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India Under British Rule from the Foundation of the East India Company

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Title: India Under British Rule from the Foundation of the East India Company

Author: James Talboys Wheeler


        
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INDIA UNDER BRITISH RULE

by

J. TALBOYS WHEELER


      *      *      *      *      *      *

    BY THE SAME AUTHOR.


     MADRAS IN THE OLDEN TIME, 1639-1748. 3 vols. sm. 8vo. Madras,
      1861-62.

     EARLY TRAVELS IN INDIA. First Series, comprising Purchas's
      "Pilgrimage" and the "Travels of Van Linschoten." 8vo. Calcutta,
      1864.

     EARLY TRAVELS IN INDIA. Second Series, comprising Sir Thomas Roe's
      "Embassy to the Great Mogul" and Fryer's "Travels in India." 8vo.
      London, 1873.

    HISTORY OF INDIA FROM THE EARLIEST AGES. 5 vols. 8vo.
     Vol. I. The Mahá Bhárata and the Vedic Period. Thick 8vo. Map. 1867.
         II. The Rámáyana and the Brahmanic Period. Thick 8vo. Map. 1869.
        III. Hindu, Buddhist, and Brahmanic Revival. 8vo. Map. 1874.
         IV. and V. Mohammedan Rule. 2 vols. 8vo. 1876-82.

     SHORT HISTORY OF INDIA, and of the Frontier States of Afghanistan,
      Nipal, and Burma. Thick-crown 8vo, with Maps and Tables. Macmillan
      and Co. 12_s._ 1880.

     HISTORY OF THE IMPERIAL ASSEMBLAGE AT DELHI, held on the 1st of
      January, 1877, to celebrate the assumption by Her Majesty Queen
      Victoria of the Title of Empress of India; with Historical
      Sketches of India and her Princes. Royal 4to, with 13 Portraits,
      Map, and 17 Illustrations, chiefly by Photographs. 1877.

     EARLY RECORDS OF BRITISH INDIA; a History of the English
      Settlements in India. 8vo. Calcutta, 1878.

     JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE UP THE IRRAWADDY TO MANDALAY AND BHAMO. 8vo.
      Rangoon, 1871.

     TALES FROM INDIAN HISTORY. 12mo. 1881.

              *       *       *

     GEOGRAPHY OF HERODOTUS, Developed, Explained, and Illustrated from
      Modern Researches and Discoveries. Thick 8vo, with Maps and Plans.
      1854.

     LIFE AND TRAVELS OF HERODOTUS. 2 vols. post 8vo. 1855.

     ANALYSIS AND SUMMARY OF HERODOTUS. Post 8vo. Bohn's Philological
      Library. 1852.

     ANALYSIS AND SUMMARY OF THUCYDIDES. Post 8vo. Bohn's Philological
      Library. 1852.

      *      *      *      *      *      *


INDIA UNDER BRITISH RULE

From the Foundation of the East India Company

by

J. TALBOYS WHEELER

Late Assistant-Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department,
and Late Secretary to the Government of British Burma.
Author of "History of India from the Earliest Ages,"
Including the "Maha Bharata" and "Ramayana,"
"A Short History Of India,"
etc., etc.







London
Macmillan and Co.
1886

The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.

Richard Clay & Sons,
Bread Street Hill, London,
Bungay, Suffolk.




    TO

    SIR CHARLES TREVELYAN, BART.,

    WHO OPENED

    THE OLD MADRAS RECORDS TO THE AUTHOR

    IN 1860,

    This book is Dedicated.




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_.




CONTENTS.




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                       _Pages_ 1-39


    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.                                _Pages_ 40-82


    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. §19. Sir Charles Metcalfe, 1835-36.
                                                    _Pages_ 83-140


    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. _Pages_ 141-184


    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.
                                                   _Pages_ 185-231


    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. _Pages_ 232-274




    PART II.

    _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.            _Pages_ 275-302


    INDEX                                          _Pages_ 303-312




INDIA UNDER BRITISH RULE.




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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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 500_l._ 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
500_l._ a year to raise any difficulty as regards fortifications or
cannon.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: Mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, 1688.]

§5. When the news of these disturbances reached England, the Directors
in Leadenhall Street, or rather their once celebrated chairman, the
great Sir Josiah Child, devised a scheme for rendering municipal
taxation acceptable to the native population. A charter was obtained
from James II. for founding a corporation in Madras, consisting of a
mayor, twelve aldermen, and sixty burgesses; but it was suggested by the
Court of Directors that the heads of Hindu castes, as well as Britons,
might be appointed aldermen and burgesses, and it was hoped that the
corporation would be willing to tax themselves and the inhabitants
generally, for keeping the town clean, improving the public health,
building a guild-hall and hospitals, and establishing schools for
teaching the English tongue to Hindus, Mohammedans, and other Indian
children. Before the Governor and Council at Madras could offer a single
suggestion, they received instructions cut and dried. The mayor and
three senior aldermen were always to be covenanted British servants of
the East India Company, and they alone were to be Justices of the Peace.
The remaining nine might belong to any nationality, and included
Portuguese, Hindu, and Jewish merchants having dealings with the Company
at Madras. Thirty burgesses were named in the charter, but they were all
Englishmen; and the remainder were to include the heads of all the
castes, so as to induce the whole of the Hindu inhabitants to contribute
cheerfully to the public works already specified. The mayor and aldermen
were to wear red silk gowns, and the burgesses white silk gowns, and
maces were to be carried before the mayor. In a word, all the
paraphernalia of an English municipality in the seventeenth century were
sent to Madras to be adopted by the new corporation.

[Sidenote: Corporation festivities.]

The new municipality was inaugurated with much pomp and ceremony in
1688, the year of the glorious Revolution. The Governor of Madras was
outside the corporation, but the mayor and three senior aldermen were
members of council. On Saturday, the 29th of September, 1688, the
Governor received the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses in the
council-chamber at Fort St. George. The members of the new corporation
then took the oaths and sat down to a corporation dinner; and after a
while they all marched to the town-hall in their several robes, with the
maces before the mayor. Nothing, however, is said about the heads of
castes, and nothing more about the burgesses.

[Sidenote: Failure of municipal rule.]

The mayor and aldermen were to be a Court of Record, with power to try
all causes, criminal and civil, in a summary way, according to "equity
and good conscience," and such laws and orders as might be made by the
Company. The corporation were authorised to levy taxes for building a
guild-hall, a public jail, and a school-house for teaching English,
arithmetic, and merchants' accounts to Indian children, and for payment
of the necessary salaries. Henceforth, two aldermen sat as justices of
the Choultry; but the corporation raised no tax and founded no
institution, and eventually died out from sheer want of vitality.


[Sidenote: Slavery under Hindu rule.]

§6. All this while the slave trade was an institution in Madras, and
indeed, throughout Southern India. In most of the Hindu kingdoms of the
Peninsula, the farm-labourers were slaves or serfs attached to the soil;
they were probably aboriginal populations who had been reduced to
slavery by their conquerors. Prisoners of war, male and female, were
also compelled to serve the conquerors as domestic servants, and treated
as slaves of the family.

[Sidenote: Mohammedan slavery.]

When Turks and Afghans introduced Mohammedan rule, slavery was
recognised, but Hindu slaves might raise their condition by embracing
Islam, and the converts might become important personages in the
household, and marry female members of the family. The favourites of a
grandee or Sultan might even marry a daughter, and rise to the rank of
steward of the household or minister of state, like Joseph in the court
of the Pharaohs.

[Sidenote: Mogul restrictions.]

When the Moguls established their dominion over Northern India there was
a change for the better. It was a fundamental law of the Moguls that no
subject should be enslaved, but only captives taken in war. This law was
still enforced when the Moguls became Mohammedans, for they always
looked upon the slavery of subjects with horror, whatever might be their
race or religion. Foreign slaves, male and female, provided they were
not Mohammedans, were sold by private dealers, or in the public
bazaar.[4]

[Sidenote: Portuguese slave trade.]

Unfortunately, the Portuguese and other nations of Europe had not as yet
awakened to the iniquity of slavery and the slave trade. During the
Portuguese wars in Africa, Moors and Negroes were carried off as
prisoners of war and sold as slaves in Lisbon. In India the Portuguese
established depôts for the purchase of slaves. At Goa female slaves were
to be found in every Portuguese household, and sometimes were sent into
the streets to sell sweetmeats and confectionary, and earn money for
their masters in other ways.

[Sidenote: Kidnapping from Bengal.]

For many years large numbers of Hindu slaves were brought from Bengal.
The Portuguese had been permitted to build a factory at Hughly, on the
river Hughly, about 120 miles from the sea. During an interval of civil
war they fortified this settlement and landed numerous cannon, whilst a
native town grew up in the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the scum of Goa and
other Portuguese towns, chiefly military deserters and apostate monks,
had established themselves on the islands near the mouths of the Ganges,
built a fleet of galleys, and led the lives of pirates, brigands, and
kidnappers. These men were the pest of the Sunderbunds. They scoured the
waterways of the delta of the Ganges, carried off whole villages into
slavery, and especially delighted in capturing marriage processions,
with the bride and bridegroom and all their kinsfolk and acquaintance in
the bravery of silks and jewels. The Portuguese at Hughly were base
enough to deal with these villains, to buy the poor wretches who had
been kidnapped, and to ship them to Goa, where they were sold as slaves
at the daily auctions on the Exchange, together with other commodities
from all parts of the world. The rascally kidnappers at the mouths of
the Ganges, and the pious traders at Hughly, alike quieted their
consciences by baptising their victims, and boasting of having saved
their souls from hell.

[Sidenote: Vengeance of the Great Mogul.]

Such a state of things aroused the Great Mogul to take action. The very
existence of a Portuguese fortress and cannon within his dominions had
given mortal offence, and this unholy slave trade sealed the fate of the
Portuguese at Hughly. The settlement was environed by a Mogul army.
There was a rush of ladies and children to the shipping, but the river
was low and the vessels ran aground. There was absolutely no way of
escape; all provisions were cut off, and the Portuguese were starved
into surrender. Five or six hundred prisoners, many of noble birth, were
sent to Agra. Some saved their lives by turning Mohammedans; others,
mostly priests, perished as martyrs; the choicest of the lads and
maidens were sent to the palace of the Great Mogul, and the remainder
were distributed amongst the mansions of the Mohammedan grandees. For
generations afterwards the doom of the Portuguese at Hughly was likened
to the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews.

[Sidenote: Slave trade at Madras.]

Hughly was captured in 1632. Seven years later the British built their
factory at Madras, on the coast of Coromandel. At every Portuguese
settlement in Southern India the slave trade was still in full swing,
for the sway of the Great Mogul had only been extended over the northern
part of the Deccan, and was as yet far away from the Peninsula.
Accordingly the British traders at Madras connived at the exportation of
slaves by sea. Some restraints, however, were placed upon kidnapping by
insisting on the registration of every slave bought or sold in Madras,
together with the names of the seller and purchaser, in order that the
information might be given in the event of any inquiry by kinsfolk or
acquaintance, and also that a fee might be levied on the registration of
every slave.

