Kitobni o'qish: «India Under British Rule»

PREFACE

A hundred years ago, when the lively Miss Frances Burney was weeping over the wrongs of Warren Hastings, and the learned and portly Gibbon was still lamenting that he had not entered on an Indian career, there were people in the British Isles who knew something of Indian history. They had picked up information respecting Indian affairs from the speeches of the grave Edmund Burke, the eloquent Charles James Fox, and the impassioned Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The facts may have come second hand, and been more or less distorted by the jealous and bitter fancies of Sir Philip Francis, the reputed author of the Letters of Junius; but facts or fables, they served to enlighten the British public on the Indian questions of the day.

During the present century, the march of intellect has turned away from India, except as regards an outlet for cotton goods, a field for speculation in railways and teas, or a provision for younger sons in the "Indian civil." Within the last few years, however, there has been a change for the better. The British public has been alarmed at the fall in silver. It has been cheered by the proposal to place British-born subjects under the magisterial jurisdiction of Hindus and Mohammedans. It has been aroused by the prospect of a war with Russia in Central Asia; but it has been comforted by the restoration of the fortress of Gwalior to Maharaja Sindia. Moreover, Burma is no longer confounded with Bermuda, and no one groans over the annexation of the country, or the destruction of brigandage by the new rulers. Still there is room for more knowledge. The author, however, has before him a letter from an old friend in high position in India, who tells him plainly that the British government does not want history. Accordingly, the present work is not called a History of India, but India under British Rule.

More than one British ruler in India has, however, sinned against history, and might well like to shut it up with confidential minutes and secret negotiations. Within the present century, India has been desolated by wars as cruel as those of the Heptarchy, and as unmeaning as those of the White and Red Roses. Within the present generation, it has been distracted and tortured by a military revolt, created by a scare about greased cartridges, but leading to crimes more horrible than those of the French Revolution. Yet Anglo-Indian statesmen have been known to ignore the past, and to propound schemes for India that would be too advanced for any European nation excepting Great Britain. They have blinded themselves against history, like ostriches burying their faces in the sand. They have dealt with India, as the German philosopher dealt with the "camel," not by the facts before them, but out of the sublime depths of their moral consciousness, stirred up by a political caucus, or a philanthropic gathering in Exeter Hall.

Controversy and fault-finding are to be deprecated. But reform is only possible after a due consideration of what has been accomplished up to date by British rule in India, and of the flaws and faults in the existing constitution.

It will be seen from the first chapter, that the British traders of the seventeenth century, who established factories, built fortresses, and created manufacturing towns, also attempted to introduce representative and municipal government into the East India Company's once famous city of Madras. The second chapter reveals the fact that the acquisition of Bengal in the eighteenth century was not the work of ambition, but an act of self-preservation. The third chapter shows that the peace of India could not have been maintained in any possible way except by the establishment of British supremacy as the paramount power. The fourth chapter proves that the first Afghan war, needless as it turned out to be at the time, was the outcome of Russian ambition which dates back to the times of Peter the Great and Nadir Shah.

The story of the sepoy mutinies of 1857 occupies a considerable space in the present volume. It is not a mere narrative of military revolt, but a revelation of Asiatic nature; a lesson which every Anglo-Indian statesman must study, if he would avoid defeat or failure. The masses in the British Isles may read Biblical accounts of rebellion and massacre, or the story in Josephus of the atrocities of Herod the Great; but very few seem to realise the fact that they are reading Asiatic history, which has no reflex in Europe, nor in any country under European rule except British India. The horrible intrigues and murders in the household of Herod; his frantic passion for the fair Mariamne; the malicious lies of Salome; the assassination of Mariamne by her jealous and infuriated husband; the alternations in the mind of Herod as regards Cleopatra, whether to accept her love or murder her;—find no parallels in European history, excepting perhaps in Turkey, or in the Russian court of the last century.

The last chapter in the present volume is devoted to the constitutional changes in the government of India, and in the local governments, since the mutinies. The author has not indulged in the hope of raising Asiatics to the level of Europeans by the premature introduction of representative government. He considers that such a scheme would for the present be as much out of place in Asia as a republic of boys for the control of schoolmasters. British India is treated as a political school for Asiatics, in which Europeans are the teachers; and so long as that theory of government is upheld, constitutional reforms in India are practical and possible.

In conclusion, the author has to express his obligations to Professor Terrien de Lacouperie of the London University College, and to his own son, Owen E. Wheeler of the Leicestershire Regiment, for revising the proofs of the present work, and for many valuable suggestions.

Fulham,

12th May, 1886.

PART I.—EAST INDIA COMPANY

CHAPTER I.—FIRST PERIOD: FACTORIES, FORTRESSES, TOWNS.—1600-1756

§1. India in 1600. §2. British at Surat and Masulipatam: Commercial and Social Life, 1612-1638. §3. Rise and Growth of Madras, 1639-1680: Portuguese and Dutch Neighbours. §4. British Rule and Representative Government, 1686. §5. Mixed Corporation of Europeans and Natives, 1688. §6. Slavery and the Slave Trade in India. §7. Madras, Surat, Bombay, and Hughly. §8. Collision with the Great Mogul, 1686-1700. §9. Domestic Administration, 1700-1746. §10. Wars against France in Southern India, 1746-1756. §11. The Black Hole at Calcutta, June, 1756.

Rise of British rule.

The rise of British rule in India is a problem in history. A single association of British traders established factories which grew into fortresses, and governed native towns which became the capitals of a British empire. The march of events is without a parallel in the annals of the world. In 1600 the East India Company obtained from Queen Elizabeth a charter of exclusive rights to trade in the Eastern seas. In 1612 it established its first factory at Surat. In 1639 it began to build a fortified factory at Madras, whilst a Hindu population of weavers and other manufacturers grew up by its side. Before the beginning of the eighteenth century, before Queen Anne ascended the throne of Great Britain, the British settlements at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta had each a fortress and a town. How Hindu and Mohammedan populations were ruled by British traders will be told in the present chapter. How the British traders acquired provinces and established an empire belongs to the after chapters.

Northern India: the Great Mogul.

§1. In 1600 the whole of Northern India was under the dominion of a Mohammedan sovereign, known as the Great Mogul. His revenues and armies were the marvel of Europe. His empire extended from the mountains of Cashmere to the Bay of Bengal, from the slopes of the Himalayas to the tableland of the Deccan. It covered large Hindu populations and many Hindu principalities, for throughout this vast area the Great Mogul was sovereign lord of all, the emperor, the Padishah.

Southern India: Mohammedan Sultans and Hindu Rajas.

South of the Mogul empire was the Deccan or "south." The country was a terra incognita to Europeans. The interior had been conquered by Mohammedan invaders from the north, and distributed into kingdoms under Sultans, who formed a barrier against the Moguls. East and west were hills and jungles stretching to the sea, mostly held by Hindu Rajas who were hostile alike to the Sultans and the Great Mogul. Mohammedan rule, however, had never as yet extended further south than the river Kistna. The whole region from the Kistna to Cape Comorin—sometimes known as the "Peninsula"—was under the dominion of Hindu Rajas.

Portuguese fortresses.

The western coast of the Deccan and Peninsula was dotted with Portuguese fortresses, mounted with cannon and garrisoned by Portuguese soldiers. The Portuguese had made their way to India round the Cape of Good Hope about the end of the fifteenth century, and for a hundred years had been building factories in the territories of Hindu Rajas, and converting them into fortresses. Nothing of the kind would have been allowed by the Great Mogul, or by the Sultans of the Deccan, but the Portuguese had persuaded the Hindu Rajas that they would help and protect them, and the Rajas never saw the danger until the fortresses were bristling with cannon and opposition was useless. The Portuguese capital was seated on the island of Goa, about half-way between Surat and Comorin, and was a centre of the Catholic religion as well as of Portuguese trade.¹

British traders at Surat.

§2. British merchants in the service of the East India Company would gladly have traded on the same sea-board, which was known as the coast of Malabar, but they were shut out by the Portuguese fortresses. Accordingly they sailed further northward, and tried to get a footing in the Mogul port of Surat. This port was a centre of the Mohammedan religion and an emporium of Mogul trade. It was the starting-point for all pilgrims going to Mecca, and the point to which they returned when their pilgrimage was over. It was the rendezvous of Mogul merchants who despatched ships to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and sent goods overland to the great capitals of the Mogul empire—Agra, Delhi, and Lahore.

British defeat the Portuguese.

At Surat, however, the British were thwarted by the Portuguese. The Nawab of Surat was told that the British were pirates. The merchants of Surat were threatened with the capture of their ships if they had any dealings with the British. Fighting was the only way of meeting the difficulty. Accordingly the British attacked a Portuguese fleet outside the bar of Surat. The news of battle and the roar of cannon brought the Nawab, the merchants, and half the population of Surat to the sea-shore. The British sunk or burnt several Portuguese ships until the residue of the fleet steered back to Goa. The Moguls were fascinated by the victory. They saw that the British had not only superior strength on their side, but Allah and kismet. The Nawab of Surat feasted the conquerors in his tents on the sands, and the Surat merchants eagerly bought British cargoes and supplied Indian commodities to the brave men who had beaten the Portuguese.

British factory at Surat, 1612.

In 1612 the British set up a factory at Surat in a large Indian house, with warehouses and offices below and chambers and refection-rooms above. It was a London establishment transferred to a Mohammedan seaport. The British merchants, factors, and writers lodged and boarded together like members of one family. Native brokers or banyans were employed to buy cotton goods, silks, indigo, and other Indian commodities; whilst public auctions were held in the factory for the sale of British broadcloths, glass and cutlery, especially sword-blades, and also for the sale of lead, copper, quicksilver, and other European commodities. The spirit of enterprise was as busy amongst the British as in after years. One factor urged the Company to send ships up the river Indus and open up a trade with Central Asia; whilst another tried to persuade the Great Mogul to lay down leaden pipes from the river Jumna to the city of Ajmere, a distance of more than two hundred miles, in order to convey drinking-water to the imperial palace in the heart of Rajputana.

Factory life.

In those early days no British ladies were allowed to reside in India. If a servant of the Company happened to be married he was obliged to leave his wife in England. The "English House," as it was called, was thus a bachelor establishment, without ladies, but not without Surat punch or Persian wine. An English chaplain read prayers every morning and evening, and preached two sermons on Sundays. An English surgeon attended the sick factors, and the Mogul authorities and other grandees often applied for his services, and thus enabled him to promote the Company's interests on more than one important occasion. The chief of the factory was known as the President, but all business was transacted by the President with the help of four or five senior merchants, who met twice a week in council. This management of affairs by a President in Council has survived the lapse of nearly three centuries. To this day the government of presidencies and the vice-royalty of India are in each case carried on by a President in Council.

Foreign guests.

Within a few years the "English House" at Surat was well known to all European sea-captains and voyagers. Not only British travellers, but Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen, were heartily welcomed by the honest factors at Surat. All were impressed with the order and regularity of the establishment, in which decorum and discipline were as strictly maintained as in Leadenhall Street or the Cheape. But when working hours were over the grave men of business proved to be convivial Britons of the old-fashioned type, and on Friday evenings especially, all the married men met together to drink the health of their absent wives to the detriment of their own. Foreign guests who could not speak the English tongue were in no want of amusement. In 1638 a young gentleman from Holstein, named Mandelslo, spent some months in the "English House," and passed the time very pleasantly, visiting the ships at anchor outside the bar of the river Tapty, and hearing the latest news of Europe from sea-captains versed in many languages, or wandering down the row of banyans' shops, which often contained as much wealth, hidden under dirt and squalor, as the houses of London merchants and goldsmiths. On Sundays, after sermon, the factors carried off their guest to their gardens outside Surat, where they all shot at butts, and were regaled with fruit and conserves.

British and Moguls.

The European gentlemen at Surat were always polite to Mohammedan grandees, and were generally politely treated in return, excepting perhaps at the custom-house. British sailors and ill-mannered Englishmen would, however, occasionally show a contempt for Asiatics, which the President could not always restrain. British interlopers on the high seas set the Company's charter at defiance, and carried on a lawless trade, plundering the Mohammedan pilgrim ships and ill-treating the passengers. The Mogul authorities insisted that the Company's servants were to blame, and would listen to no explanation, but sent large bodies of Mogul soldiery to environ the "English House," and stop all trade, cutting off all food and water, until a sufficient fine or ransom had been paid.

Trade on the eastern coast.

About 1620 the East India Company established another factory at Masulipatam on the eastern side of India. The Hindus along the coast of Coromandel were famous for painting muslins and calicoes, and there was a growing demand for such goods amongst the eastern islands, whilst valuable cargoes of nutmegs and other spices could be obtained in exchange. But Masulipatam was seated in Mohammedan territory. A Sultan of the Deccan, reigning at Golconda, had extended his dominion eastward to the coast of Coromandel, and established the port of Masulipatam for the importation of horses from the Persian Gulf. The traders at the British factory were therefore cramped and worried by the Mohammedan authorities, and yearned to effect a settlement on the territories of some Hindu Raja further south, where they could fortify a factory and mount it with British cannon without the interference of local authorities.

British territory and fortress at Madras, 1639.

§3. In 1639 a British merchant named Day bought a strip of territory on the Coromandel coast, about 300 miles to the south of Masulipatam. It was within the dominions of a Hindu Raja, and was about six miles long and one mile inland. It included a small island, which faced the sea and was defended on the land side by a river. Mr. Day agreed to pay the Raja a rent of 500l. a year in native coin known as pagodas, and the transaction was duly engraved on a plate of gold. A factory of brick was built upon the island, and mounted with cannon, and called Fort St. George. The Raja was perfectly content. He was too glad to get a rent of 500l. a year to raise any difficulty as regards fortifications or cannon.

Fort St. George and Black Town.

This factory was the germ of the city of Madras, on the coast of Coromandel. Weavers, washers, painters, and hosts of other Hindu artisans, flocked to the spot and eagerly entered the service of the British, and began to set up their looms and to weave, wash, and paint their cotton goods in the open air beneath the trees. Villages of little huts of mud and bamboo soon grew up on the sandy soil to the north of the island and factory. Each avocation formed a caste, which generally had its own quarters and its own headman. In this manner a Hindu settlement grew up by the side of Fort St. George and was known as Black Town; and the whole locality, including Fort St. George and Black Town, was called Madras, and was the first territory acquired by the East India Company in India.

Despotic rule.

The transition of the British traders from a factory under Mohammedan control to an independent settlement of their own must have been a grateful change. The President and Council at Fort St. George were de facto rulers of the whole settlement, native as well as European, with all the powers of despotic princes and with no interference from without. They acted as a supreme court of judicature for Englishmen in all cases civil and criminal; no Englishman, however, could be condemned to death unless convicted of piracy, which was regarded as the most heinous of crimes. On all other capital charges the Englishman was sent to England for trial.²

Portuguese and Dutch neighbours.

Four miles to the south of Fort St. George was the Portuguese town of St. Thomé; but the Portuguese were now friends with the English. Their power was being overshadowed by that of the Dutch, who had founded a town and fortress at Pulicat, nearly thirty miles to the northward of Fort St. George.

Dutch trade in India.

The Dutch settlements in India were the outcome of the hostility of Spain. For centuries the Dutch had been the carriers of Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. In the period which preceded the sixteenth century they had bought Indian commodities at Genoa, Naples and Venice. After the Portuguese established a trade in India, the Dutch went every year to Lisbon to buy Indian commodities for the European markets. In 1580 they threw off the yoke of Spain, and founded the United Provinces. That same year Spain and Portugal were formed into one kingdom under Philip II. In an evil hour for Portuguese interests in India, Philip thought to punish the Dutch by shutting them out of Lisbon. The Dutch revenged themselves by sailing round the Cape and buying what they wanted in the islands of the Eastern Archipelago. In 1600 they built a factory in Java, which grew into the city of Batavia. In 1610 they built a square fort on the Pulicat Lake, which grew into the town of Pulicat and threatened to become the capital of Dutch ascendency in India.

Right and Left Hands.

The Indian quarter at Madras was almost entirely Hindu. Scarcely a Mohammedan took up his abode within the Company's bounds. Accordingly one of the earliest acts of the President and Council was to divide the streets of Black Town into those of the right and left hand. All over Southern India, the lower castes of Hindus are divided into Right and Left Hands, and yet no one can account for the distinction, or satisfactorily define the respective rights of each Hand.

The so-called Hands are, however, intensely jealous of each other. For generations each Hand in the towns of Southern India has had its own streets and its own pagoda. At Madras, if one Hand passed in religious procession along the streets of the other Hand, or if the members of one Hand chanted Hindu hymns or mantras before the pagoda of the other, a fray would break out in Black Town, which could only be suppressed by British soldiers, and then would be followed by a strike of weavers or painters, or the flight of all the members of one Hand to the Portuguese settlement at St. Thomé. These conflicts, which more than once brought the settlement to the brink of ruin, reached a climax in Governor Pitt's time, as will appear hereafter.

Mohammedan invasion.

Meanwhile, the country round about Madras was in a state of turmoil. The Mohammedan army of the Sultan of Golconda was advancing against the Hindu Rajas of the south, and formed a camp in the neighbourhood. The Raja who had sold the territory to the East India Company fled away to the interior, and was never heard of more. The Mohammedan army captured the Portuguese town of St. Thomé, dismantled the walls of the fortress, and carried off the cannon to Golconda; and they would have treated Fort St. George in like fashion, had not the British stoutly resisted, and quieted the Sultan by engaging to pay him the rent which they had previously paid to the Raja.

Troubles with Dutch and French, 1670.

About 1670, or some thirty years after the foundation of Madras, the state of affairs was complicated by Charles II.'s unholy alliance with France against the Dutch. A French fleet attacked St. Thomé and drove out the Mohammedans. A Dutch fleet from Pulicat recaptured St. Thomé, drove out the French, and restored the place to the Sultan of Golconda. The British settlement was in sore peril; but in 1674 there was peace between Great Britain and Holland, and the danger was over.

Increase of population.

These troubles brought many strangers to Madras, and the population, white and black, was largely increased. Many Portuguese families from St. Thomé took refuge in Madras, and added to the strength of the European settlement, known as White Town, by building houses under the protection of the factory guns. The British factors and soldiers of the garrison married the daughters of the Portuguese, much to the horror of the English chaplain of Fort St. George, as the marriages were accompanied by numerous conversions of bridegrooms to the Catholic faith. At the same time wealthy Hindu traders and bankers began to build substantial houses in Black Town for the sake of British protection. Many invested their money in trading voyages; some acted as brokers or banyans for the supply of Indian commodities to the Company's servants; others bought European goods at the public auctions, and supplied the native dealers up country.

Fort St. George, 1670-86.

§4. Within forty years of the building of the British factory, Madras was the pride and glory of the East India Company. Fort St. George, or White Town, was a European city in miniature. The primitive factory in the centre was replaced by a stately mansion with a dome, which was known as the Governor's House, but included a town-hall, a council-chamber, and sundry offices. It was seated in an open square, having a strong wall along each of its four sides, guards' houses, and bastions at each corner mounted with cannon. Outside the fortification were little streets, paved with pebbles, containing about fifty European houses. There was also a Protestant church for the English inhabitants, and a Catholic chapel for the Portuguese residents. The whole of White Town was environed by an outer wall, sufficiently fortified to keep off an Indian army. None but Britons, or Europeans under British protection, were permitted to reside in White Town. The garrison consisted of two companies of European soldiers, and a large number of native guards, who were known as peons.

Hindu town under British rule.

At this time the population of the native town was estimated at 300,000 souls, but was probably half that number, and an attempt was made to introduce something like a representative government. Whenever the Governor and Council desired to know the wishes of the people generally, or to act with their consent, they summoned the headmen of castes, and consulted them accordingly. Justice, however, was administered by two English gentlemen, who sat twice a week in Black Town in a building known as the Choultry. The Justices of the Choultry tried all offences and disputes amongst the Hindus, and fined, flogged, or imprisoned at discretion. The old English punishments of the stocks, the pillory, and the gallows were also in full force in Black Town, but no Hindu was executed without the confirmation of the Governor and Council. The Justices of the Choultry were bound by no code of laws; they were simply instructed by the Directors of the Company in England to decide all cases, civil and criminal, according to "equity and good conscience," guided by English law and their own experiences of Hindu customs and usages.³ A Hindu superintendent of police was appointed under the title of "Pedda Naik," or "elder chief;" and he was bound to maintain a certain number of constables known as peons, and keep the peace of the town. He was expected to prevent theft and burglary, and either to recover stolen property, or to pay the value to the owner. In return, the Pedda Naik was allowed to cultivate a few fields rent free, and to levy a small octroi duty, or toll, on articles of Hindu consumption.

Protection of Hindus.

The main difficulty at Madras was to keep the peace between the European soldiers of the garrison and the Hindu population. Any European soldier who remained outside the Fort at night time was set publicly in the stocks for a whole day. Any European who attempted to get over the Fort walls, was imprisoned in irons for one entire month, and kept on rice and water. Any soldier who threatened to strike a Hindu was whipped. Any European who took an article out of a shop or bazaar, under pretence of buying it at his own price, was sentenced to pay treble the value to the party aggrieved.

Question of taxation.

Another difficulty was to keep the streets of Black Town clean and wholesome. The Governor and Council summoned the heads of castes, and proposed to levy a small tax on every house. The heads assented to the measure, but offered to carry out the work themselves, and to raise the necessary funds in the same way that they levied contributions from their respective castes for defraying the cost of public festivals. All this, however, was a blind on their part to delude the British Governor and Council. Nothing was done by the heads of castes, no money was collected, and the streets were dirtier than ever.

Contumacy of heads of castes.

Meanwhile Madras was threatened by the Sultan of Golconda, and the Directors in England instructed the Governor and Council at Madras to build a wall round Black Town, and meet the cost by levying a small ground-rent from each householder. In this case no difficulty was anticipated. The Hindus might ignore the importance of sanitation, but they could scarcely refuse to contribute towards the defence of their lives and property, to say nothing of their wives and families. The heads of castes, however, raised strong objections, but found that the Governor was bent on carrying out the orders of the Court of Directors. The heads of castes were told that the rents must be paid, and that those who refused to pay must be prepared to sell their houses and leave the British settlement. At this threat they all promised to pay, but secretly prepared for a general uprising.

Hindu rebellion, 1686.

Suddenly, one Sunday morning, the 3rd of January, 1686, it was known in Fort St. George that the Hindu population of Black Town were rebelling in Asiatic fashion. Under the orders of the heads of castes, the Hindu servants of the Company had thrown up their duties, bazaar dealers had shut up their shops, and provisions and grain were kept out of the town. The Governor in Fort St. George sent a detachment of the British garrison to guard the entrances to Black Town and suppress the tumult. Proclamation was made by beat of drum that unless the heads submitted before sunset, their houses would be pulled down on the following morning, the sites sold by auction, and the rebels and their families banished for ever. Hindus who failed to return to their duties would be discharged from the Company's service; dealers who kept their shops closed would be heavily fined and all their goods confiscated. These peremptory orders had the desired effect. The heads of castes seemed to be completely cowed. Before sunset they appeared at the Fort and begged pardon for their rebellion, and were told to put an end to the tumult in Black Town.

Wholesome despotism.

Next morning the heads of castes returned to the Fort and presented a petition, begging to be relieved from the payment of the ground-rent. Each man was asked in turn whether he would leave the town, and each in turn said that he would submit, and then the whole body declared with one voice that they would not pay the tax. Proclamation was at once made by beat of drum that the orders of Sunday would be immediately put in execution. The Hindus bent to the storm. They saw that they were at the mercy of their British rulers. The shops were opened, provisions were brought into the town, and all the artisans and servants of the Company returned to their duties. The ground-rents were collected without demur, and later on the scavenger-tax was raised without difficulty.

Threats of the Nawab of Bengal.

§11. The tragedy was appalling, but the causes were intelligible. About the beginning of the eighteenth century, a Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, territories considerably larger than the United Kingdom, had removed his capital from Dacca to Murshedabad, about a hundred miles due north of Calcutta. Here he founded a dynasty, which reigned in peace for some forty years. About 1742 a usurper seized the throne of Murshedabad, and reigned as Nawab. He died of extreme old age in April, 1756, and was succeeded by a grandson, a young man timid and suspicious, surrounded by foes eager to take his life and throne. The new Nawab heard that Governor Drake was sheltering one of his enemies at Calcutta, and strengthening the fortifications; and he ordered the British to surrender the refugee and stop further defences. Governor Drake replied that he knew nothing of any enemies of the Nawab; that he was ready to obey the Nawab in all things; and that he was repairing the defences on the river to prevent being surprised by the French, as Madras had been surprised ten years before. The Nawab was in a fury at this message, and set off for Calcutta in the heats of June with an army of fifty thousand men.

Defences at Calcutta.

For half a century the British had paid little or no attention to their defences. Fort William had been deemed a sufficient protection on the side of the river, and on the land side the native inhabitants had begun to dig a ditch as a defence against the Mahratta horsemen; but the Mahrattas were paid chout to go away, and the ditch was never finished. The Europeans dwelt in houses and gardens along the bank of the river Hughly, on either side of Fort William; and an English Church, the Mayor's Court and some other buildings, covered Fort William on the land side. The native quarter, including a large bazaar, adjoined the Mahratta ditch, and avenues of trees led from the native quarter to Fort William and the European buildings.

