such circumstances as to enable them to support their families with decency and give a liberal education to their children according to the customs of their respective castes and religions," thus securing "a regular gradation of ranks ... nowhere more necessary than in this country for preserving order in civil society."

It sounds quite unassailable to Western ears; but the results opened Western eyes. The measure was passed in 1794; in 1796 one-tenth of the land in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa was on sale. The ancient order of _zemindars_, so far from giving a liberal education to its children, was fast disappearing, glad to accept the small amount of hard cash, if any, which remained over after settling up ancestral debts. A new race of proprietors was as rapidly taking the place of the old, to the disadvantage of the peasant. For as Sir Henry Strachey writes:--

"The _zemindar_ used formerly, like his ancestors, to reside on his estate. He was regarded as the chief and father of his tenants. At present the estates are often possessed by Calcutta purchasers who never see them."

Nor were the judicial reforms of Lord Cornwallis much more happy. "Since the year 1793," says Sir Henry Strachey, "crimes of all kinds have increased, and I think most crimes are still increasing."

This was a natural result, first of the attempt to graft English law with all its legalities on Eastern equity, but mostly of the crass ignorance of native life everywhere displayed. Mr Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, expresses this well when he says:--

"What judge can distinguish the exact truth among the numerous inconsistencies of the natives he examines? How often do those inconsistencies proceed from causes very different from those suspected by us? How often from simplicity, fear, embarrassment in the witness? How often from our own ignorance and impatience? We cannot study the genius of the people in its own sphere of action. We know little of their domestic life; their knowledge, conversations, amusements; their trades and castes, or any of those national and individual characteristics which are essential to a complete knowledge. Every day affords us examples of something new and surprising, and we have no principle to guide us in the investigation of facts except an extreme diffidence of our opinion, a consciousness of inability to judge of what is probable or improbable.... The evil I complain of is extensive, and, I fear, irreparable. The difficulty we experience in discerning truth and falsehood among the natives may be ascribed, I think ... to their excessive ignorance of our characters and our almost equal ignorance of theirs."

The last sentence is perhaps scarcely strong enough, for Lord Cornwallis failed to find one civil servant of the Company in Madras who was "tolerably acquainted with the language and manners of the people."

Meanwhile, war had once more broken out between France and England, and though it had not yet disturbed India, Tippoo-Sultân, with his usual hardihood, bragged of the marvels of the French Revolution to the English officer charged, now that the ransom had been paid, with the duty of restoring the Sultân's sons, who had been kept as hostages. A trifle, which yet showed the way the wind was blowing. The Nizâm of the Dekkan, also, irritated by the tepid neutrality of Lord Cornwallis, had fled for help to French arms. Nor was Scindiah better pleased. Though of low caste, being sprung from the slipper-bearer of Bâla-ji, the first Peishwa, no Mahratta house claimed higher honours. Practically, it was master of half Hindustan, and it had been greatly offended by the refusal of Lord Cornwallis to accept its offer of help against Tippoo in consideration of a like number of troops to those promised to the Nizâm. So on all sides there was hostility--a hostility increased by Sir John Shore's policy (he succeeded Lord Cornwallis as Governor-General) "to adhere as literally as possible to the strictest possible interpretation of the restrictive clause in the Act of Parliament against entering into war."

Naturally, the fat was soon in the fire. The Mahrattas, always eager for a fray, fell upon the wretched Nizâm, who, fortunately for him, failing British aid, had that of France; but so had Scindiah. Therefore Monsieur Raymond and Monsieur de Boigne crossed swords; until the death of Ragoba the Peishwa turned all Mahratta thought to the choice of a new ruler.

English thought, also, was at this time (1798) engaged in a question of succession. Asaf-daula, the Nawâb of Oude, had died, acknowledging a certain Wazeer-Ali as his son and successor. So the dissolute, disreputable lad of seventeen was promptly placed by the British Government on the throne with all honour: it did not do to divert the weather eye, which was always open for "future advantage," to such trivialities as kingly qualities. But alas and alack for the British Government, its choice was instantly challenged by Sa'adut-Ali, the late Nawâb's brother, who brought proof that not only Wazeer-Ali, but all Asaf-daula's reputed children, were spurious.

At first England hesitated at deposing her Nawâb. Then? Then it is extremely difficult to know what the real motive underlying the action was, but in 1798 we find Sa'adut-Ali on the throne of Oude, no longer an independent ruler, but a mere vassal of the British Crown. The plea of adoption raised by Wazeer-Ali had been dismissed, and in honest truth, not absolutely without cause. For the Mahomedan law does not specifically recognise it, especially when near blood-relations exist.

These events, together with the death of old Mahomed Ali, Nawâb of Arcot, aspirant to the Nawâbship of the Carnatic--whose debts had been a veritable millstone round the neck of his consistent backer, the East India Company--saw Lord Cornwallis and Sir John Shore through their term of office, and Earl Mornington, afterwards Marquis Wellesley, reigned in their stead. He landed in April 1798 and found himself instantly confronted with the results of the non-interference policy; that is to say, with renewed war with Tippoo-Sultân, who--the remark has been made before--ought long ago to have been hanged.

It is somewhat refreshing to find that immediate negotiations were carried on both with the Nizâm and the Mahrattas in absolute defiance of Mr Pitt's famous minute against diplomacy! But nothing restrained Tippoo, not even considerations of personal safety. He was well backed by the French, with whom the English were still at war. So he tried conclusions with splendid audacity. And failed. Seringapatam was once more taken, and this time Tippoo was found dead under a heaped mass of suffocated, trodden-down corpses in the north gate. But he, apparently, had died a soldier's death, for the flickering light of the torches by which the search was made showed that a musket ball had crashed into his skull above the right ear.

It was a better death than he deserved, for though his territories were well administered, and though Seringapatam was found to be fortified, garrisoned, provisioned, better than many a modern fort, and though in every way his vitality was superhuman, it was the vitality of a devil, and not of a man. Hyder-Ali, his father, had been wild, untamable, given to long solitudes in the jungles, remote from all save savage beasts. Let the only excuse, therefore, which can be made from Tippoo-Sultân be given him--he was born with insanity in his blood.

Relieved from the Tiger-cub--the golden Tiger-head footstool of the throne found in the royal audience chamber at Seringapatam is now at Windsor--who had kept Madras in a constant state of alarm for close on half a century, the Board of Control settled down to various pieces of policy, for it must not be forgotten that all political work had been taken out of the hands of the East India Company. This is a point frequently overlooked, so it must be borne in mind that for all actions after 1784, the Board of Control, that is, a body of unbiassed English politicians appointed by the Crown, are entirely responsible. They settled a disputed succession in Tanjore, they ousted the Nawâb of Arcot, and by putting a nominee of their own on the throne with a pension of one-fifth of the revenue only, became vested with the whole of the rest of the Carnatic. They then turned their attention to Oude, where the Government of Sa'adut-Ali was in a shocking state of disorder. Reformation being urged upon him, he wilily announced his intention of abdicating, and thus gained some delay. Rather to his disadvantage than otherwise, since Lord Mornington was not long in producing a cut-and-dried scheme by which the Company should "acquire the exclusive authority, civil and military, over the dominions of Oude"; and also that by "secret treaty, not by formal abdication," the Nawâb, in consideration of receiving a liberal pension, the family treasure and jewels, should agree to his sons' names being "no further mentioned than may be necessary for the purpose of securing to them a suitable provision."

It was a big order, and to it the Nawâb naturally objected. But the screw was too tight. He had yielded himself vassal in order to gain the throne. His government was atrocious. It was practically impossible for the New Code of Western Ethics, which was everywhere raising its head in menace to the iniquities of the East, to look on such things and live. So in the end the treaty was signed; and whatever else the result might be, one thing is certain, the inhabitants of Oude were none the worse for the change of rulers.

A trivial detail in the confused complication of this transaction deserves unstinted blame, and that was Lord Mornington's acceptance of the offer made by one of the Begums of Oude to constitute the Company her heir. This was openly avowed to be a means of escaping from the extortions of her grandson the Nawâb, but though it seems equitable enough to Western ears, it must not be forgotten that the India law of inheritance of those days allowed no right of will, neither did it sanction the possession by any widow of wealth beyond a certain small proportion of her husband's real and personal property, which in this case could not have included anything but personal effects, the rest belonging to the Crown.

Volumes might be written on this question of the English action in regard to Oude, but practically there are but one or two facts, one or two admissions, to be made on both sides.

First, it is at best doubtful if we had any right to depose Wazeer-Ali in favour of his uncle. True, the right of adoption does not hold good in Mahomedan Common Law, but Indian history gives countless examples of Mahomedan sovereigns nominating their own successor, though it must be admitted that this nearly always only held good where there was no collateral heir. Second, this deposition was undoubtedly in our favour. By elevating Sa'adut-Ali, a small pensioner to the throne, we gained a hold on him which enabled us to dictate our own terms at the time, and, by the mere fact of the vassalage to which we reduced him, to enhance these terms at our convenience.

On the other hand, none can deny that the state of affairs in Oude strained patience to the uttermost; nor that in essence, the throne of Oude was of our own creation. It had only a history of a hundred years, and owned its very existence to the protection of England.

The year 1800 showed the outlook all over India more than usually threatening; so lowering indeed, that Lord Mornington, now the Marquis Wellesley, consented to prolong his service in India in order to tide affairs over the crisis which seemed about to come.

The chief factor in the unrest was Mahratta jealousy. The Nizâm of the Dekkan, their hereditary enemy, had just been granted a new treaty. Under it he had been promised a definite protection of troops in consideration of his ceding territory to the revenue amount of the subsidy which he would otherwise have had to pay--and, no doubt, would have paid irregularly.

It may here be remarked that this desire to secure regular payment for the mercenary troops necessary to maintain prestige and power, was nearly always the cause of English aggression and annexation in India.

This treaty affronted the Mahrattas, but ere they could formulate their grievances, internecine war broke out amongst them, consequent on the death of Nâna Furnavese, the Peishwa who had for so long opposed Ragoba. Over this Holkar and Scindiah, who for some time past had been at each other's throats, fought furiously, and the new Peishwa, Bâji-Rao, feeling himself in danger of falling between the two stools of his unruly vassals, applied to England for the protection of six battalions of British-trained sepoys, and promised in return to cede territory of the annual value of £225,000.

It was granted to him, but the treaty contained other stipulations regarding future relations which practically reduced the Peishwa to a state of dependence.

Holkar and Scindiah, on the part of _their_ sections of the Mahrattas, resented this fiercely. As usual, they refused to be bound by the Peishwa's pusillanimity. So war was declared; a war which for the time taxed even Sir Arthur Wellesley's military genius to the uttermost, for the Mahrattas were born fighters. But the battle of Assaye, fought on the 23rd of September 1803, broke their power in Central India. They had over ten thousand disciplined troops commanded by Europeans, chiefly French officers, and a train of one hundred guns, in addition to nearly forty thousand irregular infantry and cavalry. Against these Arthur Wellesley had but a total of four thousand five hundred men, but they included the 78th Highlanders, the 74th Regiment, and the 19th Dragoons.

It was a fine fight; a double fight, for when, overwhelmed by a real bayonet charge--the first, possibly, they had ever seen--the Mahrattas fell back on, and passed, their guns, the artillery men, feigning death, flung themselves in heaps on the ground. So, ridden over by the pursuing cavalry, treated as dead, spurned as things of no account, they remained until, the tyranny overpast, they were up and at their guns again, bringing _volte face_ destruction to their enemy's rear. It needed a desperate charge of the Highlanders, with Arthur Wellesley himself at its head, to retrieve the day.