[Sidenote: Great Mogul conquers the Deccan.]

In 1688 the British rulers of Madras abolished the slave trade by public
proclamation. The Great Mogul, the once famous Aurangzeb, was engaged in
conquering the Sultans of the Deccan. Unlike his predecessors, Aurangzeb
was a bigoted Sunni, or a zealous believer in the four Caliphs who
succeeded Mohammed. The Sultans of the Deccan were Shiahs who damned
the first three Caliphs as usurpers, and swore that Ali, and Ali only,
the son-in-law of the Prophet, the husband of Fatima and the father of
Hassan and Hosein, was the rightful successor of Mohammed. Under such
circumstances Aurangzeb was impelled by pious zeal for the interest of
the Sunni religion to conquer and slay the heretic Sultans of the Deccan
and annex their dominions to the Mogul empire. He next prepared to march
his army further south into the Peninsula, with the view of conquering
the Hindu Rajas and compelling their idolatrous subjects to accept the
religion of the Koran.

[Sidenote: Stoppage of the slave trade.]

The British at Madras were greatly alarmed at the threatened approach of
the Great Mogul. They were naturally afraid of sharing the fate of the
Portuguese at Hughly. Accordingly they abolished the slave trade by
proclamation, and sent numerous petitions to Aurangzeb, tendering their
submission to the Great Mogul, praising his imperial majesty to the
skies, imploring his protection as though he had been another Cyrus or
Darius, and engaging to pay the old rent of 500_l._ per annum in
pagodas. Matters were finally arranged, but it is grievous to add that
the pious Aurangzeb was not so careful of the welfare of the Hindus as
his liberal and tolerant predecessors. He preferred the laws of Mohammed
to those of his Mogul ancestor, Chenghiz Khan; and within a few years
the slave trade at Madras was as brisk as ever.


[Sidenote: British toleration.]

§7. The Mogul conquest of the Sultans of the Deccan drove many
Mohammedans to settle at Madras. The British traders protected the lives
and property of Hindus and Mohammedans, and permitted them to worship
as they pleased. In early days, the Directors had repeatedly pressed
their servants at Madras to convert the Hindu worshippers of idols to
the truths of Christianity, and no one in the British Isles seems to
have doubted the possibility or expediency of the work. The British
traders at Madras, however, deprecated any interference whatever. They
described a terrible riot that broke out at St. Thomé because of some
interference with a Hindu procession, and they urged that the frays
between the Right and Left Hands were sufficient proof that it was best
to leave the Hindus alone. As for Mohammedans, they were the subjects of
the Great Mogul, and interference with the dominant religion in India
was out of the question.

[Sidenote: Flourishing private trade.]

During the latter years of the seventeenth century, the British
settlement at Madras had grown into a principality, independent, and
self-contained. At the same time it presented rare attractions to
traders, Asiatic as well as European. The Company's servants were paid
very small salaries, but were allowed the privilege of private trade in
the eastern seas, so long as they paid customs and did not interfere
with the European trade. Every Company's servant in Madras, from the
Governor to the youngest writer, engaged more or less in trading
ventures. The number of traders was swelled by private individuals who
came from England, under the licence of the Court of Directors; as well
as by Hindu, Mohammedan, and Armenian merchants, who often took shares
with the Company's servants. Moreover, this private trade increased the
demand for European commodities which were sold by public auction in
Fort St. George, and swelled the revenue of the East India Company which
was derived from the sea customs.

[Sidenote: Decay of Surat.]

Meanwhile the British situation at the Mogul port of Surat had become
intolerable. The religious fanaticism of Aurangzeb had stirred up hatred
and discontent amongst Christians and Hindus. The factors at the English
House were more oppressed than ever. On the north their trade was cut
off by the Rajput princes of Western Hindustan, who were revolting
against the Great Mogul and stopping the caravans between Surat and
Agra. On the south they were exposed to the Mahrattas of the Western
Deccan, who attacked and plundered Surat, and would have plundered the
English House had not the factors surreptitiously landed some cannon,
and called in the British sailors from the shipping, and manfully beaten
off their assailants.

[Sidenote: Bombay, 1661-85.]

Fortunately, the British had taken possession of the island of Bombay,
which Charles the Second had obtained from the King of Portugal as part
of the dowry of the Infanta Catharine, and made over to the East India
Company. Bombay was nearly two hundred miles to the south of Surat, and
hedged around by the Mahrattas, but being an island it was well
protected, and included both a fortress and a town. Moreover, it had a
magnificent harbour, and the valuable trade with the Persian Gulf, the
Red Sea, and the Mozambique could be better carried on from this harbour
than over the bar of Surat at the mouth of the river Tapty. Accordingly
the East India Company secretly resolved on leaving Surat for ever, and
removing the British factors and their trade to the island of Bombay.

[Sidenote: Bengal trade, 1640-85.]

In Bengal the East India Company had established a factory at Hughly, hard
by the dismantled Portuguese fortress; but were exposed to so much
insolence and extortion from the Mogul authorities that they were
prepared to leave Bengal rather than tamely submit to further
oppression. The trade was enormously profitable, and had helped to
defray the cost of the fortifications at Madras and Bombay. Saltpetre
had been in large demand ever since the breaking out of the civil war
between Charles the First and his parliament. Raw silk and opium were
equally marketable, and all three products could be brought from Patna
to Hughly by the river Ganges. At Dacca, the old capital of Bengal to
the eastward of the Ganges, muslins were manufactured of so fine a
texture that a piece sufficient for a dress might be passed through a
wedding ring; and every young lady in the British Isles who aspired to
be a bride was equally anxious to be led to the altar in a cloud of
Dacca muslin. Aurangzeb, however, stopped the supply of saltpetre,
because the Sultan of Turkey complained that it was used by Christians
in their wars against true believers; whilst the Nawab of Bengal, who
resided at Dacca, was most overbearing, and on one occasion ordered that
Mr. Job Charnock, the chief of the Hughly factory, should be imprisoned
and scourged, and his orders were literally obeyed by the Hughly
officials.


[Sidenote: Plans of Sir Josiah Child, 1685.]

§8. Sir Josiah Child, the chairman of the Court of Directors, was
endowed with real political genius, but he was imperious and headstrong.
He resolved to make war upon the Great Mogul, and compel him to make
reparation for the misdeeds of the Nawab of Bengal, and to cede
sufficient territory for the establishment of a fortress and a town
corresponding to the settlements at Madras and Bombay. He proposed to
coerce the Great Mogul by sending out the Company's cruisers from Bombay
to capture the Mogul ships going to Mecca, until Aurangzeb came to
terms. He also persuaded James II. to send a Royal fleet to Bengal to
ensure the success of his scheme. Should his plans fail, should
Aurangzeb prove obstinate and impracticable, it was intended to form an
alliance with the Raja of Arakan, on the eastern side of the Bay of
Bengal, and promise to help him in his wars against the Great Mogul,
provided he ceded the required territory at Chittagong. In short, Sir
Josiah Child proposed to overawe the Mogul and establish British trade
with India on a lasting basis for the future by means of three great
fortresses--one at Madras, a second at Bombay, and a third in Bengal or
at Chittagong.

[Sidenote: Elements of mischief.]

Unfortunately Sir Josiah Child was unable to cope with the craft and
capacity of Aurangzeb. That keen-witted sovereign had spies in all
directions, and was gifted with such a power of divining what was going
on that he was often suspected of employing supernatural agency.
Meanwhile, Sir Josiah Child was maintaining such profound secrecy that
no Englishman on the Bengal side knew what was going on at Surat or
Bombay, and no Englishman on the Bombay side knew what was going on in
the Bay of Bengal, whilst the British at Madras knew nothing whatever of
the plans in operation.

[Sidenote: Blunders and disasters.]

The blundering that followed was most disastrous. Whilst the Company's
cruisers were capturing Mogul ships as lawful prize, Aurangzeb drew the
Surat factors into his clutches, and threatened to put them to death
unless the prizes were restored and vast sums paid by way of ransom.
Meanwhile, the Royal fleet arrived in Bengal, and made its way up the
river Hughly, under the command of a certain Captain Heath, who would
listen to no advice and regarded Asiatics with contempt, whilst he was
ready to make war on anybody. He brought away Mr. Job Charnock and the
British factors from Hughly, with all their goods and records. He
captured all the Mogul ships he encountered in the Hughly river. He
bombarded a Mogul town at the mouth of the river. Meanwhile, the Nawab
of Bengal was in a panic of fear at Dacca, willing to make any terms
provided only that the terrible admiral would leave Bengal and solemnly
promise never to return.

[Sidenote: A hot-headed admiral.]

The Royal fleet sailed to Arakan and frightened the Raja into a state of
utter bewilderment. The Raja could make nothing of the offer of the
admiral to help him against the Great Mogul, nor of the demand for the
cession of Chittagong, and he naturally vacillated, prevaricated, and
procrastinated. The admiral was blind with rage and mortification, and
would have captured Chittagong by force of arms; but the place was too
strong for him. Accordingly, he sailed away to Madras in a towering
fury, and landed Mr. Charnock and the British factors at Madras,
swearing that he had heard nothing but deceit and lies since he first
entered the Bay of Bengal.

[Sidenote: Humiliation.]

The East India Company submitted to the Great Mogul, but the great
Josiah Child must have found it a bitter pill. The prizes were restored,
a vast fine was paid, and pardon was humbly implored before the Surat
factors were restored to liberty.

[Sidenote: Calcutta founded, 1690.]

Meanwhile, the Moguls had learned to respect the British. The fugitives
from Hughly were invited to return to Bengal, and permitted to purchase
a strip of land on the eastern bank of the Hughly river, about twenty
miles nearer the sea than their old factory. It was three miles long and
one mile inland, and included the three native villages of Chutanutti,
Govindpore, and Kali Ghat, which grew into a native town resembling that
of Madras. Later on, the Hindus round about revolted against Mogul
oppression, and the British took advantage of the general alarm to
convert their factory into a fortress and to give it the name of Fort
William, in honour of the Prince of Orange. The native settlement was
known by the name of Calcutta, after the village of Kali Ghat, or the
"landing place of the goddess Kali." Thus the dream of Josiah Child was
realised, and British trade in India was protected by three fortresses
and three towns--Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta.

[Sidenote: Indian calm, 1700-40.]

