Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan Part 12
And that bold a.s.sertion received the approbation of King George III., in a despatch of the 5th May; the further principle being communicated by the writer, Lord Hobart, in His Majesty's name, "that it should be explicitly understood that in the distant possessions of the British empire during the existence of war, the want of the regular authority should not preclude an attack upon the enemy in any case that may appear calculated to promote the public interest."
Thus fortified, the Governor-General was persuaded to reconsider his intention of at once quitting India, the more so since the terms in which the Court of Directors recorded their desire that he should do so, displayed an almost equal confidence, and amounted, if not to any apology for past obstruction, at least to a promise of support for the future. In his despatch of 24th December, 1802, Lord Wellesley plainly alluded to the opening for extending the British power in India which he considered to be offered by the then pending treaty of Ba.s.sein, though at the same time he records, apparently without apprehension, the intention of Sindhia to proceed from Ujan towards Punah to counteract the machinations of Holkar. On the 11th February, 1803, Lord Wellesley signified his willingness to remain at his post another year, though without referring to any military or political prospects.
But the direction in which his eye was constantly cast is soon betrayed by a despatch of the 27th March, to General Lake, conveying instructions for negotiating with General Perron, who, from motives we shall briefly notice lower down, was anxious to retire from the service of Sindhia. In this letter Lord Wellesley plainly says, "I am strongly disposed to accelerate Hr. Perron's departure, conceiving it to be an event which promises much advantage to our power in India."
It appears, nevertheless, from the Marquis's address to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of 19th April, 1803, that, up to that time, he still entertained hopes that Sindhia would remain inactive, and would see his advantage in giving his adhesion to the treaty of Ba.s.sein, if not from friendship for England, from hostility to Holkar, against whom that settlement was primarily and ostensibly directed. Meanwhile, advices continued to arrive from Europe, showing the extremely precarious nature of the Peace of Amiens, and the imminent probability of a renewal of hostilities with France, thus keeping awake the Governor-General's jealousy of Sindhia's French officers, and delaying the restoration of French possessions in India, which had been promised by the treaty.
In May the Marquis proceeded explicitly to forbid the crossing of the Narbadda by Sindhia, and to warn the Bhonsla Raja of Berar or Nagpur against joining in the schemes of the former chief, to whom a long and forcible despatch was sent, through the Resident, Colonel Collins, in the early part of the following month (vide W. Desp. p. 120). In this letter Colonel Collins - while vested with much discretionary power - was distinctly instructed to "apprise Scindiah (Sindhia) that his proceeding to Poonah, under any pretext whatever, will infallibly involve him in hostilities with the British power." The Resident was also to require from him "an explanation with regard to the object of any confederacy"
with the Bhonsla chiefs of Berar and Nagpur, or with Holkar.
Sindhia met all these approaches with the Oriental resources of equivocation and delay; apparently unable either to arrange with due rapidity any definite understanding with the other Mahratta leaders, or to make up his mind, or persuade his chief advisers to give a confident and unconditional reception to the friendship offered him by the British ruler. Whether the latter course would have saved him is a question that now can only be decided by each person's interpretation of the despatches above a.n.a.lysed.
Those who desire to study the subject further may refer to the first volume of Malcolm's Political History, to Mill's History, and to Grant Duff's concluding volume, but will hardly obtain much result from their labour. On the one hand, it may be presumed that, had the British Government really been ambitious of extending their North-Western frontier, they would have a.s.sisted Thomas in 1801; on the other hand, it is certain that they supplanted Sindhia at Punah soon afterwards, and that they had for some years been exceedingly jealous of French influence in India. In this connection should also be mentioned the invasion planned by the Czar Paul, in concert with the First Consul, in 1800, of which the details were first made public in English by Mr. Mich.e.l.l (Rawlinson's England and Russia in the East, p. 187). The general fact of Paul's submission to the ascendancy of Napoleon was, of course, well known to British statesmen at the time. There was also the fear of an Afghan invasion, which led to the mission of Malcolm to Persia, and which was, perhaps, not the mere bugbear which it now appears. A masterly statement of Lord Wellesley's political complications will be found in his brother's Memorandum, given as an Introduction to Professor Owen's Selection, published in 1880. It is quite clear, again, that Sindhia, for his part, was not unwilling to see the British espouse the Peshwa's cause as against Holkar; while it is highly probable that his mind was worked upon by Perron when the latter found himself under combined motives of self-interest and of national animosity.