The number of British killed was one thousand five hundred and sixty-six, more than one-third of their total force.

England, however, was now finally on the war-path; hesitation was over, the Mahratta power all over India had to be crushed. No less than fifty-five thousand British troops of all arms were gathered together in India, and these were divided out between the Dekkan, Guzerât, Orissa, and Hindustan proper. Of the foremost of these divisions the record has just been given; the two next, though successful, were in all ways of minor importance. The last, under General Lake, was the largest, and consisted of nearly fourteen thousand men all told. He advanced up the Gangetic plain, and the battle of Alighur was fought before that of Assaye. It was practically fought against Scindiah's forces under General Perron, the celebrated French commander, who, with De Boigne and Raymond, had been for many years the backbone of resistance against England. But it was fought in the name of the blind Shâh-Âlam, puppet-emperor of India; for the Mahrattas, always good fighters, had sent round the fiery cross on every possible pretext of personal and national loyalty, of tribal faith and racial adherence.

But on the 16th of September, after a pitched battle before Delhi in the low-lying land across the river Jumna--the country sacred now to pig-sticking!--General Lake rode with his staff to the palace which Shâhjahân in all his glory had built, there to have the first interview which a conquering Englishman had ever had with the Great Moghul himself.

It was a fateful interview. In the palace, glorious still in its lines of beauty, an old man, blind, decrepid, seated under a tattered canopy, poverty-stricken, miserable. By his side, soon to be Akbar II., was his son, and his grandson, the man who afterwards, as Bahâdur-Shâh, served out the measure of his crimes in the Andaman Islands.

It reads like some bad nightmare, does that circumstantial description given by Lake of his ride through the thronged city at sunset-time, when the people, wide-eyed, curious, expectant, crowded so close that the little cavalcade could scarce make a way for itself.

Of what were they thinking, those poor Delhi folk who had suffered so often at the hands of so many men? Were they still faithful to the memory of the Moghuls, or did their eyes seek wistfully in the faces of the newcomers for a new master?

Certainly on that 16th of September at sunset-time, after the interview had fizzled out with the exchange of empty titles, and as "Sword of the State," "Hero of the Land," "Lord of the Age," and "Victorious in War," Lake and his staff left the old palace to nightfall, and the old king to dreams, a pale ghost may well have walked through the halls of audience beneath the reiterated pride of that legend: "If there be a Paradise upon Earth, it is this, it is this, it is this," and asked itself what might have been it instead of a fever-stricken grave at Benares, it had found help to recover kingship?

Poor Jiwan Bukht! Had you, indeed, as your name implies, the Gift of Life?

Perhaps you had--and we squashed it!

But there was more to be done by Lake's force ere on the 27th February 1804 Scindiah, who was in reality the man behind the gun, gave in, and a treaty was signed which enabled the Governor-General to give vent to his feelings in the following bombast:--

"The foundations of our empire in Asia are now laid in the tranquillity of surrounding nations, and in the happiness and welfare of the people of India. In addition to the augmentation of our territories and resources, the peace manifested exemplary faith and equity towards our allies, moderation and unity towards our enemies, and a sincere desire to promote the general prosperity of this quarter of the globe. The position in which we are now placed is such as suits the character of the British nation, the principles of our laws, the spirit of our constitutions, and that liberal policy which becomes the dignity of a great and powerful empire. My public duty is discharged to the satisfaction of my conscience by the prosperous establishment of a system of policy which promises to improve the general condition of the people in India, and to unite the principal native states in the bond of peace under the protection of the British power."

After which there was naturally nothing to be done save to whack Holkar also; for he had kept out of the scrimmage discreetly. This campaign was not so successful. The fort of Bhurtpore withstood four assaults, and might have withstood four more, had not peace with honour and a donation of £200,000 intervened.

This--for the Râjah of Bhurtpore was an independent ally of the Mahrattas--rather upset Scindiah's calculations, for he was on the point of rejoining Holkar in defiance of all treaties. So the ultimate issue stood deferred when the Marquis of Wellesley ceased to be Governor-General.

He had deviated horribly from the "restrictive policy," and had consistently acted in the way which Parliament had pronounced to be "repugnant to the wish, the honour, and the policy of our nation."

But that policy had been a broken reed. It was virtually the policy of folding the arms, and awaiting the blow in the face that was bound to come sooner or later.

Nevertheless, the expense of Marquis Wellesley's wars told against his reputation; he went home obscured by a cloud of deferred dividends, and Lord Cornwallis returned for a second attempt at Indian administration. Age had undoubtedly cooled the ardour of his blood, for he immediately made most pusillanimous concessions to Scindiah for the sake of peace, passing over flagrant breaches of treaty with an easy diplomacy, and might have done infinite harm had he lived longer. But he died at Buxar within two months of his arrival in India.

Sir George Barlow took his place, but thereon arose a fine dispute between the Directors of the India House and the Ministers of the Crown concerning the patronage of this appointment.

Perhaps this was the reason why England failed to learn a lesson which would have been of use to her fifty years afterwards; for the little mutiny at Vellore occurred in 1806, and the Great Mutiny in 1857.

Yet the causes were identical. In 1857 it was a greased cartridge, in 1807 it was a cap; but beneath both lay unreasoning fear of forcible conversion to Christianity. A fear which grew to bloodshed, and which found the Europeans, as ever, totally unprepared. Nearly one hundred of them lost their lives, and but for Colonel Gillespie's swift ride from Arcot, and the wisdom of the officers in command at Hyderabad, the mutiny might have spread, as did the one at Meerut in May 1857. And it must be admitted that those sepoys of Vellore had greater cause of offence than they of later years; for they were asked to shave to European pattern, to wear a hat-shaped turban, and appear on parade minus their caste marks.

All this, including Sir William Bentinck's recall (he was Governor of Madras at the time), went on while the India House and the Crown were at daggers drawn over the Appointments question.

The latter meant to nominate the Earl of Lauderdale, who, as a pronounced free-trader, threatened to break up the Indian monopoly. The fight ended by the Earl of Minto, President of the Board of Control, taking up the appointment in 1807, which he held till 1811. It was an uneventful administration, the extinction of the Company's monopoly, which marked its close, being the only feature in it which claims a place in this modest outline of history; this, and perhaps the fact that owing to greater facilities of borrowing the Company was enabled to pay off its old debts which it had contracted when the rate of interest was 12 per cent., and renew them at 6 per cent.; thus effecting a reduction of half a million in expenditure.

As an instance of how little the Board of Control and the policy of inaction had benefited the finances of the Company, it may be mentioned that whereas its debt was in 1793 but £7,000,000, in 1811 it was £27,000,000.

But the world was beginning now to count it as a gift--as the cost of Empire.

THE EXTINCTION OF MONOPOLY

A.D. 1812 TO A.D. 1833

The Act of Parliament which inaugurates this period did not entirely extinguish the monopoly of the East India Company; that was reserved for the Act which marked its close. Yet the one promulgated in 1813 was sufficiently wide in its scope to partake of the nature of a revolution; for although the trade with China--chiefly tea--remained on its old close footing, that with India was thrown open to any one who possessed a licence, such licences not to be solely obtainable through the Council of Directors, but also through the Board of Control. But there were two additional clauses in the bill which, though grafted in upon it during its lengthy passage through Parliament, were of more gravity than some of original import. One was the forming of a regular Church Establishment in India--a formal declaration, as it were, of the creed of the new master; the other the inclusion of missionaries as persons to whom a licence to pursue their trade might be given. Taken together, these two clauses went far towards an admission that it was the duty of England to uphold her own faith. The speeches that were delivered for and against these clauses in Parliament are excellent reading; perhaps the most informing of them being one by Sir J. Sutton, who, attempting to hedge, as it were, objected to the open avowal in the clause that persons were to be sent to India for "the introduction of religious and moral improvement," as calculated to alarm and annoy, and suggested that the words "various lawful purposes" should be used instead. The suggestion was treated seriously; Mr Wilberforce, the great speaker on the missionary side, assuring his hearers that it was extremely unlikely that the natives of India would _ever read the clause_, and ending with an impassioned assertion that unless actual mention of religion was made in the Act it would stand tantamount to a decision that though Christianity was the faith of England, the creeds of Brahma and Vishnu were to be upheld by England in India. There was a strong religious party in the House, representing a stronger one in England. And feeling had been roused by Lord Minto's refusal to allow certain Baptist missionaries to print, publish, and disseminate pamphlets calculated to arouse indignation amongst the people of other faiths. So, despite a very able protest from Mr Marsh, who asserted that it must be remembered that the people "we wished to convert were in the main a moral and a virtuous people, not uninfluenced by such ideas as give security to life, and impart consolation in death," the clause was passed.

There is also an excellent speech made by Mr Tierney on the Commerce question, in which he pertinently remarks that amongst all the benefits which he was told were to accrue to the people of India from free trade, he had never _heard_ even of a proposal to allow one manufacture of India to be freely imported into Great Britain! But such remarks were of no more avail then than they are nowadays, when the manufactures of India are stinted by the duty on cotton twists, and her markets glutted by free Manchester muslins.

The whole history of the cotton trade, in truth, is grievous. At this time, when Parliament was piously purposing to preach to so-called heathen the religion which claims first place as teaching the duty of doing to others as you would be done by, the woven goods of India could have been sold in England at rates 50 and 60 per cent. cheaper than similar goods manufactured in England. What then? Were they so sold? or sold at a price which would have brought wealth to the miserably poor Indian craftsman? No! The mills of Paisley and Manchester were protected by a duty of 70 and 80 per cent. on these Indian goods, thus sacrificing those to whom we wished to teach Christianity to those who, at any rate, said they had that faith.

Ere going on to the events of the next few years it must be mentioned that the East India Company, while vehemently protesting, had some sops thrown to it by this Act. One was that the "commercial profits of the Company were not in future to be liable for any territorial payments until the dividend claims had been satisfied." This was extremely comforting. Furthermore, £1,000,000 sterling was to be set aside from the surplus revenue (when it existed, but up to the present it had not) to meet any failure.

With this, and a few more scraps of comfort, H.M.E.I.C.S. had to be satisfied and start fair with a new Governor-General, Earl Moira. One is irresistibly reminded, when following this history of English dealings with India, of the fable concerning King Log and King Stork; for after a calm, there comes invariably a storm. How many governor-generals have not sailed out to India, loudly protesting peace, prepared at all points to uphold the non-interference clause? How many have sailed back again with reputations either marred, in English eyes, by change of policy, or kept intact by leaving behind to their successors a state of affairs out of which war was the only escape?

Earl Moira, therefore, suffered from Lord Minto's efforts after economy by his undue reduction of the army, by his refusal to see what was going on around him. So the first thing to be faced was the necessity for war in Nepaul if the boundaries of Oude were to be preserved intact. Hitherto Great Britain had been pacific over invasion to the point of pusillanimity, dreading, and not without just cause, a campaign amid the ascending peaks and passes of the Himalayas, backed by the unknown regions of its eternal snows.

But at last these dangers had to be faced. It took a whole year of hill-fighting in the finest scenery in the world, and in a climate which must have been some compensation for other hardships, ere a treaty of peace was signed at Segowlie, by which England gained in perpetuity the magnificent provinces of Kumaon and Gharwal.