From the end of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth
the Company's settlements were for the most part shut out from the
Indian world. The British had learned their lesson and kept quiet, and
the Moguls were busy fighting the Mahrattas, and left them very much
alone. The Mogul conquests in the Deccan were made over to a Mogul
Viceroy known as the Nizam, whilst those in the eastern Peninsula round
about Madras were placed in charge of a Nawab who was known as the Nawab
of the Carnatic. Meanwhile, the Moguls kept the Mahrattas quiet by the
payment of a yearly black-mail known as chout, or "_chauth_," which was
reckoned at one-fourth of the land revenue, but was often commuted for a
lump sum. Thus India was to all outward appearance in a state of calm,
but it was the calm that precedes a storm.


[Sidenote: Typical Madras Governors.]

§9. Although the administration of Madras was carried on by a Governor
and Council yet each Governor had a strong personal influence and
individuality. Two of these Governors, an Englishman and a Scotchman,
may be brought under notice as types of all.

[Sidenote: Governor Pitt, 1698-1709.]

THOMAS PITT, grandfather of the Earl of Chatham, was Governor of Madras
from 1698 to 1709. In 1702 the Nawab of the Carnatic was staying at St.
Thomé, trying to squeeze some 50,000_l_. out of the British at Madras.
He boasted loudly of his friendship for the British whilst his troops
were plundering their outlying villages. He was entertained at dinner
with great pomp at Fort St. George, and gratified with presents; but
shortly afterwards he environed the whole settlement with his army. Pitt
held out for months, getting his supplies by sea. At last Pitt offered
two or three thousand pounds in rupees, and a peace was patched up, and
the Nawab went away.

[Sidenote: Imperious rule.]

Governor Pitt was as lofty and mysterious in his way as his illustrious
grandson. He was much irritated by a protracted quarrel between the
Right and Left Hands. He set up stones to mark the boundaries between
the streets, but they were carried away at night time. The bulk of the
Right Hands fled to St. Thomé, and the Hindu populations in all the
country round about were in great commotion. Pitt threatened to send a
body of European soldiers to St. Thomé, and put the deserters to the
sword. At this crisis, the Mogul officer at St. Thomé turned the
malcontents out of the town. They went back to Madras submissive and
crestfallen, and begged to be forgiven. From this time, however, the
distinction between the Right and Left Hands was abolished as far as the
streets were concerned, and all streets were opened to both Hands. But
the old strife is still burning in the hearts of the Hindus of Southern
India. They can be prevented from fighting with swords and clubs, but
they carry the battle into the law-courts, where disputes are frequently
brought to a decision as regards the right of either Hand to worship at
a particular shrine and in a particular way.[5]

[Sidenote: Hasty tempter.]

Pitt was severe on native offenders. Some thieves went off with
boat-loads of cotton goods, and the gunner at Fort St. George was
ordered to fire upon them. The thieves escaped, but two peons who
connived at the robbery were whipped and put in the pillory, whilst
Governor Pitt thrashed the native overseer with his own hands.

[Sidenote: Pitt diamond.]

During the siege of Madras Pitt managed to buy a wonderful diamond from
a Golconda jeweller at a small price. In after years he sold it to the
Regent of France for 135,000_l._, and it was known as the Pitt diamond.
The matter created some scandal at the time, but is now only remembered
in connection with Pope's lines:--

    "Asleep and naked as an Indian lay,
    An honest factor stole his gem away."


[Sidenote: Governor Macrae, 1725-30.]

JAMES MACRAE, a Scotch celebrity, was Governor of Madras from 1725 to
1731. He carried out a general survey of Madras and its suburbs for the
better collection of the quit-rents and scavenger-tax. The population of
Madras numbered 200,000. The expenses of Fort St. George amounted to
20,000_l_. a year, whilst the revenue from the sea customs was under
5,000_l._

[Sidenote: Mayor's Court.]

The Mayor's Court was re-organised in Governor Macrae's time under the
charter of 1726. It was to consist of a mayor and nine aldermen for the
trial of all civil causes. Seven of the aldermen were to be Englishmen,
and the remaining two of any nation, provided they were Protestant. The
new court was inaugurated in a style which seems inexpressibly absurd in
the present day. The new mayor and aldermen were sworn in with much
ceremony, and then left Fort St. George in a grand procession of
soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets, dancing girls with the country
music, court attorneys with all the chief gentry on horseback, and
passed through Black Town to the Company's garden in the suburbs, where
they were received by the Governor and Council and duly _fêted_.

[Sidenote: Breaking up of the Mogul empire.]

Meanwhile, the Mogul empire was breaking up. Aurangzeb died in 1707.
Within thirty years after his death the power of the Great Moguls had
died out; the name and prestige remained, but very little more. The
successors of Aurangzeb were _Roisfainéants_ shut up in palaces with
wives and concubines, whilst all real power was exercised by the
Ministers of State and the Viceroys of the provinces. In 1738-39 the
British at the three Presidencies were startled by the news that Nadir
Shah had invaded India with a large Persian army from the north-west,
and had plundered the city and palaces of Delhi and carried away the
spoil of Northern India. The payment of the Mahratta "chout" was stopped
at the Mogul treasury, and armies of Mahratta horsemen were making up
the loss by the plunder of the Carnatic and Bengal.


[Sidenote: War with France, 1745.]

§10. In 1745 news reached India that war had been declared between Great
Britain and France. This was alarming news for the British traders at
Madras, as the French had established a flourishing town and settlement
at Pondicherry, on the coast of Coromandel, about a hundred miles to the
south of Madras, and a collision might be expected at any moment between
the two settlements. Moreover, the Governor of Pondicherry was a certain
M. Dupleix, a Frenchman of large capacity and restless ambition, who
hated the British with all the ardour of the typical Frenchman of the
eighteenth century. The same year a British fleet appeared off the coast
of Coromandel and threatened Pondicherry; but the Nawab of the Carnatic
declared that he would have no wars between European nations within his
territories, and the British fleet sailed away.

[Sidenote: Madras captured, 1746.]

In 1746 a French fleet appeared off Madras, but the Nawab was not
inclined to interfere; he had, in fact, been bought over by M. Dupleix,
the French Governor of Pondicherry. The French bombarded Fort St.
George; the native inhabitants fled from Madras; and the British
inhabitants were carried in triumph to Pondicherry as prisoners of war.

[Sidenote: French defeat the Mogul army.]

The Nawab of the Carnatic affected to be very angry at this bombardment
of Madras. He demanded that the settlement should be transferred to his
authority, and sent an army of 10,000 Moguls to take possession of the
town and fortress. To his utter amazement the army of 10,000 Moguls was
utterly routed by a battalion of 800 Frenchmen. From that day it was
felt throughout Southern India that no Mogul army could stand against
the rapid firing of disciplined Europeans. In 1748 the war between Great
Britain and France was over for a while, and Madras was restored to the
British.

[Sidenote: Brilliant success of Dupleix.]

Later on, the death of the Nizam of the Deccan threw the whole country
into confusion. Rival kinsmen began to fight for the throne of the
province without any reference to the Great Mogul. Dupleix plunged at
once into the fray. He saw that a French force might turn the scale of
victory, and he moved a French army, under the command of Bussy, to help
a victorious candidate as occasion served, without the slightest regard
to the rightness or wrongness of his claim. In 1751 he had realised his
dream of ambition. He had placed a Nizam on the throne at Hyderabad, and
he was rewarded with the cession of a territory stretching 600 miles
along the coast, for the maintenance of a French standing army. To crown
all, he induced the Nizam to appoint him Nawab of the Carnatic; and, in
spite of Dupleix being a Frenchman and a Catholic, the appointment was
actually made under the seal of the Great Mogul. Meanwhile, the British
had supported the claim of a Mogul prince named Mohammed Ali to the
throne of the Carnatic, but had been circumvented at every turn, and
were now called upon to acknowledge the superior authority of their
bitter enemy Dupleix.

[Sidenote: Triumph of Robert Clive.]

British rule in Southern India was at its last gasp. If Dupleix could
only have got hold of Mohammed Ali, he might have been master of the
Carnatic; Madras might have been a French settlement, and a French
Governor and Council might have taken the place of the British in Fort
St. George. As it was, Mohammed Ali was very nearly surrendering. He had
fled away to seek the help of the Hindu Rajas of the south, and was
being closely besieged by the French in the city of Trichinopoly, 180
miles to the south of Arcot. At this crisis Robert Clive saved the East
India Company. He left Madras with a small force, and after a march of
seventy miles into the interior, threw himself into the city of Arcot,
the capital of the Carnatic, where the Nawabs of the Carnatic had held
their court for more than half a century. The native garrison fled at
his approach, and the inhabitants, numbering 100,000, offered no
resistance. The French were aghast at hearing that the capital of the
Carnatic was in the hands of the British. They despatched a large force
from Trichinopoly, but failed to recover Arcot. In the end they raised
the siege of Trichinopoly, and Mohammed Ali was delivered out of their
hands and placed by the British in possession of the Carnatic, to the
exclusion of Dupleix and ruin of his ambitious schemes.

[Sidenote: Tragedy at Calcutta, 1756.]

British and French were now anxious for peace, and agreed to make
Dupleix their scapegoat. They threw the whole blame of the war upon the
unfortunate Frenchman, who returned to France and died in poverty. In
1755 a treaty was patched up at Pondicherry, but was never executed. In
1756, on the eve of the Seven Years' War, terrible news arrived from
Bengal. The Nawab had captured the settlement at Calcutta; and a hundred
and twenty-three English prisoners had been thrust into a barrack cell,
and perished most miserably of heat and suffocation.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] The island of Goa, and the fortress of Diu in Guzerat, were
  nominally within Mohammedan dominion, but they were really independent
  and were held by force of arms.

  [2] The authorities for the present chapter, which deals with the rise
  and early development of British rule in India, are somewhat numerous.
  The most important are the Government records at Madras, in which the
  weekly transactions of the Governor and Council are entered at full
  length in a series known as "Consultations." Every year a copy of the
  "Consultations" was sent to the Court of Directors, together with a
  summary of the affairs of the year as a "General Letter;" and every
  year a "General Letter" was received from the Court of Directors,
  reviewing the "Consultations," and conveying instructions and orders
  thereon. The Madras records have been closely investigated by the
  author from 1670 to 1748; and printed extracts were published at
  Madras in 1860-62, in three volumes small quarto, under the title of
  _Madras in the Olden Time_. To them may be added Bruce's _Annals of
  the East India Company_; Sir Thomas Roe's _Journal of a Mission to the
  Great Mogul_ in 1616-18; and the travels of Pietro della Valle,
  Tavernier, Thevenot and Fryer; as well as Orme's _History of
  Hindustan_, Stewart's _History of Bengal_, Faria y Souza's _History of
  Portuguese Asia_, and Shaw's _Predecessors of the High Court at
  Madras_. Further authorities will be found cited in the author's
  _History of India from the Earliest Ages_, and in his _Early Records
  of British India_.

  [3] The Mofussil Courts, and the High Court in Appeals from the
  Mofussil Courts, are still required to decide, according to "equity
  and good conscience." See the "High Court amended Charters" granted in
  1866.