The French General had been losing favour on account of his increasing unpopularity among the native chiefs of the army; and had been so contumeliously treated by Daulat Rao Sindhia at Ujain, in the beginning of the year 1803, that he had resigned the service. But hardly was the treaty of Ba.s.sein communicated to Sindhia, when Perron consented to remain at his post, and even, it is believed, drew up a plan for hostilities against the British, although the latter had shown as yet no intention of declaring war, but, on the contrary, still maintained a minister in Sindhia's camp. These facts, together with the statistics that follow, are chiefly derived from the memoirs of an Anglo-Indian officer of Perron's, the late Colonel James Skinner, which have been edited by Mr. Baillie Fraser. "Sindhia and Raghoji together"
(Raghoji was the name of the Bhonsla of Nagpur) "had about 100,000 men, of whom 50,000 were Mahratta horse, generally good, 30,000 regular infantry and artillery, commanded by Europeans; the rest half-disciplined troops. Sindhia is understood to have had more than 300 pieces of cannon. The army of Hindustan, under Perron, consisted of 16,000 to 17,000 regular infantry, and from 15,000 to 20,000 horse, with not less than twenty pieces of artillery." It may be added, on the authority of Major Thorn, that his army was commanded by about three hundred European officers, of whom all but forty were French. In this estimate must be included the forces of the Begam Sumroo.
The French plans, as far as they can now be learned, were as follows: - The blind and aged Shah Alam was to be continued upon the Imperial throne, under the protection of the French Republic.
"This great question being decided," proceeds the memorial from which I am extracting, "it remains to consider whether it is not possible that the branches of that unfortunate family may find protectors who shall a.s.sert their sacred rights and break their ignominious chains. It will then follow that mutual alliance and a judicious union of powers will secure the permanent sovereignty of the Emperor, to render his subjects happy in the enjoyment of personal security and of that wealth which springs from peace, agriculture, and free trade. The English Company, by its ignominious treatment of the great Moghul, has forfeited its rights as Deewan of the Empire." ("Memoir of Lieutenant Lefebre,"
6th August, 1803.)
Lord Wellesley himself records this doc.u.ment, which was found in Pondicherry, it does not appear exactly how or when; he may have had an inkling of the policy previously, but the date is sufficient to show that he had not seen it before going to war with Sindhia. Lord Wellesley refers, about the same time, to the magnitude of the establishment sent out to take possession of the settlements which the French were to recover in India by the Peace of Amiens, an establishment obviously too large for the mere management of Pondicherry and Chandarnagar.
Perhaps the memoir in question (which was drawn up by an officer of the staff sent out on that occasion) may have expressed correctly the intentions which the First Consul held at the time; for n.o.body appears to have been very sincere or much in earnest on either side at the Peace of Amiens. And it is not impossible that the paper expresses intentions which might have been more thoroughly carried out had not the terrible explosion in St.
Domingo subsequently diverted the attention of the French Government to another hemisphere. At all events it is a thinly-veiled pretext of aggression; and the accusations against the English are scandalously false, as will be clear to those who may have perused the preceding pages. Considering that it was Perron's own employer who kept the Imperial House in penury and durance, it was the extreme of impudence for one of Perron's compatriots to retort the charge upon the English, to whom Shah Alam was indebted for such brief gleams of good fortune as he had ever enjoyed, and whose only offence against him had been a fruitless attempt to withhold him from that premature return to Dehli, which had been the beginning of his worst misfortunes. It was, moreover, a gross exaggeration to call the British the Diwans of the empire now, whatever may have once been their t.i.tular position in Bengal. On the 6th of July Lord Wellesley received from the ministry in England a hint that war with France would be likely to be soon renewed; and on the 8th of the same month he addressed to his commander-in-chief a short private letter, of which the following extract shows the purport: - "I wish you to understand, my dear Sir, that I consider the reduction of Sindhia's power on the north-west frontier of Hindustan to be an important object in proportion to the probability of a war with France. M. de Boigne (Sindhia's late general) is now the chief confident of Bonaparte; he is constantly at St. Cloud. I leave you to judge why and wherefore."
