Part 12

Lord Minto, equally with Barlow, shrank from any imitation of Lord Wellesley's masterful keeping of the peace. The result was that Central India became the resort of large bands of free-booters, who ultimately rallied themselves, thirty thousand strong, under the name of Pindaris, with a single leader Amir Khan, and bade fair to destroy the Rajputs, who were our friends, altogether. The danger was the greater, inasmuch as the beaten Maratha leaders were chafing under their defeat, and were likely to use the Pindaris as allies. Central India in fact was in a most deplorable condition, when Minto was succeeded in 1814 by Lord Moira, better known as Marquess Hastings, a very able soldier and a resolute man, who realised at once that anarchy must be stopped in Hindostan, otherwise something worse than anarchy might result from it. His first trouble was with the Nepalis or Gurkhas, who were encroaching upon British lands in Bengal and in 1814 actually seized two districts. Hastings at once resolved upon war, and sent an army to penetrate the passes into the mountains. The expedition is noteworthy, for it was the first of our many invasions into the great hill ranges which surround the north of India. The operations were not easy; and it was necessary to invade the frontier in four different columns, varying in strength from four to eight thousand men. One of these was thrice repulsed in attacks upon a hill-fort; and Gillespie, its commander, was killed. There were slight reverses in other parts also, for some of the British officers showed anything but ability; but all was redeemed by the brilliant conduct of General David Ochterlony, commanding the most westerly of the four divisions, who broke through the whole of the Gurkha defences before him, and forced them in the summer of 1815 to sue for peace. Hostilities were renewed, however, the next year, when Ochterlony, now in supreme command, by further operations drove the Gurkhas to submission. They ceded to us a long tract of the Lower Himalayas, and thus our frontier was brought up to that of the Chinese Empire. Since then there has been unbroken friendship between England and Nepal; and there are no more loyal, efficient and gallant troops in the Imperial service than the Gurkhas.

Meanwhile the situation in Central India had grown worse and worse; and the Pindaris, secretly abetted by the Maratha chiefs, made inroads upon British territory within Bengal and Madras. The Rajputs implored the help of Hastings, who in 1817 set over one hundred thousand men in motion, more than forty thousand from the Dekhan, and more, than sixty thousand from Hindostan. The occasion was worthy of so large a force, for three of the Maratha chiefs, Peshwa, Holkar and Bonsla, had thrown in their lot with the Pindaris. The Marathas were speedily weakened by three defeats at Kirki, Sitabaldi and Mahidpur; and part of the armies were then turned upon the Pindaris in converging columns, so as to break them up completely. Defeat after defeat of these free-booters followed, for every man's hand was against them. For years, owing to the timidity of Minto, they had ridden roughshod over the unhappy villagers with murder, torture and rapine, but now their time was come. This campaign is the second instance of the employment of the British cavalry in marches of astonishing length and swiftness to exterminate bands of brigands. Arthur Wellesley had set the example in 1800, and it was worthily followed now. Very soon but one formidable band of Pindaris was left under a leader named Chitu, who was hunted for days and weeks until he was driven at last into the jungle and killed by a tiger. The remnant of the Peshwa's Marathas was again defeated at Korigaon; his strongholds fell one after another; and at length in March, 1819, the war was brought to an end. The boundaries of the Maratha states were carefully defined; their predatory system was utterly abolished; and their territories were made subject to Wellesley's principle with regard to troops, disputes with neighbours and relations with foreign powers. Then for the first time for nearly two centuries there was peace in Central India.

There were now but two points of disturbance on the British frontier: in the north-west, where the genius of Ranjit Singh had united the Sikhs into a single powerful and essentially military nation by conquest; and in the north-east, where the Burmese armies had carried aggression so far as to invade border-states under British protection. The ill-deeds of these last caused Lord Amherst, the Governor-General, to send in 1824 a formidable force of eleven thousand men against them. Few expeditions have been undertaken with more fatuous contempt of information and enquiry than this one. The army was sent by sea to Rangoon with orders to ascend the Irrawadi by water, capturing all the principal cities which lie upon its banks, and so penetrating to Ava. As the province of Pegu, in which Rangoon stands, was a comparatively recent conquest of the Burmese, it was assumed that the inhabitants would be friendly and native supplies plentiful. On the contrary the troops found Rangoon deserted, no boats, no native pilots, no supplies, and were obliged to remain in and about the city, eating such salted and preserved provisions as they had brought with them, until a fresh supply could be brought from India. This accordingly they did, only making occasional sorties to prevent the Burmese from hemming them in altogether. These were costly little operations, for the Burmese threw up stockades with astonishing skill and swiftness, and these required to be stormed. On several occasions attacks upon them were repulsed with loss. Having arrived at the beginning of the rainy season in order to have plenty of water to ascend the river, the British had to endure all the misery and unhealthiness of the rains, aggravated by bad food, with the result that sickness made havoc of the troops and reduced their effective numbers at one moment to three thousand men. The Burmese closed in upon them in force; but in December, 1824, were driven back by a general attack upon their whole line.