  [4] This was notoriously the case at Surat, where female slaves might
  be purchased by Europeans. There was a Dutch factory at Surat of the
  same stamp as the British factory, and its married inmates were in
  like manner forbidden to bring their wives from Holland. But when the
  Dutch got possession of Java, they offered grants of land to married
  Dutchmen, and, according to Pietro della Valle, there was a sudden
  change in domestic arrangements. Dutch bachelors were in such a hurry
  to go to Java, that they married Armenian Christians, or went off to
  the bazaar and bought female slaves and baptised them and married them
  without loss of time.

  [5] Abbé Dubois, who lived many years in Southern India, could not
  account for the distinction between the two Hands; Dr. Fryer was told
  about 1676 that the antagonism was planned by the Brahmans to keep the
  lower castes in subjection.

  [6] Since the foregoing chapter was in type, Professor Terrien de
  Lacouperie has kindly pointed out that a division between right and
  left hands has existed from a remote period in Central and Eastern
  Asia. Among the Turkish Hiung-nu on the north-west of China, the
  officers were arranged into two divisions, a left and a right-hand
  side, both before and after the Christian era. The Burut-Kirghiz are
  still divided into two wings, viz., _on_ of the right and _sol_ of the
  left.

  In China the task of keeping a daily chronicle of "words" and "facts"
  was entrusted to two officers, one on the left-hand of the emperor and
  the other on his right. The officer on the left recorded all speeches
  and addresses, whilst that on the right recorded all facts and events.
  This last division, however, is a mere title in Chinese
  administration; the left-hand being more honourable than the right,
  and taking the precedence.

  The distinction between the right and left hands in Southern India,
  is, as already seen, a caste antagonism, and it is impossible to say
  whether it has or has not any connection, however remote, with that in
  Central Asia or China. The Dravidian populations of Southern India
  certainly immigrated from the region beyond the Himalayas in some
  unknown period, but all historical links are wanting save the evidence
  of language. Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, in his lectures on
  "Indo-Chinese Philology," has pointed out that the Dravidian group
  forms the fourth division of the Kueonlunic branch of Turanian
  languages.




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.


[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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."

[Sidenote: 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."


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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 800_l_. sterling, to relieve the immediate necessities of the Prince
Imperial, and the money was gladly received by the impoverished
fugitive.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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 200,000_l._ 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.

[Sidenote: Company acquire Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, 1765.]

But the crowning event in Lord Clive's life was the acceptance of the
post of Dewan to the Great Mogul in the name of the East India Company.
Henceforth, the Governor and Council at Calcutta took over the revenues
of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa from the Nawab's revenue officers, and
provided for the military defence of the three provinces. A quarter of a
million sterling was paid to the Great Mogul, and half a million to the
Nawab at Murshedabad for the salaries of himself and his officials; but
all interference on the part of the British with the administration of
the Nawab and his ministers and servants was strictly forbidden, as
contrary to the policy of non-intervention. Accordingly, the Nawab and
his officials were left to govern the country in their own fashion,
without a revenue and without an army.

[Sidenote: Sorrows of the Great Mogul.]

The Great Mogul, however, was not content. He would not live in the
Bengal provinces; he wanted to go to Delhi, and he was sulky because the
British would not take him there. He set up his little court at
Allahabad, half-way between Calcutta and Delhi, and lived like a prince;
but he was unhappy. A British brigade was posted hard by, and the
officer in command would not allow him to support his imperial dignity
by beating the imperial kettledrums, because of the noise.

[Sidenote: Agony of Bengal, 1765-72.]

The arrangements as regards the Bengal provinces, known in India as the
acquisition of the Dewanny, were carried out in 1765. In 1767 Lord Clive
returned to England, and the Bengal provinces were reduced to greater
misery than ever. There was no one to control the native officials, and
they accumulated riches at the expense of the masses. The wealth which
the old Nawabs had lavished on their pleasures was at least spent
within the three provinces; whereas it was now sent to China to buy tea
and silk for the East India Company, or was remitted to England as the
private fortunes of the Company's servants. Bengal was drained of its
silver, and the masses loudly complained that the British ought to
protect them against their oppressors. But non-intervention was the cry
both in Bengal and in the British Isles, and nothing was done.

[Sidenote: British supervisors.]

Meanwhile the revenue had rapidly declined. Before Lord Clive left
Bengal he was compelled to do something in spite of his policy of
non-intervention. He sent a British civil servant to every district in
the Bengal provinces, under the name of Supervisor. The supervisors were
to watch and report what was going on, but not to interfere with the
Bengali officials.[8] They were to collect statistics respecting the
land, its produce and capacity; the authorised amount of land revenue
and the illegal exactions; the administration of justice and the
regulation of trade. The British supervisors could only report what they
saw, and what the native officials chose to tell them. One thing was
certain: the people were terribly oppressed and the administration was
in utter confusion; and so long as the British played at
non-intervention it was impossible to apply a remedy.

[Sidenote: Famine, 1770-71.]

At last the dreadful famine of 1770-71 desolated and depopulated the
whole country. Terrible reports reached England that the Company's
servants had leagued with the native officials to buy up all the grain
and sell it at famine prices. Meanwhile the revenue had rapidly
declined, and the blame was thrown on the Bengali officials. Accordingly
the Court of Directors resolved to dismiss the Asiatic officials, and to
appoint covenanted British servants in their room; and they selected
Warren Hastings to be Governor of Bengal, with peremptory orders to
carry out the necessary reforms.


[Sidenote: Restricted authority of Lord Clive.]

§5. The change from Lord Clive to Warren Hastings was most momentous.
Lord Clive was a soldier born to command. Warren Hastings was
emphatically an administrator born to rule. From the first Lord Clive
had shirked all political responsibility. He was content to place the
East India Company in the position of Dewan, with the additional duty of
maintaining a standing army for the defence of the country, but without
attempting to invest it with the ruling powers of a Nawab. So long as
the Company took over the revenue, the Nawab and his officials were left
to govern the people, and administer law and justice, according to their
own will and pleasure. For himself, Lord Clive was content to rule the
Company's settlement and some small cessions of territory of no account,
and to leave the outside masses in utter darkness.

[Sidenote: Vast dominion of Hastings.]

Warren Hastings went to Calcutta as absolute ruler over the three
provinces. He was a prince amongst princes; the equal if not the
superior of any Hindu or Mohammedan ruler within the Himalayas and the
two seas. As President of the Council his authority was not confined by
the Mahratta ditch, but stretched far away over territories as large,
if not larger, than Great Britain and Ireland. He united the powers of
British Governor, Nawab, and Great Mogul. He was destined to strip the
Nawab of every vestige of authority; to cut down his yearly income from
half a million sterling to 160,000_l_., and to reduce him to the condition
of a private Mohammedan grandee dwelling at Murshedabad. As for the
Great Mogul, he had vanished from the scene. In 1771 he had quitted Oudh
and returned to Delhi with the Mahrattas, and thereby forfeited his
pension and empty suzerainty as far as the British were concerned. Later
on, the Mahrattas demanded payment of the yearly tribute, but were
flatly refused by Warren Hastings.

[Sidenote: Career of Hastings _ante_ 1772.]

In 1772 Warren Hastings was forty years of age, with very large
experiences. He had landed at Calcutta at the age of eighteen, and
served as a clerk and warehouseman in the factory at Calcutta. In 1757,
after the battle of Plassy, he was Resident at the court of Nawab Mir
Jafir at Murshedabad. Later on, during the quarrel with Mir Kasim, he
was a member of the Council at Calcutta, and one of the very few who
took the part of the Nawab. In 1764 he went to England and became poor.
In 1769 he returned to India and was appointed member of the Council at
Madras. In 1772 he proceeded to Calcutta to become Governor of Bengal,
Behar, and Orissa, in other words--to govern territories covering an
area of 150,000 square miles, or one-tenth of the great continent of
India. Henceforth his dominion extended from the mouths of the Ganges to
the foot of the Himalayas, and from the frontier at Oudh to the
frontiers at Assam and Bhutan.

[Sidenote: Two portraits.]

Warren Hastings must be regarded in two different aspects. In 1766,
whilst residing in England, his portrait was painted by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and represents a mild, benevolent, and intelligent English
gentleman. Twenty years afterwards another portrait was painted, which
represents a stubborn and vindictive official, from whom all traces of
the mild gentleman had disappeared.[9]


[Sidenote: British rule in Bengal provinces.]

§6. The first task of Warren Hastings was to introduce British
administration into the Bengal provinces. The work had been easy enough
when dealing with the population of towns, who were dependent on the
East India Company for employment and protection. But dealing with
provinces having a population of twenty or thirty millions of Hindus and
Mohammedans, who knew very little of the British, and very little of
their laws or ways, was a very different matter, and demanded extreme
tact and caution.

[Sidenote: Land revenue.]

Warren Hastings began the work of government with the reform of the land
revenue--the backbone of all administration in India. In those days the
task was beyond the strength of any Englishman or body of Englishmen.
During the Mahratta invasions and sudden changes of Nawabs the
collection of the revenue had fallen into utter confusion, and it was
impossible for Europeans to understand local rights or wrongs.

[Sidenote: Zemindars and ryots.]

The bulk of the land revenue in Bengal was collected by middle men,
known as zemindars, from tenant farmers known as ryots. The zemindar was
half a landlord and half a revenue collector. He generally possessed
some hereditary land which was the family demesne; but outside the
demesne were the landholders or ryots, from whom he collected the rents.
The zemindar was not a landlord in the eyes of the ryots, because under
Mogul law he could not raise the rents. Still he was a great man within
his zemindary. He was magistrate, judge, and controller of the village
police; and he had armed followers in his pay, who helped the village
police in pursuing robbers and collecting rents. He had the right of
hunting, fishing, and cutting wood, throughout his zemindary. Moreover,
he levied irregular cesses, benevolences or aids, from the ryots, to
defray the expenses of a birth or marriage within his own family, or to
meet the demands of the Nawab in an emergency like a Mahratta invasion.

[Sidenote: British zemindar at Calcutta.]

The changes in the status of Bengal zemindars may be gathered from what
is known of old Calcutta. Before the battle of Plassy the East India
Company itself was nothing more than a Bengal zemindar, and held the
settlement at Calcutta on a zemindary tenure. The Company was pledged to
pay to the Nawab a fixed yearly royalty for their little territory. A
British civil servant was appointed to represent the Company as
zemindar, to bear the name and fulfil the duties of the post; and he
collected the ground-rents within the Company's bounds and paid the
yearly royalty to the Nawab. He could not raise the rents, for that was
forbidden by Mogul law, but otherwise he was all powerful. He
administered justice, criminal and civil, like the Justices of the
Choultry at Madras. He also raised an additional income by farming out
certain trades as monopolies, levying octroi duties on provisions, and
taking fees for the registration of marriages, and sale of houses,
boats, and slaves.