- (Desp. III. 182.)
The Governor-General here shows his own views, although his sagacity probably overleaped itself in the imputation against de Boigne, for which I have found no other authority. Ten days later he sends Lake more detailed instructions, closing his covering letter with a sentence especially worthy of the reader's attention: - "I consider an active effort against Scindhia and Berar to be the best possible preparation for the renewal of the war with France." There is little doubt of this being the key-note of the policy that led the British to the conquest of Hindustan. - Vide App. E.
On the 31st July, General Wellesley wrote to the Resident at the court of Sindhia (Colonel Collins) stating that the reasons a.s.signed by the confederates for not withdrawing their troops were illusory, and ordering Collins to leave their camp at once.
On the 15th August Lord Wellesley received a packet, which the collector of Moradabad had transmitted nearly a month before, containing translation of a letter from the Nawab of Najibabad, Bhanbu Khan, brother of the late Gholam Kadir, covering copy of a circular letter in which Sindhia was attempting to stir him and the other chiefs against the English as "that unprincipled race"; and begging them to co-operate with General Perron. War, however, had already been declared, and a letter addressed by the Governor-General to Shah Alam.
The force with which General Lake was to meet the 35,000 Franco-Mahrattas in Hindustan, consisted of eight regiments of cavalry, of which three were European, one corps of European infantry, and eleven battalions of Sepoys, beside a proper complement of guns, with two hundred British artillerymen, making a total of 10,500, exclusive of the brigade at Anupshahar.
The a.s.sembling of this force on the immediate frontier of the dominion occupied by Sindhia and the French, had been facilitated by the treaty of the 10th November, 1801, by which Saadat Ali Khan, whom the British had lately raised to the Viceroyship of Audh, had ceded to them the frontier provinces above named. This cession was made in commutation for the subsidy which the Nawab had been required to pay for the maintenance of the force by which he was supported against his own subjects. The Peshwa had previously ceded a portion of Bundelkand by the treaty of Ba.s.sein, and the red colour was thus surely, if slowly, creeping over the map of India. Perron resisted the cession of the new frontier under the treaty of Lucknow. The "Old Resident" makes the following note on the subject: - "When the British came to Sasnee, which was ceded by the Nawab Wuzier of Lucknow by a treaty in 1802 to Government, the Pergunnahs of Sasnee, Akberabad, Jellalee, and Secundra came under British rule, but not without much bloodshed in the sieges of Sasnee, Bijey Gurh and Kuchoura fortresses; in all these places we buried the remains of British officers who first shed their blood for their King and country. At Sasnee the masonry graves in a decayed condition are still to be seen. At Bijey Gurh they are in the low 'Duhur' lands apart from the Fort, and at the Kuchoura in Locus Kanugla, lies the tomb of Major Naivve, Commanding the 2nd Cavalry, who was shot whilst leading his men to the a.s.sault. A surviving relation of the above officer had a monument built in 1853 at Bhudwas, on the Trunk Road, with the original tablet which was torn off from the tomb by the villagers, and by chance discovered by a European overseer of the roads after a lapse of fifty years."
