Chapter XXII: Part 22

"Warren Hastings returned to England in the summer of 1785,
and met with a distinguished reception. "I find myself," he
wrote to a friend, "every where and universally treated with
evidences, apparent even to my own observation, that I possess
the good opinion of my country." But underneath this
superficial "good opinion" there existed a moral feeling which
had been outraged by the unscrupulous measures of the
Governor-General of India, and which began soon to speak aloud
through the eloquent lips of Edmund Burke. Joined in the
movement by Fox and Sheridan, Burke laid charges before
Parliament which forced the House of Commons, in the session
of 1787 to order the impeachment of Hastings before the Lords.
On the 13th of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court
commenced.
{1728}
There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more
gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to
grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at
Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well
calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an
imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which
belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to
the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the
talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by
liberty and civilisation were now displayed, with every
advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and
from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind
either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days
when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far
away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living
under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing
strange characters from right to left. The High Court of
Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the
days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of
exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares,
and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. The place
was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William
Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the
inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the
just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the
hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed
and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment,
the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of
Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his
fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues
were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by
cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled
by the heralds under Garter King-at-arms. The judges in their
vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law.
Near a hundred and seventy lords, three fourths of the Upper
House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from
their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. … The grey
old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were
crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or
the emulations of an orator. There were gathered together,
from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous
empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the
representatives of every science and of every art. … The
Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and
bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that
great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous
country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies,
had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he
had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had
loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to
glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like
a bad man. … His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom
were afterwards raised by their talents and learning to the
highest posts in their profession, the bold and strong-minded
Law, afterwards Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the more
humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas; and Plomer who, near twenty years later,
successfully conducted in the same high court the defence of
Lord Melville, and subsequently became Vice-chancellor and
Master of the Rolls. But neither the culprit nor his advocates
attracted so much notice as the accusers. In the midst of the
blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with green
benches and tables for the Commons. The managers, with Burke
at their head, appeared in full dress. The collectors of
gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally so
regardless of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious
tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had
refused to be one of the conductors of the impeachment; and
his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was wanting to
that great muster of various talents. … The charges and the
answers of Hastings were first read. The ceremony occupied two
whole days, and was rendered less tedious than it would
otherwise have been by the silver voice and just emphasis of
Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near relation of the amiable
poet. On the third day Burke rose. Four sittings were occupied
by his opening speech, which was intended to be a general
introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of thought
and a splendour of diction, which more than satisfied the
highly raised expectation of the audience, he described the
character and institutions of the natives of India, recounted
the circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had
originated, and set forth the constitution of the Company and
of the English presidencies. … When the Court sat again, Mr.
Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, opened the charge respecting Cheyte
Sing, and several days were spent in reading papers and
hearing witnesses. The next article was that relating to the
Princesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was
intrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public to hear him
was unbounded. His sparkling and highly finished declamation
lasted two days; but the Hall was crowded to suffocation
during the whole time. It was said that fifty guineas had been
paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded,
contrived, with a knowledge of stage effect which his father
might have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into the
arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of generous
admiration. June was now far advanced. The session could not
last much longer; and the progress which had been made in the
impeachment was not very satisfactory. There were twenty
charges. On two only of these had even the case for the
prosecution been heard; and it was now a year since Hastings
had been admitted to bail. The interest taken by the public in
the trial was great when the Court began to sit, and rose to
the height when Sheridan spoke on the charge relating to the
Begums. From that time the excitement went down fast. The
spectacle had lost the attraction of novelty. The great
displays of rhetoric were over. … The trial in the Hall went
on languidly. In the session of 1788, when the proceedings had
the interest of novelty, and when the Peers had little other
business before them, only thirty-five days were given to the
impeachment. In 1789 … during the whole year only
seventeen days were given to the case of Hastings. … At
length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced,
near eight years after Hastings had been brought by the
Serjeant-at-arms of the Commons to the bar of the Lords.
{1729}
… Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these only six found
Hastings guilty on the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to
the Begums. On other charges, the majority in his favour was
still greater. On some he was unanimously absolved. He was
then called to the bar, was informed from the woolsack that
the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly discharged. He
bowed respectfully and retired. We have said that the decision
had been fully expected. It was also generally approved. …
It was thought, and not without reason, that, even if he was
guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment
of eight years was more than a sufficient punishment. It was
also felt that, though, in the ordinary course of criminal
law, a defendant is not allowed to set off his good actions
against his crimes, a great political cause should be tried on
different principles, and that a man who had governed an
empire during thirteen years might have done some very
reprehensible things, and yet might be on the whole deserving
of rewards and honours rather than of fine and imprisonment."