Meanwhile, India was not happy. The well-meaning Western attempt to raise money by a house-tax in large cities had nearly brought about an insurrection in Benares, where the _pandits_ had, not without cause, claimed the whole city as a place for worship, and as such exempt; while an assessment for municipal police led to hard fighting at Bareilly.

But by this time Earl Moira's eyes had been opened. On every side he saw dangers to the State-politic which could not be averted save by action. The predatory system, so often the curse of divided India, was in full swing. In truth, no power wielded sufficient authority to keep the others in order. What was happening in 1815 was what would happen in 1915 if the alien rulers of India were to adopt a policy of non-interference. The Pindârees were the chief offenders; since time immemorial their hordes of free-booting horsemen had been a terror, and of late years they had aided and abetted the Mahrattas. But, despite growing atrocities, it was not until 1816 that Parliament would permit them to be coerced.

Meanwhile, Râjputana was smouldering. After the murder of the Emperor Farokhsîr the various states fell into the hands--as did almost all India--of the Mahrattas; not without hard fighting, not without bitter beatings, and still more bitter upbraiding, as when after one defeat the Rana of Oudipore made a common courtesan carry the Great Sword-of-State, avowing that in "such degenerate times it was no better than a woman's weapon."

So matters had gone on from bad to worse, while Scindiah, dissociating himself from the Peishwa, became paramount, until in 1778 Râjah Bhîm came to the throne of Mêwar (Oudipore, Chitore). During his reign Scindiah and Holkar fought almost continuously over the hills and dales of Râjputana, and the former threw the weight of his savage influence into the pitiful tragedy of Kishna Kumari, the Virgin Princess. Her story is well known, but if only for the strangeness of such an incident being possible in the nineteenth century, and in a court where Englishmen came and went, it may be given here.

Kishen Kumari, the Virgin Kishen, was beautiful exceedingly. She was promised in marriage to the chief of Jeypore. Scindiah, incensed at non-payment of a claim by the latter, opposed this in favour of the chief of Marwar; and in the ensuing struggle to the death, Bhîm Singh, seeing ruin before him, determined to sacrifice his daughter's life as the only way of ending the strife.

They tried to poniard her, she standing calm; but the dagger fell from the hand of the brother appointed, as one of sufficient rank, to the deed. Then they tried poison. She drank it three times calmly, bidding her grief-distracted mother remember that Râjput women were marked out for sacrifice from birth, and that she owed her father gratitude for letting her live so long. But the poison refused its work; so, as calmly, she asked for a _kasumba_ draught to make her sleep. It was prepared. Sweet essence of flowers, sweet syrup of fruits, concealed the deadly dose of opium; she laid herself down and slept, never to wake.

A terrible tale, which merits the comment made on it by old Sagwant Singh, chief of Karrâdur, who, riding hard for Oudipore, flung himself breathless from his horse with the quick query: "Does the princess live?" And hearing the negative, went on without a pause up the stone steps of the palace, through the wide courtyard, adown the passage, till he found Mâhârâjah Bhîm upon his throne. Then he unbuckled his sword.

"My ancestors," rang out the passionate, protesting old voice, "have served yours for thirty generations. To you, my king, I dare say nothing, but never more will sword of mine be drawn in your service."

So, laying it with his shield at the feet of the weakling, he left.

A fine old Râjput was Sagwant Singh; one feels glad he said his say.

This, however, is by the way. Nine years after it happened--that is to say, in 1819--after the war with the Pindârees (which, of course--since war is ever bred of war in India--involved hostilities with the Peishwa, with Holkar, with Scindiah, with all the native states, briefly, who tried to bar the progress of the new master), Râjputana found itself eager to claim alliance with a power which, instead as of old protesting against protection, was now not only willing to grant it, but prepared to make its promise good against all comers.

For once, then, in the sweeping changes which the year ending in 1819 brought about, the English gave as good as they got. No great battle had been fought, but Scindiah was humbled, Holkar's aggressions had been stopped, the Peishwa's very name had disappeared, and on all sides alliances had been formed--durable alliances, which would no longer require the sword to enforce them.

And all this arose out of Parliament's hesitating admission that certain predatory robbers must be restrained, and Earl Moira's wise interpretation of that scant assent into action which, after two weary years, settled the great territorial question of India as only it could be settled; that is to say, as the Earl (afterwards Lord Hastings) phrases it: "by the establishment of universal tranquillity under the guarantee and supremacy of England."

But the Gurkha or Nepaulese war, and the third and final Mahratta war, unfortunately, only form part of Lord Hastings' work. He was not so happy in dealing with the question of Oude. It had simmered for long: the Nawâb, who had been encouraged by Lord Minto, complaining of the interference of the Resident; the Resident complaining of obstinate obstruction on the part of the Nawâb. In the middle of the quarrel Sa'adut-Ali died, leaving treasure, despite his plea of poverty, to the amount of £13,000,000. He was succeeded easily, quietly, with the help of British influence, by his eldest son, who, to show his gratitude, offered one of his father's millions to the Company as a gift. It was accepted as a loan at the usual rate of interest, 6 per cent.

But the young Nawâb was even more turbulent than his father, and when a second million was asked for on the same terms as the first, took the opportunity of practically demanding the withdrawal of the Resident. Now it is impossible to be harsh with a potentate who has just loaned you two millions of money out of his private purse. Without for a moment doubting the decision that Major Baillie the Resident had been wanting in respect, the fact remains that he went to the wall, and that the Nawâb was set free of all control in his administration. Furthermore, after a treaty signed in 1816, by which the loan of the second million was written off against the cession of a piece of territory scarcely worth the sum, the Nawâb was further encouraged and advised to assume the title of King; thus once for all asserting his equality with, and not his dependence on, the shadow of the Great Moghul at Delhi.

So, to the extreme indignation of the latter's sham Court and the scandal of all true Mahomedans, he proclaimed himself "Ghâzi-uddin-Hyder, King of Oude, the Victorious, the Upholder of Faith, the Monarch of the Age."

Not such a very poor specimen at that, whether taken at native or English estimate; for he was at least amiable--a kind, not overclever princeling, who cultivated the Arts in a dilettante fashion.

For the rest, though the long service--over nine years--of the Marquis of Hastings was eminently successful, it was not likely that one who rode rough-shod over the faddists' cry for noninterference at home could escape without censure. But regular impeachment was impossible towards one who had actually augmented the public revenues by £6,000,000 a year! So he escaped the fate of Clive and Warren Hastings.

He was succeeded by William Pitt (Lord Amherst) after an interregnum during which a Mr John Adams, armed with supreme, if brief authority, carried on a crusade against the press which, in view of recent occurrences, is singularly informing. The censorship had been abolished by Lord Hastings in rather bombastical language, which scarcely matched the severe inhibitions that followed against anything like criticism; the actual result being, that while the name of an invidious office was abolished, the press was left to face prosecution. In the case of the _Calcutta Journal_, against which Mr Adams tilted, the end was deportation of the editor to England!

The Burmese war, however, occupied Lord Amherst until 1826, when various minor campaigns became necessary; one against a Sikh mendicant, who announced himself as the last of the Avatârs of Krishna, incarnated for the express purpose of ousting all foreigners from India. Bhurtpore, also, had to be finally taken, a usurper expelled, and a six-year-old râjah established on the throne, under the guidance, naturally, of a British resident. Such things had to be if the standard of Western ethics was to be enforced in Government.

There remained also Oude, that perennial thorn in the side of those who had created it. Ghâzi-ud-din-Hyder had lent a million and a half more money to the Company--had lent it at 5 per cent.!--but yet, he complained, there was no pleasing the English master! There is something pitiful about the good-natured king's plea that misgovernment _could_ not exist, because Oude from one end to the other was cultivated like a garden; there was not even a waste place in it whereon an army might encamp! And as for the disturbances on the British borders, was he responsible for the landholders being Râjputs by tribe, soldiers by profession, and so refusing to pay except by force? And for what did he pay English soldiers, except to use force?

There was force, anyhow, in his arguments, but his grievances remained unredressed at his death in 1827, when he was succeeded by his son, Nâsir-ud-din-Hyder.

So, without any great excitement save the Burmese war, Lord Amherst's Governor-Generalship came abruptly to an end, owing to sudden illness in his family, which prevented his awaiting any arrangement for his successor. This is somewhat typical of one who never seems to have taken any personal interest in Indian questions, who, in fact, seems to have wearied of the East. He was the first Governor-General who found a Capua at Simla.

Then, after much striving, Lord William Bentinck, who had been deprived of the Government of Madras in 1807 in consequence of the mutiny at Vellore, was appointed in Lord Amherst's place. It was a great triumph for him, being, as it were, an admission that he had been unjustly dismissed in the first instance. His administration, however, did much to justify his early treatment, for there can be no question that he showed an almost phenomenal want of tact. Indeed, but for the fact that the final extinction of the monopoly of trade did not take place until 1835, this chapter would end on the assumption of office by Lord William Bentinck in 1828, since there can be no doubt that many of his well-meaning efforts should be included amongst the causes which led up to the mutiny of 1857. The best plan, therefore, will be to catalogue them briefly here, and discuss them in connection with others of a like nature after 1835. The first, which brought him great disfavour with the military, was not, strictly speaking, his action, but that of England. His only responsibility for what is called the half-_batta_ (extra allowance) order is that he did not, as Lord Hastings and Lord Amherst had done, refuse to obey his superiors. It was a silly retrenchment, since for the sake of a paltry £20,000 a year it gave umbrage to a very deserving body of men, who could ill afford to lose the money. The scheme was condemned by all competent judges in India as "unwise and inexpedient, fraught with mischief, and unproductive of good."

But Lord William Bentinck had come out bound hand and foot to economy, social reform, and missionary effort, so he spent his years in adding up and subtracting, in framing laws, such as that against _suttee_, and the forfeiture which, under Hindu law, followed on conversion to a different faith.

For political work he had but one catchword; the catchword of his employers--non-interference. The puppet-emperor at Delhi complained bitterly; his complaint being unheard, he actually sent an agent--no less a person than Râm-Mohun-Rao, the founder of the Brahma-Somâjh, the modern Theistical sect of India--to plead his cause in England. But he also was unheard. His mission had been kept secret, and so his credentials were "out of order."

In Oude, Nâsir-ud-din, realising this policy of non-interference, began a series of petty aggressions against Âga-Mîr, the finance minister, whom the British Government supported. These ended unsatisfactorily for all parties by the minister being conveyed out of the reach of Nâsir-ud-din's vindictive hatred. The Nawâb then refused to appoint any one in Âga-Mîr's place, and, being totally unfit, by reason of his dissolute habits, to manage the state himself, everything fell into confusion. Finally, driven, for once, out of non-interference by the effect of it, Lord William Bentinck not only refused friendly intercourse if a responsible minister were not appointed, but told the drunken, disreputable occupier of the throne himself in so many words, that if he did not mend his ways he would be deposed.

So far well; but when, appalled by this prospect, Nâsir-ud-din besought advice how to govern, this was refused. The policy of which the Governor-General was the mouthpiece would not allow him to interfere!

Humanity is at times hard to understand; in this instance peculiarly so, unless, as was stated at the time by the respectable courtiers--and even in that sink of iniquity, Lucknow, there were some just men--the real object of the English was not to improve government, but to find an excuse for usurping it.