In Sindhia's armies there were, as we have seen, a number of officers who were not Frenchmen. These were mostly half-castes, or (to use a term subsequently invented) Eurasians, Europeo-Asiatics, or persons of mixed blood; in other words, the offspring of connections which British officers in those days often formed with native females. Nearly all these officers, whether British or half-British, were upon this occasion discharged from the service by Perron, who had probably very good reason to believe that they would not join in fighting against the army of their own sovereign. Carnegie, Stewart, Ferguson, Lucan, two Skinners, Scott, Birch, and Woodville, are the only names recorded, but there may have been others also who were dismissed from the army at Perron's disposal. The prospects of those who were absent on duty in the Deccan, and elsewhere, soon became far more serious. Though not at present dismissed, they were mostly reserved for a still harder fate. Holkar beheaded Colonel Vickers and seven others; Captain Mackenzie and several more were confined, and subsequently ma.s.sacred, by orders of Sindhia; others perished "in wild Mahratta battle," fighting for money in causes not their own, nor of the smallest importance to the world. General Wellesley complained, after the battle of a.s.sai, of "Sindhia's English officers." He says that his wounded men heard them give orders for their ma.s.sacre as they lay upon the field, and promises to send up a list of their names after full inquiry (Owen, 311). No such list has ever been heard of; and it appears, from Lewis F. Smith's memoir, that the European officers there present were all French, or Italian, or German. It is barely possible that they used English in conversing, certainly not probable; but the story was very likely prompted by the imagination of the wounded men who saw white faces among the enemy and concluded that they must be their own countrymen. The only European officers known to have been engaged on the Mahratta side are Pohlmann and Dupont (both named by Wellesley) and Saleur of the Begam's service who commanded the baggage-guard; with perhaps, J. B. da Fontaine.
Although the French officers were now without any Christian rivals, it does not appear that their position was a satisfactory one. The reader may refer to Law's remarks on this subject, during the Emperor's unsuccessful attempts to the eastward. The isolation and impossibility of trusting native colleagues, of which that gallant adventurer complained, were still, and always must be, fatal to the free exercise of civilized minds serving an Asiatic ruler. All the accounts that we have of those times combine to show that, whoever was the native master, the condition of the European servant was precarious, and his influence for good weak. On the 24th of June, 1802, Colonel Collins, the British Resident at the Court of Sindhia, had written thus to his Government in regard to Perron whom he had lately visited at Aligarh: - "General Perron has been peremptorily directed by Sindhia to give up all the Mahals (estates) in his possession not appertaining to his own jaidad (fief); and I understand that the General is highly displeased with the conduct of Sindhia's ministers on this occasion, insomuch that he entertains serious intentions of relinquishing his present command."
This intention, as we have already seen, was at one time on the point of being carried out, and Perron was evidently at the time sincere in his complaints.
It is not however possible to use, as Mill does, these discontents - alleged by Perron in conversation with a British political officer - as a complete proof of his not having had, towards the British, hostile views of his own. The whole tenor of Colonel Skinner's Memoir, already frequently cited (the work, be it remembered, of a person in the service at the time), is to show an intense feeling of hostility on Perron's part towards the British, both as a community of individuals and as a power in India. It is more than probable that but for the Treaty of Ba.s.sein, which gave the British in India the command of the Indian Ocean and the Western Coast, and but for the contemporaneous successes of Abercromby and Hutchinson in Egypt, Perron, supported by the troops of the French Republic, might have proved to the British a most formidable a.s.sailant. Skinner gives a graphic account of his vainly attempting to get reinstated by Perron, who said: "Go away, Monsieur Skinner! I no trust." He would not trust officers with British blood and sympathies.
But such was the fortune, and such were the deserts of those by whom England was at that time served, that they were able, without much expense of either time or labour, to conquer the half-hearted resistance of the French, and the divided councils of the Mahrattas. Holkar not only did not join Sindhia, but a.s.sisted the British cause by his known rivalry. Arthur Wellesley gave earnest of his future glory by the hard-fought battle of a.s.sai, in which the Begam Sumroo's little contingent, under its French officers, gave Sindhia what support they could; and General Lake overthrew the resistance of M. Perron's army at Aligarh, and soon reduced the Fort, in spite of the gallant defence offered by the garrison. Mention has been made of this Fort in the account of the overthrow of Najaf Khan's successors by Sindhia (sup. p. 145). Since those days it had been much improved. The following is the account of the Dehli Gazette's "old Resident." - "The Fort of Allyqurh was made by the Jauts while the place was under the Delhi Kings. Nawab Nujjuff Khan, the Governor, improved the fortification, and de Boigne brought it into a regular defensive state according to the French system.