Neglected precautions.

Had Governor Drake or any member of his Council possessed a spark of military genius, they might have held Fort William against the Nawab in spite of his superior numbers. There was a garrison of two hundred European soldiers in the Fort. The European residents should have abandoned their houses on the river, and repaired to the Fort with their wives and children. The neighbouring buildings should have been demolished to prevent the Nawab's troops from approaching under cover. The enemy should have been harassed with shells all day and sallies all night, until the Nawab raised the siege. Moreover, the beginning of the south-west monsoon was daily expected. With it would come the ships of the season from Europe. Could the besieged have held out for ten days, they might have been rescued by the ships, just as Charnock and the factors were carried away from Hughly some seventy years before.

Weak preparations.

Whilst the Nawab's army was approaching Calcutta, the native population were flying en masse to the neighbouring villages. There was also a large population of Portuguese half-castes, which should have been left to do the same, as they would have been in no manner of danger. Unfortunately, two thousand of these black women and children were admitted into the Fort, and the overcrowding and confusion were fatal. Meanwhile, batteries and breastworks were constructed in the avenues leading to the Fort, in the wild hope of protecting the whole European quarter; but they were too far away to be supported by reinforcements from the European garrison.

Siege of Fort William.

At noon on Wednesday, the 16th of June, the Nawab's army poured into the settlement through the unfinished portion of the Mahratta ditch. They set fire to the native bazaar, and, after meeting obstinate resistance, they captured the batteries and breastworks in the avenues. The European gunners spiked their cannon and fell back upon the Fort; but the Nawab's artillerymen drilled the cannon and turned them round towards the Fort; whilst bodies of the Nawab's matchlockmen occupied the buildings outside the Fort which ought to have been demolished, and opened fire upon the ramparts and bastions.

Escape of women and children.

The fighting lasted all Thursday and Friday. On Friday night the English ladies and children were placed on board the single ship which lay before the Fort. On Saturday the firing was hotter than ever. Hopeless efforts were made to place the Portuguese women and children on board the ship, but they would have been safer in the neighbouring villages, for the overcrowding was such that many boats were sunk and numbers were drowned. Governor Drake, however, got on board, and the ship moved slowly down the river, leaving the British soldiers and others to their fate.

Loss of Fort William.

Throughout Saturday night the garrison fired rockets for recalling the ship. At sunrise they waved flags, but without effect. A Mr. Holwell, a member of Council, was elected Governor in the room of Drake. But resistance was useless. The British soldiers broke into the arrack-room and got hopelessly intoxicated. Late in the afternoon a mob of the Nawab's troops advanced to the Fort with ladders. In a few moments they were swarming over the walls, whilst the drunken European soldiers ran to the back of the Fort and broke down the gates leading to the river. But the Fort was closely environed by the Nawab's troops, and whilst some of the fugitives may have escaped to the boats or been drowned in the river, the bulk were brought back into the Fort as prisoners of war.

Black Hole tragedy.

By this time the Nawab had taken possession of Fort William, but was terribly disappointed at finding very little money and only a poor stock of merchandise. The season ships to Europe had carried off all the Indian exports to escape the south-west monsoon, and the ships from England were waiting for the monsoon to carry their European cargoes up the river. There were 146 prisoners, and no place of security except the barrack cell, known as the Black Hole, which rarely held more than two or three prisoners, and was only eighteen feet square. In this horrid hole they were driven with clubs and swords, and next morning only twenty three were taken out alive.

End of the first period.

Such was the close of the first act of the East India Company's rule. Within a very brief space of time the British traders entered upon a new era of conquest and dominion; but the tragedy at Calcutta in June, 1756, has never been forgotten, and to this day there is not an English man or woman in India who does not occasionally call up a painful memory of the Black Hole.⁶

CHAPTER II.—SECOND PERIOD: BENGAL PROVINCES.—1756-1798

§1. From Calcutta to Plassy, 1757-58. §2. Nawab Rule under British Protection. §3. British Arrogance: Massacre at Patna. §4. Lord Clive's Double Government, 1765-67. §5. Warren Hastings, 1772-85: Life and Career. §6. British Rule: Treatment of Bengal Zemindars. §7. British Collectors and Magistrates: Circuit Courts and Sudder. §8. Innovations of Parliament. §9. Collisions in Calcutta Council: Trial and Execution of Nundcomar. §10. Clashing of Supreme Court and Sudder. §11. Mahratta War: Goddard and Popham. §12. Triple Alliance against the British: the Mahrattas, the Nizam, and Hyder Ali. §13. Parliamentary Interference: the Two India Bills. §14. Charges against Warren Hastings. §15. Lord Cornwallis, 1786-93: Perpetual Settlement and Judicial Reforms. §16. Sir John Shore, 1793-98: Non-Intervention.

Madras politics.

In June, 1756, Calcutta was lost; the news reached Madras in August. War with France was trembling in the balance. An army of Europeans and sepoys, under Colonel Clive, was waiting to attack the French in the Deccan. A Royal fleet, under Admiral Watson, was waiting to bombard the French at Pondicherry. But the news from Calcutta outweighed all other considerations; and Clive and Watson were dispatched to the river Hughly with 900 Europeans and 1,500 sepoys.

Calcutta recaptured.

§1. The force appears small in modern eyes, but it was irresistible against Asiatics. The ships of war, with their tiers of cannon, were sufficient to create a panic. The expedition reached Calcutta on the 1st of January, 1757. The Mogul commandant at Fort William fled away in terror, and next morning the British flag was hoisted over the factory. The Company's merchandise, which had been reserved for the Nawab, was lying untouched, but every house in the town, Asiatic as well as European, had been plundered by the Mogul soldiers.

Nawab accepts terms.

At this moment, news arrived that war with France had begun. Clive and Watson were anxious to make peace with the Nawab in order to fight the French. The Nawab, on his part, was frightened at the British fleet, and was ready to promise anything if the ships and cannon would only go away. He agreed to reinstate the British in all their factories and privileges, and to pay full compensation for all the plunder that had been carried away from Calcutta, so that nothing further was wanted but the execution of these terms.

Treachery and intrigue.

The Nawab, however, never seems to have intended to fulfil his promises. He vacillated, procrastinated, and lied egregiously. He signed a treaty, but evaded every application for the money. He worried Clive and Watson with fresh promises and excuses until they were wild with the delay. At last they discovered that he was intriguing with the French for their destruction. But the Nawab himself was environed with dangers of all kinds. His own grandees were plotting against him, and opened up a secret correspondence with Clive. Englishmen, Mohammedans, and Hindus became entangled in a web of conspiracy and craft, from which it was difficult to escape with an unsullied reputation. Eventually, the Nawab sent an army to Plassy, on the route to Calcutta, as if to overawe the British settlement. The army was commanded by Mir Jafir, the head of the conspiracy for dethroning the Nawab. Shortly afterwards, the Nawab himself followed Mir Jafir to Plassy, and the whole force was estimated at 50,000 men and forty pieces of cannon.

Battle of Plassy, June, 1757.

Clive advanced from Calcutta to Plassy with 3,000 men and nine pieces of cannon. The battle of Plassy was fought on the 23rd of June, 1757, just a year and three days after the Black Hole tragedy. It was more of a British cannonade than an action between two armies. Clive was expecting to be joined every moment by Mir Jafir. The Asiatic plotter had sworn to be faithful to both parties, and was mortally afraid of both the Nawab and the British. He dared not desert the Nawab, and he dared not fight the British. For hours he did nothing. At last, towards the close of the day, he moved his forces from the field, and made off towards Murshedabad. Clive advanced to charge the Nawab's camp, but the Nawab saw that he was deserted and betrayed, and fled in abject terror. The days of the fugitive were numbered. He hid himself for a while with a favourite wife and his choicest jewels, but was then taken prisoner and brutally murdered by a son of Mir Jafir. Such was the end of the once notorious Suraj-ad-daula, better known to British soldiers and sailors as "Sir Roger Dowler."

Overflowing riches.

Colonel Clive marched on to Murshedabad, and installed Mir Jafir on the throne as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Clive, and Clive alone, was the lord paramount of the hour, the hero of Plassy, the invincible warrior. The money and jewels in the treasury at Murshedabad were lavished by Mir Jafir on Colonel Clive and his party. The British officers of the army and fleet received large donations. One million sterling was given to the East India Company, another million sterling to the inhabitants of Calcutta—European and Asiatic. A hundred boats loaded with silver went down the river from Murshedabad to Calcutta, followed by the curses of the grandees; whilst the sight of the boats approaching Calcutta was hailed with the joy of men who had escaped shipwreck. "For once," says a contemporary, "and only for once, the people of Calcutta were all friends."

Terrible responsibilities.

§2. The battle of Plassy was a British triumph, but it entailed enormous responsibilities. Colonel Clive had raised up a Nawab to be absolute ruler of territories larger than Great Britain and Ireland, and far more populous. Bengal, including the delta of the Ganges, was one of the most fertile regions in the world, whilst the inhabitants were most submissive and easily governed. For centuries the Bengalis had been oppressed by foreigners—Turk, Afghan, Abyssinian and Mogul. The revenues, however, had been collected by Hindu officials, as being at once more exacting in their demands, and more easily stripped of their ill-gotten gains.

Wretched rule of Mir Jafir.

Nawab Mir Jafir was most subservient to the British and most anxious to please them, but was otherwise as dissolute and worthless as any Turkish pasha. In his younger days, when the Mahrattas were harrying Bengal, Mir Jafir might have been a good soldier, but since then he had degenerated into a worn-out voluptuary, spending all the money he could get on jewels and dancing-girls, whilst his own troops were in mutiny for want of pay, and his British supporters and protectors were demanding further supplies for the payment of their own forces. To make matters worse, the Nawab was removing the old Hindu officials and placing his Mohammedan kinsmen in their room.

Delhi affairs: flight of the Prince Imperial.

Suddenly, a new vista opened out to Clive through the territory of Oudh, on the north-west, to the remote capital of the Great Mogul at Delhi. The Great Mogul was a mere pageant in the hands of the Vizier, who exercised what remained of the imperial authority. The Prince Imperial, the son and heir of the Great Mogul, was afraid of being murdered by the Vizier, and fled away into Oudh, and threw himself on the protection of the Nawab.

Invasion of the Nawab of Oudh.

The Nawab of Oudh had long desired to get possession of the Bengal provinces, and thought to secure them by making the Prince Imperial a cat's paw. He proclaimed that the Prince Imperial had been invested by his father with the government of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. He then sent the Prince forward with a large force to enforce the proclamation, whilst he himself remained behind in Oudh and awaited events.⁷ To make matters worse, the Hindu officials in the Bengal provinces, who had been dispossessed, or were expecting to be dispossessed, were preparing to join the invaders.

Clive's difficulty.

Mir Jafir was in a panic of fear at the appearance of the Prince Imperial, and proposed to pay him a sum of money to go away. Clive would not listen to the suggestion. He ignored the Prince Imperial and the Great Mogul, and soon routed the invading army. The Prince Imperial then became a suppliant to the British, and implored Clive for help; but Clive had been requested by the Vizier at Delhi to arrest the fugitive, and would not commit himself. He, however, sent a bag of 500 mohurs, about 800l. sterling, to relieve the immediate necessities of the Prince Imperial, and the money was gladly received by the impoverished fugitive.

Wanted, a British army.

Meanwhile, Clive was at his wits' end for money. The Bengal provinces could be held against any enemy in India by a standing army of Europeans and sepoys. Such an army could be maintained for half a million sterling per annum, and the public revenue amounted to three or four millions; but the Nawab refused to disband his own rabble soldiery, and pretended that he could not pay the Europeans.

Solution.

At this crisis Clive received a secret and startling proposal from the Vizier at Delhi, that he should accept the post of Dewan to the Great Mogul for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. In the palmy days of the Mogul empire, every province was governed by two officials, the Nawab and the Dewan. The Nawab kept the peace and administered justice; the Dewan kept the public purse, received the revenues, paid all salaries, and sent the surplus as tribute to the Great Mogul. The later Nawabs had become their own Dewans, and spent the revenue as they pleased, without sending any tribute to the Great Mogul. Had Clive closed with the offer, it would have involved a mortal struggle with Mir Jafir, for it would have deprived the Nawab of all power over the public purse. But it would have removed every financial difficulty, as the Vizier would have been satisfied with a yearly tribute of half a million sterling, or even less, whilst Clive would have had the whole remaining surplus at his own disposal.

Clive's offer to Pitt, 1759.

Clive would not accept the post of Dewan, either for himself or for the East India Company. But he wrote privately to the British premier, the first William Pitt, and proposed that the British Crown should act as Dewan to the Great Mogul. Under such an arrangement, the Crown might have taken over the Bengal revenues, sent half, or a quarter of a million a year to Delhi, spent another half million on a standing army, and devoted another half million to the salaries of the Nawab and his officials; and then might have secured a surplus of two millions a year towards the payment of the national debt. William Pitt, however, was already alarmed at the growing power of the Crown, and he declined taking over the proposed income lest it should endanger the liberties of the British nation.

Turmoils in the north-west.

In 1760 Colonel Clive returned to England, and in 1761 the war with France was over. India might now have been at peace, but the north-west was in a turmoil. The Great Mogul was murdered by his Vizier. The Afghans had slaughtered 200,000 Mahrattas on the fatal field of Paniput, and established their ascendency at Delhi. The fugitive Prince Imperial was proclaimed Padishah, or Emperor, by the Nawab of Oudh, who assumed the title of Nawab Vizier; and the Padishah and his Nawab Vizier invaded Behar and threatened Patna.

Change of Nawabs.

§3. The British at Calcutta were now in sore peril, and there was no Clive to guide them. They deposed Mir Jafir on their own authority, and set up his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. The new Nawab was unquestionably a better man than the deposed Mir Jafir; but the transfer of a throne by a Governor and Council of British merchants was somewhat startling. There was, however, no one to resist the Calcutta traders, and Mir Jafir yielded to his kismet, retired from his post as Nawab, and removed to Calcutta, as a safer residence than Murshedabad.

Mastery of the British.

Mir Kasim agreed to all the British demands. He was bound over to pay half a million sterling for the maintenance of the British army; but he averted money disputes with the Company's servants by ceding three districts in the immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta, which yielded the same amount of revenue, and the British could collect the money for themselves. Above all, the new Nawab agreed, as Mir Jafir had done before him, to free the Company's servants from the payment of all inland transit duties within the Bengal provinces.

Dealings with the Padishahs.

Mir Kasim, accompanied by a British force, took the field against the young Padishah and the Nawab Vizier. The invaders were soon defeated; the Nawab Vizier fled back to Oudh, but the young Padishah remained at Patna. Accordingly, the British determined to get his sanction to their proceedings, and thus to justify their appointment of a new Nawab in the eyes of the people of India and the European nations trading with Bengal. He was without territory or revenue. His throne and capital at Delhi were in the hands of the Afghans. Yet he had been proclaimed Padishah in India, and was legally the Great Mogul. Accordingly, the British determined to recognize his sovereignty, and arrange for the appointment of Mir Kasim as Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, under his imperial seal and commission.

British set up a Great Mogul.

It was somewhat audacious for a handful of British traders to set up a Great Mogul for themselves as lord paramount of India. It was still more audacious to carry out the ceremony of installation in a building sacred to silk and saltpetre. Nevertheless, the work was done. The Company's factory at Patna was converted into a Mogul palace; the centre room into a hall of audience; the dining-tables into an imperial throne. The Padishah was carried in procession to the factory, and enthroned on the dining-tables as the Great Mogul. Mir Kasim paid homage to the sovereign, and was invested with the post of Nawab of the Bengal provinces. In return, the Nawab was bound over to pay a yearly tribute to the Great Mogul of a quarter of a million sterling.

Enthronement at Patna.

The installation of the Great Mogul, and the formal appointment of the Nawab of Bengal, were established facts, but no party was satisfied. The Padishah was disgusted, because the British would not conduct him to Delhi and place him on the throne of Aurangzeb. The Nawab was disgusted at paying a heavy tribute when the Padishah might have been forced by a little pressure to sell the appointment for a bag of rupees. He was apparently bent on breaking off all relations with the British, and there was no objection to his doing so. He moved his court from Murshedabad, which was only a hundred miles from Calcutta, to Monghyr, which was more than three hundred miles. Here he formed an army of picked men, and employed a European deserter, known as Sombre or Sumru, to drill the troops in British fashion, and began to manufacture muskets and cast guns.

No one satisfied.

The quarrel began about the right of the British servants of the Company, under the treaty with Mir Kasim, to carry their commodities through the Bengal provinces free from the payment of all transit duties. The British at Calcutta twisted the privilege of non-payment into a right to carry such native commodities as salt, tobacco, opium, betel, sugar, and oil, without payment; whilst all Bengali dealers were compelled to pay a duty at every station. The British were thus able to undersell native dealers, and monopolise the whole trade of the country. The Nawab protested against this interpretation, and insisted on collecting the duties, unless the goods were bought for exportation by sea. Then ensued quarrels, misunderstandings, frays and reprisals; the Nawab complaining of the loss of duties, whilst the British set him at defiance, and resisted all attempts to collect the duties by force of arms.

Quarrel with Mir Kasim.

Mir Kasim cut away the British monopoly by abolishing all inland transit duties. The Bengali dealers were thus placed on the same footing as the Company's servants. The Company's servants were blind with wrath at this measure. They insisted that they enjoyed a certain privilege under the treaty with Mir Kasim, and that this privilege was rendered valueless, by the general abolition of duties. Accordingly, they proposed sending two of their number to Monghyr to argue the matter with the Nawab.

Fresh exasperations.

The city of Monghyr is situated on the river Ganges, three hundred miles above Calcutta and a hundred miles below Patna. The two British envoys were received and entertained by the Nawab, but told there was nothing to settle; he had ceased to collect duties from his own subjects and the British had nothing to do with the matter. At this very moment a boat arrived at Monghyr on its way to Patna with a cargo of firelocks from Calcutta for the garrison at the British factory. The Nawab at once suspected that the British were preparing for war. He confiscated the firelocks, and kept one of the envoys as a hostage, but permitted the other to return to Calcutta. The latter man was doomed. On his way down the river he was fired upon by the troops of the Nawab, and brutally murdered.

Mir Jafir restored.

When the news of this catastrophe reached Calcutta, the Company's servants seem to have lost their heads. In vain they were told that the British at Patna, and those at another factory, were at the mercy of the Nawab. They swore that they would be avenged although every Briton up country was slaughtered; and they wrote out a declaration to that effect, and each man signed it. The Governor and Council of Calcutta then went in a body to the house of Mir Jafir, and restored him to his post as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, on the condition that he once again levied the duties from Bengali traders. Mir Jafir readily promised, and indeed would have promised anything to recover his lost throne.

Perils at Patna.

Meanwhile, the British at Patna were in extreme danger. They had a European garrison at the factory, but the factory was untenable. They made a desperate effort to seize the town of Patna, and for a few hours were successful. The Mogul commandant was taken by surprise and fled with most of his troops; but the Mogul fortress still held out. The British ought to have stormed the fortress, but delayed on account of the heat. The result was fatal. The European soldiers went to the bazaar for drink, whilst the sepoys plundered the shops and houses, and within a very short time the whole force was utterly demoralised.

British prisoners.

Suddenly, the Mogul commandant met with reinforcements, and returned and recovered the town. The British fled back to the factory, but saw that they were being environed by the Nawab's troops. They hurriedly embarked in boats, in the hope of escaping up the stream into Oudh, but the enemy closed around them. Had they resisted to the last, some might have escaped. As it was they surrendered as prisoners, and were taken to Monghyr, where they found that the British inmates of another factory had been arrested and imprisoned in like manner.

British advance: massacre at Patna, 1763.

An avenging army was soon on its way from Calcutta. Murshedabad was captured, but not without a stout resistance, for the drilled troops of the Nawab were vastly superior to the rabble hosts that had fought at Calcutta and Plassy. The British force, however, overcame every obstacle, and pushed on to Monghyr, whilst the Nawab fled to Patna, carrying his prisoners with him to the number of a hundred and fifty souls. At Patna the Nawab heard that Monghyr was taken by the British, and resolved on exacting a terrible revenge. His prisoners were shut up in a large square building with a courtyard in the centre. He ordered Sombre to slaughter the whole, and the miscreant environed the building with sepoys. The British assembled in the courtyard, bent on fighting for their lives. The sepoys climbed to the roof, but were assailed with a storm of brickbats and bottles from the courtyard. Sombre ordered them to fire on the prisoners, but they hung back, declaring that they were sepoys and not executioners, and would not fire on men without arms in their hands. Then Sombre grew furious and violent; struck down the nearest sepoys with his own hands, and threatened and bullied the rest into obedience. The sepoys yielded to their European master. Successive volleys were fired into the courtyard, until it was strewed with dead bodies. Not a single prisoner escaped that horrible slaughter.

Mir Kasim and the Nawab Vizier.

The massacre at Patna sealed the doom of the Nawab. He fled away into Oudh with his family and treasures, but the avenging Furies were at his heels. The Nawab Vizier received him with ostentatious hospitality, but only that he might strip him of his treasures. The Nawab Vizier declared war against the British for the restoration of Mir Kasim, but it was only that he might eventually get the Bengal provinces into his own hands.

Battle of Buxar, 1764.

The war lasted many months, but was brought to a close in 1764 by the battle of Buxar. The victory gained by Sir Hector Monro at Buxar on the Behar frontier was as decisive as that of Plassy. The Nawab Vizier fled away in terror to the Rohilla Afghans beyond his north-west frontier, leaving his dominions at the absolute disposal of the British; and Sir Hector Monro marched on to the capital at Lucknow and took possession of the whole of Oudh.

British triumph.

The triumph of the British was complete. Mir Kasim lost his treasures and died in obscurity. The Nawab Vizier was a helpless fugitive; neither Rohillas, nor Mahrattas, nor any other power could help him against the British. The Great Mogul was once more a suppliant in their hands. The British were de facto masters of the bulk of the old Mogul empire, and might have taken possession of the whole of Northern India in the name of the Great Mogul. As it was they proposed making over Oudh to the Afghans, and restoring the Great Mogul to the throne of his fathers at Delhi. Before, however, the Governor and Council at Calcutta could change the map of India, the Court of Directors upset their plans by sending out Clive for the last time with the authority of a dictator.

Lord Clive Dictator, 1765.

§4. The Directors of the East India Company had been alternately infuriated and terrified at the news from Bengal. They were extremely angry at the quarrel about the private trade, especially as they had not shared in the profits; but the massacre at Patna filled them with grief and despair. Accordingly Clive, who had been raised to the peerage, was sent to Bengal as Governor, with full power to act as he thought proper.

Settlement of Oudh.

When Lord Clive landed at Calcutta Mir Jafir was dead, and the existing Governor and Council had sold the throne of the three provinces to an illegitimate son for 200,000l. and divided the money amongst themselves. Lord Clive was extremely wroth, but could do nothing. The offenders retired from the service of the Company and returned to England. Meanwhile Lord Clive stopped the expedition to Delhi, restored Oudh to the Nawab Vizier, and secured a handsome sum out of the transaction for the benefit of the East Indian Company.

Bombay and the Peishwas.

Meanwhile, the British at Bombay had come into contact with the Mahrattas at Poona. For years the East India Company had been anxious to hold two important positions close to Bombay harbour, namely, the little island of Salsette and the little peninsula of Bassein. But the Mahrattas had wrested Salsette and Bassein from the Portuguese, and would not part with them on any terms. A civil war, however, had broken out in the Mahratta country. A Peishwa had been murdered. An uncle ascended the throne, but was banished on suspicion of being the murderer. He applied for help to the British at Bombay, and offered to cede the coveted positions if the British at Bombay would restore him to the Mahratta capital. The Governor and Council at Bombay closed with the offer, and the war began.

Disastrous retreat.

After some successes, the British at Bombay met with disaster. Mahadaji Sindia appeared at Poona with a large army to act against the banished Peishwa. A British force advanced from Bombay towards Poona, but took alarm at the report of Sindia's army, and suddenly halted, and beat a retreat. During the return march, the British force was environed by the Mahrattas, and finally surrendered to Sindia under what is known as the "Convention of Wurgaum."

Success of Warren Hastings.

Warren Hastings condemned the war from the outset; as, however, the Company was committed to a war, he exerted himself, in the teeth of Francis, to maintain British prestige in India. He sent an expedition, under Colonel Goddard, from Bengal to the Mahratta country, and detached another force under Captain Popham to capture Sindia's fortress at Gwalior. The success of these exploits electrified half India. The war was brought to a triumphant close, but all conquered territories, excepting Salsette and Bassein, were restored to the Mahrattas. Indeed, Warren Hastings was not a conqueror like Clive; he acquired no territory during his régime, excepting that of Benares, which was ceded to the Company by the Nawab Vizier of Oudh.

Three Asiatic powers in India.