But in Jeypore, in Jodhpore, in Bundi, in Kotah, and many another minor state, to say nothing of larger ones, the almost slavish adherence of Lord William Bentinck to the order he had received brought strained relations. And yet all the while he was attempting purely diplomatic _râpprochements_ with outlying states. The Russian scarecrow had begun to trouble the slumbers of Indian statesmen, and this curious creature, destined to remain a nightmare for generations, led to interest in the affairs of Kâbul. In Lord Minto's time Mr Mountstuart Elphinstone had, with great difficulty, met the then Ameer Shâh-Sujah at Peshâwar, and arranged the terms of a treaty with him, but ere this could be ratified Shâh-Sujah himself had been turned out of his throne. He had pleaded for help to recover it; but Lord Minto being one of the non-interference faction, aid had been refused. The Ameer had, however, been allowed a pension, on which he had lived in Ludhiâna, a Sikh town on the Sutlej river.

Here Lord William Bentinck found him in 1832, when he had an interview with Runjeet-Singh, the Sikh king of the Punjâb.

There can be little doubt that the question of aiding Shâh-Sujah to recover his throne was mooted by Runjeet-Singh, and was negatived by the Governor-General; there is also little doubt, however, that _too much cold water_ was not thrown over the scheme, since Dost-Mahomed, the Kâbul usurper, was suspicioned with Russian proclivities and was being watched.

But these are minor points compared to the changes which were coming over the East India Company at home. Its charter expired in 1834, and the question as to whether that charter should be renewed had to be answered. It was answered in the negative, and on the 22nd April 1834 India ceased to be a land of restrictions. It was thrown open to the wide world. During the course of the twenty years which had passed since the semi-extinction of the Company's power, but 1,324 licences to go to India had been issued. What proportion of these had been issued to those whose object was "the introduction of religious and moral improvements" is unknown, but in 1833 mission work had begun almost all over India; indeed, the concluding years of the period between 1813 and 1833 were marked by greatly increased efforts and results in proselytising the natives. One cause of this being the shortening of the ocean passage to India by the adoption of the Red Sea route. On the 20th March 1830 the _Hugh Lindsay_, a small steamer, left Bombay harbour, arriving in Suez in thirty-two days, and on her next voyage reduced the time to twenty-two. Thus, before the year 1836, despatches from London arrived in Bombay in two instead of six months; the time taken now is twelve days.

It may seem extravagant to say that the lessening of sea-sickness brought about the Indian Mutiny, but taken seriously, it is true. That is to say, the sudden letting loose on a country which had hitherto been reserved to especially licensed persons, of all and sundry, the dregs as well as the cream of the West, together with the removal of the great personal discomfort and expense of a six months' journey round the Cape, which had hitherto militated against travel in India, combined to produce such a change in that country as was bound to create alarm, distrust, and resentment, amongst the most Conservative people in the world.

FREEDOM AND FRONTIERS

A.D. 1834 TO A.D. 1850

What was the cause which led England to refuse a continuance of its charter to the East India Company?

It was the price of tea. Before this, all considerations as to whether the Company had done its duty to India or not vanish into thin air. As Mr Mill the historian says succinctly: "The administration of the Government of India by the East India Company was too exclusively a matter of interest to India to excite much attention in England." But with tea it was different. That was a question for every Englishman's breakfast table. Hitherto China had been debarred from free trade, and the price of tea was high; therefore monopoly was a bad thing for the consumer of tea. Q.E.D.

So on the 22nd April 1834, India was thrown open to the world, and though "John-Company" still ruled its destiny, it did so on a different footing. For the rest, the story of the dispute concerning territorial and commercial assets, the haggling over bargains between the Court of Directors and Parliament, is not edifying, as may be judged by the fact that the latter suggested the abolition of the salt-monopoly, not from the slightest consideration for the taxed native of India, but from a desire to secure a new market for Cheshire!

One of the first results of the new arrangement was an unseemly struggle over the filling up of the Governor-Generalship made vacant by Lord William Bentinck's retirement from ill-health. That the appointment should have been bestowed on Sir Charles Metcalfe is certain; he had served India well in many capacities. But parties objected. Then Mr Mountstuart Elphinstone came into the running, also Sir Henry Fane, Lord Heylesbury, Lord Glenelg, until at last a perfectly colourless appointment was made in the person of Lord Auckland, a most amiable and estimable nobleman, with no experience of India. He arrived in Calcutta in 1836, the interregnum, during which Sir Charles Metcalfe had carried on the work, having lasted for over a year. He immediately started on judicial reform with the aid of a law commission, of which Mr, afterwards Lord Macaulay, was president. It was he who drafted the Indian Penal-Code, which, founded on common-sense and the old Roman Law, remains to this day practically unaltered, a standing challenge of concise clearness to the confused medley of old precedent and new practice which so often does duty for equity in England. While this work was in progress unexpected trouble in Oude occurred. Nawâb Nâsir-ud-din-Hyder died suddenly, leaving no children. It may be remarked that the constant occurrence of heirlessness amongst the reigning families of India at this time tells its tale all too clearly. There were two boys favoured by the Queen-mother, whom the Nawâb had once acknowledged, but had since formally disavowed. He himself had no brothers, and the succession therefore reverted to the heirs-male of Sa'adut-Ali, his grandfather. Under British law the next-of-kin would have been the children of an elder son; under Mahomedan law it was the younger but still living son. Of this there can be no possible doubt. Looking back on Indian history, though, as a rule, the failure of direct heirs-male brought about a general free fight over the succession, a younger uncle has always claimed above a cousin. Thus in Oude there were instantly three claimants in the field. The Queen-mother's boy Mura-Jân, the younger uncle Nâsir-ud-daula, and Yamîn-ud-daula, who claimed to be son of an elder uncle, and was therefore a first cousin.

Naturally, the British supported Nâsir-ud-daula. Legally, he was the heir, though after a time another first-cousin-pretender, asserting that he and he only was the rightful Nawâb, actually travelled to England in order to urge his title. Meanwhile, on the Nawâb's sudden death, old Nâsir-ud-daula, the English nominee, had been dragged out of bed, promptly conveyed to the palace, and left to take an hour or two's sleep before the fatiguing ceremony of being installed on the cushion of State.

This was the Queen-mother's opportunity. She nipped in from her palace at Dilkusha with half the loose riffraff of the town (which in Lucknow floats about aimlessly awaiting such an opportunity), seized on the person of old Nâsir-ud-daula-it is a wonder they did not murder him--and promptly put Mura-Jân on the throne; he occupied it for about one hour and forty-five minutes. Then the British troops having returned and cleared a way with a few charges of grape, the coronation of the poor, miserable, by this time nerve-collapsed old uncle went on in due course!

Small wonder that he signed every obligation which he was asked to sign. This does not, however, in any way exonerate those who, taking undoubted advantage of the position, made him sign an unconditional engagement of submissiveness.

Still, signed it was; and for a very distinct and palpable "good consideration." Therefore its legality is beyond question.

The year 1836, however, brought up another political question for decision. The Râjah of Sattârah, quite a small princeling, had given trouble ever since the English had most unwisely rescued him from poverty and imprisonment and placed him in power. His proceedings, eventually, became so outrageous, that the Government deposed him, and elevated his brother to the vacant throne.

This is mentioned because the incident is made use of as evidence for the "annexation at any price policy" of the English. In this case, at any rate, they did not err.

But now, over the horizon of a fairly peaceful India, its statesmen saw, looming in the distance, the shadow of Russia, and all thought, all energies, turned to the north-west frontier. Between it and the territory already swayed by Calcutta lay the Sikh nation and the five fruitful Doabas of the Punjâb. Of these England knew little, save what she had learnt from Megasthenes the Greek, and Arrian's Anabasis.

One or two courteous interviews had passed with Runjeet-Singh, the Sikh king, but that was all. It was sufficient, however, to show him able, a man not to be easily swayed. His life-history confirms this. Left king at the age of twelve, with a profligate mother who for years had carried on an intrigue with the chief Minister-of-State, and an exceedingly ambitious mother-in-law, he managed to rid himself speedily of their influence, and ere long take his position as monarch of a far larger kingdom than he had inherited. His conquests eastwards were, indeed, only checked by meeting with British-protected states, and he kept an eye steadily on both Kâbul and Kashmîr. The former he hoped to gain by using Shâh-Sujah, the deposed Ameer, as a stalking-horse; and as a bribe for help promised, but never given, he succeeded in extorting from the latter the celebrated Koh-i-nur diamond. The latter, and Peshawar, he wrested from the Afghâns, with the aid of two French officers who opportunely arrived on the scene. So much for the Punjâb. Below it, still on the western border, lay Scinde, an independent state. Beyond it, Persia, with which England already had relations. But what of Afghanistan? There Mr Elphinstone's attempt to establish connection had ended with Shâh-Sujah's flight.

It was determined, therefore, to attempt an embassy to Dost-Mahomed, his usurping successor, and Sir Alexander Burnes was chosen as the delegate.

He was a man who had travelled all over Central Asia, who was in every way qualified for his task. Unfortunately, or fortunately, he was too well qualified for carrying out the simple commercial instructions with which the English Government had tentatively, perhaps timidly, entrusted him. But the discovery of Russian intrigues in full swing at the Kâbul court sent commerce to the right-about. Burnes was in the thick of diplomacy without delay, and ere long formal questioning and reply was going on between Russian and English ambassadors regarding the former's influence on the Indian borderland, which elicited a categorical denial of any ulterior object on the part of Russia.

But Dost-Mahomed for all that refused to accede to England's somewhat impertinent request, that he should dismiss the Russian agent from his court. And so began a quarrel which is barely settled to-day.

Sir Alexander Burnes left Kâbul in dudgeon, and almost immediately after his departure matters came to a crisis by the Persians--avowed allies of Russia--besieging Herât. Now, Herât was considered by diplomatists and the military alike the key of India, and in 1838, after many _pour parlers_, manifestoes, and embroglios, the combined armies of the tripartite alliance, that is to say, the British, the Sikhs, and Shâh-Sujah, marched on the Punjâb to reinstate the latter on his long-vacated throne in Kâbul. In all the long history of India no more unwarrantable invasion was ever undertaken, though half a hundred good reasons were given for it at the time, and could be found for its defence even now by those who fail to see that Dost-Mahomed was, as Eastern potentates go, quite a decent ruler. There is but one possible excuse. England chose her career deliberately, thinking not at all of Afghânistân, but of Russia.

After a halt at Ferôzepore, where the allies assembled and where festivities were held, Runjeet-Singh, an old man now, blind of one eye, desperately marked with smallpox, and inconceivably ugly, tripped over a carpet, to the horror of his court (who considered it an evil omen), and fell flat on his nose at the feet of a big English gun he was examining; and where, also, Henry Havelock, one of the new school of the Church-Militant, exclaimed in horror at "the ladies of a British Governor-General 'watching' choral and dancing prostitutes" (surely a somewhat over high-toned description of that deadliest of dull and decorous entertainments, an Indian _nautch_). After all this a fairly-triumphant march was made through Scinde (where the Ameer of that country, after a distinct promise that no riverside forts should be touched, was fairly diddled out of the one at Bukkhur, on the shameless plea that it stood on an island), through Quetta to Kandahâr and Ghuzni (which made a good resistance); so to Kâbul, which was entered on the 7th August 1839, when Shâh-Sujah ran about the passages of the Bâla-Hissâr palace like a child, clapping his hands with delight at finding himself back again after thirty years' absence.

So far good. But, meanwhile, Runjeet-Singh had died, and our rear was endangered by the almost open enmity of his successor. Thus a limited garrison, only, had to be left in Kâbul; and in addition, Dost-Mahomed's first flight had proved to be but a prelude to desperate resistance. Still, armed occupation was held of the town of Kâbul, cantonments were built for the British regiments and sepoys which formed the garrison, in which the troops passed the winter and summer of 1841 in comfort. Then came disaster.