_Lord Macaulay,
Warren Hastings (Essays)._

"The trial had several beneficial results. It cleared off a
cloud of misconceptions, calumnies, exaggerations, and false
notions generally on both sides; it fixed and promulgated the
standard which the English people would in future insist upon
maintaining in their Indian administration; it bound down the
East India Company to better behaviour; it served as an
example and a salutary warning, and it relieved the national
conscience. But the attempt to make Hastings a sacrifice and a
burnt-offering for the sins of the people; the process of
loading him with curses and driving him away into the
wilderness; of stoning him with every epithet and metaphor
that the English language could supply for heaping ignominy on
his head; of keeping him seven years under an impeachment that
menaced him with ruin and infamy—these were blots upon the
prosecution and wide aberrations from the true course of
justice which disfigured the aspect of the trial, distorted
its aim, and had much to do with bringing it to the lame and
impotent conclusion that Burke so bitterly denounced."

_Sir A. Lyall,
Warren Hastings,
chapter 9._

ALSO IN:
_E. Burke,
Works,
volumes 8-12._

_Speeches of Managers and Counsel
in the Trial of Warren Hastings,
edited by E. A. Bond._

INDIA: A. D. 1798-1805.
The administration and imperial policy of the Marquis Wellesley.
Treaty with the Nizam.
Overthrow and death of Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore.
War with the Mahrattas.
Assaye and Laswari.
Territorial acquisitions.