When the news of the situation reached Calcutta the Government sent out two additional expeditions to invade the province of Ava overland, one from Manipur, the other from Chittagong. The first route was found impracticable, owing to the density of the forest; the second force, eleven thousand strong, advanced upon Aracan and captured it, but failed, from neglect of sound geographical information, to find a way to the army on the Irrawadi, which it had been intended to join, and remained helpless and stationary. One fourth of the men died during the rainy season of 1825, and half of the survivors were in hospital. The main army meanwhile advanced up the Irrawadi into the interior, captured Prome, and after several smart actions arrived within sixty miles of Ava, when the Burmese at the beginning of 1826 met them and made submission. Assam, Aracan and Tennasserim were ceded to the British, and thus some compensation was gained for a very costly and destructive campaign. The casual fashion in which war had been begun in a region of continuous marsh and forest at the beginning of the rainy season, when the whole country was inundated, was thoroughly English and most condemnable. Thousands of lives were sacrificed which might have been saved, and it was fortunate that matters fell out no worse than they did. Meanwhile the eternal assault of stockades was very trying to the troops, and gave opportunities, which were abundantly taken, for brilliant displays of valour.

While this was going on, the throne of Bhurtpore became vacant through the death of the Rajah, and was usurped by a pretender. This was a direct menace to the peace of India; and Sir David Ochterlony, who was the Resident at Delhi, at once assembled a force to drive out the usurper. So little, however, did the Governor-General know his duty, that he countermanded the project and publicly censured Ochterlony in terms of extravagant harshness. The veteran General resigned, but was so much affected by Amherst's foolish policy and by the slight put upon himself that he died soon afterwards. Then of course Amherst was obliged to do at last what he should have done at first, and Sir Stapleton Cotton was sent with twenty thousand men to besiege the famous fortress which had foiled the eager impetuosity of Lake. Its strength may be imagined by the statistics that its circuit is five miles in extent, that the ditch of the citadel was fifty yards wide and fifty feet deep, and that the ramparts generally, besides being of great height and thickness, were built of clay which refused to crumble away under the battering of round shot. A bastion was therefore undermined and blown up, and the place was stormed out of hand.

Lord Amherst was succeeded in 1828 by Lord William Bentinck, a man who, having had Macaulay to write his epitaph, enjoys a reputation far above his deserts. He was mediocre alike as soldier and statesman, and had an extraordinary knack of doing foolish things. While Governor-General his only idea was to save money for the Directors--he even tried to sell the Taj Mahal, the gem of Mohammedan architecture in India;--but he neglected to keep the peace; he reduced the allowances of the European officers, in direct breach of agreement; and finally, to curry favour with the humanitarians, he, in the face of all advice from British and native soldiers, abolished the punishment of the lash in the native regiments. The mischief which he thus did was incalculable; for he lowered the officers in the eyes of the natives, and so ruined the discipline of the Sepoys that beyond doubt he was the greatest of all contributors to the Mutiny of 1857. The Duke of Wellington, and all who knew India, were furious with him; but being a sentimental Whig, which is synonymous with a man of good intentions and bad judgement, he found and still finds many admirers at home. Let me beg you not to be carried away by their admiration. Bentinck certainly did some good work, but an Indian administrator who ruins the discipline of the army--and Bentinck undoubtedly did so--is not only no statesman, but a foolish and mischievous person.

Bentinck was succeeded by Lord Auckland, whose name, unfortunately for him, is bound up with the greatest of our military disasters in India. Since the fall of Napoleon Russia had steadily pursued her advance eastwards, and by 1828 had not only appropriated some of the western territory of Persia but had gained paramount influence in that country. Thus we found ourselves confronted with the probability that we should presently have an European Power of colossal strength for our neighbour; and the question was how she should be kept at arm's length. The Government resolved that a barrier must be formed in Afghanistan. That country had lately passed out of the line of the creator of the Afghan kingdom into the hands of a strong and competent usurper. Since Persia threatened to indemnify herself for the territory lost to Russia by encroachment upon Afghanistan, this usurper, Dost Mohammed, was anxious for the English alliance. Lord Auckland on the contrary preferred to support the legitimate sovereign, Shah Shuja, who was an exile in the Punjab, and decided to replace him on the throne by an armed force, on the assumption that such an ally would be surer than Dost Mohammed. The operation was one of extreme danger, for the British and Afghan boundaries were hundreds of miles apart. Our base of operations was Scinde, a foreign state under rulers unfriendly to us; and full upon our flank, able at any moment to cut us off from India, lay the Sikhs, equally a foreign state, nominally amicable but really very jealous, and in possession of a powerful army.