What caused the outbreak is a mystery. So far as one can judge, it began in private revenge upon Sir Alexander Burnes. His house was the first attacked on the 2nd November 1841 by a mob thirsting for blood and plunder. He attempted to calm them by harangue. He offered large sums for his own and his brother's escape, but they were both cut down, every sepoy murdered, every man, woman, or child on the premises brutally killed.

And here follows _in petto_ an anticipation of what occurred some fifteen years later, when a like massacre broke out at Meerut in 1857. A general paralysis seems to have attacked those in authority. Here, there, everywhere, in isolated posts, Englishman and sepoy fought together and fell together bravely; but at headquarters decision disappeared, and Brigadier Shelton finally settled, weakly, to hold the cantonments, instead of retiring on the fortified and almost impregnable Bâla-Hissâr, where there was a plentiful store of provision. The mistake was fatal. Within a month a treaty had to be signed which was practically unconditional surrender. Dost-Mahomed was to be reinstated; Shâh-Sujah allowed to follow his friends back to India. "The terms secured," writes Sir William McNaghten, "were the best obtainable." At any rate, at the time, it was hoped that they would save the lives of some fifteen thousand human beings. But fate was against it. Sir William McNaghten, failing in a side-intrigue which, even had it succeeded, would have been barely possible with honour, was foully murdered, and on the 6th of January about four thousand five hundred fighting-men and twelve thousand camp followers, men, women, and children, were driven out into the inclement winter cold to find their way, as best they could, over peak and pass back to Hindustan.

The horrors of that terrible march will scarcely bear telling. Over three thousand found freedom at once by being massacred, wantonly massacred by mountain tribes in the first pass; the rest, without food, without fuel, without tents, pressed on, fighting fiercely as they forced their way eastwards.

It was on the 13th of January that the English garrison at Jellalabad, looking out up the passes, saw one man swaying in his saddle, scarce able to keep his seat, urging his jaded, outworn pony eastward, still eastward!

It was Dr Bryden, the only man who came through. But he brought the welcome news that some women and children, and a few men, were prisoners, and so far safe.

Naturally, there was no more question now as to the rights or wrongs of war. These captives had to be rescued, and punishment meted out to many murderers. Both objects were accomplished within the year, but not by Lord Auckland; for Lord Ellenborough succeeded him at the time of the Kâbul disaster, when matters were at their worst. There was some difficulty in finding a candidate for the throne. Shâh-Sujah himself had in the interval been shot through the head, and his son, whom the mob of Kâbul had first set up as a puppet-king and then imprisoned, had no stomach for further sovereignty. A younger member of the family was, however, eventually found willing to face assassination for the sake of a doubtful crown.

His kingship, which only lasted till the British forces were withdrawn, at least secured the preservation of the Bâla-Hissâr, which otherwise, as a punishment to Kâbul, would have been razed to the ground; as it was, the Great Bazaar, a building entirely devoted to commerce, was destroyed instead, possibly because Sir William McNaghten's body had been exposed upon it.

Thus, in 1843, the first Afghân war came to an end with the absurd incident of the Gates of Somnâth. These were supposed to be still hung at the entrance of Mahomed-the-Despoiler's tomb at Ghuzni. So, with an odd mixture of sham Orientalism and latter-day romanticism, they were taken down, carried back to India to form the subject of a most marvellous effusion addressed to the chiefs and peoples of India, which goes by the name of "Ellenborough's Song of Triumph," in which these gates, "so long the memorial of your national humiliation," are said to have "become the proudest record of your national glory!"

And after all, they were _not_ the Gates of Somnâth!

Almost immediately after this the relations with Scinde became strained. The Ameer had, in truth, just cause of complaint in a breach of treaty regarding the passage of troops across the Indus, and after much discussion the sword became the only possible arbiter. So Sir Charles Napier commenced the war which, conducted by consummate skill throughout, ended virtually with the victory of Miani and the annexation of Scinde.

It was towards the end of the next little war, this time with Scindiah, that Lord Ellenborough was recalled, and Sir Henry Hardinge, being sent to govern in his stead, found himself instantly plunged in a war of far greater magnitude with the Sikhs, with whom, after the death of old Runjeet-Singh, friendly relations had ceased. In truth, the kingdom was in a state of tumult. The army, which consisted of almost the whole nation (since every Sikh is by birth and faith a fighter), realising that the whole power was virtually in its hands, clamoured for new conquests. Dhuleep-Singh, the heir, was a minor; his mother, nominally guardian, had no influence, and finally, forced by circumstances, gave her consent to an invasion of British territory. It was an unprovoked, and yet not altogether unwelcome assault, and it met with instant and overpowering reply. On the 13th December 1845 the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej in force, and on the very same day a British proclamation was issued, formally declaring that all possessions of Mâhârâjah Dhuleep-Singh, on the British bank of the river, were annexed. Swift battle followed. At Moodki on the 18th December, on the 22nd at Ferozeshâh, on the 20th January at Aliwâl; finally, the 10th February saw the last stand made at Sobrâon, a village which stood then on the eastern bank of the sliding river. It stands now on the western, for the Sutlej has shifted.

Swift, and short, and sure, was the campaign, curiously enough leaving little of rancour behind it amongst the tall, upstanding Sikhs. "You were so much better than we were," said an old Sikh worthy, who had gone through the four defeats, as he showed an infinitesimal slice of his little finger tip; "just so much--no more! but you were better led." And the keen old eyes ranged cheerfully over the wide wheat plain, intersected by silver-shining streaks of sliding river, that had once been the battle-field of Sobrâon, and the old voice went on exultingly over the tale of how he had knelt to receive the British cavalry at Aliwâl, and knelt on, through three consecutive charges, until he had fallen unconscious amongst his dead comrades.

A treaty of peace was signed at Lahôre twelve days after Sobrâon, which stipulated for the formal cession of the whole Cis-Sutlej country and an indemnity of £1,500,000, £500,000 of which was to be paid immediately, and the remaining £1,000,000 to be discharged by the cession of Kashmîr and Hazâra.

This practically ended Lord Hardinge's Governor-Generalship, and late in 1847 Lord Dalhousie took up the office.

The whole of the next year was taken up with a war in Scinde which spread to the northern half of the Punjâb beyond Lahôre, which--despite the cession of Hazâra--still remained practically unsubdued. After the taking of Multân and the defeat of Mulrâj's troops, Lord Gough marched northwards against Shere-Singh, defeated him at Râmnuggar, fought an indecisive battle against him at Chillianwâla, and finally, on the 21st February 1849, at Gujerât, completely annihilated the Sikh army, taking all their guns.

Resistance was thus at an end, and the Punjâb as far as Peshawar was coloured red in the map of India.

The proclamation of the Governor-General in announcing the fact is worthy of quotation as a finish to the long history of English dealings with Hindustan.

"The Government of India formerly declared that it decreed no further conquest, and it proved by its acts the sincerity of its profession. The Government of India has no desire for conquest now; but it is bound in its duty to provide fully for its own security and to guard the interests of those committed to its charge. To that end, and as the only sure mode of protecting the state from the perpetual recurrence of unprovoked and wasting wars, the Governor-General is compelled to resolve upon the entire subjection of a people whom their own Government has long been unable to control, and whom (as events have now shown) no punishment can deter from violence, no act of friendship can conciliate to peace."

The question arises, how much of this admirable effusion is strictly true? In the case of the Punjâb there can be no doubt that the Sikhs began the struggle by wanton and unprovoked assault. But was this always so? Certainly not always. Yet once begun, there was no possibility of turning back in England's career of annexation. She had put her hand to the plough, she was driving a Western furrow over the uncultivated wilds of the East, and as she sowed and scattered seed, the necessity for protecting the crop-scanty though it was at first--arose immediate and insistent.

People say England has brought poverty to India. Perhaps she has. Poverty is the handmaid of so-called civilisation. But she has also brought peace--and population!

MANNERS, MORALS, AND MISSIONARIES

A.D. 1850 TO A.D. 1857

Beyond the second Burmese war and the annexation of Oude there is little to be recorded in this short period of seven years. The former passed on, as did every war, to annexation; yet once again there seems little doubt that this was brought about by obstinate refusal to keep the treaty which ensured "the utmost protection and security" to British ships trading to Burmese ports.

The question of the annexation of Oude, however, falls into another category, and is so often cited as one of the chief causes of the Great Mutiny of 1857, that it is best discussed among the many other reasons for resentment and rebellion which undoubtedly existed in India at this time. One of these was the change of manners in the ruling white-faced race.

In the old days of a good year's voyaging and sea-sickness round the Cape few women had been found to face it; and so the Englishmen in India had formed irregular connections with native women, often of very good birth. These connections, though, of course, contrary to our marriage laws, were not exactly immoral; they were, indeed, often as regular as the differing codes of Christianity, Hinduism, and Mahomedanism would allow. And, naturally, they greatly bridged over the gulf between the rulers and the ruled.

The short sea-passage changed all this. English ladies came out in crowds, and seeing themselves surrounded by native sister-subjects who thought differently to what they did on almost every conceivable social subject, held up holy hands of horror at everything they saw, oblivious, apparently, of the obvious fact, that if the native sister appeared a bogey to them, they also must have been a bogey to the native sister.

She, however, by her very seclusion, was prevented from airing her opinion. Not so the Englishwomen and young girls who began to come to live amongst those who were generally called the heathen. There is no more charitable and kindly soul than the average British matron, and in the days before '57 she was beyond measure romantic. This was the time when, escaping from the stern rule of papa and mama, who had been ready with bread and water for "miss" if she refused an eligible _parti_, the English girl looked on Love with a big L, as something only a trifle less divine than the God whom she worshipped. She was not, therefore, likely to find anything but militant pity and charity for a social system which began by ignoring love as synonymous with passion. Thus the Englishwoman was no factor for peace in the new order of things. Then the changes inaugurated by the inclusion of the "introduction of religious and moral improvement" as a licensable trade had borne much fruit. One has only to read missionary reports to find out how enormously organised effort to convert the people of India had increased since 1813, and still more from 1833. In the year 1840 Dr Duff's Christian college at Calcutta numbered over six hundred pupils, and in 1845 came the added interest to the cause of Missions brought by the great Evangelical movement, not only in the Church of England, but throughout all Europe. This wave of religiosity left no Christian sect untouched, and part of its result was the introduction into India of a race of Church-Militant officials, admirable in character, in work, who, despite their faithful performance of duties to Cæsar which demanded absolute impartiality, could not divest themselves absolutely of their other duty (as they held it) to God; that is to say, to influence the natives for good--in other words, to Christianity. Without attempting praise or blame, it is impossible to deny that the example of such strong and militant Christians as the Lawrences, as Havelock, as half a hundred other well-known names, to say nothing of the hundreds of lesser-known ones who in civil stations and cantonments were encouraging mission work with all their might and main, must inevitably have attracted the attention of _pandits_ and _moulvies_, whose profession, whose bare living, was bound up in so-called heathendom.