[Sidenote: Auction sales of Calcutta lands.]

After Plassy the British zemindar at Calcutta cared nothing for Mogul
law. He raised the rents within the Company's bounds by the simple
process of putting the leases up to auction; and the eagerness of the
Bengalis to hold lands and sub-let them to under-tenants led to much
competition and a large advance of rents. The zemindar who carried out
this innovation was no other than Mr. Holwell, the same gentleman who
was accepted as Governor of Calcutta on the morning of the day that
ended in the Black Hole disaster. During that terrible night Mr. Holwell
seems to have imbibed hatred and contempt for Moguls and Nawabs. Whilst
Clive was shilly-shallying with Mir Jafir, Holwell was urging the
deposition of the Nawab, the annexation of the Bengal provinces, and the
radical measure of putting up all the zemindaries to public auction.[10]
This scheme was ignored at the time as the dream of a madman; but
nevertheless, within fifteen years, or half a generation, it was
seriously considered by Warren Hastings.

[Sidenote: Mogul revenue records.]

[Sidenote: Mysterious disappearance.]

The revenue records of the Moguls had always been singularly complete
down to the minutest detail. The holding of every ryot and the area of
every zemindary had been measured and remeasured; the average value of
the yearly produce of every field had been calculated; and the yearly
rents payable by the ryots and the yearly revenue payable by the
zemindar had been fixed in each case on the basis of the average
harvests. All these details had been entered at length in the Mogul
records. But the revenue records which contained all the details
respecting the land in the Bengal provinces had mysteriously
disappeared when they were most wanted. A Mohammedan contemporary says
that they were all destroyed when Mir Kasim fled into Oudh. Possibly
they may have been thrown into the Ganges and carried out to sea.

[Sidenote: British collectors.]

Warren Hastings did perhaps the best he could under the circumstances.
By the stroke of a pen he converted the British supervisors into British
collectors of revenues; and thus brought the new collectors into direct
contact with the zemindars, who collected yearly rents from the ryots or
tenant farmers. The next work would have been to re-measure all the
lands and to make fresh estimates of the average yearly value of the
produce of each field. This work had been carried out within the
Company's zemindary at Calcutta, and many frauds and errors had been
discovered and corrected. But what was possible in an estate, was
impossible in a territory considerably larger than the British isles.
Warren Hastings had no means at his disposal for re-measuring the lands
and revaluing the yearly produce, and it was utterly impossible to get
at the actual facts as regards rents and revenues. Not only were the
records lost, but the revenue administration was in utter confusion; the
ministers exacted what they could from the zemindars, and the zemindars
in their turn oppressed the ryots. Moreover, no reliable information
could be obtained from ryots or zemindars, who were alike suspicious of
British intentions and mortally terrified by the British invasion. The
new British collectors, with the help of native officials, arrived at
some approximate estimate of the rents paid by the ryots in each
zemindary, and then every zemindar in possession was called upon to pay
a certain lump sum as yearly revenue for the whole during a term of five
years. If he accepted a lease for the five years, well and good. If he
refused, the lease was sold to the highest bidder, with no other reserve
than that of requiring him to give the necessary security for the yearly
payment to the British collectors.

[Sidenote: Disastrous results.]

[Sidenote: Auction sales of zemindaries.]

The experiment proved a failure. The revenue demands had been fixed too
high. Such was the passion for local influence, that many zemindars had
agreed to pay a larger revenue than could be realised from the rents.
Vast amounts were lost as arrears that could not be realised. Many
zemindaries were sold by auction, and were bought up by native
speculators who were ruined in their turn. When the five years' leases
had run out no attempt was made to renew them; but zemindaries were let
on yearly leases until some permanent system could be devised, and this
arrangement continued in force until the end of Warren Hastings's
administration.


[Sidenote: Judicial reforms: Mohammedan criminal courts.]

§7. The system of judicial administration introduced by Warren Hastings
was equally cautious and experimental. Bengal zemindars ceased to act as
magistrates or judges. The British collector became magistrate and civil
judge.[11] As magistrate he made over all prisoners for trial to a
Mohammedan court, which was created in each district, but over which he
maintained some degree of control. A cazi sat as judge and tried the
prisoners, whilst muftis and mulvis expounded or interpreted Mohammedan
law; but the British collector was present to see that trials were
properly conducted, and perhaps to intercede when the punishment awarded
was barbarous or cruel. This was little more than a reform of the
existing system--such a reform as might have been carried out by an
Akbar or Aurangzeb. For centuries Mohammedan law had been the common law
of Northern India, and Hindu criminal law, with its hideous severities
as regards caste, had been ignored by Mogul rulers, although, no doubt,
caste laws were often enforced by the Hindus themselves.

[Sidenote: Mixed civil courts: collectors, cazis, pundits.]

Civil justice was administered more directly by the British collectors.
In civil disputes, especially as regards inheritance and marriage, the
parties concerned were necessarily guided by their own laws. Accordingly
the collector sat as judge, but was assisted by Mohammedan lawyers in
deciding cases between Mohammedans, and by learned Brahmans, or pundits,
in deciding cases between Hindus. Under most circumstances the cazi or
pundit must often have been the real judge, whilst the British collector
was only the representative of the supreme authority.

[Sidenote: Courts of circuit and appeal.]

Courts of circuit and appeal were also appointed to travel through
different areas, and sit as British judges of assize in both criminal
and civil courts. Here was that same mixture of British and Asiatic
judges as in the collectors' courts. But many changes were made from
time to time in the judicial system, and the whole question will be
better considered hereafter when dealing with the reforms of Lord
Cornwallis, who eventually succeeded Warren Hastings as
Governor-General.

[Sidenote: Chief court or Sudder.]

Meanwhile the Governor and Council still formed the chief court at
Calcutta, and confirmed all capital sentences, or heard appeals in
important civil cases, as in the old times when British authority was
bounded by the Mahratta ditch. From time to time they passed regulations
for the guidance of collectors, and eventually Warren Hastings drew up a
clear and concise criminal code with his own hands. This chief court was
known as the Sudder. It had a civil and a criminal side, and lasted as
an institution down to the latest days of the East India Company.[12]

[Sidenote: Patriarchal justice.]

Under such circumstances British ideas of justice gradually superseded
Mohammedan usages. Indeed it was impossible to maintain the criminal law
of the Mohammedans in courts controlled more or less by British judges.
Under Mohammedan law theft was punished by mutilation, adultery was
punished by death, or not punished at all unless four eye-witnesses
could be produced; whilst the most atrocious murderer might escape from
justice by the payment of a blood fine to the kinsmen of his victim.
Cazis and muftis might be nominally independent, but practically they
yielded to British influences; and British judges administered justice
in a patriarchal fashion, which might be condemned by trained lawyers,
but was far better suited to the condition of the masses than British
courts of law in the last century.


[Sidenote: New members of Council and barrister judges.]

§8. Whilst carrying out these reforms Warren Hastings was taken somewhat
aback by the appointment of three English gentlemen, not in the service
of the Company, to seats in the Calcutta Council. At the same time four
barrister judges, equally independent of the Company, were sent out from
England to form a Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta for the
administration of English law, civil and criminal. The jurisdiction of
the Supreme Court was to extend to all British subjects, and to all
Asiatics who were servants of the Company or had dealings with British
subjects. The Chief Justice was Sir Elijah Impey, who was known to
Hastings, as the two had been schoolfellows together at Westminster. The
three other barristers were puisne judges.

[Sidenote: Regulating Act of 1773.]

The three new members of Council and the four new Supreme Court judges
had been appointed, not by the East India Company, but by Parliament and
the Crown. The public mind in England had been greatly stirred by
reports of maladministration, and in 1773 a "Regulating Act" had been
passed to bring the administration of merchant rulers under some control
independent of that of the East India Company. No offence was intended
to Warren Hastings; on the contrary, he was raised by the same
"Regulating Act" to the post of Governor-General, with a controlling
power over Madras and Bombay on all questions of war and peace. He
filled the chair as President of the Council, but besides him there was
only Mr. Barwell, who belonged to the Company's service. The three
remaining members were the three strangers and outsiders--General
Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Philip Francis, the reputed author of
the _Letters of Junius_.


[Sidenote: Warren Hastings and Philip Francis.]

§9. From the very first there were jealous suspicions in the Council
between the two gentlemen in the service of the Company and the three
gentlemen appointed by the Crown. In one direction Warren Hastings had
laid himself open to an attack. In an evil hour he had lent the services
of a British brigade to the Nawab Vizier of Oudh, and the Nawab Vizier
had employed the brigade against the Rohilla Afghans on the north-west
in a quarrel with which the British had no concern. The Rohilla Afghans
were defeated by the British brigade, and then plundered and brutally
ill-treated by the cowardly troops of the Nawab Vizier. Warren Hastings
could only defend himself by saying that money was urgently required by
the East India Company, and that the Nawab Vizier had paid heavily for
the brigade.

[Sidenote: Charges against Hastings.]

Whilst Philip Francis and his two independent colleagues were denouncing
this transaction, the idea spread amongst the Bengalis that the three
new members of Council had been sent by the King of Great Britain to
redress the wrongs of natives. Petitions against Warren Hastings were
poured into the Calcutta Council, and seriously investigated by Philip
Francis and his two colleagues, whilst Hastings and Barwell formed a
minority and could not override their proceedings. Hastings was charged
with having taken a bribe of 100,000_l._ from the Nawab Vizier of Oudh.
Then it was said that the public auctions of zemindaries were shams;
that the native servants of Hastings and others had succeeded in getting
large estates at low leases, and that Hastings had shared in the gains.
Finally, a Brahman, named Nundcomar, a man of notoriously bad character,
charged Hastings with having taken bribes for certain lucrative
appointments in the household of the Nawab at Murshedabad.

[Sidenote: Nundcomar executed.]

Warren Hastings might have rebutted the charges by producing his
accounts, and allowing his steward and other servants to be examined
before the Council. But he preferred standing on his dignity and
refusing to answer the charges brought forward by Nundcomar, who was
notorious for perjury, for forging other people's seals, and for
carrying on secret correspondence with the enemies of the British.
Suddenly Nundcomar was arrested on a charge of forgery, and tried in the
Supreme Court by a full bench, comprising Chief Justice Impey and the
three puisne judges, and, after a fair summing up, was found guilty by a
British jury, and hanged accordingly.

[Sidenote: Inaction of Hastings: extenuating circumstances.]