A treaty was made with the Amirs of Scinde whereby we obtained the right to use the navigation of the Indus. With enormous difficulty transport and supplies were brought up to feed the armies during the march through the barren passes of Afghanistan; and, after frightful losses of animals and no small peril of starvation, some fifteen thousand men and twenty thousand followers marched by the Bolan and Khojak passes to Kandahar, opened the way from thence to the capital by the storm of Ghazni; and in August, 1839, escorted Shah Shuja into Kabul. Then the difficulties began. It was very soon evident that, without a British force, Shah Shuja's reign would be short; so one division of infantry and a little cavalry and artillery were left to occupy the country, and the rest of the army marched for India. Honours were lavished on the commanders, and everyone flattered himself that the work was done. Signs of insurrection, however, soon showed themselves; and the British troops scattered about between Kabul, Ghazni, Kandahar and Jelalabad were incessantly employed in putting down tribal risings. By the autumn of 1840 the commander of the army of occupation was crying out for reinforcements. The winter of 1840-1 passed away fairly quietly, and not until the following November did the final insurrection at Kabul occur. The general in command there was weak and incompetent; and the whole of his division was cut to pieces. Ghazni and various small forts were captured; and, though Jelalabad and Kandahar were stoutly held, all communication with India was hopelessly cut off. It was necessary to send practically a fresh army to relieve the beleaguered garrisons; but the Indian Government was at first so panic-stricken as to lose all thought of anything but the immediate withdrawal of the army of occupation. The Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, who had succeeded Auckland, later bethought him that such a timid retreat would endanger our whole Empire in India, but had not courage to order a new advance upon Kabul. Happily the generals took the responsibility which their superiors feared to incur. They did not withdraw their armies until they had forced their way triumphantly, the one by the Khyber Pass and Jelalabad, the other from Kandahar, to Kabul. Then and not till then did they evacuate Afghanistan, having shown that the British were still unconquerable. Even so the principle upon which the operations were conducted was open to much criticism, though everything was redeemed by the gallant behaviour of the troops.

While withdrawing from Afghanistan, however, Lord Ellenborough was anxious to retain our hold upon the lower Indus with the fort of Karachi, which had been occupied temporarily as our base for the late operations. Sir Charles Napier was therefore sent out to Scinde with a small force to press upon the Amirs a treaty to that effect. The Amirs very naturally resented the demand; whereupon Napier instantly struck the first blow. His campaign is one which every Englishman should know, and which none has any excuse for not knowing; for its history was written by William Napier. Charles Napier began by making a raid with five hundred and fifty men mounted on camels across many miles of desert to a stronghold of the Amirs, and blowing up the fort with gunpowder. On this march he carried not only provisions but water for the whole force, animals and men. Then returning to the Indus he marched south upon Hyderabad with twenty-eight hundred men; and on the 17th of March, 1843, attacked between twenty and thirty thousand of the enemy at Miani, in a strong position above the bed of a dry river. There followed one of the greatest and most marvellous battles ever fought by the British; and at the close of three hours the enemy was hopelessly routed with a loss of five thousand men. Again the Baluchis managed to collect twenty thousand men; and Napier, having been reinforced to a strength of five thousand men, defeated them in a second action of much the same kind at Dubba; after which he with little more trouble completed the subjection of the Amirs. Scinde was then annexed; and Napier as its first Governor showed himself not less capable as an administrator than as a general.

By this time trouble had arisen in the dominions of Scindia owing to the death of the Maharaja without issue; and an armed insurrection broke out against the authority of the Regent accepted by the British Government. The matter was one which at ordinary times might have been adjusted by patience; but the attitude of the Sikhs, which I shall describe immediately, was such that there could be no trifling. The Maratha armies had been assembled, some thirty thousand strong, including between them twenty-two thousand men trained by European officers; and, with a disputed succession in train, it was impossible to say what mischief their leaders might work. Ellenborough therefore ordered a strong force to enter Scindia's dominions in two columns, and the war was ended in one day--29th of Dec. 1843--by the simultaneous victories of Sir Hugh Gough at Maharajpore, and of General Grey at Punniar. These were the last of our battles with the Marathas. They have never to this day forgiven us for depriving them of the mastery of India; and in 1843, in consequence of our defeats in Afghanistan, they had been stirring up hostility against us in every court of the East. The double defeat therefore gave them a salutary lesson.