Then, ever since the days of Lord William Bentinck, legislation had favoured the new faith. It will be remembered that he was mixed up with the mutiny at Vellore--a mutiny, if ever there was one, caused by abject fear of enforced conversion. His abolition of _suttee_, his tinkering with Indian law so as to free Hindu converts to Christianity from disabilities in succession (or as it has been put, "to free them from the trammels of their former superstitions and secure them in the full possession of Christian freedom"), had passed muster at the time, but as their effects became palpable, their interference in matters of custom and religion was resented. The very inauguration of female education was an offence, and as the years went on, bringing ever more and more missionary effort, and, above all, more support to that effort on the part of the ruling race, fear of wholesale conversion sprang up amongst the ignorant people, and was carefully fostered by the priests and preachers who had all to gain and nothing to lose by revolt.

And behind all this lay slumbering a great resentment. Say what folk would, be the excuse what it might, the fact remained that the last hundred years had seen every Indian prince reduced to the position of a pensioner, his land annexed. And the years between 1850 and 1857 produced a large crop of such annexations and usurpations. To begin with the petty state of Sattârah. When Pertâp-Singh the ruler (given his chiefship by the British who hunted him up, prisoned, poverty-stricken) had to be deposed childless, England forebore to annex, and placed a brother on the cushion of State; but when that brother, also childless, adopted a son but a few hours before his death, she refused to recognise his right to do so in regard to the succession. Such a son was legal heir to personal property, but Sattârah, being a dependency, could not by Indian law pass by adoption without the permission of the lord-paramount, which in this case had not been asked. Legally, she was right; but the sting of annexation rankled.

Then the case of Kerowli occurred, in which adoption was made without permission; but here the Governor-General's order was over-ruled by the Directors, who held that though "Sattârah had been originally a gift and creation of the British Government, Kerowli was one of the oldest Râjput states, and merited different treatment." Annexation was not, therefore, carried out; but the very considerateness of the decision intensified feeling in the other case.

Following this came the Jhânsi case, involving an area of about 2,000 square miles. Here, again, no issue--almost no collateral relationships--was the cause of an unauthorised adoption which, because the chiefship was, again, a creation of the English, was held inadmissible.

Then, as if these three almost forced annexations, occurring in 1849,1852, and 1853 respectively, were not enough to damn British policy in the eyes of disaffection, yet another case came up for settlement in 1853; for on the 11th of December died Râgoji-Bônsla, the Râjah of Berâr. He left neither issue nor collateral heir, neither had he attempted to supply their place by adoption; thus the question of the state lapsing to the Crown arose in its simplest and clearest form. The decision was, naturally, that by the Râjah's "death _without any heir whatever_, the possession of his territories has reverted to the British Government which gave them"; a decision without any doubt legal.

Now, ere passing on to the annexation of Oude, which stands on a totally different footing, it is as well to notice the drift of what may be read between the lines of this long record of principalities passing by lack of heirs of the body to the lord-paramount. What does it mean? Doubtless, it points first to degeneracy, to the fading away of families which is due to dissolute life. But this life in high places was no new thing; the English had found it rampant when they came. Therefore some other reason for the necessity of State interference must be found. What was this?

Plainly, on the very face of things, the answer is to be found. It was the order, the law, the freedom from conspiracy, assassination, self-aggrandisement, which English protection had ensured. In the old times an heirless râjah of past fifty would have been the centre of a snatching crowd of nobles, and the strongest would have asserted his right, and possibly hurried on the death of the dying king, or ever the lord-paramount had time to interfere; and then a payment in gold would have satisfied authority! So degeneracy did not matter; a new family always took the place of the dead one.

Now there was a hard and fast law which had to be obeyed by king and subject alike; a bitter lesson for any Oriental to learn, whose very idea of kingship is its superiority to order.

The trouble in Oude began--when did it not begin!

In 1760 Sûjah-ud-daula, its hereditary wazîr, well beaten by the Company for aggression on Bengal, ceded Allahabad and Korah, but was left undisputed master of the rest of his territories. In 1768, again in consequence of defeat, he was bound over to reduce his army. In 1773 he once more bound himself to further dependence in return for troops. In 1775 Sûjah-ud-daula died, and his son Asâf-ud-daula, in return for "good consideration," ceded territory as perpetual payment of the said troops, and afterwards, by various treaties, promised, in return for the guarantee of the possession, protection, and administration of Oude, to govern "in such a manner as would be conducive to the prosperity of his subjects"; also, to act on the advice of the British Government. Sa'adut-Ali, his successor, ratified these treaties, and showed, by the mere fact of his amassing treasure to the amount of £14,000,000 during his reign of fifteen years, that they were not, at least, pecuniarily hard. Ghâzi-ud-din, the next Nawâb or wazîr, regained a certain independence, not by treaty, but by loaning out his father's millions to the Company. The sop of being allowed to assert his independence of Delhi and call himself King was thrown to him; but he was no ruler, and the aid of British troops being refused him, "except in support of just and legitimate demands," he defied the treaty which limited his own army, and kept sixty thousand native troops, two-thirds of whom were entirely without discipline, living naturally by rapine and robbery. His son Nâsir-ud-din, hopeless debauchee, continued and increased these evils, drawing down on himself the solemn warning of Lord William Bentinck in 1829, that deposition must surely follow on such misrule. Unfortunately, however, advice how to rule was refused, and on Nâsir-ud-din's death--of course without issue--advantage was taken of the accession of the old man--almost in his dotage--Nâsir-ud-daula, to obtain a fresh and still more stringent treaty, by which, if misrule continued, the British Government reserved the '_right to administer, rendering account to the Nawâb_,' and so far as possible maintaining existing forms so as to '_facilitate the future restoration of power to its rightful owner_.' In other words the Nawâb was, if contumacious, to be put under trustees for the time. This was in 1837. At Nâsir-ud-daula's death in 1842 his son succeeded, and in 1847 another son rose to the throne by his brother's death--of course without issue. Now Wajîd-Ali-Shâh, the last Nawâb or King of Oude, was utterly worthless. One has but to read the journal of the Resident, General Sleeman, to recognise how hopeless was the problem of peace, prosperity, or progress, under his rule. Surrounded by fiddlers, prostitutes, poetasters, eunuchs, he wasted half the revenues on these creatures, by whom he was led about, a silly imbecile, with drugged brain and diseased body.

"There is not, I believe," writes General Sleeman--a man of infinite knowledge of the native, infinite sympathy with them--"another Government in India so entirely opposed to the best interests and most earnest wishes of the people as that of Oude now is. People of all classes have become utterly weary of it."

No better case for deposition, for the removing of a whole people from the grip of fatuous immorality and crass misrule, could be found than this; but the means chosen to effect the desirable consummation were mean in the extreme. There were two definite treaties regarding the government of Oude. The one signed in 1837, gave as the punishment for misrule, the placing of the administration _under trustees only_. That signed in 1801 gave a guarantee of British protection in return for the cession of certain territories, _provided the administration of Oude coincided with the advice of the Company_. In this case, therefore, the only penalty was palpably the _withdrawal of protection_.

Neither of these penalties satisfied the desire for a total change of policy. Instead of saying this openly, instead of boldly running up the flag of England, and saying: "This passes! It can no longer be permitted, that, under the protection of England such vice, such fraud, such extortion, such downright devilry, should exist. This crazy, imbecile, lecherous, drunken scoundrel shall take his pension and cease to be a tyrant." Instead of all this, with at least some backbone of righteous indignation to carry it through, Lord Dalhousie the Governor-General and his advisers informed the Nawâb that the treaty of 1837 had never been ratified in England, but that by some mistake the fact had never been notified to him! And this after Lord Hardinge in 1847 had threatened the Nawâb with the penalty laid down in that treaty, and no other!

It is almost incredible! But there is more to tell. By thus setting the treaty of 1837 aside, that of 1801 remained, under which the English had no power to do more than withdraw their protection from Oude. Thus annexation stood less justified than ever, except on the plain ground of the greatest good of the greatest number.

Oude was annexed in 1856. It was the recruiting-ground of a large portion of our native armies, and there is no doubt whatever that we have here the great political cause of disloyalty. In the previous two or three years, also, many measures had been passed to rouse religious resentment and suspicion, such as the Hindu widows re-marriage Act, and the Act to remove all forfeiture of property due to a change of religion. Nor were these things, as of old, too remote to touch on the common lives of the people. In Lord Dalhousie's term of office alone 4,000 miles of electric telegraph wires had spread a network over India, railways were every day eating into the heart of the land, a road, metalled, duly laid out for posting, stretched 2,000 miles from Culcutta to Peshâwar, schools were starting up in the rural districts, and letters--stamped letters--carrying God knows what of lies born of fear or fraud, were being delivered for a trifle to almost every town and hamlet in India.

A mighty change this, bringing with it at every point the defiling touch of the Feringhi.

Nor was this all. Government was changing. It might be for the better--at any rate, it could not be for the worse--but still it was strange. The man to whom the revenue would in future be paid would have a white face, and that in itself was disturbing.

Yes! without doubt, the West was encroaching fast

Oude, it has been said, was the great recruiting-ground of our native cavalry, but also for our table attendants. The first went home to hear tales of annexation, of order which gave the brotherhood-of-arms that had remained at home no chance of plunder as in the past. The latter took home with them on their holidays long tales of the mem-sahibas, and the sahibs' command that all servants should attend family prayers; and of the _bakshish_ of kindness to be gained by professing interest in the new faith.

So, fostered by professional agitators, by disappointed claimants--even as the present unrest is fostered in India nowadays--the indefinite fear of something grew in the years between 'fifty and 'fifty-seven.

THE GREAT MUTINY

A.D. 1857 TO A.D. 1859

Heaven knows there were not wanting signs and portents in India before "'fifty-seven" which might have put statesmen on their guard--had they known of them.

But the terrible fact is that they did not know of them. Why? Because those whose duty it was to keep their fingers on the pulse of the body corporate, whose duty it was to note every passing symptom of the new organism of whose life so much remained to be learnt, did not, as a rule, know enough of the language of India; the language by which alone they could gather information at first hand.

Reading the records of these fateful two years, plodding through question and answer in many a weary enquiry or trial in which long pages of evidence are given by officers who required an interpreter in dealing with the men under them, the connection comes home startlingly, that the greatest cause of the Indian Mutiny was the ignorance of Englishmen. And this much is certain; that in every case where incipient rebellion was quelled, where officers seemed to have had some hold over their subordinates, the influence came through "knowledge of the vernaculars."

Yet so great was the ignorance of England, that even General Hearsay, a man noted for his tolerant friendliness with his sepoys, could write on the 11th February 1857: "We have at Barrackpore been dwelling on a mine ready for explosion."

Still some there were who saw, who feared and even gave expression to their fears, like Sir Charles Metcalfe.

"I expect to wake some fine day and find India lost to the English Crown."

Fateful words, which might have come true but for the national characteristic of Englishmen: their readiness to die in order to retrieve the mistakes they have lived to make.

What, then, were those signs. There were many. Chief amongst them the steady distribution northwards and westwards of the hearth-baked cake which passed from the hands of one village watchman to the other, with the mysterious message? "For the elders; from the south to the north, from the east to the west." What did it mean? Heaven knows. Most likely it was merely an attempt to arouse in the calm, steadfast lives of the peasants in their fields, something of the unrest which was being felt wherever native life impinged upon the life of the new master. It failed, of course. Throughout the whole Mutiny, the India of the wide wheat-fields, the flooded rice-patches, the sugarcane brakes, the tall millet-stretches, and the snow-tufted cotton bushes, dreamt on peacefully.

Then there was the general grievance, started craftily in Calcutta and carried throughout every native regiment in India, of the grease-defiled cartridges. Was the tale true or untrue? In the beginning, at Dum-Dum, there may have been a possibility of suet smearing. Afterwards there was none. But that mattered little. Agitators, professional agitators, were abroad, and in India no lie is too gross to be believed.