"The period of Sir John Shore's rule as Governor-General, from
1793 to 1798 [after which he became Lord Teignmouth], was
uneventful. In 1798, Lord Mornington, better known as the
Marquis of Wellesley, arrived in India, already inspired with
imperial projects which were destined to change the map of the
country. Mornington was the friend and favourite of Pitt, from
whom he is thought to have derived his far-reaching political
vision, and his antipathy to the French name. From the first
he laid down as his guiding principle, that the English must
be the one paramount power in the peninsula, and that Native
princes could only retain the insignia of sovereignty by
surrendering their political independence. The history of
India since his time has been but the gradual development of
this policy, which received its finishing touch when Queen
Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India on the 1st of
January, 1877. To frustrate the possibility of a French
invasion of India, led by Napoleon in person, was the
governing idea of Wellesley's foreign policy. France at this
time, and for many years later, filled the place afterwards
occupied by Russia in the minds of Indian statesmen. Nor was
the danger so remote as might now be thought. French regiments
guarded and overawed the Nizam of Haidarabad. The soldiers of
Sindhia, the military head of the Marhatta Confederacy, were
disciplined and led by French adventurers. Tipu Sultan of
Mysore carried on a secret correspondence with the French
Directorate, allowed a tree of liberty to be planted in his
dominions, and enrolled himself in a republican club as
'Citizen Tipu.' The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon afforded
a convenient half-way rendezvous for French intrigue and for
the assembling of a hostile expedition. Above all, Napoleon
Buonaparte was then in Egypt, dreaming of the conquests of
Alexander, and no man knew in what direction he might turn his
hitherto unconquered legions. Wellesley conceived the scheme
of crushing for ever the French hopes in Asia, by placing
himself at the head of a great Indian confederacy. In Lower
Bengal, the sword of Clive and the policy of Warren Hastings
had made the English paramount. Before the end of the century,
our power was consolidated from the seaboard to Benares, high
up the Gangetic valley. … In 1801, the treaty of Lucknow
made over to the British the Doab, or fertile tract between
the Ganges and the Jumna, together with Rohilkhand. In
Southern India, our possessions were chiefly confined, before
Lord Wellesley, to the coast Districts of Madras and Bombay.
Wellesley resolved to make the British supreme as far as Delhi
in Northern India, and to compel the great powers of the south
to enter into subordinate relations to the Company's
government. The intrigues of the Native princes gave him his
opportunity for carrying out this plan without breach of
faith. The time had arrived when the English must either
become supreme in India, or be driven out of it. The Mughal
Empire was completely broken up; and the sway had to pass
either to the local Muhammadan governors of that empire, or to
the Hindu Confederacy represented by the Marhattas, or to the
British. Lord Wellesley determined that it should pass to the
British. His work in Northern India was at first easy. The
treaty of Lucknow in 1801 made us territorial rulers as far as
the heart of the present North-Western Provinces, and
established our political influence in Oudh. Beyond those
limits, the northern branches of the Marhattas practically
held sway, with the puppet emperor in their hands. Lord
Wellesley left them untouched for a few years, until the
second Marhatta war (1802-1804) gave him an opportunity for
dealing effectively with their nation as a whole. In Southern
India, he saw that the Nizam at Haidarabad stood in need of
his protection, and he converted him into a useful follower
throughout the succeeding struggle. The other Muhammadan power
of the south, Tipu Sultan of Mysore, could not be so easily
handled.
{1730}
Lord Wellesley resolved to crush him, and had ample
provocation for so doing. The third power of Southern
India—namely, the Marhatta Confederacy—was so loosely
organized, that Lord Wellesley seems at first to have hoped to
live on terms with it. When several years of fitful alliance
had convinced him that he had to choose between the supremacy
of the Marhattas or of the British in Southern India, he did
not hesitate to decide. Lord Wellesley first addressed himself
to the weakest of the three southern powers, the Nizam of
Haidarabad. Here he won a diplomatic success, which turned a
possible rival into a subservient ally. The French battalions
at Haidarabad were disbanded, and the Nizam bound himself by
treaty not to take any European into his service without the
consent of the English Government,—a clause since inserted in
every engagement entered into with Native powers. Wellesley
next turned the whole weight of his resources against Tipu,
whom Cornwallis had defeated, but not subdued. Tipu's
intrigues with the French were laid bare, and he was given an