Perron and Pedron subsequently added their skill in strengthening the fortress, which commanded a wide open plain, the most part being under water during the heavy rains on account of the lands being low." The gate was blown in and the place rapidly stormed by the 76th, piloted by a Mr. Lucan, who was made a captain in the British service for his treachery. He was afterwards taken prisoner during Monson's retreat and put to death by Holkar's orders. The enemy were commanded by natives, having withdrawn their confidence from Perron's French Lieutenant, Colonel Pedron, who was on that occasion made prisoner by the troops. Perron himself, having first retreated upon Agra, and thence on Mathra, came over to the English with two subordinates, and was at once allowed a free pa.s.sage to Chandarnagar with his family and his property. Bourquien, who commanded the army in Dehli, attempted to intrigue for the chief command, but was put under arrest by his native officers; and the Mahratta army, like sheep without a shepherd, came out to meet the advancing British on the Hindan, a few miles to the east of the capital, on the old road from the town of Sikandrabad, so often mentioned in this narrative. After they had killed six officers and about 160 men by a furious cannonade, their obstinacy was broken down by the undeniable and well-disciplined pertinacity of the 27th Dragoons and the 76th Foot; and they suffered a loss of 3,000 men and sixty-eight pieces of artillery, mounted in the best French style. This decisive victory was gained on the 11th September, 1803; when on the 14th the army crossed the Jamna, and General Bourquien, with four other French officers, threw themselves upon British protection. Their example was soon after followed by the Chevalier du Drenec and two other officers from the army of the Deccan; and shortly after by Hessing and other European officers in command of the garrison at Agra, which had at first confined them, but afterwards capitulated through their mediation.
No sooner did the ill-starred Emperor hear of the sudden overthrow of his custodians, than he opened formal negotiations with the British General, with whom he had been already treating secretly. The result was that on the 16th, the Heir Apparent, Mirza Akbar, was despatched to wait upon General Lake in camp, and conduct him to the presence of the blind old man, who was the legitimate and undoubted fountain of all honour and power in Hindustan. The prince vindicated his dignity in a manner peculiar to Asiatics, by keeping the conqueror waiting for three hours.
The cavalcade was at last formed, and, after a slow progress of five miles, reached the palace as the sun was setting. Rapid motion was rendered impossible by the dense collection of nearly 100,000 persons in the narrow ways; and even the courts of the Palace were on this occasion thronged with spectators, free at last. A tattered awning had been raised over the entrance to the famous Diwan-i-Khas, and underneath, on a mockery of a throne, was seated the descendant of Akbar and of Aurangzeb. It would be interesting to know what was the exact manner of General Lake's reception, and what were the speeches on either side; but the inflated enthusiasm of the "Court-Newsman," and the sonorous generalities of Major Thorn and the Marquess Wellesley, are all the evidence which survives. According to the latter, the people of Dehli were filled with admiring joy, and the Emperor with dignified thankfulness; according to the former, so great was the virtue of the joyful tears shed on this occasion by the Monarch, that they restored his eyesight - the eyesight destroyed fifteen years before by Gholam Kadir's dagger. Such is the nature of the stones offered by these writers to the seeker for historical nourishment.
What is certain is, that the British General received the t.i.tle of Khan Dauran, which was considered the second in the Empire, and which implied perhaps a recognition of the claims of the Audh Nawab to be hereditary Vazir; while the British Government "waived all question of the Imperial prerogative and authority" - in other words virtually reserved them to itself. The Emperor was only sovereign in the city and small surrounding district; and even that sovereignty was to be exercised under the control of a British Resident, who was to pay his Majesty the net proceeds, besides a monthly stipend of 90,000 rupees.
These conditions received the sanction of Government, and are recorded in despatches. No treaty is forthcoming; although native tradition a.s.serts that one was executed, but afterwards suppressed; the copy recorded in the palace archives having been purloined at the instigation of the British. This suspicion is entirely unfounded; no treaty was ever concluded with Shah Alam, though his Majesty formed the subject of a clause in the treaty with Sindhia. This is of importance, as serving to show the position to which the Court of Directors was supposed to have succeeded; namely to that of Vakil-mutlak or Plenipotentiary Vicegerent of the Empire, in the room of the Mahratta Peshwa and his once all-powerful Deputy. They were subjects of George III., no doubt, but servants of Shah Alam; money continued to be struck in the Emperor's name, and the laws then prevailing in Hindustan remained in force. The very disclaimer of all intention to usurp the royal prerogative or a.s.sert "on the part of His Majesty (Shah Alam) any of the claims which, as Emperor of Hindustan he might be considered to possess upon the provinces composing the Moghul Empire," is full of significance.