§12. During the Mahratta war secret negotiations were carried on between the Indian powers for a confederation against the British. The two great powers of the Deccan—the Mahrattas on the west representing the Hindus, and the Nizam on the east representing the Mohammedans—had hated one another for the greater part of a century. A third power, that of a Mohammedan adventurer named Hyder Ali, was becoming formidable further south on the western tableland of the peninsula. Hyder Ali is said to have once served as a sepoy in the French army. Later on, he entered the service of the Hindu Raja of Mysore, and eventually ousted the Raja, usurped the sovereign authority, and conquered the countries round about.

Hyder Ali of Mysore.

For many years Hyder Ali was the Ishmael of the Deccan and peninsula. His hand was against every man, and every man's hand was against him. He invaded alike the territories of the Mahrattas and the Nizam in the Deccan, and those of the Nawab of the Carnatic up to the suburbs of Madras and Fort St. George. At the same time, he more than once exasperated the British by his secret dealings with the French at Pondicherry.

Invasion of the Carnatic, 1780: breaking up of the confederation.

About 1779 Warren Hastings was warned that the three powers—the Mahrattas, the Nizam, and Hyder Ali—were preparing for simultaneous attacks on Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, and that a large Mahratta army was already on the move from Berar territory for the invasion of the Bengal provinces. In 1780 Hyder Ali desolated the Carnatic with an army of a hundred thousand men, but he was the only one of the three allies that kept to his engagement, and was eventually driven back by Sir Eyre Coote, one of the half-forgotten warriors of the eighteenth century. The Nizam did nothing; he probably waited to see what the others would do. The Mahrattas of Berar encamped in great force in the hills and jungles of Orissa, but only appear to have wanted a money present; and after wasting several months they were induced by Warren Hastings to return to Berar. No movement of any kind was undertaken against Bombay; and thus the strange confederation of Mohammedans and Mahrattas melted away.

Parliament interferes.

§13. The quarrels, the wars, and the irregularities of Warren Hastings induced the British Parliament to attempt radical changes. The antagonism between Philip Francis and Warren Hastings had led to a duel, in which Francis was wounded; and he returned to England to pour his bitter prejudices against Warren Hastings into the ears of Burke and Fox. The result was that a bitter animosity was excited, not only against Warren Hastings, but against the East India Company; and Parliament was called upon to decide whether the control of the administration of British India ought not to be transferred from the Court of Directors to the British Crown. The main question was one of patronage. The patronage of Indian appointments would render the Crown too powerful, as the elder Pitt had foreseen in the days of Clive; and George III. was already straining his royal prerogative over Parliament and Ministers to an extent which was exciting alarm.

Fox's India Bill, 1783.

In 1783, when the coalition ministry of Charles James Fox and Lord North was in power, Fox brought forward a bill for abolishing the Court of Directors, and transferring their authority and patronage to seven Commissioners nominated by Ministers. The bill was passed by the Commons, but George III. opposed it, and it was rejected by the Lords.

Pitt creates a board of control, 1784.

In 1784 William Pitt the younger brought in another bill, which left the Directors in full possession of their power and patronage, but brought them under the strict supervision of a Board of Control, consisting of six privy councillors nominated by the Crown. Henceforth the President of the Board of Control, who was always a member of the Cabinet, was the centre of all authority, and was strictly responsible to Parliament for the conduct of Indian affairs.

Trial of Warren Hastings.

§14. Warren Hastings returned to England in 1785 to find that the minds of Burke, Fox, and other leading statesmen had been poisoned against him by Philip Francis. Eventually he was impeached by the Commons and tried by the Lords in Westminster Hall. Hastings was certainly responsible for the Rohilla war, and also responsible for the execution of Nundcomar; but the crowning charge against him was that he had connived at the torture of the servants of the Oudh Begums by the Nawab Vizier of Oudh. The charge was painted in terrible colours by Sheridan, and it may be as well to sum up the actual facts.

Case of the Oudh Begums.

A Nawab Vizier of Oudh died in 1775, leaving treasure to the value of some two or three millions sterling in the public treasury at Lucknow. The son and successor of the deceased ruler naturally assumed possession on the ground that the money was state property; but his mother and grandmother, known as the two Begums, claimed it as private property, which the late Nawab Vizier had made over to them as a gift. Warren Hastings declined to interfere. Philip Francis, however, insisted that the British Government ought to interfere; and eventually the money was made over to the Begums on the condition that they paid some quarter of a million towards the State debt due to the East India Company.

Did Hastings connive at torture?

During the Mahratta war money was urgently required. The Nawab Vizier owed large arrears to the Company, but could not pay up unless he recovered possession of the State treasures. Philip Francis had returned to England. Accordingly Warren Hastings abandoned the Begums to the tender mercies of the Nawab Vizier, and connived at the imprisonment of their servants. It subsequently appeared that the Nawab Vizier tortured the servants until the money was surrendered, but there is no evidence to show that Warren Hastings connived at the torture.

Services of Hastings.

Warren Hastings was undoubtedly a man of great abilities and marvellous energy. His services to the East India Company, and to British interests in India, are beyond all calculation. But he was exposed to great temptation in times when public virtue was less exalted than it has been in the present generation, and he was hedged around with enemies who were spiteful and unscrupulous enough to misrepresent any and every transaction. His errors were those of his time, but his genius is stamped for ever on the history of British India. His misdeeds cannot be entirely overlooked, but he paid a bitter penalty. For many months he was threatened by the proceedings which culminated in his trial at Westminster Hall. Eventually he was acquitted of all charges, but his trial was protracted over seven long years and ruined his private fortunes and public career.

Merits as an administrator.

After the lapse of a hundred years, the flaws in the character of Warren Hastings may be condoned in consideration of his merits as an administrator. He found the Bengal provinces in chaos, and introduced light and order. He converted British traders into revenue collectors, magistrates, and judges, but he established Courts of Appeal to supervise their proceedings; and if his magistrates and judges had no legal training, they were at any rate Britons with a national sense of justice, and their decisions were infinitely better than those of Bengal zemindars, without law, or justice, or control. Warren Hastings kept a watchful eye on British interests as well as on the welfare of the people under his charge. He sent a mission to Tibet, which shows his anxiety for the extension of trade. He recorded a touching tribute to the memory of Augustus Cleveland, a young Bengal civilian who had done much to humanise and elevate the rude Sonthals of the Rajmahal hills, which sufficiently proves his sympathy with the well-being of the masses. Altogether, if Warren Hastings is not so free from blame as he is represented by his friends, he certainly was not so black as he has been painted by his enemies.

Lord Cornwallis, 1786-93.

§15. In 1786 Lord Cornwallis, an independent peer, was appointed Governor-General. This event marks a change in British rule. Lord Cornwallis was the first British peer, and the first Englishman not in the service of the East India Company, who was appointed to the post of Governor-General. He carried out two measures which have left their mark in history, namely, the perpetual settlement with the Bengal zemindars, and the reform of the judicial system.

Perpetual settlement.

The settlement with the Bengal zemindars was still awaiting a decision. Lord Cornwallis was anxious to arrange the land revenue of the Bengal provinces on English lines. He abandoned the yearly leases, and concluded leases for ten years, with the view of eventually declaring the settlement to be perpetual. Mr. John Shore, a Bengal civilian, pressed for a preliminary inquiry into the rights of the ryots, for the purpose of fixing the rents. But Lord Cornwallis was opposed to any further delay. In 1793 he proclaimed that the ten years settlement would be perpetual; that the tenant-rights of ryots would be left to future inquiry; and that henceforth the Bengal zemindars would be invested with the proprietary rights enjoyed by English landlords, so long as they paid the fixed yearly revenue to Government and respected all existing rights of ryots and cultivators.

Judicial reforms.

The judicial system introduced by Warren Hastings was modified by Lord Cornwallis. The British collector, as already seen, was also magistrate and civil judge. Lord Cornwallis decided that a collector ought to have no judicial duties under which he might be called on to adjudicate in revenue questions. Accordingly a regulation was passed under which the duties of revenue collector were separated from those of magistrate and judge, and the magistrate and judge was to be the head of the district, whilst the revenue collector was his subordinate. It is difficult to understand the merits of this measure. Since then the two offices have been sometimes united and sometimes separated. Eventually the two offices of magistrate and collector were united in the same person.

Non-intervention.

Four provincial Courts of Circuit and Appeal were created by Lord Cornwallis, and remained without alteration for a period of forty years. One Court was at Calcutta, a second at Dacca, a third at Murshedabad, and a fourth at Patna. Each Court consisted of three civilian judges and three Asiatic expounders of the law, namely, a Mohammedan cazi and mufti, and a Hindu pundit. The judges sat in their respective cities to hear appeals in civil cases; and they went twice a year on circuit to try the prisoners who had been committed by the district magistrates within their respective jurisdictions.

Munsifs and darogahs.

Lord Cornwallis also created a class of Hindu civil judges named munsifs, and a new body of Asiatic police under the name of darogahs. These changes are best dealt with in connection with modern reforms which will be brought under review in a future chapter.

First war against Tippu.

Lord Cornwallis was engaged in two campaigns against Tippu of Mysore, the son and successor of Hyder Ali. The war is a thing of the past. Tippu had invaded the territory of the Hindu Raja of Travancore, who was under British protection; and a triple alliance was formed against him as a common enemy by the British Government, the Peishwa of the Mahrattas, and the Nizam of Hyderabad. In the end Tippu was reduced to submission and compelled to cede half his territories, which were distributed amongst the three allies. The confederation, which only lasted to the end of the war, is memorable for suggesting the idea of maintaining the peace of India by a balance of power, which for a brief interval dazzled the imaginations of Anglo-Indian statesmen.¹⁵

Shore, 1793-98; abolition of "dharna."

In 1793 Lord Cornwallis was succeeded by Sir John Shore, the Bengal civilian who pressed Lord Cornwallis to settle the rights and rents of the ryots before proclaiming the perpetual settlement with the zemindars. He is better known by his later title of Lord Teignmouth. He was the first British ruler who suppressed a Hindu institution. He put a stop to "sitting in dharna," a Hindu usage which was subversive of all justice and all law. It was based on the superstitious belief that the life of a Brahman was as sacred as that of a sovereign, and that killing a Brahman, or being in any way implicated in his death, was the most hideous crime that could be committed by mortal man. Any Brahman might ruin a Hindu, either for private revenge or to avenge another, by sitting at his door and refusing to take food. The victim was as helpless as a bird under the fascination of a serpent. He dared not eat so long as the Brahman fasted. He dared not move lest the Brahman should injure himself or kill himself—a catastrophe which would doom the victim to excommunication in this life and perdition in the next. The terrors of this superstition were removed by a British regulation passed in 1797; and although "sitting in dharna" is still a crime under the Penal Code, the memory of the usage is passing away.¹⁶

Sir John Shore strictly adhered to the old policy of non-intervention, which amounted to political isolation. Meanwhile the Mahratta powers united to demand enormous arrears of chout from the Nizam; and the Nizam was utterly defeated, prostrated and paralysed. All hope of a balance of power for the maintenance of the peace of India was thus cast to the winds. Finally, as if to show beyond all question the absurdity of the idea, the Mahratta powers were at war with each other for the mastery at Poona. Such was the state of affairs in 1798 when Lord Mornington, better known by his later title of Marquis of Wellesley, succeeded Sir John Shore as Governor-General, boasting, as he left Europe, that he was going to govern India from a throne with the sceptre of a statesman, and not from behind a counter with the yard measure of a trader.

CHAPTER III.—THIRD PERIOD: IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT.—1798-1836

§1 Lord Mornington (Marquis of Wellesley), 1798-1805: last war against Tippu, 1799. §2. Carnatic confiscated and annexed to Madras Presidency. §3. Wellesley's scheme of a paramount power. §4. Second Mahratta war: successes of Arthur Wellesley and Lake. §5. Disastrous war with Holkar. §6. Return to non-intervention. §7. Sepoy mutiny in Madras army. §8. Lord Minto, 1807-13: wars and alliances against France. §9. Evils of non-intervention in Rajputana: troubles in Nipal. §10. Lord Moira (Marquis of Hastings), 1813-23: war with Nipal, 1814-15. §11. Revival of the paramount power: Pindhari and Mahratta wars, 1817-18. §12. Lord Amherst, 1823-28: wars with Burma and Bhurtpore. §13. Lord William Bentinck, 1828-35; abolition of Suttee. §14. Suppression of Thugs. §15. Administrative reforms. §16. North-West Provinces: Joint Village Proprietors. §17. Madras and Bombay Presidencies: Ryotwari Settlements. §18. Changes under the Charter of 1833. §18. Sir Charles Metcalfe, 1835-36.

French menaces, 1798.

In 1798 British India was confronted on all sides by France or Frenchmen. An army of sepoys, drilled and commanded by French officers, was maintained by the Nizam in the Deccan. Another French officered army was maintained by Sindia in Western Hindustan, between the Jumna and the Ganges. Napoleon Buonaparte was invading Egypt, and threatening to conquer the world.

Asiatic aspirations of Napoleon.

The successes and crimes of the French Revolution had filled Europe with indignation and despair. Napoleon Buonaparte had risen, like another Chenghiz Khan or Timour, to take the world by storm. He had driven the British from Toulon, conquered Italy, wrested the Netherlands from Austria, threatened to invade the British Isles, and then had landed in Egypt, won the battle of the Pyramids, and proclaimed himself to be a follower of the Prophet. Not a man in Europe or Asia could penetrate the designs of the young Corsican. Alexander of Macedon had invaded Egypt as a prelude to the conquest of Persia and India. Napoleon might follow in his footsteps after the lapse of twenty-two centuries. He might restore the Caliphat of Bagdad on the banks of the Tigris, or resuscitate the sovereignty of the Great Mogul over Northern India, from the banks of the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges.

Tippu's alliance with France.

§1. The first duty of Lord Mornington was to get rid of the French sepoy battalions in the Deccan and Hindustan, and to provide for the defence of India against France and Napoleon. Within three weeks of his landing at Calcutta the note of alarm was sounded in Southern India. Tippu, Sultan of Mysore, had formed a hostile alliance with France against Great Britain. It appeared that Tippu had been groaning under his humiliation by Lord Cornwallis, and burning to be revenged on the British government. He hesitated to ally himself with the Mahrattas or the Nizam, and coveted an alliance with a European power. Accordingly he secretly sent emissaries to the French governor of Mauritius, to conclude a treaty with France and Napoleon against Great Britain. The idea fired the imagination of the French at Mauritius, and the fact of the treaty was published in the Mauritius Gazette, and republished in the Calcutta newspapers for the edification of the new Governor-General.

Explanations demanded.

Lord Mornington naturally concluded that Tippu was in collusion with Napoleon, and that a French fleet might soon be sailing from Egypt down the Red Sea to help Tippu in the invasion of the Carnatic, or to help Sindia to restore the supremacy of the Great Mogul over Oudh and Bengal. In the first instance he called upon Tippu for an explanation, and proposed to send an envoy to Seringapatam to arrange for a better understanding between the two governments.

Tippu dumbfoundered.

Meanwhile Tippu was amazed and bewildered. To have his secret designs suddenly published in successive newspapers, and then to be called upon for an explanation, seems to have stupefied him. He replied that the French were liars, and refused to receive an envoy from Lord Mornington. To have overlooked the offence would have been sheer madness. Accordingly Lord Mornington determined to revive the old alliance with the Nizam and the Mahrattas against Tippu; and meanwhile to get rid of the French sepoy battalions.

French battalions disbanded at Hyderabad.

The Nizam welcomed a British alliance as offering a means of escape from the crushing demands of the Mahrattas. He was glad enough for the British to disband his French sepoy battalions, which drained his resources, and were threatening to mutiny for arrears of pay. A British force was moved to Hyderabad, the disbandment was proclaimed, and a battle was expected. Suddenly, the French sepoys raised an uproar, and the French officers rushed into the British lines for protection. It was the old Asiatic story of mutiny for want of pay, and when the British advanced the money, the sepoys went away rejoicing, and the French officers were thankful for their deliverance.

Mahrattas evade a British alliance.

Lord Mornington next began his negotiations with the Mahrattas, but they raised up a host of difficulties. The Peishwa at Poona was a young Brahman, sharp and suspicious. He was jealous of the British alliance with the Nizam, which boded no good as regarded future payments of chout, but he was anxious to keep on good terms with the British. Accordingly he promised to send a contingent to join the British in the war against Tippu, but at heart he had no intention of doing anything of the kind. With him an alliance with the Christian or the Mohammedan was a mere question of money. He was anxious to sell his alliance to the highest bidder. Accordingly he entertained Tippu's envoys at Poona in the hope that the Sultan might eventually offer higher terms than the British for the services of a Mahratta army.

Destruction of Tippu, 1799.

In 1799 Lord Mornington began the war against Mysore. A British army from Madras, under the command of General Harris, invaded it from the east, whilst another force from Bombay invaded it from the west. The two armies soon closed round Tippu. He saw that he was environed by his enemies, and that resistance was hopeless. He sued for terms, but was told to cede the half of his remaining dominions and pay up two millions sterling. He refused to surrender on such crushing conditions, and retired to his fortress at Seringapatam, resolved to die sword in hand rather than become a servant or a pensioner. In May, 1799, Seringapatam was taken by storm, and the dead body of Tippu was found in the gateway.

Cruelty of Tippu.

The fate of Tippu might have been regretted but for his cruel treatment of British prisoners in former wars. At Bangalore, British captives were chained together, starved, threatened, and tormented until some were driven to become Mohammedans. The consequence was, that during the advance on Seringapatam British soldiers were burning for revenge, and Sir David Baird, one of the greatest sufferers, begged for the command of the storming party as a relief to his outraged feelings. When the war was over, the death and downfall of the tyrant was celebrated in songs which were reverberated from India to the British Isles, and the old strains are still lingering in the memories of some who are yet living.¹⁷

Hindu Raj restored.

Lord Mornington annexed part of Mysore territory to the Madras Presidency, and gave another share to the Nizam; and he proposed, as will be seen hereafter, to give a third share to the Mahrattas; but he converted the remainder into a Hindu kingdom. Accordingly an infant scion of the Hindu Raja, who had been deposed by Hyder Ali some forty years previously, was placed on the throne of Mysore in charge of a British Resident and a Brahman Minister until he should attain his majority. The subsequent career of the Raja will be brought under review hereafter.

Annexation of the Carnatic.

§2. Soon after the capture of Seringapatam a clandestine correspondence was discovered in the palace between the Nawab of the Carnatic and the deceased Tippu. The treachery was undeniable. At the same time the discovery enabled the British to get rid of a dynasty that had oppressed the people and intrigued with the enemies of the East India Company for half a century. Nawab Mohammed Ali, whom the British had placed on the throne of the Carnatic in opposition to the French, had died in 1795. His son and successor had followed in the steps of his father, but no complaints reached him, for he was smitten with mortal disease. Lord Mornington, now Marquis of Wellesley, waited for his death, and then told the family that their rule was over. The title of Nawab was preserved, and pensions were liberally provided, but the Carnatic was incorporated with the Madras Presidency, and brought under British administration like the Bengal provinces.

Scandals of Nawab rule.

The annexation of the Carnatic delivered Madras from a host of scandals which had been accumulating for some forty years. The old Nawab had removed from Arcot to Madras, and carried on costly intrigues with the Company's servants in India, and with influential persons in the British Isles, in the hope of getting the revenues into his own hands, and leaving the East India Company to defend his territories out of their own resources. He loaded himself with debt by bribing his supporters with pretended loans, which existed only on paper, bore exorbitant interest, and were eventually charged on the public revenue. All this while, he and his officials were obstructing British operations in the field by withholding supplies, or treacherously informing the enemy of the movements of the British army. Since the annexation of the Carnatic in 1801 all these evils have passed into oblivion, and the public peace has remained undisturbed.

Wellesley's political system.

§3. The war with Tippu taught Lord Wellesley that it was impossible to trust the Mahrattas. They would not join the British government against a common enemy unless paid to do so; and they were always ready to go over to the enemy on the same terms. Accordingly Lord Wellesley proposed to maintain the peace of India, not by a balance of power, but by becoming the sovereign head of a league for the prevention of all future wars.

Subsidiary alliances.

With these views Lord Wellesley proposed that neither the Nizam nor the Mahrattas should take any French officers into their pay for the future; that neither should engage in any war or negotiation without the consent of the British government; and that each should maintain a subsidiary force of sepoys, drilled and commanded by British officers, which should be at the disposal of the British government for the maintenance of the peace of India.

Nizam accepts.

The Nizam accepted the subsidiary alliance. He provided for the maintenance of a Hyderabad Subsidiary Force by ceding to the British government all the territories which he had received on account of the Mysore wars. By this arrangement all money transactions were avoided, and the subsidiary force was paid out of the revenues of the ceded districts.

Mahrattas refuse.

The Mahratta rulers utterly refused to accept subsidiary alliances in any shape or form. They did not want British protection, and they would not permit any interference by mediation or otherwise with their claims for chout against the Nizam. The Peishwa would not maintain a subsidiary force, but he was willing to take British battalions of sepoys into his pay, provided he might employ them against Sindia or any other refractory feudatory. He would not pledge himself to abstain from all wars or negotiations without the consent of the British government. He was willing to help the British in a war with France, but he would not dismiss the Frenchmen in his service.

Sindia refuses British alliance against Afghans.

Sindia was still more obstinate and contemptuous. Mahadaji Sindia was dead. His successor, Daulat Rao Sindia, was a young man of nineteen, but already the irresponsible ruler of a large dominion in Western Hindustan. He was all-powerful at Delhi, and was bent upon being equally all-powerful at Poona. He collected chout from the princes of Rajputana, and, with the help of his French-officered battalions of sepoys, he had established a supremacy over the valleys of the Jumna and Ganges from the banks of the Sutlej to the frontier of Oudh at Cawnpore. Lord Wellesley would not venture to offer a subsidiary alliance to a prince so puffed up with pride as young Sindia. The Afghans, however, were threatening to invade India, and Lord Wellesley invited Sindia to join in an alliance against the Afghans. But Sindia would not hamper himself with a British alliance. He was not afraid of the Afghans. At any rate he waited for the Afghans to appear before taking any steps to prevent their coming.

British fears of France and Russia.

Lord Wellesley was not afraid of Afghans alone, but of French or Russians, who might make their way through Persia, join the Afghans, resuscitate the Great Mogul, and establish a European empire in his name as the rightful representative of Aurangzeb. Accordingly Lord Wellesley sent the once famous Sir John Malcolm on a mission to Persia to persuade the Shah to bar out the French and prevent the Afghans from invading India. Meanwhile, he anxiously waited some turn in Mahratta affairs which would bring their rulers into a more compliant mood towards the British government.

Provinces taken from Oudh.

Lord Wellesley, however, determined that the Nawab Vizier of Oudh should contribute something further towards the defence of India against invasion. The Nawab Vizier maintained a rabble army that was costly and useless, and he depended entirely on British troops for his defence against Afghans and Mahrattas. He was urged to disband his rabble army and replace it by battalions of sepoys trained and commanded by British officers; but he was impracticable, and Lord Wellesley got over the difficulty by taking half his territory for the maintenance of the required battalions. This was an arbitrary proceeding, but it was justified on the score of state necessity and self-preservation. It pushed the British frontier westward to Cawnpore on the Ganges, where it was close to Sindia and his French sepoy battalions, and would be face to face with any foreign invasion from the north-west. The new territories were called "ceded provinces," and eventually were incorporated with what are now known as the North-West Provinces.¹⁸

Constitution of Hindu villages.

The village community was originally a brotherhood, consisting of a tribe, family, or clan, who settled in a particular locality, and distributed the land, or the produce of the land, amongst themselves. The area was called a village, but was more like an English parish. The village community managed its own affairs, and claimed a joint proprietorship in all the land within the village area. They rented out waste lands to yearly tenants, strangers and outsiders, who were treated as tenants, and shut out from the management. Some of these tenants acquired rights of occupancy by prescription or length of possession, whilst others were only tenants at will.

Hereditary officials and artisans.

The village commonwealth had its own hereditary officials, such as a village accountant, who kept a record of all transactions between the joint proprietors, and all accounts between the joint proprietors and their tenants. There was also a village constable or guide, who watched the crops and looked after strangers. Sometimes, when a brotherhood had decayed, a head man ruled the village in their room; and the headman, with the help of the accountant and constable, managed all the domestic affairs of the village, and conducted its relations with the outer world. To these were added hereditary artisans, such as a carpenter, potter, blacksmith, barber, tailor, washerman, and jeweller. In like manner there was an hereditary schoolmaster, astrologer, and priest, who were generally Brahmans. The higher officials were remunerated with hereditary lands, held rent free; but the others were paid by fees of grain or money. Traces of these institutions are still to be found in Behar and Orissa, but in Bengal proper the village life has died out. Hereditary artisans still remain, but hereditary officials have become the servants of the zemindar.

Land revenue.

These village communities contributed a yearly revenue to the government of the day, either as joint proprietors or through a head man. In theory they claimed possession of the land because they had cleared the jungle, and cultivated and occupied a virgin soil. But they paid a revenue to the Raja in return for protection, or to satisfy the superior right of the sovereign, or as black-mail to prevent the Raja from carrying off their crops and cattle.

Talukdars or zemindars.