opportunity of adhering to the new subsidiary system. On his
refusal, war was declared, and Wellesley came down in
viceregal state to Madras to organize the expedition in
person, and to watch over the course of events. One English
army marched into Mysore from Madras, accompanied by a
contingent from the Nizam. Another advanced from the western
coast. Tipu, after a feeble resistance in the field, retired
into Seringapatam, and, when his capital was stormed, died
fighting bravely in the breach (1799). Since the battle of
Plassey, no event so greatly impressed the Native imagination
as the capture of Seringapatam, which won for General Harris a
peerage, and for Wellesley an Irish marquisate. In dealing
with the territories of Tipu, Wellesley acted with moderation.
The central portion, forming the old state of Mysore, was
restored to an infant representative of the Hindu Rajas, whom
Haidar Ali had dethroned; the rest of Tipu's dominion was
partitioned between the Nizam, the Marhattas, and the English.
At about the same time, the Karnatic, or the part of
South-Eastern India ruled by the Nawab of Arcot, and also the
principality of Tanjore, were placed under direct British
administration, thus constituting the Madras Presidency almost
as it has existed to the present day. … The Marhattas had
been the nominal allies of the English in both their wars with
Tipu. But they had not rendered active assistance, nor were
they secured to the English side as the Nizam now was. The
Marhatta powers at this time were five in number. The
recognised head of the confederacy was the Peshwa of Poona,
who ruled the hill country of the Western Ghats, the cradle of
the Marhatta race. The fertile Province of Guzerat was
annually harried by the horsemen of the Gaekwar of Baroda. In
Central India, two military leaders, Sindhia of Gwalior and
Holkar of Indore, alternately held the pre-eminence. Towards
the east, the Bhonsla Raja of Nagpur reigned from Berar to the
coast of Orissa. Wellesley laboured to bring these several
Marhatta powers within the net of his subsidiary system. In
1802, the necessities of the Peshwa, who had been defeated by
Holkar, and driven as a fugitive into British territory,
induced him to sign the treaty of Bassein. By this he pledged
himself to the British to hold communications with no other
power, European or Native, and granted to us Districts for the
maintenance of a subsidiary force. This greatly extended the
English territorial influence in the Bombay Presidency. But it
led to the second Marhatta war, as neither Sindhia nor the
Raja of Nagpur would tolerate the Peshwa's betrayal of the
Marhatta independence. The campaigns which followed are
perhaps the most glorious in the history of the British arms
in India. The general plan, and the adequate provision of
resources, were due to the Marquis of Wellesley, as also the
indomitable spirit which refused to admit of defeat. The
armies were led by Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of
Wellington) and General (afterwards Lord) Lake. Wellesley
operated in the Deccan, where in a few short months, he won
the decisive victories of Assaye [September 23, 1803] and
Argaum [November 28], and captured Ahmednagar. Lake's campaign
in Hindustan was equally brilliant, although it has received
less notice from historians. He won pitched battles at Aligarh
[August 29] and Laswari [November 1, 1803], and took the
cities of Delhi and Agra. He scattered the French troops of
Sindhia, and at the same time stood forward as the champion of
the Mughal Emperor in his hereditary capital. Before the end
of 1803, both Sindhia and the Bhonsla Raja of Nagpur sued for
peace. Sindhia ceded all claims to the territory north of the
Jumna, and left the blind old Emperor Shah Alam once more
under British protection. The Bhonsla forfeited Orissa to the
English, who had already occupied it with a flying column in
1803, and Berar to the Nizam, who gained fresh territory by
every act of complaisance to the British Government. … The
concluding years of Wellesley's rule were occupied with a
series of operations against Holkar, which brought little
credit on the British name. The disastrous retreat of Colonel
Monson through Central India (1804) recalled memories of the
convention of Wargaum, and of the destruction of Colonel
Baillie's force by Haidar Ali. The repulse of Lake in person
at the siege of Bhartpur (Bhurtpore) is memorable as an
instance of a British army in India having to turn back with
its object unaccomplished (1805). Bhartpur was not finally
taken till 1827. Lord Wellesley during his six years of office
carried out almost every part of his territorial scheme. In
Northern India, Lord Lake's campaigns brought the
North-Western provinces (the ancient Madhyadesa) under British
rule, together with the custody of the puppet emperor. The new
Districts were amalgamated with those previously acquired from
the Nawab Wazir of Oudh into the 'Ceded and Conquered
Provinces.' This partition of Northern India remained till the
Sikh wars of 1844 and 1847 gave us the Punjab."