Nundcomar was a Brahman, and in those early days no Brahman, under Hindu
law, could be put to death; whilst killing a Brahman, even by accident
or unavoidable circumstances, was regarded by Hindus as the most
horrible crime that could be committed by man. Forgery was a capital
offence under English law, but not under Hindu or Mohammedan law.
Hastings might have reprieved Nundcomar, but would not interfere. Philip
Francis and his two allies, Clavering and Monson, were insolent and
aggressive in the extreme. They had pushed Hastings into a corner from
which he could not escape without damaging his position as Governor in
the eyes of the Bengali population. They were equally insolent towards
Sir Elijah Impey and the Supreme Court. They demanded, in arrogant
language, that every respect should be paid to the caste feelings of
Nundcomar during his imprisonment; and whilst the trial was proceeding
they addressed the Chief Justice in the language of reprimand, as though
they had been his superiors. Sir Elijah Impey went so far as to consult
Hindu pundits on the proper treatment of a Brahman under confinement,
and to act in accordance with their suggestions. Indeed he seems to have
regarded the pretensions of a Brahman to be above English law, to be as
deserving of respect as the old "Benefit of Clergy," which was still in
existence in England, although taken away by statute from several
offences. The execution was delayed for more than a month after
conviction, and Nundcomar would probably have been reprieved altogether,
but for the arrogance of Philip Francis and his two allies, and the
additional perjuries and forgeries which were committed in the course of
the trial. Had Sir Elijah Impey submitted further to the dictation of
Francis, the Supreme Court would have lost all authority in the eyes of
the people of Bengal. The abstract justice in executing Nundcomar for
the crime of forgery may be open to question, but Sir Elijah Impey, as
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was bound to follow English law,
without making any exception in favour of a Brahman.


[Sidenote: Collision between the Supreme Court and the Sudder.]

§10. Meanwhile there was a collision between the Supreme Court and the
Sudder. The Supreme Court began to exercise jurisdiction over zemindars
and other Asiatics throughout the Bengal provinces, and to override the
decisions of the Company's Courts. Its powers had not been clearly
defined, and on one occasion it had been called upon to arbitrate in a
quarrel between Warren Hastings and General Clavering, thus assuming a
superior authority by deciding differences between the Governor-General
and a member of his Council. Again, the judges of the Supreme Court were
qualified lawyers appointed by the Crown, and they ignored the decisions
of the Company's servants, who were not lawyers.

[Sidenote: Points in dispute.]

The collision, however, was entirely due to the false position which the
East India Company had taken up. The servants of the Company had as yet
received no authority from Parliament or the Crown to act as judges, or
to make laws. They affected to treat the Nawab as a sovereign, and to
act in his name; but the Nawab was a fiction set up to hide the
territorial power of the East India Company from the British nation.
Warren Hastings pleaded that the Bengal zemindars were servants of the
Nawab, over whom the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction. The judges
replied that the Nawab was a puppet, a phantom, as unsubstantial as a
king of the fairies. Unfortunately, the maintenance of this phantom
Nawab for the benefit of the East India Company has been for more than a
century a dead weight on the revenues of Bengal.

[Sidenote: Parliamentary settlement, 1781.]

In 1781 another Act of Parliament was passed which put everything to
rights. It authorised the Governor-General and Council of Bengal to make
regulations which should have the force of laws, and it restricted the
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to the old bounds of the settlement
between the Mahratta ditch and the river Hughly. But the state of
Englishmen--that is, of British born subjects of the Crown--was
exceptional. They could not be tried by any of the Company's Courts, or
under any of the Bengal regulations. A British born subject who
committed a criminal offence in any part of the Company's territories in
Bengal could only be tried by the judges in the Supreme Court, in
accordance with English law, and could only be convicted by a jury of
his own countrymen.

[Sidenote: Alleged corruption of Impey.]

Whilst the struggle was going on between the Supreme Court and the
Sudder, Warren Hastings appointed Sir Elijah Impey to be chief judge in
the Sudder, on a salary of 7,000_l._ per annum, in addition to his post
as chief justice in the Supreme Court. Philip Francis denounced this
arrangement as a bribe to Impey; possibly it may have been so, but in
itself the appointment was admirably suited to the exigencies of the
time. As an experienced lawyer, Sir Elijah Impey was far better fitted
than Warren Hastings to act as chief judge in the Sudder, to hear
appeals from the Company's Courts up-country, and to control the
judicial administration of the Company's judges, who could not pretend
to any legal training. But the malice of Philip Francis was as obvious
in the case of Impey as in the case of Hastings. Francis had been cast
in heavy damages by the Supreme Court as a co-respondent; and he was
bent on the ruin of Impey. The result was that Impey was recalled to
England and impeached.[13]


[Sidenote: Origin of the Mahratta power.]

§11. Meanwhile the British had been drawn into a war with the Mahrattas.
For a hundred years the Mahrattas had been the terror of India. Between
1660 and 1680, Sivaji, the hero of the Mahrattas, founded the Mahratta
kingdom in the Western Deccan, between Surat and Goa. The head-quarters
of the family of Sivaji had been at Poona, about seventy miles to the
south-east of Bombay, and Sivaji's early life and exploits were
associated with Poona. Subsequently, in consequence of Mogul
aggressions, the Mahratta capital was removed to Satara, about seventy
miles to the south of Poona.

[Sidenote: Rise of the Peishwas, 1748.]

In 1748 there was a revolution. The last descendant of Sivaji was shut
up in a fortress at Satara, whilst the Brahman minister, known as the
Peishwa, removed to Poona, the ancient seat of Sivaji's family, and
cradle of his dynasty. The imprisonment of the sovereign at Satara, and
the reign of a Brahman minister at Poona, hardened into an institution;
and whenever a Peishwa died, his successor went to Satara to be invested
with the office of minister by his imprisoned sovereign.[14]

[Sidenote: Peishwa and his feudatories: Sindia, Holkar, &c.]

The Mahratta kingdom covered the greater part of the area of the
Mahratta-speaking people. But the Peishwa sent his lieutenants to
collect chout, or black-mail, in Northern India; and one of these
lieutenants, Mahadaji Sindia, became a greater man than his master.
Sindia always professed to be the loyal servant of the Peishwa, and yet
he managed to exercise a commanding influence at Poona. It was Mahadaji
Sindia who carried off the Great Mogul to Delhi in 1771 and established
a dominion in Hindustan, extending from the Gwalior territory northward
over the valleys of the Jumna and Ganges. The other lieutenants were
only beginning to play their parts in history; they included Holkar of
Indore, the Gaekwar of Baroda, and the Bhonsla Raja of Berar in the
Deccan, immediately to the northward of the Nizam.

[Sidenote: British relations with Berar.]

Very soon after the battle of Plassy, the British at Calcutta came into
contact with the Bhonsla Raja of Berar. It was the Bhonsla Raja who
compelled the later Nawabs of Bengal to pay chout, and to cede Cuttack;
and when Lord Clive had concluded his settlement with the Great Mogul
and the Nawab Vizier of Oudh, he advised the Court of Directors to pay
chout on condition of getting back Cuttack. But the Directors did not
want Cuttack and would not pay black-mail; and the Bhonsla Raja pressed
his demand at convenient intervals, but wisely abstained from invading
the Bengal provinces.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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."

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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.


FOOTNOTES:

  [7] The three provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa are known to
  Europeans by the one name of Bengal. Bengal proper includes the delta
  of the Ganges and Brahmaputra. Behar is the frontier province towards
  Oudh, having its capital at Patna. Orissa lies to the south of Behar
  and Bengal proper, but Cuttack and the hilly country to the south and
  west had been ceded to the Mahrattas. The Orissa of the period
  comprises little more than Midnapore; but the high-sounding title was
  still retained of Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa. After the
  Mahratta wars of 1803, the British took possession of Cuttack and
  remaining portions of Orissa, in order to hold the sea-board against
  invasion.

  [8] In the present day there are forty-five districts in the Bengal
  provinces, namely, thirty-seven regulation and eight non-regulation.
  The distinction between the two classes of districts will be explained
  hereafter.

  [9] The first portrait of Warren Hastings was exhibited at the
  Grosvenor Gallery in 1883. The second portrait is still hanging in the
  Council Chamber at the India Office at Westminster.

  [10] See Holwell's _Historical Events in Bengal_.

  [11] The control over the country police was also transferred from the
  zemindars to the new magistrates and collectors. This measure was good
  in itself, but attended with disadvantages, which will be brought
  under review hereafter.

  [12] The old Sudder Courts at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay finally
  disappeared in 1862, when they were amalgamated with the Supreme
  Courts, which will be described hereafter, and which, up to that date,
  were exclusively composed of barrister judges. In the present day they
  are forgotten by all but lawyers familiar with a past generation, yet
  the Sudder Courts played their part in the history of the past. In the
  beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Marquis of Wellesley was
  Governor-General, three civilians were appointed judges in the Sudder,
  one being a member of Council and the Chief Judge in the room of the
  Governor-General.

  [13] The defence of Sir Elijah Impey has been thoroughly investigated
  from a legal point of view, in the _Story of Nuncomar and the
  Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey_, by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.

  [14] Two centuries have passed away since the death of Sivaji, yet in
  June, 1885, a public meeting was held at Poona to take steps for
  repairing his tomb. His admirers styled him the Wallace of the Deccan.

  [15] Lord Cornwallis carried out important reforms in the Bengal army,
  and thus enabled his successors to build up the larger Indian empire.
  The British army in India, Asiatic and European, will be brought under
  review it Chapter V., which deals with the sepoy revolt of 1857-58.

  [16] The abolition of "sitting in dharna" by Sir John Shore was the
  first great social reform which was carried out in India under British
  rule. In 1802 Lord Wellesley abolished the still more horrible
  practice of sacrificing living children by throwing them to the
  alligators at the mouth of the Ganges; whilst the once famous rite of
  suttee, or the burning of living widows with their dead husbands, was
  practised under British rule down to 1829, when it was abolished by
  Lord William Bentinck.




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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.


[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: Sindia master of Holkar.]

Meanwhile the Mahratta empire was falling into the hands of Sindia. This
ambitious feudatory tried to pose as the protector of his suzerain the
Peishwa. The two, however, were perpetually plotting against each
other; the soldier and the Brahman were each trying to be master. About
this time Holkar died, and Sindia hastened to Indore and put an imbecile
son of Holkar on the throne, as a preliminary step to appropriating the
territory and revenues.

[Sidenote: Rise of Jaswant Rao Holkar.]

At this moment a bandit prince appeared at Indore with an army of
predatory horsemen, brigands and outlaws, the scum of Central India. He
was a bastard son of the deceased Holkar, and was known as Jaswant Rao
Holkar. He was routed by Sindia's French battalions, but the scattered
horsemen soon rallied round his banners, and he went off to the south to
threaten Poona and the Peishwa.

[Sidenote: Flight of the Peishwa.]

The Peishwa was wild with terror. Under his orders a brother of Jaswant
Rao Holkar had been dragged to death by an elephant through the streets,
and he had reason to believe that Jaswant Rao was bent on revenge. His
army was reinforced by Sindia, but the united forces were utterly routed
by Jaswant Rao outside the city of Poona. Accordingly he fled away to
the coast, and embarked on board a British ship for the port of Bassein,
about twenty miles to the north of Bombay.