After the Mohammedan conquest the mode of collection differed according to circumstances. Sometimes officials were appointed by the sovereign. Sometimes a local magnate, or a revenue farmer, was employed, who collected the revenue from a group of villages, and paid a yearly block sum to the sovereign. They were middle-men, getting what they could out of the village communities, and paying as little as they could to the government of the day. These local chiefs, or revenue contractors, were known in the North-West Provinces as talukdars. They corresponded to the zemindars of Bengal, and often, like them, assumed the rights of ownership over the villages.

Settlement with joint village proprietors.

Lord Wellesley ordered that the land revenue in the North-West Provinces should be settled with the talukdars at fixed rates, like the perpetual settlement with the zemindars in Bengal. Fortunately, there was a preliminary inquiry into the conflicting rights of talukdars and village proprietors, which terminated in favour of the villagers. Lord William Bentinck travelled through the North-West Provinces, and eventually the land revenue was settled direct with the joint village proprietors.

Madras villages: Hindu colonisation.

§17. The Madras Presidency seems to have been originally distributed into village communities of joint proprietors. A Hindu legend has been preserved to this day, which tells the story of old Hindu colonisation. A Raja of the southern country had a son by a woman of low birth. The people refused to accept the prince as their Raja. Accordingly the young man crossed the river Palar with a band of emigrants, and cleared the forest to the northward, near the site of the modern city of Madras. For six years the emigrants paid no share of the crops to the Raja. In the seventh year they were brought under the revenue administration.²³

Joint village proprietors.

The modern history of this locality is equally interesting. It was ceded by the Nawab of the Carnatic to the East India Company during the wars of the eighteenth century, and was known as the Company's Jaghir. It was found to be in the possession of joint village proprietors of the same constitution as those described in the North-West Provinces, and a settlement of the land revenue was made with these joint proprietors.

Disappearance.

During the latter half of the eighteenth century the rights of the joint village proprietors in Southern India faded away under the tyranny of Asiatic rulers, but the hereditary officials, artisans, and professionals still survived. Few, if any, joint village proprietors in their full entirety could be found in any villages under the Nawab's officials; whilst those within the Company's Jaghir had been duly respected and preserved by the British officials. Under such circumstances it was proposed to settle the revenue of the Carnatic territory, acquired in 1801, with individual ryots or landholders under what was afterwards known as the ryotwari system.

Perpetual settlement ordered.

Lord Wellesley, however, interfered, and ordered that perpetual settlements should be concluded with zemindars. Somehow this zemindari settlement had a fascination for British statesmen of the period. It was believed that the creation of an aristocracy of landlords would guarantee the permanence of British rule in India. Accordingly, Lord Wellesley was deaf to all arguments in favour of a ryotwari settlement, and threatened to remove any public servant in the Madras Presidency who should hesitate to carry out his orders.

No zemindars.

Madras had no alternative but to submit. There were zemindars in the Telugu country to the northward, which had been conquered centuries previously by the Mohammedan Sultans of Golconda; and with these zemindars it was easy to conclude a perpetual settlement. But there were no zemindars in the Tamil country to the southward.

Zemindars created.

In this extremity there was no alternative but to manufacture zemindars. Accordingly zemindars were created in the Madras Presidency by the old Bengal process of grouping villages together, selling them by auction, and treating the lucky buyer as a zemindar. But the new zemindars failed to pay the stipulated revenue. The groups of villages were again brought into the market, and as Lord Wellesley had left India, the estates were bought in by the Madras government, and the revenue resettled with individual ryots or cultivators.²⁴

Military bond-holders.

In Malabar and Canara on the western coast the proprietors of land did not live in villages. They were landholders of the old military type, clinging to their lands with hereditary tenacity, employing serfs or slaves to cultivate them, and paying no revenue except feudal service and homage to their suzerain. Eventually Malabar and Canara were conquered by Tippu of Mysore, and the landholders were compelled to pay revenue, or to surrender their lands.

Thomas Munro: ryotwari settlement.

Thomas Munro is the real author of the ryotwari settlement. He was a cadet in the Madras army, who landed at Fort St. George about the time that Hyder Ali was desolating the Carnatic. In 1792 he was employed in settling the revenue in Malabar and Canara, which had been ceded by Tippu to Lord Cornwallis; and there he formed his ideas of a settlement direct with individual landholders. The controversy between Madras and Bengal raged for years, but in the end Thomas Munro was victorious. He converted the Board of Control and Court of Directors to his views. He was knighted, and appointed Governor of Madras. He died in 1827, after having triumphantly introduced the ryotwari. The zemindars in the Telegu country still retain their estates with the proprietary rights of landlords.

Bombay: Mountstuart Elphinstone.

Meanwhile the Bombay Presidency had been vastly enlarged by the acquisition of the dominions of the Peishwa. Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the contemporary of Sir Thomas Munro, was appointed Governor of Bombay. He introduced the ryotwari settlement into the Mahratta country, and framed a code of laws which remained in force throughout the Bombay Presidency until 1860, when it was superseded by the Penal Code.

Madras collectorates.

Lord William Bentinck's system of commissioners of divisions was introduced into the North-West Provinces and Bombay; but the Madras Presidency was without commissioners or divisions, and was distributed into twenty large districts or collectorates, which on an average are as large as Yorkshire. In Bengal and the North-West Provinces the districts on an average are no larger than Devonshire. In each Madras district there was a collector, who might be described as a proconsul, and a civil and sessions judge, corresponding to those in the other Presidencies. The administration of the Madras Presidency, revenue and judicial, has always been distinguished by a larger element of Asiatic officials than either Bengal, Bombay, or the North-West Provinces.

Charter Act of 1833: India Thrown open.

§18. The last and most important changes in the rule of the East India Company were carried out during the administration of Lord William Bentinck, under the charter Act of 1833. Before, however, dealing with this radical reform, it may be as well to review the successive stages in the relations of the East India Company towards parliament and the crown.

Company and Crown, 1600-1688.

During the seventeenth century, the first of the Company's existence, it mainly depended on the favour of the crown. It had obtained a charter of exclusive trade from Queen Elizabeth. It prevailed on James I. to send Sir Thomas Roe as ambassador to India, to propitiate the Great Mogul and secure his good offices for the Company's trade. It sold 600,000 lbs. of pepper to Charles I. on the security of bonds on the customs, and enabled that sovereign to raise £60,000 for the expenses of his war with Parliament. Oliver Cromwell however did not approve of trade monopolies. The Lord Protector was willing to help the English Company to fight the Dutch Company, but he was of opinion that every Englishman had as much right as the Company to trade in the Eastern seas. Charles II. and James II. renewed the Company's original monopoly and privileges, and received presents in return, which however rarely exceeded the modest sum of £1,200 a year.

Parliament interposes, 1688-1708.

Under William of Orange the monopoly of the East Indies was again in danger. Parliament voted that every Englishman might traffic wherever he pleased. The Directors scattered bribes with a lavish hand; but parliament insisted upon searching the books of the Company. Then discoveries were made which were scandalous alike to the Company and the nation. Every man in power, from the highest to the lowest, had taken money from the India House. In 1693 about £90,000 had been spent in corruption. The Duke of Leeds was impeached in the House of Commons for taking a bribe of £5,000, and £10,000 was traced to the illustrious William. In this extremity the King prorogued parliament, and proceedings were brought to a close.

The United Company.

The parliamentary vote however had abolished for a while the monopoly of the trade with the East Indies. A second East India Company was formed and the two rivals nearly ruined each other. At last the two Companies were united into one, and a large loan was advanced to government by the new corporation. Under this new arrangement the trade monopoly was secured to the united Company throughout the eighteenth century.

Old East India House.

In those early days every shop in London exhibited a sign or emblem. The first old East India House was a quaint building with a large entablature in front, bearing three ships in full sail and a dolphin at each end. The business was distributed amongst the Directors, and transacted in committees. All the Directors put their names to the letters sent to India, and signed themselves "Your loving friends." To this day the business of the India Office is conducted by committees, but the "loving friends" vanished with the East India Company.

New India House.

In the early half of the eighteenth century a new India House was built in Leadenhall Street. It was here that the Directors grew into merchant princes, and administered the affairs of provinces, until they built up our Anglo-Indian empire. Here too began the later conflict between the Company and the House of Commons. George III. was bent on coercing parliament and removing his ministers at will. But during the coalition ministry of Lord North and Charles James Fox, there was a battle royal between parliament and the crown.

Fox's India Bill.

In 1783 Fox introduced his bill for abolishing the Court of Directors, and transferring their power and patronage to seven commissioners nominated in the bill. An agitation arose which threw the whole kingdom into a ferment. The King claimed the right of governing all countries conquered by his subjects. Accordingly he claimed the right of nominating the seven commissioners, and thus getting all the power and patronage of the Court of Directors into his own hands. But the House of Commons would not trust the King. Whigs and Tories saw that their liberties would be endangered by such additions to the royal prerogative, and they passed Fox's bill by large majorities.

Hostility of George III.

King George was furious. His only hope was that the obnoxious bill would be thrown out by the Lords. He caused a message to be conveyed to every peer, that his Majesty would withdraw his friendship from any one who voted for the bill. Accordingly the bill was thrown out by the Lords. Fox and Lord North were ignominiously dismissed, and William Pitt the younger became prime minister.

Pitt's India Bill.

Pitt's India Bill of 1784 was a marvel of statesmanship. The Court of Directors was left in the full exercise of all patronage as regards first appointments in England to the ranks of the Indian civil services, or to cadetships in the armies of the three Presidencies. All promotions in India were left to the local governments and to the Governor-General in Council. Parliament exercised a constitutional control over the whole administration of the Anglo-Indian empire; and the patronage, whether in England or in India, was wisely kept out of the hands of either ministers or the crown.

Abolition of monopoly.

Under the charter act of 1813 the trade of the Company with India was thrown open to the British nation, but the Company still retained its monopoly of trade with China. The Company, however, suffered little by the loss of its monopoly as regards India. It was an old-established firm of two centuries standing. Its settlements and shipping were all in full swing, and it continued for twenty years longer to carry on a splendid business, which suffered but little by the rivalry of private interlopers. Meanwhile, as already seen, it had become the paramount power in India by its successful wars against Nepal and Burma, the extinction of the Peishwa, the humiliation of Sindia and Holkar, and the extermination of the predatory system.

End of Company's trade.

Under the charter act of 1833 all trading on the part of the East India Company, whether with India or with China, was brought to a close. The East India Docks were emptied of the Company's shipping, and the trade of Europe in the Eastern seas was thrown open to the whole world.

Licensing system.

Another radical change was also effected. Ever since the first establishment of the Company's settlements in India, no British born subject, not in the service of the Company, had been permitted by law to reside in India without having previously procured a license from the Court of Directors. This license system was brought to a close in 1833, and any British born subject might take up his residence in India, and trade or travel wherever he pleased.

Constitutional changes.

The constitution of the British government in India was remodelled. The Governor-General of Bengal was created Governor-General of India with increased control over Madras and Bombay. The Council of India, which hitherto consisted of the Governor-General as President, two Bengal civilians, and occasionally the commander-in-chief of the Bengal army, was increased by the addition of a law member. Mr., afterwards Lord, Macaulay was appointed to the new post. His labours will be noticed hereafter in dealing with the constitutional changes of 1853.

Centralisation.

Henceforth all legislative authority and financial control were centred in the government of India; and the governments of Madras and Bombay were stripped of all power to enact laws, and prohibited from creating any new office or making any grant of money, without the consent of the Governor-General of India in Council, or the sanction of the Court of Directors.

Stagnation at Madras and Bombay.

The charter of 1833 was not an unmixed good. It stopped all progress in Madras and Bombay by bringing those Presidencies too closely under the control of Bengal. For twenty years they had no representatives in the Council at Calcutta. They had framed their own systems of land revenue. They were relieved of the cares of trade, which had been a worry to Governors and Governors-General from the days of the Marquis of Wellesley to those of Lord William Bentinck. But after the year 1833 they were more or less paralysed by the loss of all discretion and responsibility in matters of legislation and expenditure. Great events were about to agitate Northern India, but for twenty years Madras and Bombay were without a history, and the work of administration was as lifeless and monotonous as the working of a machine.

Popular administration of Bentinck.

Lord William Bentinck left India in 1835. His administration had been eminently popular with all classes of the community; and his memory is preserved to this day as that of a just and able ruler, who paid due regard to the rights and claims of Asiatics as well as of Europeans.

Sir Charles Metcalfe, 1835-6: coming collisions with Asiatic powers.

Sir Charles Metcalfe, the Bengal civilian, who was sent on a mission to Runjeet Singh in 1808, and since then had filled some of the most responsible posts in the Anglo-Indian empire, acted as Governor-General between the departure of Lord William Bentinck in 1835 and the arrival of Lord Auckland in 1836. A new era was beginning to dawn upon India. Great Britain was about to appear, not only as mistress of an Anglo-Indian empire, but as an Asiatic power coming more or less into collision with four other Asiatic powers—Persia, Russia, Afghanistan and China.

CHAPTER IV.—FOURTH PERIOD: RISE TO ASIATIC POWER.—1836-56

§1. Russian advance checked by Nadir Shah, 1722-38. §2. First Cabul war under Lord Auckland, 1838-42. §3. Lord Ellenborough, 1842-44: return from Cabul and conquest of Sind. §4. War in Gwalior: reduction of Sindia's army. §5. Lord Hardinge, 1845-48: Sikh rule in the Punjab. §6. First Sikh war: Moodki, Ferozshahar, Aliwal, and Sobraon. §7. Lord Dalhousie, 1848-56: Second Sikh war: Chillianwalla and Goojerat: annexation of the Punjab. §8. British rule: patriarchal government. §9. Second Burmese war, 1852: annexation of Pegu. §10. Lord Dalhousie as an administrator: no roads in India. §11. Trunk road, trunk railway, telegraphs, Ganges canal. §12. Annexations of Nagpore, Satara, Jhansi, and Oudh. §13. India Bill of 1853: new competitive Civil Service. §14. New Legislative Council: Lord Macaulay and the Penal Code. §15. Departure of Lord Dalhousie, 1856. §16. Lord Canning, 1856-62: expedition to the Persian Gulf. §17. Mogul family at Delhi. §18. Condition of Oudh.

Lord Auckland, 1836-42: jealousy of Russia.

Lord Auckland landed in Bengal at a grave political crisis. Great Britain was growing jealous of Russia as regards India, and tact and common sense were required, not to promote a war, but to prevent one. Jealousy of Russia was a new sensation. Great Britain had been indignant at the partition of Poland, but the two nations had become reconciled during the wars against France and Napoleon. Later on Russia began to extend her empire, and to menace Turkey on one side and Persia on the other; and at last it dawned on the people of the British Isles that unless there was a speedy understanding between British and Russian diplomatists, the Cossack and the sepoy would cross swords on the banks of the Oxus.

Central Asia: Afghanistan and Turkistan.

§1. Central Asia is a new world which has been slowly opening up to European eyes. It includes the vast territories of Afghanistan and Turkistan, which intervene between British India, Persia, Russia, and China. It is a region of desert and mountain, ruined gardens and dried-up springs—the relics of empires which flourished in the days of the so-called Nimrod and Sennacherib, and the later days of the fire-worshippers, but were brought to rack and ruin by the Tartars and Turkomans in the armies of Chenghiz Khan and Timur.

Cradle of India.

The whole of this region, and, indeed, the whole of Central and Northern Asia, has been the cradle of the people of India from the remotest antiquity. Hindus and Mohammedans are all immigrants from beyond the Indus. The Dravidian races, the pre-Aryan people, brought their devil worship and noisy orgies from Northern Asia into Hindustan. Eventually they were driven to Southern India by the Aryan people, who brought the Vedic gods and hymns, the sacred hôma and the ministration of Rishis, from Persia and Media into Northern India. The Rajputs, the Greeks, and the Indo-Scythians of Hindustan, were all strangers from the north-west. The Turks and Afghans, who invaded India during the Crusades, and the Moguls, who established their empire in the days of the Tudors, were all sojourners from the same remote region. Thus Russia is only following the old instinct of Dravidians and Aryans, as she advances southward from the steppes towards Persia and India. She expands on land just as Great Britain expands on the sea.

Russian advance to Persia, 1722.

The marches of Tartar, Turk, Afghan, and Mogul belong to a distant period. The march of Russia began in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Peter the Great had been humiliated by Turkey on the banks of the Pruth, and looked to Persia for compensation. Persia was on the brink of ruin. In 1722 the Afghans had advanced to Ispahan; and the Czar and the Sultan prepared to divide her remaining territory. Turkey took the western provinces, whilst Russia occupied the provinces along the south of the Caspian. The Caspian was a base for an advance on India, and had Peter lived he would have found his way to India. The road was easy viâ Meshed to Herat, and the Mogul empire would have fallen into his hands like an over-ripe plum. The British at Calcutta were a little hive of traders, who would have been helpless to resist a Russian invasion. Most probably they would have preferred Russia to the Mogul, and would have sent a deputation to the Russian camp to pray for the protection of the Czar.

Checkmated by Nadir Shah, 1727.

But Peter the Great died in 1727, and Nadir Shah, the last of the "world stormers," stepped in and snatched Persia from Russia. Nadir Shah was a Turk of the noble tribe of Afshar; a brigand in his youth, but destined to be as great a general as Cyrus or Napoleon. In 1727, the very year that Peter the Great died, Nadir Shah joined the dethroned Shah of Persia, drove the Afghans back to their own territories, and conquered Khorassan as far as Herat. Eventually he imprisoned the Shah, and usurped the throne of Persia. He compelled Turkey to retire from the western provinces, and Russia to retire from the provinces on the Caspian.

Persian invasion of India, 1738-39.

In 1738 Nadir Shah captured Candahar, invaded the Punjab, and entered Delhi in triumph. His battalions of Persians and Turkomans, trained and disciplined under picked officers, were irresistible against Afghans and Moguls. He did not want to conquer India, but only to plunder it. He carried off the treasures of Delhi, the spoil of Hindustan, and the peacock of jewels which had blazed for a hundred years over the throne of the Great Mogul. Thus, within twelve years of the death of Peter the Great, the parade of jewels, which might have adorned the Kremlin, became the prize of Nadir Shah.

Nadir Shah and his Persian officers.

Nadir Shah was the last of the line of Asiatic warriors that began with Sargon and Cyrus, and culminated in Chenghiz Khan and Timur. He was tall, powerful, and loud-voiced, with an eye of lightning, and an expression that alternately terrified and charmed. He stood out head and shoulders above his Persian officers, arrayed in a plain cloak lined with black lambskin from Bokhara, a crimson turban, a richly-mounted dagger in his belt, and a huge battleaxe of steel in his hand. He was ever at work from morn till night, inspecting troops, administering justice, dictating letters, or transacting business by word of mouth. His fare was of the plainest boiled rice, with a little meat, bread, cheese, radishes, and parched peas whilst his drink was butter-milk or water. His officers were Asiatic dandies, clad in rich pelisses trimmed with furs, smart vests with gold and silver lace, crimson hats with four peaks, or arrayed in coats of mail with steel helmets and sharp pikes. They scorned the frugal fare which satisfied their Turkish master. They delighted in Persian dishes, such as pillaws stuffed with plums and raisins, savoury stews, dainty bits of meat known as kabobs, together with grape jelly, and confections; and they revelled in wine and strong waters, to the horror of all strict Mohammedans.

Russian advance: war declared, 1838.

§2. A century passed away. Nadir Shah was forgotten, and Russia was again menacing Persia and dabbling in the Caspian. In 1837 Persia was besieging Herat under the pretence that it had formed part of the empire of Nadir Shah; but Russia was in the background putting forth Persian claims as a cat's-paw for seizing Herat. Great Britain, however, was resolved that neither Persia nor Russia should take Herat from the Afghans, to whom it had properly belonged ever since the death of Nadir Shah. In October, 1838, Lord Auckland declared war to compel Persia to retire from Herat. It was also determined to dethrone Dost Mohammed Khan, the ruler of Afghanistan, because he had been carrying on a suspicious intercourse with Russia, and to set up Shah Shuja in his room, because he had been dethroned many years previously by Dost Mohammed Khan, and was therefore the rightful ruler of Afghanistan. Moreover Shah Shuja had been living many years in British territory under British protection, and was therefore likely to prove a more faithful ally against Russia, than Dost Mohammed Khan.

Political mistakes.

The declaration of war was a mistake. Persia had already taken the alarm, and raised the siege of Herat. Dost Mohammed Khan may have been a usurper, but he had been accepted by the Afghan people as their ruler, and he was a man of undoubted capacity. If he had been properly treated in 1836-37 he might have become as useful an ally to the British government as he proved himself to be twenty years later. Shah Shuja, on the other hand, whom the British wished to set up in his room, was a weak and worthless prince, and it was doubtful at the time whether the Afghan people would accept him as their ruler, especially if he were forced upon them by the British government.

First Afghan war, 1838-42.

Thus began the first Cabul war. The British army was shut out from the Punjab by Runjeet Singh, and compelled to take a circuitous route through Sind. A bridge of boats was constructed to carry the army over the Indus at Sukkur; but in those days Sind was a foreign territory, and no reliance could be placed on its rulers. Indeed, had the British met with a defeat in Afghanistan, the Amirs, or rulers of Sind, would possibly have destroyed the bridge, and cut off their return to India.

British advance to Cabul, 1839.

In February, 1839, the British army crossed the river Indus, and advanced along the Bolan Pass to Quetta, and thence to Candahar. Major Rawlinson remained at Candahar as minister and envoy of Shah Shuja, supported by a force under the command of General Nott. The main army, under Sir John Keane, advanced northward, captured the important fortress of Ghazni, and conducted Shah Shuja to Cabul, whilst Dost Mohammed Khan fled away northward to Bokhara. Shah Shuja was placed on the throne of Afghanistan, under the guidance of Sir William Macnaghten, the minister and envoy at Cabul, protected by the British army under Keane, who was subsequently created Baron Keane of Ghazni.²⁵

British successes, 1840.

The year 1840 brought unexpected good fortune. Runjeet Singh died in 1839, and his successor opened the Punjab to the march of British troops. Russia sent a counter expedition from Orenburg towards Khiva, but it was stopped by snows and want of water, and compelled to return. Shah Shuja, however, was only maintained on the throne at Cabul by British arms and gold. The Afghans cared nothing for him. So long as they received subsidies from the British authorities they remained loyal, but there was no enthusiasm. The hill tribes, who occupied the passes into the Punjab, were equally loyal so long as they received pay, but otherwise might turn against the British at any time, and cut off their return to India. The shopkeepers and bazaar dealers at Cabul were satisfied, for they reaped a golden harvest from their British customers. Towards the close of 1840 Dost Mohammed Khan returned to Cabul and surrendered to Sir William Macnaghten. This was a stroke of luck which for a brief space threw the destinies of Central Asia into the hands of British rulers. The Dost was sent to Calcutta as a prisoner but treated as a guest, and often played at chess at Government House. Meanwhile British officers and officials fancied they were perfectly safe, and were joined by their wives and families, who gladly exchanged the depressing temperature of India for the cool climate of Cabul.

Coming catastrophe.

Such was the state of affairs in India when the storm of 1857 was about to burst upon Hindustan, which was to shake British power in Northern India to its very foundations, and sweep away the East India Company for ever. The outbreak was hardly felt in the older presidencies of Bengal, Madras, or Bombay, nor in the Punjab or Pegu, nor in Nagpore or Satara, the provinces recently annexed without conquest, nor, with few exceptions, in the feudatory states under British suzerainty. The main fury of the storm was spent on Oudh and the North-West Provinces; and the significance of this localisation will appear in the after history.

CHAPTER V.—SEPOY REVOLT: BENGAL, DELHI, PUNJAB.—1857

§1. European soldiers and Asiatic sepoys. §2. Three British armies in India: Bengal, Bombay, and Madras. §3. Sepoy army of Bengal: Brahmans and Rajputs. §4. Enfield cartridges: general horror of pork: Hindu worship of the cow. §5. Agitation of the sepoys at Barrackpore. §6. First mutiny against the cartridges: Berhampore. §7. Second mutiny: Barrackpore. §8. Oudh: mutiny at Lucknow: suppressed. §9. Mutiny and massacre at Meerut. §10. Mohammedan revolt and massacre at Delhi: general excitement. §11. British advance from the Punjab to Delhi. §12. Siege of Delhi by Europeans, Sikhs, and Ghorkas. §13. Punjab and John Lawrence: antagonism between Sikhs and Mohammedans. §14. Sepoy plots at Lahore and Mian Mir: quashed. §15. Peshawar and frontier mountain tribes. §16. Execution of sepoy mutineers at Peshawar. §17. Brigadier John Nicholson: worshipped by a Sikh brotherhood. §18. Proposed withdrawal from Peshawar. §19. Mutiny at Sealkote: wholesale executions. §20. Siege and storm of Delhi, September 1857: peace in the North-West.

Military rule in India.

It is a common saying that "India is held by the sword;" but the phrase is misleading, and in one direction it is absolutely untrue. The British army is not maintained to rivet a foreign yoke on the subject populations. Its main duty has been to keep the peace between rival princes, to put down fighting between antagonistic religions, and to protect India against foreign aggression.

Paucity of European troops.