_W. W. Hunter,
Brief History of the Indian People,
chapter 13._

ALSO IN:
_W. H. Maxwell,
Life of the Duke of Wellington,
volume 1, chapters 2-12._

_J. M. Wilson.
Memoir of Wellington,
volume 1, chapters 2-9._

_G. B. Malleson,
Decisive Battles of India,
chapters 9-10._

_W. H. Hutton,
The Marquess Wellesley._

_J. S. Cotton,
Mountstuart Elphinstone,
chapter 4._

{1731}

INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816.
Reversal of Lord Wellesley's policy.
Sepoy revolt at Vellore.
Influence established with Runjeet Singh and the Sikhs.
Conquest of the Mauritius.
The Ghorka War.

"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. Before Lord Cornwallis reached Bengal
the political outlook had brightened. … 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.
For some years the policy of the British government was a
half-hearted system of non-intervention. … The Mahratta
princes were left to plunder and collect chout [a blackmail
extortion, levied by the Mahrattas for a century] in
Rajputana, and practically to make war on each other, so long
as they respected the territories of the British government
and its allies. … 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. 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 garrison at Vellore
consisted of about 400 Europeans and 1,500 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. 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; 400 mutineers
were cut down, and the outbreak was over. … In 1807 Lord
Minto succeeded Barlow as Governor-General. He broke the spell
of non-intervention. … 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. 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 the 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. … Meanwhile the war against France and
Napoleon had extended to eastern waters. The island of the
Mauritius had become a French depot 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 [1810], 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. …
Meanwhile war clouds were gathering on the southern slopes of
the Himalayas.
{1732}
Down to the middle of the 18th century, the territory of Nipal
had been peopled by a peaceful and industrious race of
Buddhists known as Newars, but about the year 1767, when the
British had taken over the Bengal provinces, the Newars were
conquered by a Rajput tribe from Cashmere, known as Ghorkas.
The Ghorka conquest of Nipal was as complete as the Norman
conquest of England. The Ghorkas established a military
despotism with Brahmanical institutions, and parcelled out the
country amongst feudal nobles known as Bharadars. … During
the early years of the 19th century the Ghorkas began to
encroach on British territory, annexing villages and revenues
from Darjeeling to Simla without right or reason. They were
obviously bent on extending their dominion southward to the
Ganges, and for a long time aggressions were overlooked for
the sake of peace. At last two districts were appropriated to
which the Ghorkas had not a shadow of a claim, and it was
absolutely necessary to make a stand against their
pretensions. Accordingly, Lord Minto sent an ultimatum to
Khatmandu, declaring that unless the districts were restored
they would be recovered by force of arms. Before the answer
arrived, Lord Minto was succeeded in the post of
Governor-General by Lord Moira, better known by his later
title of Marquis of Hastings. Lord Moira landed at Calcutta in
1813. Shortly after his arrival an answer was received from
the Ghorka government, that the disputed districts belonged to
Nipal, and would not be surrendered. Lord Moira at once fixed
a day on which the districts were to be restored; and when the
day had passed without any action being taken by the Ghorkas,
a British detachment entered the districts and set up police
stations. … The council of Bharadars resolved on war, but
they did not declare it in European fashion. A Ghorka army
suddenly entered the disputed districts, surrounded the police
stations, and murdered many of the constables, and then
returned to Khatmandu to await the action of the British
government in the way of reprisals. The war against the
Ghorkas was more remote and more serious than the wars against
the Mahrattas. … Those who have ascended the Himalayas to
Darjeeling or Simla may realise something of the difficulties
of an invasion of Nipal. The British army advanced in four
divisions by four different routes. … General David
Ochterlony, who advanced his division along the valley of the
Sutlej, gained the most brilliant successes. He was one of the
half-forgotten heroes of the East India Company. … For five
months in the worst season of the year he carried one fortress
after another, until the enemy made a final stand at Maloun on
a shelf of the Himalayas. The Ghorkas made a desperate attack
on the British works, but the attempt failed; and when the
British batteries were about to open fire, the Ghorka garrison
came to terms, and were permitted to march out with the
honours of war. The fall of Maloun shook the faith of the
Ghorka government in their heaven-built fortresses.
Commissioners were sent to conclude a peace. Nipal agreed to
cede Kumaon in the west, and the southern belt of forest and
jungle known as the Terai. It also agreed to receive a British
Resident at Khatmandu. Lord Moira had actually signed the
treaty, when the Ghorkas raised the question of whether the
Terai included the forest or only the swamp. War was renewed.
Ochterlony advanced an army within fifty miles of Khatmandu,
and then the Ghorkas concluded the treaty [1816], and the
British army withdrew from Nipal. The Terai, however, was a
bone of contention for many years afterwards. Nothing was said
about a subsidiary army, and to this day Nipal is outside the
pale of subsidiary alliances; but Nipal is bound over not to
take any European into her service without the consent of the
British government."

_J. T. Wheeler,
India under British Rule,
chapter 3._

ALSO IN:
_J. D. Cunningham,
History of the Sikhs,
chapters 5-6._

_E. Thornton,
History of British Empire in India,
chapters 21-24 (volume 4)._

INDIA: A. D. 1816-1819.
Suppression of the Pindaris.
Overthrow of the Mahratta power.
The last of the Peshwas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Illustrations of the History of the Thugs._

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

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

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