On the 1st November Lake overthrew the brigade of du Drenec in the b.l.o.o.d.y battle of Laswari; and Arthur Wellesley having been equally victorious a second time in the Deccan, Sindhia consented to the Treaty of Sarji-Arjangaon. By that instrument Daulat. Rao Sindhia ceded, besides other territories, all his conquests in the Doab.
Thus pa.s.sed into the hands of British delegates the administration of the sceptre of Hindustan: a sceptre which had been swayed with success as long as it protected life, order, and property, leaving free scope to conduct, to commerce, and to conscience; nor failed in discharging the former cla.s.s of obligations until after it had ceased to recognize the latter.
CHAPTER IV.
CONCLUSION.
Effects of climate - Early immigrants - French and English - Mohammedan power not overthrown by British - Perron's administration - Changes since then - The Talukdars - Lake's friendly intentions - Talukdars' misconduct - Their power curbed - No protection for life, property, or traffic - Such things still dependent on foreign aid - Conclusion.
AFTER many blunderings and much labour, the judgment of history appears to have formed the final conclusion that the physical conditions of a given country will always be the chief determining agents in forming the national character of those who inhabit it; and that the people of one country, transplanted into another, where the soil and the sun act in a manner to which they have not been accustomed, will, in the course of a few generations, exhibit habits of mind and body very different to what characterized them in their original seats.
It is therefore without legitimate cause for surprise that we hear from scholars that the feeble folk of Hindustan are the direct and often unmixed representatives of the dominant races of the world. To begin with the Hindus: the Brahmans and some of the other cla.s.ses are believed to be descended from the brave and civilized peoples of ancient Asia, of whom sacred and profane writers make such frequent mention, of some of the founders of Nineveh and Babylon, and of the later empire of the Medes and Persians, which was on the eve of subjugating Europe when stopped by the Greeks at Marathon and Salamis. Nay, more, the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves, together with the modern inhabitants of Europe, are alike descended from the same grand stock.
The Mohamadans, again, are mainly of three n.o.ble tribes. The earlier Mohamadan invaders of India belonged to the victorious Arabian warriors of the Crescent, or to their early allies, the bold mountaineers of Ghazni and of Ghor; and their descendants are still to be found in India, chiefly under the names respectively of Shaikh and Pathan. A few Saiyids will also be found of this stock.
In later days came hordes of Turks and Mongols (Tartars as they are generically though inaccurately called by Europeans), the people of Janghiz and of Timur, terrible us the locusts of prophecy - the land before them like the garden of Eden, and behind them a desolate wilderness.
To these, again, succeeded many Persians, chiefly Saiyids, or so-called descendants of the Prophet; a later race of Afghans, also called Pathans, and a fresh inroad of Tartars (converted to Islam) who finally founded the Moghul Empire. Under the regime thus established the civilization of India a.s.sumed a Persian type; and the term "Moghul" in the present day, in India signifies rather a Persian than a Turkman or Tartar. They add the word "Beg" to their names, and are usually of the Shiah denomination; as also are the descendants of the Persian Saiyids.
The Saiyids of Arab origin take the t.i.tle of "Mir;" the Pathans are commonly known by the affix "Khan." All but the offspring of converted Hindus represent foreign invasions by races more warlike than the people of India.
All these mighty conquerors, one after another, succ.u.mbed to the enervating nature of the climate of Hindustan, with its fertile soil and scanty motives to an exertion which, in that heat, must always be peculiarly unwelcome.
It is not, however, the heat alone which causes this degeneracy.