§1. The small number of European troops in 1857 proves that India was free. In the Bengal provinces, which cover a larger area than Great Britain and Ireland, and a denser population, there were scarcely any European troops. A single regiment sufficed to garrison Calcutta; and of this regiment one wing was quartered in Fort William within the city, whilst the other wing was quartered in Dumdum arsenal, seven miles off. With this exception, there were no European troops within 400 miles of Calcutta. One European regiment was quartered at Dinapore, to the westward of Patna, and another at Rangoon, in the newly-acquired province of Pegu. There was also a European regiment at Lucknow in Oudh, and two European regiments at Meerut in the North-West Provinces, about forty miles from Delhi, and a thousand miles from Calcutta. But the bulk of the European regiments in India were quartered in the Punjab, the frontier province on the north-west. This frontier is the only vulnerable side of India. It faces Afghanistan; but it also faces a possible combination of European and Asiatic powers, which may some day menace the British empire in India.

Sepoys or Asiatics.

The army of the East India Company was mainly composed of native soldiers, known as sepoys. The term "native," however, is equivocal, and sepoys are best called Asiatics, to distinguish them from British soldiers, who are known in India as Europeans. They were formed into regiments corresponding to European battalions, and were drilled and commanded by European officers corresponding to regimental officers in Her Majesty's army. Each regiment had also an Asiatic staff of sepoy officers, known as naiks, havildars, jemadars, and subahdars—corresponding to corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. Such regiments were known as "regulars."

Army strength.

In 1857 the regular army of the East India Company comprised in round numbers about 200,000 Asiatics, commanded by 4,000 European officers, and about 45,000 British-born soldiers. But the European regiments were not all taken from Her Majesty's service. The East India Company had enlisted nine European regiments for exclusive service in India, who were known as Fusiliers and Locals. Moreover, in addition to the regular sepoys, there were battalions known as irregulars, because they had fewer regimental European officers. They were raised specially for service in particular provinces, and also for service in the contingent and subsidiary forces maintained by feudatory states under existing treaties.

Tried fidelity.

The sepoy army had been the pride and glory of the East India Company for more than a hundred years. It won its first laurels in the old wars against the French in Southern India; and from the battle of Plassy in 1757, to the dawn of 1857, it had shared the triumph of the British army in building up the Anglo-Indian empire. For perfection of discipline, and fidelity to their European officers, the sepoys might for many years have been favourably compared with the soldiers of any continental army. Hindus and Mohammedans fought side by side with Europeans, and one and all were bound together by that brotherhood in arms, which grows up between soldiers of all races and climes who have been under fire together in the same campaign.

No religious distinctions.

On the parade-ground and on the battle-field all differences of race, caste, and religion were for the moment forgotten. Together, sepoys and soldiers fought, not only against the French, but against Nawabs and Sultans who were Mohammedans, and against Mahrattas and Rajas who were Hindus. Together, they had crossed the Indus and the Sutlej to fight against Afghans and Sikhs; climbed the shelves and precipices of the Himalayas to punish the aggressions of the Ghorkas of Nipal; and ascended the waters of the Irrawaddy to chastise the arrogance of Burmese kings. When the sepoys were called out by the British magistrate to repress riots between Hindus and Mohammedans, they put their religion into their pockets and fired with the utmost impartiality on both parties, although in their hearts they must have sympathised with one side or the other. But the pride of the sepoy, whether Hindu or Mohammedan, was to be "faithful to his salt"—in other words, to be loyal to the master from whom he drew his pay.

Sepoy ways.

But sepoys have ways of their own which Europeans cannot always understand, unless they have served with them shoulder to shoulder, and listened patiently and considerately to the outpourings of their grievances. A sepoy is proud of his corps, jealous for its reputation, and respectful to his officers. Hindus of the higher castes, such as Brahmans and Rajputs, and Mohammedans of noble and ancient families, are alike amenable to British discipline. But sepoys can be stung to insubordination by insult or injustice, like soldiers of other races. Sepoys have been known to sacrifice caste prejudices to help European officers in time of need, but they resented needless interference or looks of scorn with the sullen pride of Orientals. At Vellore, in 1806, the Madras sepoys were driven to mutiny by the contemptuous orders of the military authorities as regards caste marks and turbans, and above all by the jeers of the Mysore princes, who taunted them with becoming Christians. Yet during the first Cabul war and other distant campaigns, sepoys often forgot their caste in cases of emergency, and cheerfully obeyed orders which they would have resented in their own country, or in the presence of inconvenient witnesses.

Mutiny at loss of batta.

Injustice again, real or imagined, is as intolerable to sepoys as it is to children. More than once a regiment has been deprived of batta, or field allowances, under circumstances which kindled a burning sense of wrong. This batta is given during service in foreign territory, but is withdrawn after the return of the sepoys to British territory. Thus, sepoys who had borne the brunt of the wars in Sind and the Punjab, were suddenly deprived of batta when those countries became British provinces, and naturally rebelled against what must have appeared to them a crying injustice. The sepoy complained that he had helped to conquer Sind for the East India Company, and was then punished by the loss of batta. The paymaster pointed to the regulations, but the result was disaffection amounting to mutiny.

Disbandment.

Under such circumstances there was no alternative but disbandment. There can be no pardon for mutineers, yet capital punishment, or even a long term of imprisonment, would be needlessly severe in dealing with ignorant sepoys. As it was, their doom was terrible in the eyes of their fellows. In a moment they were deprived of all hope of pension, which secured to every sepoy, a life provision in his native village when age or infirmity compelled him to retire from the army.

Three armies: Bengal, or Northern India.

§2. The Company's regular forces in India were formed into three distinct armies, namely, those of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, and each army had its own commander-in-chief. The armies of Madras and Bombay were mostly recruited in their respective presidencies; but the people of Bengal are not a fighting race, and the Bengal army was mostly recruited from the warlike populations of Oudh and the North-West Provinces. Again the Bengal army was not kept within the limits of the Bengal presidency, but was distributed over the whole of Northern India as far as the north-west frontier. It was consequently larger than the two other armies put together. It garrisoned Bengal, the North-West Provinces, and the newly-acquired provinces of Oudh and the Punjab; whilst it overlooked, more or less, the Asiatic states to the south and west of the Jumna, including the principalities and chiefships of Rajputana, the territories of Sindia and Holkar, and the smaller domains of a host of minor feudatories.

Bombay in the Deccan; Madras in the South.

The Bombay army garrisoned the Western Deccan and Sind, and the Madras army garrisoned Southern India and Pegu; but neither of these armies played any prominent part in the great sepoy revolt of 1857-58. Some disaffection was shown in the Bombay army which was nearest to the Bengal sepoys, and caught something of the contagion. The Madras army was for the most part still further south; and only one regiment caught the infection, and was promptly disbanded.

Hindus in Bengal army.

§3. The sepoy army of Bengal was mainly composed of Hindus. Taking the average strength of every regiment at 1,000 sepoys, there would be 800 Hindus and 200 Mohammedans; and the antagonism between the two religions was supposed to secure an additional safeguard against mutiny or disaffection.

High castes: Brahmans and Rajputs.

High caste was the main characteristic of the Hindu sepoys in the Bengal army. Of the 800 Hindus in every regiment, about 400 were Brahmans, the sacred caste of India, who claim to be gods, and are supposed to be endowed with supernatural powers. Next to the Brahmans were about 200 Rajputs, the royal caste of India, who claim to be "sons of Rajas," and are soldiers by birth as well as calling. The remaining 200 Hindus were men of low caste, who were regarded as inferior beings. The Brahmans were powerful over all, and were worshipped by the Rajputs as well as by the low castes.

Discipline and caste.

Pride of caste was thus the moving spirit of the Bengal army. This, however, was not perceptible on the parade ground or field of battle, except in the lofty mien, haughty bearing, and splendid physique of the men. The Bengal sepoys were taller on the average than any European armies, excepting perhaps the Russian guard.²⁷ On duty the Brahman and Rajput obeyed the word of command when given by a low caste sepoy officer. Off duty, the low caste sepoy officer prostrated himself in token of worship before the Brahman soldier under his command.

Growing insubordination of the Bengal sepoys.

But pride of caste had its disadvantages, and for years the Bengal sepoys had displayed a laxity of discipline, and a spirit of insubordination towards their European officers, which had been unknown in the older days. They had been pampered and humoured to an extent which diminished their efficiency, and many officers of experience lamented the change. But any report to that effect was naturally offensive to the higher military authorities; and those who were most alive to the growing evil found that it was best for their own interests to keep their opinion to themselves.

Calcutta, Dumdum, Barrackpore, Berhampore.

It has been seen that Calcutta was garrisoned by a single regiment of Europeans, one wing being quartered in Fort William and the other in the arsenal at Dumdum, about seven miles off. Nine miles north of Dumdum, and sixteen miles north of Calcutta, is the pleasant station of Barrackpore, where the Governor-General has a park and country mansion, and where four sepoy regiments were cantoned with their European officers, but without European troops. About 100 miles still further north is the station of Berhampore, hard by the old capital of Murshedabad; and here a regiment of sepoy infantry was posted, with half a regiment of sepoy cavalry and a battery of sepoy artillery.

Sepoy huts and lines.

A sepoy regiment in the Bengal army was cantoned in ten rows of huts, a company of 100 sepoys in each row. The arms and ammunition of each company were kept in a circular magazine in the front of each line. The European officers, with or without wives and families, lived round about in one-storied houses with thatched roofs, known as bungalows. The European officers rarely visited the sepoy lines during the heat of the day, but two European sergeants were appointed to each regiment to lodge close to the lines and report all that was going on.

Enfield rifle: musketry schools at Dumdum, Meerut, and Sealkote.

§4. In 1856 the Russian war was over, and the Enfield rifle, which had been used with such success in the Crimea, was introduced into India. Accordingly three musketry schools were established in Northern India for teaching the sepoys of the Bengal army the use of the new rifle. One school was established at Dumdum for the instruction of the sepoys in the Bengal presidency; another at Meerut, forty miles from Delhi, for those in the North-Western Provinces; and the third at Sealkote for those in the Punjab. Under this arrangement, detachments from the different regiments were to be sent from time to time to one or other of these schools until the whole Bengal army was familiar with the use of the Enfield. It will be seen hereafter that the three most dangerous mutinies in India grew out of these musketry schools.

Greased cartridges.

In those days every sepoy and soldier had been accustomed for generations to bite off the end of his paper cartridge before loading his musket. Accordingly a supply of cartridges for the new rifle was received from England, and forwarded to each of the three schools, and further supplies of the same pattern were manufactured in the arsenal at Dumdum by low-caste workmen known as Lascars. Suddenly it leaked out that the new cartridges were greased with the fat of cows, or with the fat of pigs. Thus every Hindu sepoy who bit the cartridge would lose his caste and religion as if he had eaten beef; whilst every Mohammedan sepoy would be polluted by contact with pork, and not only lose his religion, but be barred out for ever from the heaven of celestial houris.

Discovery at Dumdum.

A Lascar employed in Dumdum arsenal met a Brahman sepoy going to Barrackpore, and asked him for a drink of water out of his brass lotah. This was an unusual request, intended to vex and annoy the Brahman. A thirsty low-caste Hindu might ask a high-caste man to pour water into his mouth, but would not offend the Brahman by the bare suggestion of drinking out of his lotah. The Brahman turned away in disgust at the idea of low-caste lips polluting his drinking-cup. The Lascar retorted that the Brahman would soon be as impure as himself, for he would bite the new cartridges which had been smeared with the fat of cows and pigs, and would lose caste altogether.

Horror of Hindus and Mohammedans.

The Brahman was thunderstruck at this taunt. Europeans who have never visited India can scarcely realise the horrors that must have seized on his Brahmanised imagination. Suet and lard are such familiar ingredients in European cookery, that no one in the British Isles could have been surprised at their being used for greasing Enfield cartridges. But to Europeans that have lived in India, the bare fact that cartridges should have been greased with suet or lard, to be bitten by Hindu or Mohammedan sepoys, seems a mad freak of fortune which is altogether incomprehensible. In the fierce antagonism between the two religions, Hindus have thrown dead pigs into Mohammedan mosques, and Mohammedans have thrown slaughtered cows into Hindu temples; but the British government stood on neutral ground. It had always professed to hold an even balance between the two religionists, and any attempt to destroy the caste of Hindus, or the religion of Mohammedans, was altogether foreign to the ideas of Asiatics or Europeans.

Pigs unclean.

It is easy to understand why both Hindus and Mohammedans regard swine as unclean. The Jews have had the same horror of pigs and pork from time immemorial. To this day, both Hindus and Mohammedans shudder, or affect to shudder, at the idea of Europeans cleaning their teeth with brushes made of bristles; and none but those of enlarged experiences, who have been Europeanised out of their religious prejudices, or smitten with a passion for European luxuries, would venture to eat a slice of ham.

Cow worship.

The cow is not more to Mohammedans than it is to Europeans, but the Hindus worship it as a deity. Gratitude for the milk and butter which she gives to the family has swelled into affection and adoration, which have invested a common-place animal with attributes that are at once mystic and divine. The cow is the living representative to the Hindu of all that is beautiful and spiritual in women, and of all that is mysterious in the sex. The cow is the incarnation of the earth, the mother of all things, the goddess of good fortune, the living manifestation of Lakshmi; she who was created by the gods, who descended from the heaven of Indra and churned the ocean, until the bright goddess rose out of the waves, like a Hindu Aphrodite, to become the wife of the supreme spirit, Vishnu. To kill a cow is a sacrilegious crime, like killing a Brahman, a woman, or a Raja. To taste the flesh of a cow is as revolting to the Hindu imagination as tasting the flesh of a mother.

Eating beef a mortal sin.

Eating or tasting beef through the most distant medium is a mortal sin in the eyes of Hindus. Under Hindu rule, when the caste system was enforced by village communities, the vile sinner was driven from his wife, family, kinsfolk, and village by the ban of Brahmanical excommunication. In the days of Mohammedan persecutions, thousands of Hindus were compelled to swallow shreds of beef by tyrants of the stamp of Tippu Sultan of Mysore, in order to force them to become Mohammedans. There was no way of escape. They had no alternative but to accept Islam, marry a Mohammedan wife, and enter a new life and career with a new home and surroundings.²⁸

Excitement at Barrackpore.

§5. The ball set rolling from the arsenal at Dumdum soon assumed monstrous dimensions in the cantonment at Barrackpore. The sepoys blindly accepted the conclusion that Her Majesty the Queen and Lord Canning had arranged a secret scheme for converting them all to Christianity. The greased cartridges, they decided, must have been manufactured expressly to destroy their religion; to compel them to become Christians, and to eat beef and drink beer until they became as strong as Europeans, and were able to conquer Persia, Russia, and China. Wild fictions, the outcome of Oriental imaginations which would not have imposed upon a European child, were greedily accepted and talked over as matters of fact, by the ignorant and credulous sepoys. India, it was said, was being bound in iron fetters by railway lines and telegraph wires; and now the poor sepoy was to be cut off from his countrymen and co-religionists, and to become the helpless vassal of his European masters, like the genii who are slaves to magicians and sorcerers.

Fruitless explanations.

These ridiculous stories soon reached the ears of the European officers. General Hearsey, who commanded the Calcutta division, assembled the sepoys on the parade ground at Barrackpore, and reminded them that the British government had never meddled with their religion or caste, and had heavily punished any European officer who had attempted to do so. But his words were thrown away; the brains of the sepoys were too heated, and their convictions too deeply rooted, to be explained away. For months they had been discussing the expedition sent from Bombay to the Persian Gulf to defeat the designs of Russia on Herat; and now there was to be a war with China! The general might say what he pleased, but the British government had obviously manufactured the greased cartridges to destroy the caste of the poor sepoys, to make them eat beef and drink beer until they were strong enough to conquer the world.

Secret incendiarism.

The sepoys at Barrackpore were bewildered and terrified. They were too afraid to speak, and began to set houses on fire. The suspicious telegraph office, the magic house at Barrackpore, was burnt down. Other buildings followed. The agitation was reported to the military authorities at Calcutta. The composition of the cartridge was explained to the sepoys. The drill was changed, and the sepoys were no longer required to bite the cartridge. But nothing would stop the panic. The sepoys argued with severe logic that if the cartridges had not been greased with the objectionable fat there would have been no occasion to change the drill. Eventually the issue of the greased cartridges was stopped altogether, but the sepoys were as suspicious as ever. As yet, however, there was no open mutiny at Barrackpore. Discipline was maintained with the usual strictness, and the word of command was obeyed without demur. Barrackpore was too near Calcutta, too near the stronghold of British supremacy which had controlled Bengal for a hundred years, for the sepoy as yet to dream of open mutiny.

Contagion at Berhampore.

§6. Matters were at this pass when a small guard of sepoys was sent on duty from Barrackpore to Berhampore, a hundred miles to the northward. Here, it will be remembered, was a regiment of sepoy infantry, half a regiment of sepoy cavalry, and a battery of sepoy artillery. The new arrivals from Barrackpore were duly feasted by their comrades of the sepoy infantry, and the whole story of the greased cartridges was told with all the latest embellishments of fiction.

Cartridges refused.

The next day, the 25th of February 1857, a parade for exercise with blank ammunition was ordered for the following morning. Blank cartridges were issued to the infantry of the same pattern that had been used for generations, but the sepoys refused to accept them. Colonel Mitchell was in command of the station, and threatened the men with court martial. Accordingly the sepoys took the cartridges in gloomy silence and returned to their lines.

Mutiny.

In the middle of the night the regiment rose as one man; it was the 19th Native Infantry of the Bengal army. Every company seized arms and ammunition from its magazine, and then the whole regiment rushed out of the lines and shouted defiance. Colonel Mitchell had no European force to suppress the outbreak; nothing but half a regiment of sepoy cavalry and the sepoy battery, and it was extremely doubtful whether the men would fire on the mutineers. However he ordered out the cavalry and battery, and advanced with his European officers towards the infantry lines by the light of torches. As he approached there was a halt and a pause. Tanks of water were in the way, and horses and guns might have been lost in the darkness.

Hesitation.

Neither side wished to take action. The mutineers shrank, as yet, from firing on their European officers. The sepoys, under Colonel Mitchell, might have refused to fire. The whole cantonment might have joined in the mutiny, and the civil stations in the country round about would have been in sore peril. So there was a parley. The colonel pointed out to the mutineers the absurdity of their fears and the enormity of their offence, and conjured them to give up their arms and return to their lines. The mutineers, on their part, were not prepared to push matters to extremities. Their excitement had cooled down as they saw their European officers advancing with the Asiatic cavalry and artillery, whilst the lurid scenery was lit up by flaming torches. Accordingly it was arranged that they should return to their lines, and that the force advancing against them should return to their own quarters.

Alarm at Calcutta.

The news of this unexpected outbreak at Berhampore naturally alarmed Lord Canning. He had much sympathy for the deluded and infatuated sepoys, but the mutiny could not be ignored. It was absolutely necessary to disband the regiment, but there was no European force to carry out the measure. Unless European soldiers were present, the sepoys might have resisted disbandment, and other sepoy regiments might have joined the mutineers. No soldiers could be spared from the European regiment which was quartered at Fort William and Dumdum. Accordingly steamers were sent to Burma to bring away the European regiment quartered at Rangoon.

Sepoy terrors.

§7. On the 20th March the European regiment from Rangoon entered the Hughly river. The 19th Native Infantry was marched from Berhampore to Barrackpore, knowing that it was to be disbanded. At Barrackpore the sepoys were in a ferment. They felt that they were to be coerced by the European soldiers. It was not forgotten that some thirty years before, a sepoy regiment at Barrackpore had refused to go to Burma unless paid double batta, and had been scattered by a volley of grape, and its number erased from the army list. Accordingly the sepoys at Barrackpore had good reason to fear that they might be mowed down by the artillery unless they accepted the greased cartridges.

Mungal Pandy.

Of the four sepoy regiments at Barrackpore, the 34th Native Infantry had the greatest cause for alarm. It was the 34th that furnished the sepoy guard which played so much mischief at Berhampore; and the sepoys of the 34th openly expressed their sympathy with those of the 19th. About the end of March it was reported to Lieutenant Baugh, the Adjutant of the 34th, that the sepoys in his regiment were much excited, and that one of them, named Mungal Pandy, was marching through the lines with a loaded musket, calling on the sepoys to rise against their officers, and swearing to fire at the first European that appeared on the scene.

Assault on Lieut. Baugh.

Lieutenant Baugh at once put on his uniform, mounted his horse, and rode off to the parade ground with a pair of loaded pistols in his holsters. There was the quarter-guard of the regiment, consisting of twenty sepoys under the command of an Asiatic lieutenant, known as a jemadar. In front of the quarter-guard was the gun which fired the salutes at sunrise and noon. Mungal Pandy saw Baugh riding up, and got behind the gun, and deliberately fired at him. The horse was wounded and the rider was brought to the ground. Baugh, however, disengaged himself, snatched a pistol, and advanced on Mungal Pandy before the latter could reload his musket. Baugh fired and missed. At that moment Mungal Pandy rushed at him and cut him down with a sword.

Outbreak and suppression.

The European serjeant-major of the regiment had followed Baugh at a distance, and shouted to the quarter-guard to help their officer. But the sepoys sympathised with Mungal Pandy, and the jemadar forbade them to stir. The serjeant-major came up breathless, and attempted to seize Mungal Pandy, but he too was struck down. On this the jemadar advanced with his twenty sepoys, and began to strike Baugh and the serjeant-major with the butt ends of their muskets. At this moment a Mohammedan orderly, who had followed Baugh from his house, ran up and arrested Mungal Pandy just as he had reloaded his musket. He was followed by General Hearsey and other officers. The general drew a pistol from his belt and rode up to the quarter-guard, ordered the men to return to their post, and threatened to shoot with his own hands the first sepoy who disobeyed orders. By this bold action the regiment was overawed, and the storm cloud passed away just as it was about to burst upon the station.

Disbandment of 19th Native infantry.

Two days afterwards there was a solemn parade at Barrackpore. All the European force available was assembled on the ground, including the regiment from Rangoon and a wing and two batteries from Dumdum. The 19th Native Infantry was marched into Barrackpore, repentant and ashamed. They had petitioned for forgiveness, but there was no pardon for mutiny. The orders of Lord Canning were read aloud, setting forth their crime, exposing the absurdity of their fears, and ordering the disbandment. The men laid down their arms and marched away. The 19th Native Infantry had ceased to be.

Hesitation.

For some weeks the 34th Native Infantry was not disbanded. Mungal Pandy and the jemadar were tried, convicted, and hanged, but the plague of mutiny was not stayed. Not a sepoy would point out the men of the quarter-guard who assaulted the European officers. April, however, passed away, and nothing was done.

Siege of Delhi: perils of British.

§12. The British force reached the Ridge on the evening of the battle. It then numbered 4,000 troops, half Europeans and the other half Sikhs and Ghorkas. The city might have been taken by surprise at an earlier date, but the month's delay had elated the sepoys, and given them time to look to their defences. The British troops were encamped behind the Ridge, and were thus protected from the fire of the rebels. They were, however, the besieged rather than the besiegers. They were threatened on all sides, except the rear, by mutineers and rebels. The rear, however, was open to the Punjab, and all reinforcements and supplies were brought up from the Punjab. For weeks, and indeed for months, the British force could only hope to hold their position until reinforcements could arrive from Lahore or Calcutta. The city of Delhi was strongly fortified with walls and bastions loaded with cannon, and environed by a broad, deep ditch, filled from the river Jumna, which rendered it as impregnable as Babylon of old. It was impossible to storm such fortifications without a strong army of British soldiers and an adequate siege train, all of which were anxiously expected from the Punjab.

Strength of the rebels.

Meanwhile the rebels inside the walls of Delhi were being constantly reinforced by fresh bodies of mutineers. They were in possession of the arms, ammunition, and other stores, which had been collected in the British magazine for more than a generation. They were in receipt of daily supplies of provisions from the neighbouring villages, and it was impossible to cut off the convoys. A force of 4,000 men could scarcely be expected to environ a city seven miles in circumference, or even to approach within cannon shot of the walls.

Punjab and John Lawrence.

§13. Bengal was completely separated from Delhi by the disaffection which flooded the North-west Provinces. All hope of crushing the rebels at Delhi rested on the Punjab; and John Lawrence sent Europeans and Sikhs, siege guns and supplies of all kinds, as fast as they were available to the British force behind the Ridge. In June the "Punjab Guides" reached the Ridge, one of the best regiments in the Indian army. It belonged to the Punjab Frontier Force, which was recruited from the mountain tribes between the Punjab and Afghanistan, and trained and commanded by British officers.

Sikh hatred of Mohammedans.

In 1857 the Sikhs had learnt to respect their European rulers, who maintained order and law. They had no sympathy for the Mohammedans, nor for the king of Delhi. On the contrary, they remembered the murder of their Gurus and saints by Aurangzeb and his successors, and were burning to be revenged on Delhi and the Mogul. During the reign of Runjeet Singh they had outraged the Mohammedans of the Punjab by polluting their mosques and profaning the tombs of their holy men. Accordingly the Sikh warriors of the Khalsa, the very men who had fought against British supremacy at Chillianwalla and Goojerat, were now anxious to join the Europeans in putting down the revolt at Delhi and sacking the capital of Islam in India.

Mutinous spirit of sepoy garrisons.