Then the commissariat flour was defiled purposely by bone dust--(it may have been of malice prepense, for agitation in India _sticks at nothing_); no righteous man could eat of it and live. This was a dish prepared for the high-caste Brahmins, and Kshatriyas of Oude; and for the Mussulmans a like poisoned _plât_ was made ready by the English shiftings and shufflings over the annexation of that country and the deposition of its king.

Taking this, and a like anger from every decadent court in India, the absolute brutality of the Mutiny ceases to be inexplicable. Every scoundrel in India was against us. Doubtless, honest dread of wholesale conversion, even a sense of duty, drove many fairly honest men to murder; but the whole Mutiny was, so to speak, engineered by lust of power which had passed.

The 34th Native Infantry began the ball at Barrackpore, about 100 miles north of Calcutta, and so within reach of the priestly power that gathers always round Mai-Kâli's famous and bloody shrine. Thanks to General Hearsay's prompt action, it was quelled. The story of the old man's gallop across the parade-ground, revolver in hand, accompanied by his protesting son as aide-de-camp, is well worth telling, but there is no time for it here. Then fires began to break out in cantonments all over India, showing a state of unrest, which made old General Hearsay give the warning so early as the 18th of April, that "the Hindoos, generally, are not at present trustworthy servants of the State."

By the 2nd of May his words were found true in Lucknow, where a regiment of irregular cavalry--part of the late Nawâb's marauding army--mutinied openly over the greased cartridge question--which had now so openly become a pretence--and was disarmed by Sir Henry Lawrence's prompt action. But India had not an indefinite supply of heroes and hard-headed old campaigners ready and able to cope with danger, and the 10th May at Meerut found hopeless, helpless weakness.

In order to abate the growing grievance of the cartridge, orders had been issued that they were no longer to be bitten as of old, but torn, thus obviating, it was thought, all possible danger of caste-defilement. It was a mistaken order, since it gave credence to the lie of their being greased at all. Consequently, the 3rd regiment of Light Cavalry (Oude-recruited almost to a man) refused even to handle them. On the 9th of May, eighty-five men, condemned to ten years' penal servitude for mutiny, were, by General Hewitt's senseless severity, degraded publicly before the whole garrison, and marched off to prison; he the while watching the proceedings complacently from his buggy, for he had already been removed from the Peshâwar command on account of physical unfitness for duty.

Ere twenty-four hours had passed, he proved himself also mentally unfit to grapple with a great emergency. Meerut was in flames, women and children lying murdered, yet His Majesty's 60th Rifles, the 6th Dragoon Guards, the European Artillery, and no small loyal contingent from the native regiments, were cooped up, inactive; not even one man sent to warn Delhi, but 30 miles away!

How the heart aches as one reads of brave men on their knees begging for a squadron! Only a troop! For a gun! for anything! wherewith to dash down the broad, white road, and guard the way to Delhi--begging, and being refused!

All one can say is that, inadvertently, General Hewitt did good service to his country, in that his folly precipitated, and made premature, an outbreak which, had it gone on to full growth, would surely have lost us India for a time.

"To Delhi! To Delhi!" That was the one cry of the half-dazed mutineers, feeling freedom full in their faces; unexpected, unhoped-for freedom. Yet, even so, the old habit was strong on them. They must have a master; if the new one hid like a coward, they must find another. And at Delhi was the representative of the House of Timur, of Akbar, whose memory still lingered in the hearts alike of Hindu and Mahomedan. He, the man without a State-religion, the man who had held the balance true, to whom all religions equal, was master indeed! Whether old Bahâdur-Shâh, his degenerate descendant, who since Akbar II.'s death had dozed and dreamed away a drugged life full of causeful and causeless complaints, was in the plot beforehand, or whether it took him by surprise to find himself acclaimed King instead of Puppet, is a moot point. All that is to be known of this is, that a nine months' trial--a trial, be it remembered, by a victorious, autocratic accuser which thus, in a country like India, where strength ever goes to the strong, could have its pick of witnesses--failed to find evidence of complicity.

Not that it mattered, save to one poor, dottled old man saved thus from the hangman's noose, whether he knew or did not know. Events marched with terrible rapidity, murderous certainty, whether the palace gave orders for them or whether it watched, stupefied, expectant. The Ridge was swept clear of Englishmen, women, children, save for the few who sought refuge in the Flagstaff Tower, thus deferring for a time their inevitable fate. Dawn had brought the first troopers to shoot down the captain of the palace guards and savagely to cut to pieces Simon Fraser, the Commissioner, who attempted to harangue them, and all day long massacre had gone on unabashed; but even the blood-drunken assassins paused and held their breaths when at sunset, with a great roar, a shaking of solid earth which by force made the bodies of the mutineers shiver, the "Glorious Nine" in the Arsenal sent their message of defiance to the skies. Truly, that blowing-up of the magazine by the "Nine"-by Willoughby, Forrest, Scully, Buckley, and five others--may be likened to the roar of the British Lion, as yet half-asleep.

It was the only note of defiance that was heard at Delhi for five long weeks.

Women and children were murdered; the Palace, roused from its dreamings, took the goods the Gods gave--and small blame to it, seeing how coincident had been the dwining of the Moghuls' power with the widening of English influence; the mutineers looked in each others faces, almost appalled at their own success; yet still the master made no sign. Truly had it been said that their rule was but to be one hundred years, and was not this the centenary of Plassey, when Sâbat-Jung, the "Daring in War," had first laid finger on Hindustan?

If the "Daring in War" had been here now! That was a thought which surely must have been in the minds of many of these hereditary soldiers whose fathers may have fought against Clive. But there were no such sahibs nowadays; Surâj-ud-daula--on whom be peace!--had said sooth when he held the English but a small nation--scarce ten thousand warriors all told!

In good sooth, however, there was some excuse for inaction. Of personal courage--take a stronger word and say heroism--there was no lack, but of national preparedness, nothing. Mutiny spread like mushroom spawn in the dark, and everywhere took authority by surprise, so holding back the power which otherwise would have been free for giving help where help was needed. Fortunately, some places found a man able and willing to take the lead. At Benares, two hundred Europeans faced and overpowered two thousand sepoys, chiefly owing to the personal vitality of Colonel Neill, and at Lucknow Sir Henry Lawrence, after crushing one rebellion, was calmly making his preparations for the next, which he knew must come ere long. Whether in his sagacious head lay the thought that by holding Lucknow at all costs he might lessen the pressure of Delhi, and so divert the attention of some mutineers from that central point, who can say? But his action undoubtedly saved the whole situation. Had Lucknow--the defenders--gone, thus setting free the hordes of rebels investing it, the forlorn hope of attackers who clung to the Red Ridge of Delhi in almost helpless defiance all the long hot summer could not have held their own.

So when the question is raised as to which heads the list of importance in this history of the Mutiny--the Defence of Lucknow or the Forlorn Hope of Delhi--the only possible answer is, that they both form part and parcel of the one desperate effort to retain hold of Empire in India.

The fact that a whole month elapsed ere the blow given at Meerut was returned, made the task of the Red Ridge a harder one. But for the loyalty of the Punjâb the counterblow might have been even longer in coming. Sir John Lawrence, however, was at Lahôre, and none of the Lawrences ever failed their country. Still, Fate was unkind, and Englishmen--brave, patriotic Englishmen--still more unkind in their lack of comprehension. When the blow was finally struck at Budli-keserâi, and the mutineers ran pell-mell for Delhi, 6 miles off, they were not followed, though the Kashmîr and the Mori gates were open wide, though the populace were waiting, waiting, watching for the master's return. But we condemned Delhi unheard. We held every man in it a rebel, and so, as night fell, the open gates were closed once more. How many men's life-blood was spilt thereinafter in trying to open them as wide again? God knows. So the army clung to the Red Ridge instead, and as the heat grew and the rocks seemed to blister and the sunshine to scorch, half of it gave up the struggle for a quiet sleep in the shadow of Earth's breast. Even the generals died; but the change of command brought no change in action, until, on the 5th of August, a tall, lank, black-bearded man rode into camp ahead of the relief column with which he had marched from Peshâwar. It was John Nicholson.

By a curious coincidence, a faint echo of the challenging roar which Willoughby and Forrest, Buckley and Scully, had sent to the skies just three months before, greeted his entry as the powder factory in the rebel camp blew up. But this was no challenge; it was a salute. Within ten days of the arrival of the four thousand who had come to relieve the six thousand on the Ridge, the battle of Nujufghur had been won. On this occasion the troops under Nicholson marched 36 miles through a morass, and fought a desperately hard fight in six-and-thirty hours. But Nicholson did not spare others, because he did not spare himself. Then ensued a wait of nine days, ere the siege-train arrived; a wait that was full of work. The man saw what had to be done, and made up his mind to do it, despite all difficulties placed in his way; for he was but six-and-thirty, and the older officers had not his fire, his dash.

It was on the 14th of September 1857, at three o'clock in the grey dawn, that the assault of Delhi commenced: by noon it was taken, but the man who had taken it lay shot through the breast. He had attempted the impossible. He had seen his own regiment--Jacob's rifles, the 1st Bengal Fusileers--hesitate, and hesitate perhaps rightly, seeing that the storming of that lane by the Burne bastion had been attempted many times and failed. So he had given the old call, "Forward, Fusileers! Officers to the front!" and had led the way.

The rush did not fail that time. The Burne bastion was taken, but the heart and soul of the man who had arisen for this purpose had orders for recall. John Nicholson lay dying.

He lived to see the whole city taken, the English flag floating over the Palace. Concerning the charge that drunkenness amongst the English army was the cause of the five days' delay in achieving this end, much has been written. Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, who was on the staff, has given an authoritative denial to this charge, by stating that he did not see a single drunken man throughout the day of the assault, although in the "discharge of his duty, he visited every position held within the walls."

This sounds satisfactory, were it not for the fact that this inspection was immediately followed by a general order for fatigue parties to destroy all liquor found in the shops (though some of it was urgently needed by the hospital); and also for the subsequent despatch which says, three days later, that an attempt to take the Lahôre gate had failed, "because of the refusal of the European soldiers to follow their officers."

But Delhi was taken, and, practically, the Mutiny was at an end. For the sepoys could not live without a master, and the master, a trembling, distracted old man, had given himself up from his hiding-place in his great ancestor Humayon's tomb, to Major Hodson, of Hodson's Horse. Concerning the yielding up of, and the subsequent shooting down of, the Delhi princes, much again has been written. Whether honourably or treacherously given, they richly deserved their fate; but the validity of the excuse that the shooting down was a sudden necessity which arose out of the fact that rescue was attempted while Major Hodson was conveying them under escort to Delhi, is fatally injured by a tiny scrap of evidence, irrefutable absolutely.

Hodson's favourite orderly, in telling the story in after years, invariably gives this detail: "Prince Abûl-bakr wore a talisman on his arm; so I said to Hodseyn-Sahib: 'Wait a bit, Huzoor! to kill him with that on will bring ill-luck. I'll take it off ere we shoot him.'"

No hurry there, no stress of circumstances surely, to make the immediate use of a revolver necessary?

But, once again, Delhi was taken. "If ever India needs a deed of daring done, John Nicholson is the man to do it." So had said a comrade-in-arms years before, and now the deed was done. Delhi, which had focussed rebellion for four long months, was taken by assault.