[Sidenote: Peishwa accepts subsidiary alliance, 1802.]

The Peishwa was ready to make any sacrifice to procure British help.
Accordingly he accepted the subsidiary alliance on the condition that
the British restored him to Poona. The terms were soon arranged, and the
treaty was signed at Bassein on the last day of December, 1802. The
Peishwa ceded territories for the maintenance of a Poona Subsidiary
Force, and sacrificed his position as suzerain of the Mahratta
confederacy. For the future he was bound to abstain from all wars and
negotiations, even with his own feudatories, excepting by the knowledge
and consent of the British government.


[Sidenote: Surprise of the Mahratta feudatories.]

§4. The Mahratta feudatories were bewildered and stupefied by the treaty
of Bassein. In a single day the British government had become their
suzerain in the room of the Peishwa; the Christian governor of Calcutta
was lord over the Brahman Peishwa of Poona. True, the Peishwa was
restored to his throne at Poona, but only as the creature of the British
government, not as the suzerain of the Mahrattas. Sindia's hope of
ruling the Mahrattas in the name of the Peishwa was shattered by the
treaty. The Raja of Berar was equally down-hearted. The Gaekwar of
Baroda accepted the subsidiary alliance, and ceased to play a part in
history. Jaswant Rao Holkar was out of the running; he was an outlaw and
an interloper.

[Sidenote: Vacillations of Sindia and the Bhonsla.]

The whole brunt of the struggle against the British supremacy, if there
was to be any struggle at all, thus fell on Daulat Rao Sindia of Gwalior
and the Bhonsla Raja of Berar. Meanwhile the two Mahratta princes moved
restlessly about with large armies, drawing nearer and nearer to the
Nizam's frontier as if to enforce their claims to chout. They would not
accept a subsidiary treaty, and they would not break with the British
government. They tried to tempt Jaswant Rao to join them, but the young
brigand only played with them. He got them to recognise his succession
to the throne of Indore, and then returned to his capital, declaring
that he must leave Sindia and the Bhonsla to fight the British in the
Deccan, whilst he went away north to fight them in Hindustan.

[Sidenote: Wellesley's campaign in the Deccan, 1803.]

Lord Wellesley was well prepared for an outbreak. His younger brother,
Colonel Arthur Wellesley, was watching Sindia and the Bhonsla in the
Deccan, whilst General Lake, commander-in-chief of the Bengal army, was
watching the French sepoy battalions of Sindia in Hindustan. Sindia was
vacillating and irresolute, but his language was growing more hostile.
He said he was waiting for Jaswant Rao Holkar; he talked of collecting
chout in the Nizam's territory; and he expressed doubts whether there
would be peace or war. At last he was told that he was breaking the
public peace, and must take the consequences.

[Sidenote: British victory at Assaye.]

The battle of Assaye was fought on the Nizam's frontier on 23rd
September, 1803. It was the old story of a British army of five thousand
men fighting an Asiatic army of fifty thousand. The Mahratta artillery
worked terrible execution on the British army, and one-third of its
European force was left dead or wounded in the field. But the Bhonsla
Raja fled at the first shot, and Sindia soon followed his example.
General Wellesley's victory at Assaye crushed the hopes of the
Mahrattas. Sindia especially took his lesson to heart. It was followed
by the capture of fortresses and another victory at Argaum; and by the
end of 1803 the campaign in the Deccan was over, and Sindia and the
Bhonsla came to terms.

[Sidenote: General Lake's campaign in Hindustan.]

Meanwhile, General Lake had fought a brilliant campaign in Hindustan.
Directly he heard that war had begun in the Deccan he left Cawnpore, on
the British frontier, and pushed his way to Delhi. He defeated the
French sepoy cavalry and captured the fortress at Alighur. Next he
defeated the French sepoy infantry and entered Delhi in triumph. He was
received with open arms by the poor old Padishah, Shah Alam, who once
again threw himself upon British protection. He left Delhi in charge of
Colonel Ochterlony, marched down the right bank of the river Jumna,
captured the city of Agra, and brought the campaign to a close by a
crowning victory at Laswari, which broke up the French sepoy battalions
for ever, and placed the British government in possession of the relics
of the Mogul empire in Hindustan.

[Sidenote: British power paramount.]

The campaigns of Wellesley and Lake established the British government
as the paramount power in India. Sindia was driven by Wellesley to the
northward of the Nerbudda river, and by Lake to the southward of the
Jumna. The Bhonsla Raja was deprived of Berar on one side and Cuttack on
the other, and was henceforth known only as the Raja of Nagpore. The
British government had acquired the sovereignty of the Great Mogul and
that of the Peishwa of the Mahrattas. It took the princes of Rajputana
under its protection, and prepared to shut out Sindia and Holkar from
Rajput territories. Only one Mahratta prince of any importance remained
to tender his submission, and that was Jaswant Rao Holkar of Indore.


[Sidenote: Relations with Holkar.]

§5. The British government was not responsible for the usurpation of
Jaswant Rao Holkar. It was willing to accept him as the _de facto_ ruler
of the Indore principality, and to leave him alone, provided only that
he kept within his own territories, and respected the territories of the
British and their allies.

[Sidenote: Holkar's pretensions.]

Jaswant Rao Holkar, however, was a born freebooter, a Mahratta of the
old school of Sivaji. He was not ambitious for political power like
Sindia, and he wanted no drilled battalions. He was a Cossack at heart,
and loved the old free life of Mahratta brigandage. Like Sivaji, he was
at home in the saddle, with spear in hand, and a bag of grain and goblet
of water hanging from his horse. He and his hordes scoured the country
on horseback, collected plunder or chout, and rode over the hills and
far away whenever regular troops advanced against them. Indore was his
home and Western India was his quarry; and never perhaps did he collect
a richer harvest of plunder and chout than he did in Rajputana during
the latter half of 1803, when Lake was driving Sindia and the French out
of Hindustan, and Wellesley was establishing peace in the Deccan.

[Sidenote: Difficulties as regards "chout".]

Jaswant Rao Holkar looked at the British government from his own
individual point of view. He was no respecter of persons; he despised
the Peishwa, and had got all he wanted from Sindia and the Bhonsla. The
British government was his _bête noire_; it had grown in strength, and
was opposed to the collection of chout. He wanted it to guarantee him in
the possession of Holkar's principality, and to sanction his levying
chout after the manner of his ancestors; and he refused to withdraw from
Rajputana until these terms were granted. If his pretensions were
rejected, he threatened to burn, sack, and slaughter his enemies by
hundreds of thousands. Such was the ignorant and refractory Mahratta
that defied the East India Company and the British nation.

[Sidenote: Lake attacks Holkar.]

[Sidenote: Disastrous retreat of Monson, 1804.]

The reduction of Jaswant Rao Holkar was thus a political necessity. In
April, 1804, General Lake entered Rajputana, and drove Jaswant Rao
Holkar southward into Indore territory. In June the rains were
approaching, and General Lake left Colonel Monson to keep a watch on
Holkar, with five battalions of sepoys, a train of artillery, and two
bodies of irregular horse, and then withdrew to cantonments. Colonel
Monson pushed on still further south into Indore territory, but in July
everything went wrong. Supplies ran low. Expected reinforcements failed
to arrive. Jaswant Rao turned back with overwhelming forces and a large
train of artillery. In an evil hour Monson beat a retreat. The rains
were very heavy. The British guns sunk in the mud and were spiked and
abandoned. Terrible disasters were incurred in crossing rivers. The
Rajputs turned against him. His brigade was exposed to the fire of
Holkar's guns and the charges of Holkar's horse. About the end of August
only a shattered remnant of Monson's brigade managed to reach British
territory.

[Sidenote: Reaction against British supremacy.]

For a brief period British prestige vanished from Hindustan, and Jaswant
Rao Holkar was the hero of the hour. Sindia forgot his wrongs against
Jaswant Rao, and his defeats at Assaye and Argaum, and declared for
Holkar. Fresh bodies of bandits and outlaws joined the standard of
Holkar to share in the spoil of his successes. With Mahratta audacity
Jaswant Rao pushed on to Delhi, to capture Shah Alam and plunder
Hindustan in the name of the Great Mogul. He was beaten off from Delhi
by the small garrison under Colonel Ochterlony, but the Jhat Raja of
Bhurtpore received him with open arms in that huge clay fortress, the
stronghold of the predatory system of the eighteenth century, which to
this day is the wonder of Hindustan. Holkar left his guns in the
fortress and went out to plunder; and Lake, instead of following him up,
wasted four months in a futile attempt to capture the Bhurtpore
fortress without a siege train.


[Sidenote: Reversal of Lord Wellesley's policy, 1805.]

§6. The retreat of Monson was not only a disastrous blow to British
prestige, but ruined for a while the reputation of Lord Wellesley.
Because a Mahratta freebooter had broken loose in Hindustan, the Home
authorities imagined that all the Mahratta powers had risen against the
imperial policy of the Governor-General. Lord Wellesley was recalled
from his post, and Lord Cornwallis was sent out to take his place, to
reverse the policy of his illustrious predecessor, to scuttle out of
Western Hindustan, to restore all the ceded territories, to surrender
all the captured fortresses, and to abandon large tracts of country to
be plundered and devastated by the Mahrattas, as they had been from the
days of Sivaji to those of Wellesley and Lake.

[Sidenote: Death of Lord Cornwallis.]

[Sidenote: Sir George Barlow's half measures, 1806.]

Before Lord Cornwallis reached Bengal the political outlook had
brightened. Jaswant Rao Holkar was flying into the Punjab from General
Lake, and was soon brought to bay. Daulat Rao Sindia was repenting his
desertion from the British alliance. The Jhat Raja of Bhurtpore had
implored forgiveness and paid a heavy fine. But Lord Cornwallis was
sixty-seven years of age, and had lost the nerve which he had displayed
in his wars against Tippu; and he would have ignored the turn of the
tide, and persisted in falling back on the old policy of conciliation
and non-intervention, had not death cut short his career before he had
been ten weeks in the country.

Sir George Barlow, a Bengal civilian, succeeded for a while to the post
of Governor-General, as a provisional arrangement. He had been a member
of Council under both Wellesley and Cornwallis, and he halted between
the two. He refused to restore the conquered territories to Sindia and
the Bhonsla, but he gave back the Indore principality to Holkar,
together with the captured fortresses. Worst of all, he annulled most of
the protective treaties with the Rajput princes on the ground that they
had deserted the British government during Monson's retreat from Jaswant
Rao Holkar.

[Sidenote: Non-intervention: sad results.]