John Lawrence had thus nothing to fear from the Sikhs. Nor had he anything to fear from the Mohammedans, for they were only anxious for protection against the Sikhs. The Hindus of the Punjab cared for no one but themselves; most of them were traders and money-lenders whose interests were bound up in the maintenance of British rule. The terror of the Punjab lay in the sepoy regiments of the Bengal army that garrisoned the country. The sepoys in the Punjab had no real ground for alarm at the greased cartridges; the issue had been stopped at the school of musketry at Sealkote, on the Cashmere frontier. But the contagion was as virulent as ever. They were maddened by the conviction that the British government was bent on destroying their religion and caste; and when they heard of the outbreak at Meerut and revolt at Delhi, they were bent on mutiny and massacre.

Lahore and Mian Mir.

Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, is situated in the heart of the province, about half-way between Delhi and Peshawar. The fortress at Lahore was held by a battalion of Bengal sepoys, which was relieved once every fortnight—that is, on the 1st and 15th of every month. There was also a European guard within the fortress of about a hundred British soldiers. Six miles from Lahore was the cantonment of Mian Mir, where three regiments of Bengal sepoys were quartered, together with one regiment of Europeans, and two batteries of European artillery.

Sepoy plots.

§14. News of the revolt at Delhi reached Lahore on the 12th of May. Without a moment's delay, a secret plot was formed between the sepoys in the fortress at Lahore and those in the cantonment at Mian Mir for the slaughter of Europeans. On the 15th May, when the sepoy battalion in the fortress was to be relieved by another sepoy battalion, the two were to join together, murder their own officers and then overwhelm the European guard. A signal was thereupon to be given to the cantonment at Mian Mir, on which the sepoy regiments were to break out in mutiny, murder the officers, and environ and overwhelm the regiment of Europeans.

Defeated.

Fortunately the plot was betrayed by a Brahman to the British authorities, and the scheme was defeated. On the morning of the 15th of May, the sepoy regiments in the cantonment at Mian Mir were drawn up on parade as usual. Suddenly, they were ordered with a loud voice to lay down their arms. Before them was a thin line of European infantry which presently fell back, and revealed the mouths of twelve guns pointed at the sepoys with lighted fires. The European infantry began to load their rifles behind the artillery, and the sepoys could hear the clicking of locks and ramrods. The would-be rebels saw that the game was up. They threw away their muskets and sabres in sheer terror. More than 3,000 Asiatic sepoys, who were preparing to murder their officers, had surrendered their arms to less than 600 Europeans. The plot in the fortress at Lahore was crushed in a like fashion. The European guards had been strongly reinforced by a detachment from the regiment at the cantonment at Mian Mir; and the two sepoy battalions were disarmed before they could unite for the slaughter of Europeans.

Chamberlain's flying column.

Later on it was found that all the Bengal sepoys in the Punjab were more or less tainted. Measures were taken to avert or counteract the evil. Suspected regiments were removed to localities where the Sikhs were most hostile to the Bengal army. A flying column of Europeans, Sikhs and others, was organised to act against threatened points and overawe intending mutineers by rapid movement and vigorous action. In the first instance it was commanded by Brigadier Neville Chamberlain, who rose to be one of the most distinguished officers of the time. Later on, the column was commanded by Brigadier John Nicholson, the hero of the day, who, as will be seen hereafter, was cut off in the very zenith of his fame.

Peshawar valley.

§15. The valley of Peshawar was another cause of anxiety. It lies in the north-west corner of the Punjab beyond the river Indus, and faces the Khyber Pass. It is the key to India, the route by which Alexander the Great and the early Mohammedan conquerors invaded the Punjab.

Frontier tribes.

Ever since the British conquest, the Peshawar valley had been harassed by the same mountain tribes that had worried the Macedonians, the Mohammedans, and the Sikhs under Runjeet Singh. Tribes living within the circle of British outposts could be compelled to live in peace; but tribes living beyond the border, and outside British influence, were turbulent, murderous and predatory. Occasionally they assassinated a British officer, or gave an asylum to criminals, or committed raids on British territory or on tribes living under British protection, and not unfrequently stole horses and other property from the British cantonment. All this while they were strictly forbidden to cross the border into British territory; and any tribesman who dared to disobey this law, was liable to arrest and imprisonment until the elders of his tribe made their submission and paid a fine.

Peshawar cantonment.

The valley of Peshawar was held by 9,000 Bengal sepoys and about 3,000 Europeans. Here, as at Lahore, there was a perpetual fear of mutiny and murder. A secret enemy was dwelling in the British camp that was capable of any amount of secrecy and treachery. Accordingly the cantonment was declared in a state of siege. The Europeans took up strong positions, and some of the Bengal regiments were disarmed.

Mutiny and murder.

§16. Towards the end of May a sepoy regiment rose against its officers. The colonel had staked his life on the fidelity of his men, and they had not been disarmed; and owing to this infatuated belief in the fidelity of the sepoys, the rebels had been able to set out for Delhi with their arms and ammunition. The colonel was in the ranks to the last, labouring to keep the men to their colours; but his efforts were vain, and he retired broken-hearted and shot himself. The rebels, however, were pursued and scattered, by the flying column under Neville Chamberlain, and 120 were taken prisoners and brought back to Peshawar.

Executions at Peshawar.

The prisoners were tried for mutiny and were all condemned to death. But John Lawrence recoiled from such wholesale executions. He did not want to exact vengeance on the mutineers, but to terrify other regiments from following their example. Forty of the worst were sentenced to death, but the remaining eighty were imprisoned for periods varying from three to seven years. The condemned forty were blown from guns at Peshawar on the 10th of June.

Volunteering of Sikhs and tribes.

The disarmament of the sepoy regiments, and the executions at Peshawar, convinced the populations of the Punjab that the British were masters. There may have been some of the old Sikh soldiers of the Khalsa, who were still yearning for the expulsion of the British from the land of the five rivers; but even in their case the old hostility was forgotten in the feverish longing to be revenged on Delhi for the persecution and slaughter of their saints. Possibly they were still more eager to plunder the palaces and bazaars of Delhi. The mountain tribes outside the British frontier, who professed to be Mohammedans, were as enthusiastic as the Sikhs to share in the sack of Delhi. They implored pardon for all past offences, paid up all fines, and volunteered to help the British to capture the revolted city.

Sore peril.

John Lawrence sent the Punjab Guides to Delhi, and raised nineteen or twenty regiments of Sikhs and others. But he could not spare more Europeans. Mutiny threatened him on all sides. At Julinder three Bengal regiments murdered their officers, broke open prisons, and ran off to Delhi before the flying column under Neville Chamberlain could overtake them.

John Nicholson, the sainted warrior.

§17. At this crisis Neville Chamberlain was sent to join the British force on the Ridge, and John Nicholson took the command of the flying column. He disarmed several sepoy regiments without firing a shot, but had no mercy for rebels. He was a fine type of the zealous and single-minded European officers of the old East India Company's army; a hero who was reverenced by Asiatic soldiery for his dash and valour, and worshipped by his men as one of the demigods of India. Indeed in one case the worship of Nicholson was literal. A religious fraternity of Sikhs took the name of "Nicholsons"; or as they pronounced it "Nikkal Scynes." They wore salmon-coloured garments and black felt hats as a distinctive garb, and they sang hymns with a chorus of "Guru Nikkal Scyne." In 1854 a deputation of these worshippers waited on Nicholson, threw themselves at his feet and chanted his praises. He remonstrated, but they persisted, and he ordered his native servants to whip the nonsense out of them. The devotees, however, gloried in being flogged, and declared that it was a just punishment for their sins. Nicholson was obliged to run away from his worshippers. It will be seen hereafter that he fell in the storming of Delhi. When the news of his death reached the fraternity, two of them committed suicide, whilst the third embraced Christianity out of respect for the memory of his "Guru."

Proposed withdrawal from Peshawar.

§18. John Lawrence was hedged round with dangers. European regiments were urgently demanded for the siege of Delhi, and he could not spare a man. He was compelled to keep 3,000 Europeans for the defence of the valley of Peshawar, and he had only 2,000 Europeans left to garrison the rest of the Punjab. In this dilemma he proposed to abandon Peshawar and make it over to Dost Mohammed Khan of Cabul. He argued that if the force locked up in Peshawar could be sent against Delhi, the city might be captured in a week, and the revolt brought to a close. Subsequent events strengthened this impression. On the 23rd of June, the centenary of the battle of Plassy, the besieging force at Delhi was nearly overpowered by the rebels. Several sepoy regiments had mutinied in Rohilcund, to the north-west of Oudh, and joined the rebels at Delhi. The Gwalior contingent, a subsidiary force officered by Europeans, and maintained in Sindia's territory, had broken out in mutiny. Altogether John Lawrence was convinced that Delhi must be captured at all hazards, and that it was absolutely necessary to retire from Peshawar.

Opposition.

But the military authorities at Peshawar, including General Sidney Cotton and Colonel Herbert Edwardes, vehemently opposed the measure. They were unanimously agreed that the loss of Peshawar would entail such a loss of prestige as to turn Sikhs and Afghans against the British government. They urged that relief might be already at hand; that five or six European regiments might be advancing from Bengal to Delhi, and that four or five times that number might be on the high seas from England.

Negatived by Lord Canning.

The burning question was referred to Calcutta for the decision of Lord Canning. The reply was a long time coming, but it settled the matter at once. "Hold on Peshawar to the last!" John Lawrence was overruled.

Mutiny at Sealkote.

§19. In this extremity John Lawrence determined to disarm every Bengal sepoy in the Punjab, and then to send every European soldier and gun to Delhi that could be spared. Nicholson hurried on the disarming, when news arrived that the sepoy brigade at Sealkote, on the Cashmere frontier, had broken out in revolt, murdered their officers, and then gone off to Delhi. Nicholson hurried after the brigade, overtook it on the banks of the Ravi, and almost annihilated it. Nearly every rebel was slain, or drowned in the river, or surrendered by the villagers to the British authorities.

Terrible execution.

There was one more tragedy in the Punjab which cannot be ignored. A sepoy regiment mutinied after it was disarmed, and tried to escape to Delhi. It was pursued by a British magistrate with a detachment of irregular horse. About 280 escaped to an island in a river, and being without arms and without food, they were compelled to surrender. The magistrate, however, could not possibly dispose of 280 rebels. He could not imprison them, and it was dangerous to let them loose. In this terrible emergency he saw no alternative but to have them shot in gangs. It was a measure which can only be justified by the law of self-defence and state necessity. The magistrate left the scene pale and trembling.²⁹

Siege of Delhi.

§20. Towards the end of June the hot season passed away. The rains began; military operations before Delhi became possible in the daytime. Sir Henry Barnard died on the 5th of July, and was succeeded by General Archduke Wilson. On the 14th of July an attack on the British outposts was repulsed by General Chamberlain. Towards the middle of August, John Nicholson arrived from the Punjab with his flying column. On the 4th of September a heavy siege train arrived from the Punjab, and fifty large guns were placed in position.

Captured, September 1857.

From the 8th to the 12th of September, four batteries poured a constant storm of shot and shell on the doomed city. On the 13th the breaches were practicable. At three o'clock on the following morning, three assaulting columns were formed in the trenches, whilst a fourth was kept in reserve. The Cashmere gate was blown open by gunpowder; one column pushed through the gateway, whilst the others escaladed the breaches. The advancing columns were exposed to a ceaseless fire from houses, mosques, and other buildings, and John Nicholson received a mortal wound. Then followed six days of desperate street fighting. On the 20th of September the British flag waved in triumph over the old capital of Hindustan and the palace of the Great Mogul.³⁰

Peace in the north-west.

Immediately after the fall of Delhi, a column was sent down the grand trunk road, to relieve the fortress at Agra, and to open up communications between Delhi and Allahabad. Within a few short months peace and order were restored to the North-West Provinces, and the brigandage and anarchy which for a brief interval revived the memory of the old Mahratta days, disappeared, it is hoped for ever, from Hindustan.³¹

CHAPTER VI.—SEPOY REVOLT: NORTH WEST, CAWNPORE, LUCKNOW.—1857-58

§1. Bengal and Lord Canning: General Neill's advance from Calcutta. §2. Sacred city of Benares: Hindu population overawed. §3. Fortress at Allahabad: treachery and massacre. §4. Cawnpore: extreme peril. §5. Story of Nana Sahib. §6. European refuge in the barracks. §7. Nana Sahib at Cawnpore: aspirations after Hindu sovereignty: delusion of General Wheeler. §8. Mutiny and treachery: barracks beleaguered by Nana Sahib. §9. First massacre at Cawnpore: massacre at Jhansi. §10. Advance of General Havelock. §11. Second massacre of women and children: the well. §12. Lucknow and Sir Henry Lawrence: May and June. §13. Siege of British Residency at Lucknow: July to September: death of Sir Henry Lawrence. §14. Havelock's advance and retreat. §15. Advance of Havelock and Outram. §16. Relief of Lucknow. §17. Sir Colin Campbell's advance: deliverance of the garrison. §18. Mutiny of the Gwalior contingent: defeated. §19. End of the mutiny and rebellion: causes.

Surprises.

The progress of events in Northern India, from the revolt at Delhi in May to the capture of the city in September, was a mystery to every Anglo-Indian. Many had foreseen that the Bengal army was in an evil way; that Bengal sepoys had been pandered until the discipline of the army had become dangerously loosened. But no one foresaw mutiny, murder, and massacre. Every fresh budget of news was consequently a surprise which baffled the oldest civilian and the most experienced general. There was much angry controversy, and much bitter recrimination; but such obsolete quarrelling may well be dropped into oblivion. The lessons which the mutiny teaches are best gathered from a plain narrative of events, not by conjectures as to plots and conspiracies which may have had no better origin than those of Oates and Bedloe.

British soldiers.

§1. Whilst Mr. John Lawrence was sending Europeans and Sikhs from the Punjab to reinforce the besiegers on the Ridge at Delhi, Lord Canning was sending similar reinforcements from Bengal to Allahabad, to relieve the beleaguered garrisons at Cawnpore and Lucknow, and to crush the growing disaffection in Oudh. Immediately after the revolt at Delhi, Lord Canning had sent telegrams and steamers to Madras and Bombay, to Ceylon, Burma, and Singapore, to send to Calcutta every European soldier that could be spared. Every local government responded to the call, and Lord Elgin, who was at Singapore pushing on a war with China, sent two British regiments, that were coming round the Cape, to the help of Lord Canning. It was a noble sacrifice. Lord Elgin's heart was in the Chinese war, but he felt as a Briton, that the suppression of a sepoy revolt in India was of far more pressing importance to the British empire than hostilities against China.

Allahabad and Cawnpore.

During the latter part of May, European soldiers were landed at Calcutta, and sent in batches to Allahabad. At that time Lord Canning was most anxious to relieve Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow. The railway had been completed for a hundred miles from Calcutta. Accordingly the soldiers were sent by railway from Calcutta, then by boats up the river Ganges to Allahabad, at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna, about half way between Calcutta and Delhi. From Allahabad they were sent a hundred and twenty miles still further up the Ganges to the town of Cawnpore, where the river formed a line of frontier between the North-West Provinces and Oudh. It will be seen hereafter that only a few Europeans reached Cawnpore, and that none of those sent up from Calcutta ever reached Lucknow.

Neill's advance.

The British reinforcements were commanded by Colonel Neill, a Madras officer who had served in the Crimean war, and was distinguished by force of will. On one occasion the station-master at Calcutta proposed sending away a railway train without the soldiers, because the latter were delayed. To his utter surprise he was arrested by Neill, and kept under a guard until every soldier had taken his seat. The incident is trivial, but it tells the character of Neill.

Delay at Benares.

§2. Colonel Neill did not reach Allahabad for some days. He was detained at Benares from the 4th to the 9th of June. This city, the Jerusalem of the Brahmans, is situated on the river Ganges, about 420 miles above Calcutta and eighty miles below Allahabad. It had a population of 300,000, mostly Hindus. The cantonment is two or three miles from the city, and was occupied by a regiment of Bengal infantry, one of irregular cavalry, and a Sikh regiment. There was no European force whatever to keep the city and cantonment in check beyond thirty British gunners, but this number would have been ample had there been no scare about greased cartridges. No danger was to be apprehended from the civil population of Benares. The sepoy regiments in the cantonment were the only cause for alarm.

Turbulence of the people.

Yet the Hindu population of Benares had always been bigoted and turbulent. During the persecuting reign of the Mogul Aurangzeb, in the seventeenth century, the Hindus of the sacred city were kept down by brute force, and compelled to pay the poll-tax levied on infidels, whilst Mohammedan mosques were built on the ruins of Hindu temples. Under the tolerant rule of the British, the Hindus had been more contented, but there had been occasional fights between Hindus and Mohammedans, especially at festival times. Moreover, the Hindus at Benares were under the thumb of the Brahmans, and were more bigoted and exacting under British rule than they had dared to be under Mohammedan domination. A British magistrate, however, had generally kept the peace in Benares with the help of Asiatic police, but occasionally he found it necessary to call out a detachment of sepoys.

Hostility of the Brahmans: stamped out by Gubbins.

For many years the Brahmans at Benares utterly refused to have the sacred city lighted or drained. They declared that lighting and drainage were contrary to the Hindu religion, and the arguments of the British magistrate to the contrary were a sheer waste of words. At last, in 1851, the British magistrate, a Mr. Frederic Gubbins, carried out these municipal reforms in the teeth of a Hindu mob. Then followed a commotion at Benares precisely similar to that which occurred at Madras in the seventeenth century, when the British rulers endeavoured to reform the sanitary condition of their city. The traders and bazaar dealers shut up their shops, and refused to supply the cantonment with grain. Mr. Gubbins was pelted and fired at, and fled for his life. He called out a detachment of sepoys, arrested the ringleaders of the riot, and lodged them in the jail. From that moment Mr. Gubbins was lord of Benares. He rode through the city and ordered all the shops to be opened, and there was no one to say him nay.

British and Mogul rule.

All this was of course very wrong. The Supreme Court at Calcutta, with its bench of British judges, trained to respect the liberties of British subjects, would have been aghast at such proceedings. But from the days of Warren Hastings to those of Lord Canning, the Supreme Courts at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay were prevented by the Act of Parliament passed in 1781 from interfering in any way with the administration of the Company's servants outside the limits of the Presidency capitals. It might, however, be added that the action of the British magistrate, arbitrary and high-handed as it must appear to British readers, was mild and merciful in comparison with Mogul severities. Under an imperious ruler like Aurangzeb, trains of armed elephants were driven through the masses in the streets, and trampled down all that came in their way, until the crowd broke up and fled in terror at the carnage.

Brave civilians.

Right or wrong, the action of Mr. Gubbins in 1851 was remembered by the people of Benares in 1857. Mr. Gubbins was by this time judge at Benares, and a Mr. Lind was magistrate and collector. The Bengal sepoys in the cantonment were disaffected, but there was no sign of insurrection in the city. The British residents were in alarm, and it was proposed to remove to the fortress of Chunar, on the other side of the river Ganges, which was occupied by invalided British soldiers. But Gubbins and Lind refused to desert their posts and abandon Benares. Accordingly the other British residents resolved to stay likewise; and it was arranged that in the event of a mutiny of the sepoys, they should all take refuge on the roof of the treasury, about two miles from the cantonment, which was guarded by Sikh soldiers.

Mutiny at Benares: disasters.

Colonel Neill arrived at Benares on the 4th of June. A detachment of Europeans had been obtained from Her Majesty's 10th Foot, which was posted at Dinapore, and preparations were being made for disarming the Bengal sepoys. Neill joined in the work, but there were untoward incidents. The Europeans were drawn out and the three guns were loaded. The Bengal sepoys were ordered to lay down their arms, and some obeyed. Suddenly, however, the whole regiment of sepoys took alarm and fired at the Europeans. The gunners opened fire on the mutineers. The irregular cavalry joined in the outbreak. The British officer in command of the Sikh regiment was shot dead. The Sikhs were seized with panic and fired on the Europeans. The gunners then discharged a volley of grape at the Sikhs; and sepoys, irregular horse, and Sikhs fled in hot haste from the cantonment, and dispersed in all directions over the surrounding country.

Loyalty of Sikhs and Hindus.

This disaster might have sealed the fate of the Europeans at the treasury. When the Sikh regiment at the cantonment was scattered by a discharge of grape, the Sikh guards at the treasury might have revenged the slaughter by firing at the Europeans on the roof. Fortunately Mr. Gubbins was there, and so too was an old Sikh general, who had fought against the British in the Sikh wars, and was residing at Benares under surveillance, but had become reconciled to British supremacy. Both Gubbins and the Sikh exile pointed out to the guards, that cannonading the Sikhs at the cantonment must have been unpremeditated, and was probably a misunderstanding or an accident. Had it been otherwise, the Europeans at the treasury would never have placed themselves under the protection of Sikh guards. This explanation satisfied the Sikh guards, and the station was saved. It should be added that British authority was nobly supported by the Raja of Benares and another Hindu gentleman of high rank and influence.

Allahabad: strategic importance.

§3. Colonel Neill spent some days in driving the mutineers from the neighbourhood of Benares, and then went on to Allahabad. On his arrival he found the city in a state of insurrection and uproar, whilst the Europeans were shut up in the fortress, and besieged by mutineers and rebels. The city of Allahabad was situated, as already described, at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna, in the centre of Northern India, and about half-way between Calcutta and Delhi. It is the strongest fortress between Calcutta and Agra. It commands the whole river communication between Bengal, Oudh, and the North-West Provinces. It also commanded the old trunk road between Calcutta and Delhi. In the treasury there was £200,000 in silver. Yet, when the mutinies broke out in May, the station and fortress were garrisoned entirely by Asiatics, namely, one Bengal regiment, half a Sikh regiment, and a battery of sepoy artillery. There were no European soldiers whatever at Allahabad, except the British officers in command of the sepoys.

Misplaced confidence.

The colonel and officers of the Bengal sepoys had the most perfect confidence in their men. They had always encouraged the sepoys in their sports, and contributed toward the expenses. It was rumoured in the newspapers that the sepoy regiment was disaffected, but the colonel published an unqualified denial, and declared that the rumour was false and malicious. The British residents at Allahabad were, however, by no means satisfied with this denial. They were alarmed at the reports which reached them of mutiny and murder elsewhere, and after the revolt at Delhi, they complained that they were not sufficiently protected. But no European soldiers were available, not even to garrison the important fortress. Accordingly the British authorities tried to allay the public fears by ordering up sixty-five European invalids from Chunar. Thus the European garrison of the great fortress at Allahabad, which commanded all communications between Bengal and the North-West, consisted for a while of sixty-five invalids. Eventually 100 European non-combatants formed themselves into a volunteer company, and helped to garrison the place. Meanwhile, every batch of European soldiers that arrived from Bengal was at once sent 120 miles further up the river Ganges to the city of Cawnpore, the frontier station towards Oudh.

PART II.—THE BRITISH CROWN

CHAPTER THE LAST.—CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT.—1858-1886

§1. Awakening of the British Nation. §2. Government Education in India: Toleration. §3. British Rule after the Mutiny: Legislative Council of 1854 and Executive Council: Wrongs of Non-Official Europeans. §4. Mr. James Wilson and his Income-Tax. §5. New Legislative Council of 1861-62. §6. New High Court: proposed District Courts. §7. Lord Canning leaves India. §8. Lord Elgin, 1862-63. §9. Sir John Lawrence, 1864-69: Governments of Madras and Bombay: Migrations to Simla: Foreign Affairs. §10. Lord Lawrence leaves India. §11. Lord Mayo, 1869-72. §12. Lord Northbrook, 1872-76: Royal visits to India. §13. Lord Lytton, 1876-80: Empress Proclaimed. §14. Second Afghan War. §15. Political and Judicial Schools. §16. Constitution of British India: proposed Reforms.

Extinction of the East India Company.

The great and grand East India Company was brought to a close after a busy life of two centuries and a half, extending from the age of Elizabeth to that of Victoria. It was still in a green old age, but could not escape extinction. The story of mutiny and revolt raised a storm in the British Isles which demanded the sacrifice of a victim, and the Company was thrown overboard like another Jonah. In July, 1858, India was transferred to the Crown by Act of Parliament. In the following November proclamation was made throughout India that Her Majesty Queen Victoria had assumed the direct government of her Eastern empire. The Governor-General ceased to rule in the name of the East India Company, and became Viceroy of India. The old Court of Directors, which dated back to the Tudors, and the Board of Control, which dated back to William Pitt the younger, were alike consigned to oblivion. Henceforth India was managed by a Secretary of State in Council, and Great Britain was an Asiatic power.

Alarm and panic in Great Britain.

§1. The sepoy mutinies awakened the British nation from the lethargy of forty years. At one time it was aroused by the discovery that the East India Company had acquired an empire larger than that of Napoleon; but was soon immersed once more in its own insular concerns. The sepoy revolt of 1857 stirred it up to its innermost depths. The alarms swelled to a panic. Exeter Hall clamoured for the conversion of Hindus and Mohammedans to Christianity. Some called aloud for vengeance on Delhi. The inhabitants were to be slaughtered as David slaughtered the Ammonites; the city was to be razed to the ground and its site sown with salt. Others, more ignorant than either, denounced the East India Company and Lord Dalhousie; demanded the restoration of British territory to Asiatic rulers, and the abandonment of India to its ancient superstition and stagnation.