And how of defence?

Lucknow still held out, despite the death of the man who had made defence possible, for Henry Lawrence died from a shell-wound on the 4th July; but he left stout hearts behind him. And then, with all justice be it said, the besiegers were but half-hearted. They must have been so, else how could a scant garrison of fifteen hundred, in a weak position, with scarce a palisade in some places between them and the foe, have held their own against close on twelve thousand soldiers, backed by the wildest, wickedest, most wanton town-rabble in all India? And the population of Lucknow runs into hundreds of thousands.

Meanwhile, English troops on their way to China had been stopped and diverted to India by telegraph; England, grasping the magnitude of the disaster, was sending out regiment after regiment, and divisions were being formed up and sent hither and thither to quell and to punish. Amongst the commanders of these, Henry Havelock stands first, and at the head of a movable column, started for Cawnpore in July. Too late to save the beleaguered garrison, pent up foolishly in untenable entrenchments; too late even to save the horrible tragedy of the well at Cawnpore, into which, by the wanton wickedness of a courtesan, two hundred English women and children were thrown, after being foully murdered.

They did not, however, die in vain; for from the moment the news of the awful massacre reached the English camps there was no more hesitation. Not by God, but by the slaughter-house at Cawnpore, every man swore that retribution should be bitter and deep. How deep, how bitter it was, it is not well to say. Let the dead past bury its dead. It was hard for the British soldier to believe that the peasants whose villages he entered in his forced marches scarcely knew that war was abroad. But so it was. Within 20 miles of Delhi itself there are villages which passed through the Great Mutiny time knowing no more of it than that "the Toorkh"--the bugbear of Indian rustic life--had appeared again. That sometimes with a dark face, sometimes with a white one, he appeared, plundered the grain-stores, perhaps cut down a man or two, mayhap ravished a woman, and then disappeared. That was all. To the vast, the overwhelming majority of the people of India, that was all!

But to those who had sworn by the festering, blood-stained well at Cawnpore, all life seemed bound up in those two thoughts: "Will Delhi fall ere we reach it to help?" "Will Lucknow hold out ere we can relieve it?"

There was so much to be done. All over the country isolated resistances were staring death in the face bravely. At Arrah, half a dozen civilians held a miserable thatched bungalow for days, almost amusing themselves in its defence, strengthening its possibilities with mud from the garden, and using their sporting rifles with deadly effect on their foes. In another place a magistrate used his bulky files to fortify the public office roof, writing afterwards to report coolly that for impenetrability he could recommend a good criminal case, full of hard swearing.

All this, and hundreds of other heroisms, filled up the long hot summer of '57. The rains fell copiously, the crop was a bumper one, the peasants, mercifully, had no time to think, even, of aught save its harvesting and husbanding; there was so much to be done.

On the 25th of September, just five days after the final fall of Delhi, Havelock and Outram, with a small force, had pushed their way through to Lucknow, but, though the garrison was relieved, the generals did not feel themselves strong enough to march out and face the rebels. So once more, but now heartened up by the certainty of success which came to every Englishman in India with John Nicholson's daring deed, Lucknow waited for more help.

It came with Sir Colin Campbell's force on the 16th of November, when, leaving Outram to hold the Alumbagh with three thousand five hundred men, the general marched back as he had come, triumphantly carrying with him the women, the children, and the sick.

Thus the Defence had ended, the Attack had succeeded, and only Retribution remained.

By this time the Delhi column, set free from its task, had marched southwards for further assault. Agra, Jhânsi, Central India generally, had to be settled, and settled they were satisfactorily.

By the 11th of May 1858 the Mutiny had disappeared, as the mutineers themselves had disappeared on that fateful day in late September 1857, when, having retreated--some fifty or sixty thousand strong--from Delhi to the plains about Agra, the dusk found them encamped, still coherent, still resolved on struggle, and the night glittered with the watch-fires of a vast army. But the dawn, coming cloudily, reluctantly, found only the dead ashes of a resolve that had passed in the night; the men who had made it had vanished into thin air. They were hurrying back to their homes, eager to be found peacefully at work when the master should once more come on his tour of inspection.

The 2nd of August in that same year a bill for the "Better Government of India" passed into law.

It had eighty-five sections, but its general object was to transfer the whole administration of India from the Company to the Crown.

Whether better government has resulted, or not, is a question which it is to be hoped the English reader of this mere sketch of Indian history may be more qualified to judge than he (or she) was before the perusal of these slight pages.

INDEX

Abul-faiz,

Abul-fazl,

Agriculture,

Ajâta-sutru,

Akbar,

Ala-ud-din,

Alexander,

Alighur,

Ali-Verdi-Khân,

Allah-ud-din,

Altâmish,

Anabasis,

Anangpal,

Ancient Age,

Andhra,

Antivivisection,

Architects,

Architecture,

Arcot,

Arrian,

Aryan, ----gods, ----laws,

Asaf-daula,

Asaf-Jâh,

Asôka,

Assaye,

Astronomy,

Asva-medha,

Attock,

Auckland, Lord,

Aurungzebe,

Babar,

Bactrians,

Bâhmani dynasty,

Baji-rao,

Battlefield,

Beâs,

Begums,

Begum Sumroo,

Benares,

Bentinck,

Bernier's views,

Bhattinda,

Bhim-si,

Bhishma,

Bimbi-sâra,

Bindu-sâra,

Birbal,

Black Hole,

Board of Control,

Bodh-Gya,

Bo tree,

Brahmâna,

Brahmans,

Bucephalus,

Buddha,

Buddhism,

Buddhist Councils, ----Creed,

Bussy,

Byrâm I., ----II., ----III.

Campaigns of the Crescent,

Carnatic,

Censorship,

Chandra-gûpta I., ----II.,

Chaos,

Character of Hindus,

Charter,

Chikandîn,

Child, Sir John,

Chitore,

Christianity,

Church establishment,

Chytuc,

Clive,

Coins,

Coote,

Cornwallis, Lord,

Cuttack,

Dalhousie, Lord,

Darius,

Dark Ages,

Dâsyas,

Dekkan,

Delhi,

Deva-datta,

Devastated India,

Dharnia Sûtra,

Didda,

Doaba,

Drama,

Drâupadi,

Dupleix,

Eastern knowledge,

East Indian Companies,

Ellenborough, Lord,

English administration, ----army, ----encroachments, ----grip on India, ----laws, ----motive, ----travellers,

Epic period,

Faizi,

Fatehpur Sikri,

Ferghâna,

Ferishta,

Ferôze Toghluk,

First grants,

Fortunâta, Princess,

Francis, Philip,

French and English, ----Companies,

Frontiers,

Ganga,

Ganges,

Geography,

Ghâzi-ud-din,

Ghiâss-ud-din,

Ghori,

Ghuznevide dynasty,

Ghuzni,

Godeken,

Gold,

Golden Age,

Gondophares,

Grammarians,

Greased cartridge,

Great Mauryas, ----Moghuls,

Greed of gold,

Greek influence,

Gupta Empire,

Hamida,

Hamîr,

Hardinge, Lord,

Harsha,

_Harsha-charita_,

Hastinapûr,

Hekataios,

Hemu,

Herât,

Hiuen T'sang,

Horse sacrifice,

House of Sûr,

Humâyon,

Hydaspes,

Hyder-Ali,

Hymns,

Impeachments,

Indian agriculture, ----architecture, ----geography, ----knowledge, ----literature, ----lost river, ----morality, ----philosophy, ----policy, ----religions, ----rivers, ----secretiveness,

Indo-Bactrian,

Indo-Parthian,

Invasion, Aryan, ----Bactrian, ----Mahomed, ----Mongolian, ----Parthian, ----Sâkas, ----Yuehchi,

_Jâghirs_,

Jahângir,

Jainism,

Jaipal,

Janâka,

Jesuits,

Jeysulmêr,

Jhelum,

Jingi,

Jodhpur,

Johâr,

Jullunder,

Kabul,

Kafûr,

Kalidasa,

Kalîngar,

Kandahâr,

Kanîshka,

Kapîla,

Kârna,

Kaurâvas,

Khilji dynasty,

King's duties,

Kishna Kumari,

Kosâla,

Kshatriya,

Kutb-din-Eîbuk,

Kutb Minâr,

Labourdonnais,

Lahôre,

Lake, Lord,

Lally,

Lawrence,

Lost river,

Love,

McNaghten,

Madras,

Magadha,

Mâhâbhârata,

Mahmûd Ghuzni, ----ambition, ----greed,

Mahomed, ----death of, ----Ghori, ----Toghluk, ----treachery of,

Mahratta,

Manes,

Mangalore,

Marvellous Millenium,

Maurya,

Megasthenes,

Mercenaries,

Middle Age,

Mihr-un-nissa,

Mîr-Jâffar,

Missionaries,

Mobârik,

Moghul,

Moira, Earl of,

Monism,

Monopoly,

Mornington, Lord,

Mutiny,

Nâdir, invasion of,

Nâga,

Nagarkôt,

Nanda dynasty,

Nâsir-ud-daula,

Nâsir-ud-din, ----,

_Nawa-ratani_,

Nawâb of Bengal,

New Rajagrîha,

Nine gem necklace, ----Nandas,

Nizâm,

Nuncomâr,

Nurjahân,

Nyaya,

Omichand,

Oude,

Oudipur,

Outlying provinces,

Padmani,

Palibothra,

Pandu,

Pâniput,

Parthians,

Pataliputra,

Patna,

Peace of Aix la Chapelle,

Permanent settlement,

Persistency of creed,

Personality,

Pertap,

Pillars of Asôka,

Pirates,

Plassey,

Pondicherry,

Portuguese,

Porus,

Prithvi-Râj,

Private trade,

Punjâb,

Puranas, ----creed,

Queen Elizabeth,

Rajagrîha,

Râjputni heroism,

Râjputs, ----confederacy, ----resistance,

Râmâyana,

Râzia Begum,

Reinhardt,

Religion,

Rig-Veda,

Rock edicts,

Sa'adut-Ali,

Sabaktagîn,

Sai-nair,

Sâkas,

Salîm,

Samûdra-gupta,

Sanchi,

Sandracottus,

Sankhya,

Sanwat era,

Sarâswati,

Scythians,

Seleukos Nikator,

Self-choice,

Serpent kings,

Ses-nâga kings,

Shahâb-ud-din,

Shâhjahân,

Sidi Dervish,

Sikhs,

Siva-ji,

Sivalak,

Slave kings,

Smith,

Soma,

Somnâth,

Sonpût,

St Thomas,

Successions,

Sunjogata,

Surâj-ud-daula,

Susceptibility to personal equation,

Sûtra,

Syyeds,

Tâj,

Takshaks,

Taksîla,

Tanjore,

Tartar dynasties,

Taxîles,

Teetotalism,

Teignmouth Shore,

Thanêswar,

Timur, ----, cruelty of,

Tippoo-Sultân,

Toghluk dynasty,

Tôghlukabad,

Toork,

Trichinopoly,

Trumpet-flower City,

Ujjain,

University,

Ûpanishads,

Vaisasika,

Vedanta,

Vedas,

Vellore,

Vikramadîtya,

Vyan-Mâta,

Warren Hastings,

Watson,

Wazîr-Ali,

Wellesley, Marquis of, ----, Arthur,

White Huns,

Woman's plea,

Yoga,

Yuehchi,

Yunâni system,

Zemindar,

PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET.

End of Project Gutenberg's India Through the Ages, by Flora Annie Steel