For some years the policy of the British government was a half-hearted
system of non-intervention. Public opinion in the British Isles, as
expressed by Parliament and Ministers, was impressed with the necessity
for maintaining friendly relations with the Mahrattas, and for
abstaining from any measure which might tend to a renewal of
hostilities. The fact was ignored that Mahratta independence meant
plunder and devastation, and that British supremacy meant order and law.
Accordingly the Mahratta princes were left to plunder and collect chout
in Rajputana, and practically to make war on each other, so long as they
respected the territories of the British government and its allies. The
result was that the Peishwa was brooding over his lost suzerainty;
Sindia and the Bhonsla were mourning over their lost territories; and
Jaswant Rao Holkar was drowning his intellects in cherry brandy, which
he procured from Bombay, until he was seized with delirium tremens, and
confined as a madman. All this while an under-current of intrigue was at
work between Indian courts, which served in the end to revive wild hopes
of getting rid of British supremacy, and rekindling the old aspirations
for war and rapine.


[Sidenote: Sepoy revolt at Vellore, 1806.]

§7. In 1806 the peace of India was broken by an alarm from a very
different quarter. In those days India was so remote from the British
Isles that the existence of the British government mainly depended on
the loyalty of its sepoy armies. Suddenly it was discovered that the
Madras army was on the brink of mutiny. The British authorities at
Madras had introduced an obnoxious head-dress resembling a European hat,
in the place of the old time-honoured turban, and had, moreover,
forbidden the sepoys to appear on parade with earrings and caste marks.
India was astounded by a revolt of the Madras sepoys at the fortress of
Vellore, about eight miles to the westward of Arcot. The fallen families
of Hyder and Tippu were lodged in this fortress, and many of Tippu's old
soldiers were serving in the garrison; and these people taunted the
sepoys about wearing hats and becoming Christians, whilst some secret
intriguing was going on for restoring Mohammedan ascendency in Southern
India, under the deposed dynasty of Mysore.

[Sidenote: Slaughter of British officers.]

The garrison at Vellore consisted of about four hundred Europeans and
fifteen hundred sepoys. At midnight, without warning, the sepoys rose in
mutiny. One body fired on the European barracks until half the soldiers
were killed or wounded. Another body fired on the houses of the British
officers, and shot them down as they rushed out to know the cause of the
uproar. All this while provisions were distributed amongst the sepoys by
the Mysore princes, and the flag of Mysore was hoisted over the
fortress.

[Sidenote: Suppression of mutiny; recall of Bentinck.]

Fortunately the news was carried to Arcot, where Colonel Gillespie
commanded a British garrison. Gillespie at once galloped to Vellore with
a troop of British dragoons and two field guns. The gates of Vellore
were blown open; the soldiers rushed in; four hundred mutineers were cut
down, and the outbreak was over. The Home authorities wanted a
scapegoat; and Lord William Bentinck, the governor of Madras, and Sir
John Craddock, the commander-in-chief of the Madras army, were recalled.
Fifty years afterwards, when the Bengal army broke out in mutiny on the
score of greased cartridges, many an old officer wished that a
Gillespie, with the independent authority of a Gillespie, had been in
command at Barrackpore.


[Sidenote: Lord Minto, 1807-13: lawless condition of Bundelkund.]

§8. In 1807 Lord Minto succeeded Barlow as Governor-General. He broke
the spell of non-intervention. South of the river Jumna, between the
frontiers of Bengal and those of Sindia and Holkar, are the hills and
jungles of Bundelkund. For centuries the chiefs of Bundelkund had never
been more than half conquered. They never paid tribute to Mogul or
Mahratta unless compelled by force of arms; and they kept the country in
constant anarchy by their lawless acts and endless feuds.

[Sidenote: British conquest.]

When the Peishwa accepted the British alliance, he ceded Bundelkund for
the maintenance of the Poona Subsidiary Force. Of course the cession was
a sham. The Peishwa ceded territory which only nominally belonged to
him, and the British were too happy in concluding a subsidiary alliance
to inquire too nicely into his sovereign rights over Bundelkund. The
result was that the chiefs of Bundelkund defied the British as they
defied the Peishwa, and Sir George Barlow sacrificed revenue and
ignored brigandage rather than interfere with his western neighbours.
Lord Minto found that there were a hundred and fifty leaders of banditti
in Bundelkund, who held as many fortresses, settled all disputes by the
sword, and offered an asylum to all the bandits and burglars that
escaped from British territory. Lord Minto organised an expedition which
established for a while something like peace and order in Bundelkund,
and secured the collection of tribute with a regularity which had been
unknown for centuries.

[Sidenote: Dangers in the Punjab.]

Lord Minto's main work was to keep Napoleon and the French out of India.
The north-west frontier was still vulnerable, but the Afghans had
retired from the Punjab, and the once famous Runjeet Singh had founded a
Sikh kingdom between the Indus and the Sutlej. As far as the British
were concerned, the Sikhs formed a barrier against the Afghans; and
Runjeet Singh was apparently friendly, for he had refused to shelter
Jaswant Rao Holkar in his flight from Lord Lake. But there was no
knowing what Runjeet Singh might do if the French found their way to
Lahore. To crown the perplexity, the Sikh princes on the British side of
the river Sutlej, who had done homage to the British government during
the campaigns of Lord Lake, were being conquered by Runjeet Singh, and
were appealing to the British government for protection.

[Sidenote: Mission to Runjeet Singh, 1808-9.]

In 1808-9 a young Bengal civilian, named Charles Metcalfe, was sent on a
mission to Lahore. The work before him was difficult and complicated,
and somewhat trying to the nerves. The object was to secure Runjeet
Singh as a useful ally against the French and Afghans, whilst protecting
Sikh states on the British side of the Sutlej, namely, Jhind, Nabha,
and Patiala.

Runjeet Singh was naturally disgusted at being checked by British
interference. It was unfair, he said, for the British to wait until he
had conquered the three states, and then to demand possession. Metcalfe
cleverly dropped the question of justice, and appealed to Runjeet
Singh's self-interest. By giving up the three states, Runjeet Singh
would secure an alliance with the British, a strong frontier on the
Sutlej, and freedom to push his conquests on the north and west. Runjeet
Singh took the hint. He withdrew his pretensions from the British side
of the Sutlej, and professed a friendship which remained unbroken until
his death in 1839; but he knew what he was about. He conquered Cashmere
on the north, and he wrested Peshawar from the Afghans; but he refused
to open his dominions to British trade, and he was jealous to the last
of any attempt to enter his territories.

[Sidenote: Missions to Persia and Afghanistan.]

About the same time Lord Minto sent John Malcolm on a second mission to
Persia, and Mountstuart Elphinstone on a mission to Cabul to provide
against French invasion. Neither mission was followed by any practical
result, but they opened up new countries to European ideas, and led to
the publication of works on Persia and Afghanistan by the respective
envoys, which have retained their interest to this day.

[Sidenote: Capture of Mauritius and Java.]

Meanwhile the war against France and Napoleon had extended to eastern
waters. The island of the Mauritius had become a French depôt for
frigates and privateers, which swept the seas from Madagascar to Java,
until the East India Company reckoned its losses by millions, and
private traders were brought to the brink of ruin. Lord Minto sent one
expedition, which wrested the Mauritius from the French; and he
conducted another expedition in person, which wrested the island of Java
from the Dutch, who at that time were the allies of France. The
Mauritius has remained a British possession until this day, but Java was
restored to Holland at the conclusion of the war.


[Sidenote: Anarchy in Rajputana.]

§9. During the struggle against France difficulties were arising in
Western Hindustan. The princes of Rajputana had been engaged in wars and
feuds amongst themselves from a remote antiquity, but for nearly a
century they had been also exposed to the raids and depredations of
Mahratta armies. Lord Wellesley had brought the Rajput princes into
subsidiary alliance with the British government, but the treaties had
been annulled by Sir George Barlow, and war and pillage were as rampant
as ever. The evil had been aggravated by the rise of Afghan adventurers,
who had conquered territories and founded new kingdoms in central India
amidst the prevailing anarchy; whilst a low class of freebooters, known
as Pindharies, plundered the villagers in the skirts of the Mahratta
armies, or robbed and pillaged the surrounding territories, with a
savage ferocity which rendered them a pest and terror.

[Sidenote: The Rana, or suzerain.]

The hereditary suzerain of the Rajputs was a prince known as the Rana of
Oodeypore. The Rana claimed descent from Rama, the hero of ancient Oudh,
and incarnation of Vishnu or the Sun, whose mythical and divine glory is
celebrated in the Ramayana. Unfortunately the living Rana was a weak and
helpless prince, who was the dependent of his own feudatories, whilst
his territories were at the mercy of Mahrattas and Afghans. He had a
daughter who was regarded as a prize and treasure, not on account of her
beauty or accomplishments, for she was only an immature girl, but
because her high birth would ennoble her bridegroom and her future sons
or daughters.

[Sidenote: War for the Rana's daughter.]

From 1806 to 1810 the Rajas of Jeypore and Jodhpore were fighting for
the hand of this daughter of the Rana. The girl herself had no voice in
the matter. In Rajput traditions a princess is supposed to choose her
own bridegroom in an assembly of Rajas, by throwing a garland round the
neck of the happy lover. But in modern practice the "choice" has fallen
into disuse, and a gilded cocoa-nut is sent by the father of the
princess to some selected Raja as typical of an offer of her hand. The
cocoa-nut for the Oodeypore princess had been sent to a Raja of
Jodhpore, but he died before the marriage, and the cocoa-nut was sent to
the Raja of Jeypore. Then followed a contention. The new Raja of
Jodhpore claimed the princess, on the ground that the offer had been
made, not to the individual, but to the throne of Jodhpore. The Raja of
Jeypore, however, had accepted the cocoa-nut, and insisted on his
rights. The contention became a war to the knife, and nearly every
prince in Rajputana took a part in the contest. Strange to say, the Rana
himself, the father of the princess, looked on as a neutral whilst
Jeypore and Jodhpore were fighting for his daughter. Meanwhile his
territories, known as the garden of Rajputana, were ravaged by Sindia
and an Afghan adventurer named Amir Khan, until nothing was to be seen
but ruined harvests and desolated villages.

[Sidenote: Non-intervention.]

Amidst this terrible turmoil, the princes and chiefs of Rajputana
implored the British government to interfere. They asserted that there
always had been a paramount power in India; that such a power had been
formerly exercised by the Great Mogul; that the East India Company had
acquired that power; and that the British government was bound to stop
the war. The Rana of Oodeypore offered to cede half his territories if
the British government would protect the other half. Jeypore and
Jodhpore offered to submit their claims to British arbitration, and
pledged themselves to abide by the decision. Lord Minto had only to
declare which bridegroom he recognised, and his dictum would have been
accepted. But Lord Minto shrunk from the exercise of a sovereignty which
would have been a violation of the sacred dogma of non-interference, and
have carried British influence outside Br

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