British ignorance.

In the olden time India was only known to the bulk of the British nation as a land of idol-worshippers, who burnt living widows with their dead husbands, tortured themselves by swinging on hooks, thrust javelins through their tongues, prostrated themselves beneath the wheels of Juggernauth's car, and threw their dying and dead into the holy Ganges, under a child-like faith that the safest way of going to heaven was by water. Educated men knew that the greater part of India had been previously conquered by Mohammedans, just as Syria and Persia were conquered by Arabs and Turks. It was also known that Mohammedans hated idolatry, broke down idols and pagodas, built mosques in their room, and forced many Hindus to accept Islam. But few, excepting those who had lived in India, knew anything of its affairs, or cared to know anything about them, except when war was declared against Afghans, Sikhs, or Burmese, or when Parliament was about to renew the charter of the late East India Company.

Missionary and educational movements.

But the instincts of the British nation are generally healthy and sensible. It subscribed largely to missionary societies, and was led by flaming reports to expect the speedy conversion of Hindus and Mohammedans. Such aspirations, however, were not to be realised. The devout were obliged to wait and pray; the sensible urged the East India Company to provide for the secular education of the masses. For centuries the rising generation had learnt something of reading, writing, and arithmetic from village schoolmasters, mostly Brahmans. These hereditary schoolmasters taught the village boys from generation to generation, in the same old-world fashion, with palm-leaves for books, sanded boards and floors for writing lessons, and clay marbles for working out little sums. Christian missionaries had established schools from an early period, especially in Southern India; and to this day nearly every Asiatic servant in the city of Madras can speak English indifferently well. Meanwhile the East India Company had done little or nothing for the education of the masses, nor indeed had much been done by the British government for its own people in those illiterate days.

Government High Schools, 1841: Hindus and Mohammedans.

§2. In 1841, when a British army was still at Cabul, the British government established high schools at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. Hindu boys flocked to the new schools, but Mohammedans kept aloof. The followers of the Prophet would not accept an education which rejected the authority of Mohammed and the Koran. Meanwhile there was an agitation for teaching the Bible in the government schools. Had it succeeded, respectable Hindus would probably have followed the example of the Mohammedans.

State education, 1854.

At last, in 1854, a State system of education was introduced, beginning with primary schools and middle-class schools, and ending in British colleges with professors and lecture-rooms. The whole system in every presidency, and gradually in every province, was placed under the control of a Director of Public Instruction. Grants in aid were made to schools established by missionaries and others, according to the educational results of their teaching. A University was established at Calcutta, another at Madras, and a third at Bombay, for the conduct of examinations and the granting of degrees. In a word, secular education was proceeding on a liberal scale, and some Hindus, who took high degrees, got appointments in the revenue and judicial departments, whilst others entered the service of Asiatic rulers, and rose to the rank of ministers.

Bible teaching.

Then followed the terrible sepoy mutinies, and wild cries from the British Isles for teaching Christianity and the Bible in every government institution. Had British statesmen yielded to the demand, the general population would have felt that the rebel sepoys were in the right; that they had fought, not from childish terror, but for the defence of their religion and caste; that they were martyrs to their faith, who had been crushed by the European red-coats to clear the way for the conversion of helpless Hindus and Mohammedans who were without arms.

Toleration proclaimed, 1858.

Fortunately, the Royal Proclamation of 1858 was drafted by a statesman who felt that the machinery of government had no more to do with religious movements than the machinery of workshops. It announced, in clear and unmistakable language, that the British government had neither the right nor the desire to interfere with the faith of its Asiatic subjects, and the question of religious toleration in India was settled for ever.

Hostility of non-official Europeans.

§3. The sepoy mutinies had paralysed the executive government of India. To make matters worse, the non-official Europeans—the merchants, bankers, planters, and lawyers—had been hostile to the government of Lord Canning from the very beginning of the outbreak. The cause of this collision is important. It suggested the necessity for future reforms. It will be seen hereafter that something was done in this direction in 1861-62; but something else was undone, and further reforms are still needed.

Representation in the legislative council.

The legislative assembly of 1854 has already been described as the earliest germ of representative government in India. This was due to the fact that in addition to the executive members of council, the legislative chamber included four representative members, each one chosen from the civil service of one or other of the four Presidencies; also two judges of the old Supreme Court, who were not in the service of the East India Company, but were appointed by the British Crown, and were consequently independent legislators.

Controlled by the executive.

In every other respect, however, the executive government, including Lord Canning and the members of his executive council, exercised supreme control over the Indian legislature. They introduced what measures they pleased. They excluded what measures they disliked. Being mostly Bengal civilians, they were accused of ignoring the representative members from Madras and Bombay, and Madras and Bombay had some ground of complaint. No member of the legislative council of India had the power to introduce a bill without the consent of the Indian executive; nor even had the power, common to every member of the British parliament, to ask any question as regards the acts of the executive.

Class legislation.

At this period there was a nondescript body in England known as the "Indian Law Commissioners." These gentlemen prepared an act cut and dried, and the Court of Directors sent it to India in 1857, and recommended that it should be passed into law by the legislative council of India. This act began with asserting the equality of Asiatics and Europeans in the eyes of the law; but laid down a still more invidious distinction between non-official and official Europeans. It proposed to subject all non-official Europeans to the jurisdiction of Asiatic magistrates, but to exempt from such jurisdiction all Europeans who were members of the Indian civil service, or officers of the army or navy.

Agitation and withdrawal.

The first reading was followed by alarm and indignation. The press thundered, outside orators raved in public meetings, and European petitions against the bill poured in like a rushing stream. For a long time not a single member of the legislative chamber raised a voice against such vicious legislation. The Penal Code had not become law, and judges and magistrates, whether European or Asiatic, administered the law very much at their own discretion, by the light of "equity and good conscience," and voluminous regulations. Then, again, the time was out of joint for such an innovation. Mutiny and revolt were at work in the upper provinces, and isolated European planters might soon be at the mercy of Asiatic magistrates who sympathised with the rebels. At last, however, Sir Arthur Buller, one of the ablest judges of the old Supreme Court, rose from his seat in the legislative chamber, and virtually tore the bill to shreds. From that day it was doomed. Bengali baboos vainly petitioned the British government to pass the bill in all its integrity. It perished in the maelstrom of the mutiny, and was then formally withdrawn by the Court of Directors.

Executive council remodelled.

When the mutiny was over, Lord Canning remodelled the executive council into the form of a cabinet. He divided the administration into six branches, namely:—foreign, home, legislative, military, financial, and public works. The Viceroy was the prime minister, who sat as president of the council. He took charge of "foreign affairs." The other members were ministers; each had charge of a separate department, and transacted the bulk of its business. All important business, however, was transacted by the whole cabinet of ministers, which held its regular sittings at Government House, as it had done in the days when the governor or president was only the head of a factory.

Ministers and secretaries.

The post of minister was not, and is not, doubled up with that of secretary, except during the earlier years of the public works department. In the present day there is a minister for every department. Every minister transacts the business of his branch at his own house; leaving the secretary and under-secretary to control the office of his particular department, conduct the correspondence, and carry out orders.

Mr. Wilson, Finance Minister, 1860.

§4. In 1860 an English financier, the late Mr. James Wilson, was sent out from England to put the Indian budget to rights. He was a famous man in his day; a noted leader of the anti-corn law league, and had a large reputation as a sound financier. He freely conferred with Calcutta merchants and bankers, and so far poured oil on the troubled waters; but in those days the merchants of Calcutta were as ignorant of India outside the city of palaces as Mr. Wilson himself, who was sent out to tax the people.

Income-tax.

Mr. Wilson quoted the laws of Manu in the legislative chamber, and proposed an income-tax. It was not an ordinary tax on incomes above 400l. or 500l. per annum, with which India has since been burdened. It included a tax on Asiatic incomes rising from eight shillings a week to twenty shillings. It was as oppressive as the poll-tax which drove Wat Tyler and Jack Cade into rebellion. But India was prostrate. British red-coats were masters; and British financiers might do as they pleased.

Protest of Sir Charles Trevelyan.

Sir Charles Trevelyan was Governor of Madras and knew India well. He protested against the tax and sent his protest to the newspapers. The Viceroy and the Secretary of State were filled with wrath at an act of insubordination which amounted to an appeal to the public opinion of India against the ukase of the supreme government. Sir Charles Trevelyan was removed from the government of Madras, but within two years he was revenged. The obnoxious clause had filled 600,000 households with weeping and wailing, in order to collect 350,000l., of which 100,000l. was spent on the work of collection. Accordingly the clause was repealed.³⁴

Independent Judges.

Later on, the two judges who sat in the legislative chamber were guilty of a still more flagrant act of insubordination. Whilst 350,000l. was exacted from 600,000 poor Asiatics in the shape of income-tax, the Secretary of State for India overruled a previous decision of Lord Dalhousie, and capitalised half a million sterling, in order to improve the pensions of the descendants of Tippu! The controversy is obsolete; the two judges ventured to question the justice of this measure, and the heinous offence was punished in due course.

Legislative council remodelled, 1861-62.

§5. In 1861-62 the legislative council of India was reconstituted by act of parliament. The two judges were excluded from the legislative chamber, and European merchants, and Asiatics of wealth and influence, were nominated in their room. The control of the executive was thus stronger than ever, but it is doubtful whether the legislature has profited by the change.

Legislative councils at Madras, Bombay, and Bengal.

Legislative councils, on a similar footing to that of India at Calcutta, were granted to the governments of Madras and Bombay, as well as to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. They include both European and Asiatic members, who are nominated by the local government. They legislate on purely local measures, such as port dues, hackney carriages, canal tolls, and municipalities. They are, however, under the immediate control of the executive, and have no power to make laws, or to initiate legislation in the legislative council of India.

New High Courts.

Judges in council.

§6. A still more important measure was carried out at this period. A new High Court of Justice was created at Calcutta, and also at Madras and Bombay, by the amalgamation of the Supreme Court and Sudder, which had been separate and rival courts ever since the days of Warren Hastings. In other words, the barrister judges appointed by the British Crown, and the civilian judges appointed by the Indian governments, sat together in the new High Court. Moreover, as a crowning innovation, an Asiatic judge was appointed to each High Court, to sit on the same bench as the European judges. The amalgamation of the two courts is an epoch in British rule in India. The coalition of barrister and civilian judges, and the presence of an Asiatic judge on the same bench, enlarged and strengthened the High Court. It was, however, unfortunate that a European and an Asiatic judge did not also sit in the legislative chambers. Such an addition would have converted the chambers into schools of legislation. An Asiatic judge, who had graduated in the High Court, would have taught something to his Asiatic colleagues in the legislative council; whilst a European judge would have smoothed away many of the asperities which have sprung up of late years between the acts of the Indian executive and the rulings of the High Court.

European and Asiatic magistrates.

The mixed constitution of the High Courts might be extended with advantage to the District Courts. If European and Asiatic judges sit on the same bench, why not European and Asiatic magistrates, deputy-magistrates, and subordinate judges? Such an amalgamation would prove a school for Asiatic magistrates and judges; whilst the evil spirit of race antagonism, which was raised by the unfortunate bill of 1857, and revived a few short years ago, would be allayed for ever.

Lord Canning leaves India, 1862.

§7. Lord Canning left India in March, 1862, and died in England the following June. His administration had been more eventful than that of any of his predecessors. At first he hesitated to crush the mutinies, and was named "Clemency Canning"; but he never lost his nerve. After the revolt at Delhi he rose to the occasion. Later on, non-official Europeans, as well as officials, learned to respect "Clemency Canning," and his sudden death was felt by all as a loss to the nation as well as to the empire.

Lord Elgin, Viceroy, 1862-63.

§8. Lord Elgin succeeded Lord Canning. He was a statesman of experience and capacity, but cumbered with memories of China and Japan. Lord Elgin's reign did not last two years. He died in November, 1863.

Sir John Lawrence, 1864-69.

§9. In those days of imperfect telegraphs, there was an interregnum of two months. Meanwhile, Sir William Denison, Governor of Madras, acted as provisional Governor-General. With great presence of mind, he sanctioned all the measures which he had previously sent up from Madras for the confirmation of the government of India. In January, 1864, Sir John Lawrence landed at Calcutta as Viceroy and Governor-General.

Sir William Denison at Madras.

Sir William Denison returned to Madras. He is said to have been hostile to competitive examinations, and anxious to govern Southern India without the help of an executive council. But his ideas of government were not in accord with those in power, and competitive examinations and civilian members of council have remained to this day.

Sir Bartle Frere at Bombay.

At this period Sir Bartle Frere was Governor of Bombay. He was an Anglo-Indian statesman of the first order, with capacity and experience combined with diplomatic tact. He had done good service as commissioner of Sind. Since then he had graduated in the Indian executive as Home member of Lord Canning's cabinet. But, like many Indian civilians, he was too self-reliant, and fell upon evil times when Indian experiences could not help him.

American war: cotton famine.

Sir Bartle Frere was transferred from the cabinet at Calcutta to the government of Bombay at the moment when war was raging between the North and the South in the United States of America. A cotton famine was starving Manchester, and Indian cotton rose from threepence a pound to twenty pence. Bombay cultivators loaded their women with jewels, and shod their cattle with silver shoes. The spirit of speculation was rampant. Europeans and Asiatics, shrewd Scotchmen and cautious Parsis, rushed blindly into the wildest gambling. Mushroom companies sprung up in a single night like the prophet's gourd, and flourished like the South Sea Bubble. Clerks and brokers woke up to find themselves millionaires, and straightway plunged into still madder speculations, dreaming, like Alnaschar, of estates as large as counties, of peerless brides, and of seats in the House of Lords.

Crash and panic.

Suddenly the American war collapsed, and cargoes of cotton were hurried from the States across the Atlantic. Prices fell to zero. There was joy at Manchester, but weeping and wailing at Bombay. The Bombay Bank had been drawn into the vortex of speculation, and loans had been advanced on worthless shares. How far Sir Bartle Frere was implicated is a disputed point; but the bank stopped payment, and Sir Bartle Frere lost his chance of becoming Viceroy of India.

Civilian experiences of John Lawrence.

The Viceroyalty of Sir John Lawrence was altogether exceptional.³⁵ Most Viceroys are noble peers, who land in India with parliamentary and diplomatic experiences, but with no special knowledge of Asiatic affairs, beyond what has been "crammed up" at the India Office during the interval between acceptance of office and embarkation for Calcutta. In 1864 Lord Lawrence knew more about India than any previous Governor-General, Warren Hastings not excepted. He, and his foreign and home secretaries, the late Sir Henry Durand and the late Sir Edward Clive Bayley, were, perhaps, better versed in Indian history than any other men of the time. Lord Lawrence had gone through the ordeal of the mutiny with the salvation of the Empire in his hands. Since then he had sat on the council of the Secretary of State at Westminster, and learnt something of public opinion in the British Isles on Indian affairs.

Yearly migrations to Simla.

Lord Lawrence hated Bengal, and could not endure her depressing heats and vapour-baths.³⁶ He was the first Governor-General who went every year to Simla, and he was the first who took all his cabinet ministers and secretaries with him. Old Anglo-Indians disliked these migrations, and likened them to the progresses of the Great Mogul with a train of lords and ladies, in tented palaces, escorted by hosts of soldiers and camp-followers, from Agra to Lahore, or from Delhi to Cashmere. But the migrations of the British government of India required no army of escort, and entailed no expense or suffering on the masses. Railways shortened the journeys; telegraphs prevented delays; and civilian members of government, whose experiences had previously been cribbed and cabined in Bengal, began to learn something of the upper provinces.

Sir John Lawrence and Sir Henry Durand.

Lord Lawrence, like his immediate predecessors, took the Foreign Office under his special and immediate charge. At that time Colonel, afterwards Major-General Sir Henry Durand, was foreign secretary to the government of India. Both Lawrence and Durand were firm to the verge of obstinacy, but Sir John was sometimes hasty and impetuous, whilst Colonel Durand was solid and immovable.

Foreign and political.

The main business of the Foreign Office is that of supervision. It directs all negotiations with the Asiatic states beyond the frontier, such as Afghanistan, Cashmere, and Nipal. It controls all political relations with the feudatory states of Rajputana and Central India, which are carried on by British officers known as political agents and assistants. In like manner it controls the political relations with other courts, which are carried on by "Residents." It also overlooks the administration in newly-acquired territories, which, like the Punjab, are known as "non-regulation" provinces.³⁷

Afghanistan: death of Dost Mohammed Khan.

The main question of the day was Afghanistan affairs. Dost Mohammed Khan died in 1863, after a chequered life of war and intrigue, a labyrinth which no one can unravel. He had driven his enemy Shah Shuja out of Cabul; he had been robbed of the coveted valley of Peshawar by Runjeet Singh; he had coquetted with Persia, Russia, and the British government. He had abandoned his dominions on the advance of the British army in 1839-40; fled to Bokhara; then surrendered to Macnaghten; was sent to Calcutta as a state prisoner; played at chess with the ladies at Government House; and finally returned to Cabul. He seized the valley of Peshawar during the second Sikh war. Finally he had become friends with the British government, and made no attempt to take advantage of the sepoy mutinies to recover Peshawar.

Jacob versus Esau.

But old Dost Mohammed had a patriarchal weakness for youthful wives. He had been beguiled by a blooming favourite into nominating her son as his successor, to the exclusion of the first-born. It was nearly a case of Jacob versus Esau, and when the old man was gathered to his fathers, the younger son and the first-born, with their respective partisans, tried to settle the succession by force of arms. The British government did not interfere, but left the brothers to fight on, until the elder was carried off by death, and the younger, the late Shere Ali Khan, gained the throne.

Mysore.

Mysore was another vexed question. Lord Wellesley had acquired Mysore by the conquest of Tippu in 1799. He incorporated some provinces into the Madras Presidency, but formed the remaining territory into a little Hindu state, and placed a Hindu boy, a kinsman of the Raja who had been supplanted by Hyder, on the throne of Mysore. The boy grew to be a man, and turned out a worthless, extravagant, and oppressive ruler, deaf to all remonstrances and warnings. His subjects rebelled against his tyranny and exactions. Even Lord William Bentinck, a sentimental admirer of Asiatic principalities, was disgusted with his conduct and deposed him, and placed Mysore territory in charge of a British commissioner, and brought it under British rule.

Restoration of Hindu rule.

Thirty years passed away. There was an outcry in the British Isles against annexation. It was proposed to restore the ex-Raja to his throne, but Mysore had become to all intents and purposes a British province. In the teeth of these facts, it was determined to restore this flourishing territory to the rule of the worthless Hindu who had been deposed by Lord William Bentinck a generation previously. Sir John Lawrence fought against the measure, but was overruled. At last there was a compromise. It was decided to place an adopted son of the ex-Raja on the throne, and to remove the British administration from Mysore, and place an Asiatic administration in its room. The ex-Raja was extremely annoyed at this arrangement. It put an end to all his aspirations. He did not want an adopted son, and would willingly have left his territories to the British government, had he been only allowed to handle the revenues during his own lifetime.

Opposition of Durand.

Sir John Lawrence, like every practical administrator in India, was most unwilling to replace Mysore under Asiatic rule. He submitted under pressure, but not without misgivings. Colonel Durand, however, opposed it tooth and nail. Had he been a Roman general, ordered to restore the island of Albion to an adopted son of Boadicea, or had he been an English lord of the marches ordered to restore the principality of Wales to a son of Llewellyn, he could not have felt more indignation. Durand was, of course, powerless to resist, and the restoration was carried out. The future alone can decide the merits of the question.

Oudh talukdars.

Next arose a controversy about the Oudh talukdars. Lord Canning had dealt liberally with the talukdars, restored most of their so-called estates, and converted them into landed proprietors. Sir John Lawrence discovered that the rights of joint village proprietors had been overlooked. Again there was a paper war, which ended in another compromise. The talukdars were eventually confirmed in the possession of their estates, but the rights of under proprietors and occupiers were defined and respected.

The cabinet and legislature.

Meanwhile Colonel Durand was transferred from the Foreign Office to the executive council, with charge of the military department. As a member of the council he had a seat in the legislative chamber, and on one occasion he voted against the other ministers. This raised a question as to the right of a member of the cabinet to vote against the majority of his colleagues in the legislative chamber. It was argued on one side that in England a cabinet minister must vote with his colleagues in parliament; in other words, he must either sacrifice his conscience for the sake of party or resign his post in the executive. On the other side it was urged that an Indian cabinet had nothing whatever to do with party, and that any cabinet minister might vote in the legislative chamber as he deemed best for the public service, without thereby losing his position as member of the executive council.

Sir John Lawrence leaves India, 1869.

§10. Sir John Lawrence retired from the post of Viceroy in 1869. With the exception of an expedition into Bhotan, a barbarous state in the Himalayas next door to Nipal, there was peace in India throughout the whole of his five years' administration. He returned to England and was raised to the peerage. He had strong attachments, but the outer world only knew him as a strong, stern man, with a gnarled countenance and an iron will. He lived for ten years longer in his native country, doing good work as the chairman of the London School Board, and taking an active part in every movement that would contribute to the welfare of his generation, until, in 1879, the saviour of British India found a final resting-place in Westminster Abbey.

Lord Mayo Viceroy, 1869-72.

§11. Lord Mayo succeeded as Viceroy and Governor-General. To him is due the greatest reform in the constitutional government of India since the mutiny. He delivered the local governments from the financial fetters of the Viceroy in Council, and left them more responsibility as regards providing local funds for local wants, and devoting local savings to local expenditure. Hitherto every presidency and province got as much as it could out of the imperial treasury, and spent as much as it could during the current financial year, for any balance that remained was lost for ever by being credited to imperial funds. Henceforth every presidency and province was interested in improving its income and cutting down its expenditure, since it was entrusted with some discretion as regards the disposal of the surplus money.

Tragic death.

The assassination of Lord Mayo in 1872 by an Afghan desperado in the Andaman Islands, brought the career of a great and energetic Viceroy to a sad and sudden close. By force of character, noble address, and genial open-heartedness, Lord Mayo had charmed every Asiatic feudatory that came to do homage; and even brought Shere Ali Khan, the sour and suspicious ruler of Afghanistan, to put some trust in the good faith and good intentions of the British government. His death was a loss to every European and Asiatic in India, and a loss to the British empire.

Lord Northbrook, 1872-76.

§12. The later administrations of Lord Northbrook in 1872-76, of Lord Lytton in 1876-80, of Lord Ripon in 1880-1884, and the advent of Lord Dufferin, the present Viceroy, are too recent for personal criticism. They have been characterised, however, by events and changes which have left their mark on British rule in India.

Royalty in India.

The personal influence of Her Majesty, and the presence of princes of the royal blood, have imparted a new prestige to British sovereignty. The visit of the Duke of Edinburgh during the régime of Lord Mayo, and the extended tour of the Prince of Wales during the régime of Lord Northbrook, were welcomed in India with every demonstration of joy and loyalty. The old East India Company was a magnificent corporation, but had always been a mystery to Asiatics. The presence of British princes, the sons of Her Majesty, solved the problem for ever.

Lord Lytton Viceroy, 1876-80: proclamation of the Empress.

§13. Finally the Imperial assemblage at Delhi on the 1st of January, 1877, when Her Majesty was proclaimed Empress of India by Lord Lytton, in the presence of all the members of the Indian governments, all the high officials of the empire, and of all the Asiatic feudatory rulers and their ministers, gave a reality to British sovereignty in India which had previously been wanting. When Queen Elizabeth gave a charter to the East India Company, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Queen Anne received a present of "tay" from the Court of Directors, and even when George III. and Queen Charlotte graciously accepted an ivory bedstead from the polite Warren Hastings, not a soul in the British Isles could possibly have dreamed that the nineteenth century would see the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland reigning as Empress over the dominions of the Great Mogul. Neither could the Asiatic populations of that dim commercial period, who beheld the European gentlemen writing letters and keeping accounts in factories and fortresses, have imagined that a day would come when the descendants of the "European gentlemen" would be the rulers of India.

Second Afghan war.

§14. Under Lord Lytton's régime there was a second war in Afghanistan. Shere Ali Khan had become estranged from the British government. He imprisoned his eldest son, Yakub Khan, and refused British mediation. He was offended because the British government would not conclude an offensive and defensive alliance on equal terms. He received a mission from Russia at Cabul, and refused to receive a mission from the British government.

British designs.

Accordingly, it was resolved to establish British supremacy in Afghanistan; to advance the British frontier to the Hindu Kush; to convert the mountain range into a natural fortress, with Afghan-Turkistan for its berme and the river Oxus for its ditch. Russia already held the glacis, as represented by Usbeg-Turkistan.

Massacre and submission.

Shere Ali Khan fled away northward as the British army advanced, and died in exile. Yakub Khan succeeded to the throne, and submitted to the demands of the British Resident. Then followed the cruel and cowardly massacre of Sir Louis Cavagnari, the British Resident at Cabul, with all his officers and attendants; the abdication of Yakub Khan; and finally the accession of Abdul Rahman Khan, the present Amir, who was son of the first born of Dost Mohammed who was ousted in favour of Shere Ali.

Regulation and non-regulation provinces.

