India Through the Ages Part 44

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

The chief factor in the unrest was Mahratta jealousy. The Nizam of the Dekkan, their hereditary enemy, had just been granted a new treaty.

Under it he had been promised a definite protection of troops in consideration of his ceding territory to the revenue amount of the subsidy which he would otherwise have had to pay--and, no doubt, would have paid irregularly.

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

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

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

Holkar and Scindiah, on the part of _their_ sections of the Mahrattas, resented this fiercely. As usual, they refused to be bound by the Peishwa's pusillanimity. So war was declared; a war which for the time taxed even Sir Arthur Wellesley's military genius to the uttermost, for the Mahrattas were born fighters. But the battle of a.s.saye, fought on the 23rd of September 1803, broke their power in Central India.

They had over ten thousand disciplined troops commanded by Europeans, chiefly French officers, and a train of one hundred guns, in addition to nearly forty thousand irregular infantry and cavalry. Against these Arthur Wellesley had but a total of four thousand five hundred men, but they included the 78th Highlanders, the 74th Regiment, and the 19th Dragoons.

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

It needed a desperate charge of the Highlanders, with Arthur Wellesley himself at its head, to retrieve the day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps you had--and we squashed it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he died at Buxar within two months of his arrival in India.

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

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

Yet the causes were identical. In 1857 it was a greased cartridge, in 1807 it was a cap; but beneath both lay unreasoning fear of forcible conversion to Christianity. A fear which grew to bloodshed, and which found the Europeans, as ever, totally unprepared. Nearly one hundred of them lost their lives, and but for Colonel Gillespie's swift ride from Arcot, and the wisdom of the officers in command at Hyderabad, the mutiny might have spread, as did the one at Meerut in May 1857.

And it must be admitted that those sepoys of Vellore had greater cause of offence than they of later years; for they were asked to shave to European pattern, to wear a hat-shaped turban, and appear on parade minus their caste marks.

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

The latter meant to nominate the Earl of Lauderdale, who, as a p.r.o.nounced free-trader, threatened to break up the Indian monopoly.

The fight ended by the Earl of Minto, President of the Board of Control, taking up the appointment in 1807, which he held till 1811.

It was an uneventful administration, the extinction of the Company's monopoly, which marked its close, being the only feature in it which claims a place in this modest outline of history; this, and perhaps the fact that owing to greater facilities of borrowing the Company was enabled to pay off its old debts which it had contracted when the rate of interest was 12 per cent., and renew them at 6 per cent.; thus effecting a reduction of half a million in expenditure.

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

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

THE EXTINCTION OF MONOPOLY

A.D. 1812 TO A.D. 1833

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

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

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

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

With this, and a few more sc.r.a.ps of comfort, H.M.E.I.C.S. had to be satisfied and start fair with a new Governor-General, Earl Moira. One is irresistibly reminded, when following this history of English dealings with India, of the fable concerning King Log and King Stork; for after a calm, there comes invariably a storm. How many governor-generals have not sailed out to India, loudly protesting peace, prepared at all points to uphold the non-interference clause?

How many have sailed back again with reputations either marred, in English eyes, by change of policy, or kept intact by leaving behind to their successors a state of affairs out of which war was the only escape?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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