Arabia is one of the hottest countries in the world, but the Arabs have at one time or another overthrown both the Roman Empire of Byzantium and the Gothic monarchy of Spain. On the other hand, the lovely climate of Kashmir produces men more effeminate than the Hindustanis, some of whom indeed, notably the peasantry of the Upper Doab, are often powerful men, innured to considerable outdoor labour; their country is far hotter. But the curse of Hindustan, as of Kashmir, and more or less of all countries where life is easy, lies in the absence of motives to sustained exertion; owing to which emulation languishes into envy, and the compet.i.tive instincts, missing their true vent, exhibit themselves chiefly in backbiting and malice. Whatever advantage may be derived by Kashmiris from their climate is shown in the superiority of their intellects.
Hence, after the battle of Panipat, 1761, which exhausted the victors almost as much as it exhausted the vanquished, and left Hindustan so completely plundered as to afford no further incitements to invasion, little other immigration took place; and the effete and worn-out inhabitants were left to wrangle, in their own degenerate way, over the ruined greatness of their fathers. The anarchy and misery to the ma.s.s of the population that marked these times have been partly shown to the reader of these pages.
But there was fresh blood at hand from a most unexpected quarter.
Bred in a climate which gives hardness to the frame (while it increases the number of human wants as much as it does the difficulty of satisfying them), the younger sons of the poorer gentry of England and France, then (at least) the two most active nations of Europe, began to seek in both hemispheres those means of sharing in the gifts of fortune which were denied to them by the laws and inst.i.tutions of their own countries. Their struggles convulsed India and America at once. Still the empire of Hindustan did not fall by their contests there; nor were the valour and ambition of the new comers the only causes of its fall when at last the catastrophe arrived. But when, to predisposing causes, there was now added the grossest incompetence on the part of nearly all natives concerned in the administration, it became inevitable that one or other of the competing European nations should grasp the prize. Any one who wishes to study this subject in its romantic details should refer to Colonel Malleson's two works on the French in India. Living under a better Home Government, and more regularly supported and supplied, the English prevailed.
In sketching a part of the process of subst.i.tuting foreign rule for anarchy, it has been my task to exhibit the main events which caused, or accompanied the preparation of the tabula rasa, upon which was to be traced the British Empire of India. It has been shown that the occupation of the seaboard, and a few of the provinces thereto contiguous, long const.i.tuted the whole of the position; and that it was only in self-protection, and after long abstinence, that the "Company of Merchants" finally a.s.sumed the central power. Upper India, in the meanwhile, stood to their Calcutta Government in a very similar relation to that occupied, successively, by the Panjab and by Afghanistan in later times towards its successors. This, though absolutely true, has been popularly ignored, owing to the accident of Calcutta continuing to be the chief seat of the Supreme Government after the empire had become British; but the events of 1857 are sufficient to show that, for the native imagination, Hindustan is the centre, and Dehli still the metropolis of the Empire. The idea, however, that the British have wrested the Empire from the Mohamadans is a mistake. The Mohamadans were beaten down - almost everywhere except in Bengal - before the British appeared upon the scene; Bengal they would not have been able to hold, and the name of the "Mahratta Ditch" of Calcutta shows how near even the British there were to extirpation by India's new masters. Had the British not won the battles of Pla.s.sey and Buxar, the whole Empire would ere now have become the fighting ground of Sikhs, Rajputs, and Mahrattas. Except the Nizam of the Deccan there was not a vigorous Musalman ruler in India after the firman of Farokhsiar in 1716; the Nizam owed his power to the British after the battle of Kurdla (sup. p. 229), and it was chiefly British support that maintained the feeble shadow of the Moghul Empire, from the death of Alamgir II. to the retirement of Mr. Hastings. Not only Haidarabad but all the other existing Musalman princ.i.p.alities of modern India owe their existence, directly, or indirectly, to the British intervention.
It only now remains to notice, as well as the available materials will permit, what was the social condition of these capital territories of the empire when they pa.s.sed into the hands of the ultimate conquerors.
Perhaps the best picture is that presented in a work published by order of the local Government, more than half a century later, upon the condition of that portion of the country which was under the personal management of the French general.
This record informs us that, having obtained this territory for the maintenance of the army, Perron reigned over it in the plenitude of sovereignty. "He maintained all the state and dignity of an oriental despot, contracting alliances with the more potent Rajahs and overawing by his military superiority, the petty chiefs. At Dehli, and within the circuit of the imperial dominions, his authority was paramount to that of the Emperor.