During the generation that followed the mutinies, the administration of British India has been undergoing an important change. The old patriarchal rule of non-regulation provinces has been fading away. The distinction between regulation and non-regulation is being effaced. The Punjab and Oudh, the Central Provinces and British Burma, which for years had been exclusively controlled by the Foreign Office, are being brought more and more under the Home Office; and the same laws and forms of administration will soon prevail throughout every presidency and province of the Anglo-Indian empire.

Asiatic students: European masters.

§15. British India is a school for Asiatics in which Europeans are the masters. The teaching has hitherto been successful. Asiatic students are becoming monitors; some are under-masters; and some may in due course hope to be masters. The British government is appointing educated Asiatics to posts of responsibility and trust, which few European merchants and bankers have hitherto ventured to do. Accordingly, non-officials, as well as officials, are awaiting the results of an experiment that will serve to show how far the Asiatic has profited by his European education; and how far he may be entrusted with the higher duties of administration, or with the exercise of self-government and political power.

Hindu culture.

Hindus have many virtues. They are obedient to parents, polite to equals, respectful to superiors, and reverential towards priests and preceptors. But for ages they have lived under the despotism of caste, custom, and religion, which is slowly melting away from European capitals of India, but is still rampant in Asiatic towns and villages. British education is elevating their intellects and enlarging their experiences, but cannot change their nature, nor hastily emancipate them from the usages of ages. The result is that to this day, both Hindus and Mohammedans lack those political ideas of constitutional government and public life, in which Englishmen have been trained since the days of Queen Elizabeth.

Child marriages.

Hindus are married in their childhood, and are often husbands and fathers when British boys are still at school, or learning trades and professions, or competing at boating or cricket. All this while, and for years after they have attained manhood, the bulk of Hindus are living under the roof of their parents. Husbands are ruled by fathers as though they were still children, and wives are the victims of their mothers-in-law.

Temper and repression.

Occasionally Hindus will exhibit a petulance and passion like that which drove the sepoys into mutiny; but as a general rule, they are kept within bounds by the despotism and discipline which reigns supreme in Hindu families, as well as by the severe self-control, which Asiatics esteem as one of the highest virtues. Moreover, during a long course of ages, they have become more or less enervated by that depressing heat, which often shakes the nerve and loosens the muscle of Europeans. Consequently, they have little relish for active life, and generally prefer sedentary duties which do not involve physical exertion.

Village communities.

Hindu village communities may have had some public life in the pre-British period. They governed themselves, and administered justice amongst themselves, but they in their turn were governed by caste, custom, and superstition. Sometimes they defended themselves against brigands or tigers, and they environed their domiciles with mud walls, wooden palisades, or hedges of prickly pear. If however there were any rumours of an enemy appearing in force, they all fled to the jungle until the danger was over. In Bengal, the villagers were helpless to resist dacoits, who occasionally committed the most horrible crimes; but since the organisation of police under European superintendence, such atrocities have disappeared from British India.

Despotic commonwealths.

Where the village community was strong, the little commonwealth was a despotism. The joint proprietary was an oligarchy, and tenants and cultivators were serfs or slaves. The officials and artisans were hereditary, and hereditary officials are almost invariably inefficient and untrustworthy. Village justice may have been administered by the elders, but generally at the dictation of some domineering Brahman or Guru.

Old civilian conservatism.

Indian civilians of the old school, like Thomas Munro and Mountstuart Elphinstone, were much inclined towards Hindu institutions. In those ancient times the whole village would turn out to welcome the arrival of a new British collector and magistrate. The Asiatic officials appeared with music, flags, and garlands, whilst the village dancing girl performed before the "great man," and sung his praises. The "great man" in his turn was charmed with these manifestations of respect for British rule; but a later generation was aghast at the enormity, and the demonstration was stopped by the Court of Directors.

Failure.

In the Madras Presidency Munro turned the headmen of villages into munsifs, and empowered them to settle all civil disputes up to the value of twenty shillings. The village munsifs might also summon a punchayet, or council of arbitrators, to settle disputes above that amount. In the Bombay Presidency, Mountstuart Elphinstone made similar attempts to utilise the Mahratta collectors and sub-collectors. But in both cases the experiment failed through hereditary incapacity or corruption.

Trained Asiatic officials.

The creation of new classes of Asiatic officials has been more successful. Munsifs, trained and educated, are deciding civil cases in the districts, and have proved efficient and trustworthy. Deputy-collectors and magistrates, as well as subordinate judges, have also been found to do their work well. Pay and position have been improved, and the number has been increased; and possibly more might be done in this direction. But this question can be best worked out with that of placing European and Asiatic magistrates on the same bench.

Viceroy of India in council.

§16. The Viceroy is sovereign over the whole of India. He is no longer drawn away from the cares of supreme control by the separate and direct government of Bengal and the North-West Provinces. Each of these presidencies has now a lieutenant-governor of its own. The Viceroy is thus the presiding deity of the whole of India. During the cold weather months he reigns at Calcutta on the banks of the Hughly, where he is president alike of an executive council and a legislative council. During the hot weather months, he is enthroned at Simla like another Indra, on the slopes of the Himalaya mountains, attended by his cabinet or executive council. He exercises sovereign authority over every presidency and every province; and every Asiatic ruler in India, Hindu or Mohammedan, Rajput or Mahratta, acknowledges the supremacy of the Viceroy and Governor-General as the representative of the Queen and Empress.

Secretary of State in Council.

But Indra himself is subject to some mysterious power, who is omnipotent and invisible. In like manner the Viceroy of India in Council is subject to a deus ex machinâ, in the shape of the Secretary of State for India in Council. The Secretary of State, or one of his under-secretaries, is sometimes asked questions in Parliament; but the Secretary of State for the time being generally manages to have his own way, or treads cautiously in the footsteps of his predecessors, or relies on the wisdom of the reigning Viceroy.

Strengthening of legislative council.

The executive council of the Secretary of State, as well as that of the Viceroy, are essential parts of the constitutional government of India. But the legislative council of India lacks strength and independence. It was a mistake to shut out the two judges from the chamber. One European and one Asiatic judge would be as useful in the council as on the bench. Again, in these days of railways and steamers, there seems no reason why governors of presidencies, and lieutenant-governors and chief commissioners of provinces, should not occasionally sit in the legislative council of India to exchange views and give the weight of their personal support to their respective representative members. The sittings are generally held in the cold season, when the British Parliament is not sitting. The occasional presence of high Indian officials and British members of Parliament would improve the debates, educate public opinion, and convert the chamber into a high school for Asiatic legislators.

British Residents in Asiatic states.

Meanwhile the idea of a school should be borne in mind in every branch of the administration, civil and judicial, and especially in the foreign or political department. A British officer at an Asiatic court is often the one solitary representative of civilisation and progress; and this feeble light ought to be fed, strengthened, and kept constantly burning like the fire of the Vestal virgins. By that light, Asiatic rulers may hope in time to rise to the level of Europeans; without it, they may sink back into the barbarism of the past century, when the Mogul empire had lost its hold, and was tottering to its fall.

INDEX

A

Adoption, question of, 175;

present aspect, 177

Afghanistan, Elphinstone's mission, 103;

Russian advances, 143;

first Afghan war, 146;

insurrection at Cabul, 149;

British losses in the Khyber Pass, 150;

end of war, 152;

vulnerable frontier, 186;

death of Dost Mohammed Khan, 290;

fratricidal war, 291;

Shere Ali Khan, ib.;

second Afghan war under Lord Lytton, 296

Agnew, Mr. Vans, murdered at Multan, 161

Agra, captured by General Lake, 95;

presidency formed, 128;

water way, 171;

isolation during the sepoy mutinies, 215, 231

Ajmere, acquired by the British, 120

Akalis, Sikh fanatics, 156, 157

Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammed, heads revolt at Cabul, 149;

murders Sir William Macnaghten, 150

Alam, Shah, Padishah, seeks British protection, 95

Alexander the Great, defeat of Porus, 163;

his invasion of India, 225

Alighur, fortress of, captured by Lake, 94

Aliwal, battle of, 159

Allahabad, at the junction of the Jumna and Ganges, 171;

position during the sepoy revolt, 215, 217, 220, 238;

mutiny and massacre, 241;

fortress besieged, ib.;

relieved by General Neill, 242

Amherst, Lord, Governor-General, 120;

first Burmese war, 121;

Bhurtpore war, 122

Amir Khan, an Afghan Pindhari, 105;

founds principality of Tonk, 112, 113;

surrenders to the British, 115

Amritsar, city of, 155

Andaman Islands, 294

Anderson, Lieut., murdered at Multan, 161

Anson, General, at Simla, 216;

movements at the revolt of Delhi, 216-271;

his death, ib.

Appa Sahib, defeated by the British, 117;

flight from Nagpore, ib.;

succeeded by his grandson, ib.

Arakan, annexed by the British government, 122, 169

Arcot, captured by Clive, 34;

suppresses mutiny at Vellore, 100

Arrah, besieged by rebels, 266;

relieved by Major Eyre, 267

Asia, Central and Northern, the cradle of India, 142;

rise of Nadir Shah, 143;

rise of British power in, 145

Asiatics of India, better phrase than "native," 186;

characteristic craft, 240;

officials, 300

Asiatic rulers, acknowledge British supremacy, 301;

British political officers in India, 302

Assam, overrun by Burmese, 121;

acquired by the British, 122;

tea cultivation, 123

Assaye, battle of, 94

Attock, fortress of, captured by Dost Mohammed Khan, 163

Auckland, Lord, Governor-General of India, 141;

declares war against Dost Mohammed Khan, 145;

sends expedition against Cabul, 146

Aurangzeb, the Great Mogul, 21;

stops supply of saltpetre to the British at the bidding of Turkey, 25;

his death, 31;

persecutes the Sikhs, 155;

detested by the Sikhs, 222

Ava, see Burma

B

Baird, Sir David, commands storming party at Seringapatam, 86

Bala Hissar, fortress of, 148

Barlow, Sir George, provisional Governor-General, 98;

political half measures, 99;

sacrifices revenue in Bundelkund, 101;

annuls protective treaties, 104

Barnard, Sir Henry, commander-in-chief in 1857, advances against Delhi, 218;

his death, 230

Baroda, Gaekwar of, 112

Barrackpore, cantonment and park, near Calcutta, 192;

story of the Lascar and Brahman, 194;

sepoy agitation, 196;

incendiarism, 197;

outbreak of Mungal Pandy, 201;

disbandment of 19th Native Infantry, 202;

of the 34th Native Infantry, 205

Barwell, Mr., member of the Council of Warren Hastings, 65

Bassein, efforts of the British at Bombay to acquire from the Mahrattas, 72;

treaty of 1802 concluded with the Peishwa, 92, 119 note

Bayley, Sir Edward Clive, Home Secretary to Sir John Lawrence, his knowledge of Indian history, 288

Behar, a province of Bengal, 42-44, 127, 129;

mutinies at Patna, Dinapore, and Arrah, 266

Benares, ceded to the British, 73;

turbulent population, 235;

triumph of Mr. Gubbins, 236;

mutiny of sepoys, 237

Bengal, early English trade, 25;

British supervisors, 55;

terrible famine, ib.;

British administration, 58;

zemindari system of land revenue, ib.;

no village communities, 128;

people, 190

Bengal army, see Sepoys

Bentinck, Lord William, recalled from Madras, 101;

Governor-General, 123;

wise and just administration, ib.;

civil and judicial reforms, 126;

appoints Asiatic officials, 127;

settles land revenue in the North-West Provinces, 131, 167;

popularity, 140;

appoints Asiatic deputy collectors, 166

Berhampore, sepoys at, 192;

mutiny against greased cartridges, 198

Berar, British relations with, 72;

vacillations of the Raja, 95; see Nagpore

Bhotan, beyond Northern India, expedition to, 293

Bhurtpore, Jhat Raja of, pays a heavy fine to the British, 98;

destruction of the fortress, 122

Bithoor, palace of Nana Sahib, 244;

destroyed by Havelock, 259

Bombay, old fortress and town, 24;

interference in Mahratta affairs, 73;

bravery of sepoys, 118;

acquires the territories of the Peishwa, 134;

stagnation, 139;

want of roads, 172;

state education, 278;

cotton speculations, 287;

failure of Bank, ib.

Brahmans, hereditary schoolmasters, astrologers, and priests, 129;

survival of, 131;

position in the Bengal army, 188, 191

Britain, Great, an Asiatic power, 140, 180, 276

Buller, Sir Arthur, his opposition in legislative council, 281

Bundelkund, lawless condition of, 101;

chiefs of, defy the British, ib.;

peace restored, 102;

condition, 255, 289 note

Burma, aggressive demands of the officials, 120;

invade British territory, 121;

end of first war, 122;

second war, 168

Burnes, Sir Alexander, at Cabul, 148;

environed by Afghan mob, 149;

murdered, ib.

Buxar, battle of, 52

C

Cabul, see Afghanistan

Cachar, under British rule, 122;

tea cultivation, 123

Calcutta, founded, 28;

captured by the Nawab of Bengal, 35;

Black Hole tragedy, 38;

recaptured, 42;

auction sales of lands, 60;

British garrison of, 186, 192

Campbell, Sir Archibald, at Rangoon, 121

Campbell, Sir Colin, commander-in-chief, Bengal army, 271;

sets out for Lucknow, ib.;

reaches Residency, ib.;

brings away besieged, ib.

Canara, landholders and land revenue of, 133

Canning, Lord, Governor-General, 181;

war with Persia, ib.;

settlement with the Delhi family, 182;

uneasy about Oudh, ib.;

alarm of the sepoys at Barrackpore, 192;

mutiny at Berhampore, 200;

outbreak at Barrackpore, 201;

disaffection in Oudh, 202;

disbandments at Barrackpore, 202, 205;

mutiny at Meerut, 206, 208;

orders General Anson to Delhi, 217;

refuses to abandon Peshawar, 229;

offends non-official Europeans at Calcutta, 279;

turns the executive council of India into a cabinet, 281;

departure and death, 285

Carnatic in Southern India, conquered by Aurangzeb, 22;

war between Great Britain and France, 32;

interference of the Nawab, ib.;

rival Nawabs, 33;

invasions of Hyder, 74;

acquired by Lord Wellesley and incorporated with the Madras Presidency, 87, 88

Cashmere, conquered by Runjeet Singh, 103;

sold by Lord Hardinge to Golab Singh, 160;

relations with the British government, 289

Caste in Bengal army, 191;

its disadvantages, ib.

Cavagnari, Sir Louis, murdered at Cabul, 297

Cawnpore on the Ganges, British cantonment in Lord Lake's time, 94;

position, 171, 175;

outbreak of the sepoy mutinies, 233;

story of Cawnpore, 243;

peril of General Wheeler, 244;

palace of Nana Sahib at Bithoor, 245;

suspense, 248;

mutiny, 251;

treachery of Nana Sahib, 252;

revolting cruelties, ib.;

massacre, 254;

advance of Havelock, 256;

story of the "well," 258;

defeat of Wyndham, 272;

victory of Sir Colin Campbell, ib.

Central India, feudatory Asiatic states and chiefships, 289 note

Central Provinces, under Home Office, 297

Chamberlain, Neville, his flying column in the Punjab, 224;

services at the siege of Delhi, 227, 230

Charnock, Job, imprisoned and scourged by the Nawab of Bengal, 25;

flies to Madras, 27;

founds Calcutta, 28

Charters, see East India Company

Child, Sir Joseph, frames a municipal corporation for Madras, 16;

makes war on the Great Mogul, 25;

plans the protection of British trade in India by three great fortresses, 26;

his humiliation, 27

Chillianwalla, battle of, 163, 164

China, East India Company's trade with, 138

Chout, paid by the Mogul to the Mahrattas, 28;

plunder of Bengal and the Carnatic for non-payment, 32;

Mahratta demands on the Nizam, 82;

demanded by Holkar, 96

Clavering, General, appointed member of council, 66;

insolence to Warren Hastings and Elijah Impey, 67, 68

Cleveland, Augustus, humanises the Sonthals, 78

Clive, Robert, saves British interests in India by the capture of Arcot, 34;

expedition to Calcutta after the Black Hole disaster, 40;

victory at Plassy, 42;

instals a new Nawab, 43;

relieves the Mogul Prince Imperial, 45;

refuses the post of Dewan to the Great Mogul, ib.;

offers it to William Pitt, 46;

Governor of British settlements in Bengal, 53;

accepts the Dewani, 54;

returns to England, 55;

inferior authority to that of Warren Hastings, 56

Code, Penal, 281

Colvin, Mr. John, besieged in fortress of Agra, 220, 231 note

Combermere, Lord, captures fortress of Bhurtpore, 122

Company, see East India

Cornwallis, Lord, appointed Governor-General, 78;

proclaims the perpetual settlement, 79;

judicial reforms, ib.;

war against Tippu, 80;

Governor-General a second time, 98;

dies, ib.

Councils, executive and legislative, see Government

Courts, see Judicature

Currie, Sir Frederic, Resident at Lahore, 161

D

Dalhousie, Lord Governor-General, 161;

enters on the second Sikh war, 163;

annexes the Punjab, 164;

introduces British administration, 166;

second Burmese war, 168;

annexation of Pegu, 169;

progressive policy, 170;

public works, ib.;

roads, 171;

railways, 173;

telegraphs, 174;

Ganges canal, ib.;

annexation policy, 175;

question of adoption, 176;

annexation of Jhansi and Oudh, 177;

opens the legislative council of India, 179;

leaves India, 180

Deccan, definition of the term, 2;

Mohammedan Sultans of Golconda, 22;

bad roads, 172

Delhi, capital of the Mogul empire, 44;

flight of the Prince Imperial to Calcutta, ib.;

proposed British expedition stopped by Clive, 53;

defended by Ochterlony against Holkar, 95;

occupied and plundered by Nadir Shah, 144;

water-way to Calcutta, 173;

family of the last of the Moguls, 182;

occupied by the rebel sepoys from Meerut, 208;

the city and its surroundings, 210;

massacre of Europeans, 213;

explosion of the magazine, 214;

rebel successes, 216;

avenged, 219;

the siege, 221;

the capture, 230;

imperial assemblage at, 295

Denison, Sir William, Provisional Governor-General, 286;

returns to Madras, ib.

Dharna, sitting in, 81;

abolished, ib.

Dhuleep Singh, nominal sovereign of the Punjab, 157

Dinapore, European regiment at, 186;

mutiny at, 266

Dost Mohammed Khan, ruler of Afghanistan, 145;

defeated by the British, 146;

a prisoner at Calcutta, 147;

returns to Cabul, 152;

recovers Peshawar during second Sikh war, 162, 163;

helped by the British in the Persian war, 181;

death, 290;

wars between his sons, 291

Dravidian races, 142

Dumdum arsenal, near Calcutta, 186;

musketry school at, 192

Dupleix, French Governor of Pondicherry, 32;

his brilliant success, 33;

appointed Nawab of the Carnatic, ib.;

ruin of his schemes by Clive, 34;

return to France, ib.;

disgrace and death of, ib.

Durand, Sir H., Foreign Secretary, 288;

relations with Sir John Lawrence, 289;

proposed restoration of Mysore, 292

Dutch, settlements of, 9

E

East India Company, charter and factories, 1;

English house at Surat, 4;

territory and fortress at Madras, 7;

Fort St. George, 12;

charter from James II. for municipal corporation, 16;

settlement at Bombay, 24;

at Hughly, 25;

war against the Great Mogul, 26;

submission, 27;

war with France, 32;

saved by Robert Clive, 34;

Black Hole tragedy, 35;

Plassy, 42;

exasperated by their civil servants at Calcutta, 53;

accepts the office of Dewan for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, 54;

orders Warren Hastings to assume the direct administration, 56;

false position of the Company in Bengal, 69;

first war against the Mahrattas, 71;

Fox's hostile India bill, 75;

Pitt's Board of Control, 76;

trial of Warren Hastings, 77;

wars of Lord Wellesley, 84;

conquest of Mysore, 86;

annexation of the Carnatic, 88;

subsidiary alliances, 89;

second Mahratta war, 94;

recall of Lord Wellesley from Bengal, 98;

recall of Lord William Bentinck from Madras, 101;

war against Nipal, 108;

Pindhari and Mahratta wars, 110;

paramount power in India, 120;

first Burmese war, ib.;

administration of Lord William Bentinck, 123;

stages in the relations between the Company and the Crown, 135;

old East India House, 136;

patronage under Pitt's bill, 137;

charters of 1813 and 1833 granted by Parliament, 138;

abolition of licences, ib.; constitutional changes, 139;

appointment of Lord Macaulay, ib.;

charter of 1833, its evil results, ib.;

an Asiatic power, 141;

first Sikh war, 154;

second Sikh war, 161;

acquisition of the Punjab, 165;

second Burmese war, 168;

splendid administration of Lord Dalhousie, 170;

question of adoption, 175;

annexation of Oudh, 177;

end of charter of 1833, 178;

competitive examinations for the Indian civil and new legislative council of India, 179;

sepoy revolt, 185, 232;

end of the East India Company, 275

Edinburgh, Duke of, visit to India, 295

Education in India, 277;

state system, 278;

Bible teaching, 279

Edwardes, Herbert, defeats rebels at Multan, 161, 162;

opposes withdrawal from Peshawar, 229

Elgin, Lord, sends British regiments to Lord Canning, 233;

Viceroy and Governor-General, 286

Ellenborough, Lord, Governor-General, 151;

hears news of Khyber Pass disaster, ib.;

interferes in Gwalior, 152;

recalled, 154;

proposes removal of the Delhi family, 182

Elphinstone, Mountstuart, his mission to Cabul, 103;

Resident at Poona, 112;

negotiations with the Mahratta Peishwa, 113;

destruction of his library, 116;

Governor of Bombay, 134;

conservatism in India, 299;

its failure, 300

Empress of India, proclamation of, 295

F

Ferozshahar, battle of, 158, 159

Foreign Office, Indian, relations with Asiatic states, 289;

misleading term, 290 note

Fort St. George, see Madras

Fort William, see Calcutta

Francis, Mr. Philip, member of Bengal Council, reputed author of the Letters of Junius, 66;

jealous hatred of Warren Hastings, ib.;

bitter charges against Hastings and Impey, 67, 68;

denounces appointment of Impey to the Sudder, 70;

fights a duel and returns to England, 75

Frere, Sir Bartle, Governor of Bombay, 286;

his career, 287

Frontier tribes on the north-west, 225

G

Gaekwar of Baroda, 112, 289 note

Ganges canal, 174

Ganges, river, 171, 175

George III., his hostility to Fox's India Bill, 137;

accepts presents from Warren Hastings, 296

Ghorka, conquest of Nipal, 106;

war against British government, 108-110

Gillespie, Colonel, commands garrison at Arcot, 100;

suppresses mutiny at Vellore, 101

Goa, the capital of Portuguese India, 2

Goddard, Colonel, leads an expedition from Calcutta to Bombay against Mahratta country, 73

Godwin, General, commands expedition to Burma, 169

Golab Singh buys Cashmere from Lord Hardinge, 160

Goojerat, battle of, 164

Gough, Sir Hugh, commands army in Gwalior, 153;

his victory at Maharajpore, 154;

battles at Moodki and Ferozshahar, 158;

at Sobraon, 159;

Chillianwalla, 163;

Goojerat, 164

Government, old merchant rule in Madras, 5, 8, 12;

municipal experiments, 14, 16;

Nawab rule in Bengal, 43;

offer of the Dewani, 45;

Great Mogul installed in British factory at Patna, 48;

collision between the British and the Nawab in Bengal, 49;

Clive's double government, 54;

Warren Hastings a sovereign ruler, 56;

British zemindar at Calcutta, 59;

appointment of British collectors, 61;

members of council at Calcutta appointed by Parliament, 65;

quarrels, 66;

Governor-General in Council empowered by parliament to make laws, 69;

changes under the charter of 1833, 135;

executive council remodelled by Lord Canning, 280;

legislative councils of 1854 and 1861-6, 179, 284;

relations of legislative and executive, 293;

British India a school for Asiatics, 297

Govind, Guru, 155;

founder of the Sikh Khalsa, 156

Graves, Brigadier, commands station at Delhi, 209, 210;

preparations to resist rebel sepoys from Meerut, 211;

escapes to Flagstaff Tower, 213

Gubbins, Mr. Frederic, his municipal reforms at Benares, 235, 236

Gwalior, fortress of, captured, 73;

interference and war by Lord Ellenborough, 152

Gwalior contingent formed, 154;

mutiny of, 228, 229;

victory of, at Cawnpore, 272

H

Hands, Right and Left, Hindu antagonism in Southern India, 10, 11;

see also 39 note

Hardinge, Lord, Governor-General, 154;

commands the army at Moodki, 158;

at Sobraon, 159;

settles the government of the Punjab under a regency, 160;

returns to England, 161

Harris, General, commands British army against Mysore, 86

Hastings, Warren, appointed Governor of Bengal, 56;

virtually sovereign of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, ib.;

previous career, 57;

introduces British administration, 58;

dealings with the zemindars and land revenue, 59, 61;

judicial administration, 62 creates the Sudder Court, 64;

surprised by the arrival of three new members of council, and the creation of the Supreme Court, 65;