Lord Ellenborough was now recalled; and Sir Henry Hardinge, one of Wellington's veterans and a highly accomplished soldier, came out as Governor-General in his stead. The condition of the Punjab was most critical. Ranjit Singh, the great leader and ruler of the Sikhs, had died in 1839, leaving no strong man to succeed him. The succession was of course disputed; and a course of risings, mutinies and assassinations showed that the great Sikh state was sinking into anarchy. All power had passed into the hands of committees of regimental officers, who were in turn partly controlled by the passions of their men. The nominal ruler could think of no better resource than to turn the unruly host across the Sutlej to fight the English, for which some recent frontier disputes furnished sufficient pretext. Lord Hardinge, who had seen what was coming, was ready for them, and some twelve thousand men under Sir Hugh Gough advanced to meet them. Sir Hugh was a very brave man but a very bad commander, who could not see a wall without dashing his head against it. In the first action, Moodkee, he hurried his troops into the fight with every disadvantage, and though victorious lost nine hundred men. In the second action three days later at Ferozeshah, he launched about sixteen thousand British and Sepoys against fifty thousand Sikhs in a very strong position, and was practically beaten at the close of the first day's fighting, though he recovered himself on the second. In this affair he threw away twenty-five hundred men; and on the night after the first engagement the British Empire in India rocked for some hours on the verge of ruin. A month later a far more telling and scientific victory was won by Sir Harry Smith with a detachment of the army at Aliwal; and then Gough made a final blundering attack upon the Sikhs in a strongly entrenched position at Sobraon, where, though the valour of his troops and the devotion of his divisional generals won a decisive victory, it was at a cost once more of nearly twenty-five hundred men.

Sobraon brought the war for the moment to a close; but the government temporarily established by us in the Punjab was weak and inefficient; and early in 1848 a general insurrection brought about a reassembling of the Sikh army to try conclusions with the British once more. Lord Dalhousie, the new Governor-General, at once took up the challenge; and Gough again was in command of the army. He began as usual by knocking his head against a very strong position of the Sikhs at Ramnuggar, and was repulsed. He did precisely the same thing a few weeks later at Chillianwalla, once more lost nearly twenty-five hundred men, and fought at best a drawn battle. Finally a month later he fought a third action at Gujerat on the 21st of February, 1849, showed for once (he or his officers for him) some tactical skill, and won a great and decisive victory with comparatively small loss. The Punjab was then annexed to the British dominions by Dalhousie, and the frontier thus carried to the foot of the mountains of Afghanistan. But the struggle had been very severe, for the Sikhs were most valiant men, very skilful gunners, and masters of the art of choosing strong positions, whereas Gough was a hot-headed Irishman, of splendid bravery, but wholly unfit to command anything larger than a battalion in action.

But still there was no rest for the British Army. Doubtless under the spell of our disasters in Afghanistan, the Burmese Government had been bullying and maltreating British merchants at Rangoon in violation of the treaty of 1826; and its only response to Dalhousie's protests was contemptuous insult to his envoys. An expedition was therefore despatched to Rangoon in 1852, which first and last numbered some twenty thousand men; but on this occasion the campaign was properly thought out. A few towns only, which commanded the mouth of the Irrawadi, were captured so as to cut off all external trade, and within eighteen months the Court of Ava was obliged to sue for peace. The fighting was of slight importance, indeed the sharpest was against dacoits or patriot banditti, some of whom were very formidable. However, the Government at Calcutta took care to provide land-transport, in case an inland advance should be necessary, elephants in particular being employed in very large numbers. The province of Pegu was annexed to the British dominions, and thereupon followed a brief period of peace, during which Dalhousie annexed also three Maratha states, in default of direct heirs, and the Kingdom of Oudh.

It was this period of peace, signifying practically the pacification of all India, that brought about the mutiny of the Sepoys of the Bengal Army. There were various contributory causes, most notably the steady decay of its discipline, partly through the employment of the best officers in political work, and the making of political services the best channel to advancement, partly owing to the steady discouragement of the officers in favour of the men which had marked the mistaken policy of Bentinck. The Sepoys were so continually flattered that they imagined themselves to have conquered India, whereas without European battalions an Indian army is like a spear without a point. They therefore broke out into mutiny, and for a time extinguished British rule in certain districts. Thereupon reappeared all the old animosities of past centuries, Mohammedan and Hindu fighting each other more fiercely than the English; while adventurers joyfully gathered bands of their own kind around them for the gay business of free-booting. Great part of the country settled down to a hearty enjoyment of anarchy; and nearly two years were needed to restore order. Two regiments indeed, the Central India Horse, were raised on purpose to hunt down banditti in Central India, and are still always the first troops to be sent into the field wherever there is serious police-duty to be done.