Certainly on that 16th of September at sunset-time, after the

interview had fizzled out with the exchange of empty titles, 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

kingship?

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 constitutions, 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 principal 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

assaults, and might have withstood four more, had not peace with

honour and a donation of L200,000 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 pronounced 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, passing 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

pronounced 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 L7,000,000, in 1811 it

was L27,000,000.

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 passage 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,

assuring his hearers that it was extremely unlikely that the natives

of India would _ever read the clause_, and ending with an impassioned

assertion 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 asserted 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 passed.

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, L1,000,000 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 scraps 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 passes 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 hardships, ere a

treaty of peace was signed at Segowlie, by which England gained in

perpetuity the magnificent provinces of Kumaon 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 worship, and as such exempt;

while an assessment for municipal 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 horsemen 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 Kumari, 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 Kumari, 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.

They tried to poniard her, she standing calm; but the dagger fell from

the hand of the brother appointed, as one of sufficient rank, to the

deed. Then they tried poison. She drank it three times calmly, bidding

her grief-distracted mother remember that Rajput women were marked out

for sacrifice from birth, and that she owed her father gratitude for

letting her live so long. But the poison refused its work; so, as

calmly, she asked for a _kasumba_ draught to make her sleep. It was

prepared. Sweet essence of flowers, sweet syrup of fruits, concealed

the deadly dose of opium; she laid herself down and slept, never to

wake.

A terrible tale, which merits the comment made on it by old Sagwant

Singh, chief of Karradur, who, riding hard for Oudipore, flung himself

breathless from his horse with the quick query: "Does the princess

live?" And hearing the negative, went on without a pause up the stone

steps of the palace, through the wide courtyard, adown the passage,

till he found Maharajah Bhim upon his throne. Then he unbuckled his

sword.

"My ancestors," rang out the passionate, protesting old voice, "have

served yours for thirty generations. To you, my king, I dare say

nothing, but never more will sword of mine be drawn in your service."

So, laying it with his shield at the feet of the weakling, he left.

A fine old Rajput was Sagwant Singh; one feels glad he said his say.

This, however, is by the way. Nine years after it happened--that

is to say, in 1819--after the war with the Pindarees (which, of

course--since war is ever bred of war in India--involved hostilities

with the Peishwa, with Holkar, with Scindiah, with all the native

states, briefly, who tried to bar the progress of the new master),

Rajputana found itself eager to claim alliance with a power which,

instead as of old protesting against protection, was now not only

willing to grant it, but prepared to make its promise good against all

comers.

For once, then, in the sweeping changes which the year ending in 1819

brought about, the English gave as good as they got. No great battle

had been fought, but Scindiah was humbled, Holkar's aggressions had

been stopped, the Peishwa's very name had disappeared, and on all

sides alliances had been formed--durable alliances, which would no

longer require the sword to enforce them.

And all this arose out of Parliament's hesitating admission that

certain predatory robbers must be restrained, and Earl Moira's wise

interpretation of that scant assent into action which, after two weary

years, settled the great territorial question of India as only it

could be settled; that is to say, as the Earl (afterwards Lord

Hastings) phrases it: "by the establishment of universal tranquillity

under the guarantee and supremacy of England."

But the Gurkha or Nepaulese war, and the third and final Mahratta war,

unfortunately, only form part of Lord Hastings' work. He was not so

happy in dealing with the question of Oude. It had simmered for long:

the Nawab, who had been encouraged by Lord Minto, complaining of the

interference of the Resident; the Resident complaining of obstinate

obstruction on the part of the Nawab. In the middle of the quarrel

Sa'adut-Ali died, leaving treasure, despite his plea of poverty, to

the amount of L13,000,000. He was succeeded easily, quietly, with the

help of British influence, by his eldest son, who, to show his

gratitude, offered one of his father's millions to the Company as a

gift. It was accepted as a loan at the usual rate of interest, 6 per

cent.

But the young Nawab was even more turbulent than his father, and when

a second million was asked for on the same terms as the first, took

the opportunity of practically demanding the withdrawal of the

Resident. Now it is impossible to be harsh with a potentate who has

just loaned you two millions of money out of his private purse.

Without for a moment doubting the decision that Major Baillie the

Resident had been wanting in respect, the fact remains that he went to

the wall, and that the Nawab was set free of all control in his

administration. Furthermore, after a treaty signed in 1816, by which

the loan of the second million was written off against the cession of

a piece of territory scarcely worth the sum, the Nawab was further

encouraged and advised to assume the title of King; thus once for all

asserting his equality with, and not his dependence on, the shadow of

the Great Moghul at Delhi.

So, to the extreme indignation of the latter's sham Court

and the scandal of all true Mahomedans, he proclaimed himself

"Ghazi-uddin-Hyder, King of Oude, the Victorious, the Upholder of Faith,

the Monarch of the Age."

Not such a very poor specimen at that, whether taken at native or

English estimate; for he was at least amiable--a kind, not overclever

princeling, who cultivated the Arts in a dilettante fashion.

For the rest, though the long service--over nine years--of the Marquis

of Hastings was eminently successful, it was not likely that one who

rode rough-shod over the faddists' cry for noninterference at home

could escape without censure. But regular impeachment was impossible

towards one who had actually augmented the public revenues by

L6,000,000 a year! So he escaped the fate of Clive and Warren

Hastings.

He was succeeded by William Pitt (Lord Amherst) after an interregnum

during which a Mr John Adams, armed with supreme, if brief authority,

carried on a crusade against the press which, in view of recent

occurrences, is singularly informing. The censorship had been

abolished by Lord Hastings in rather bombastical language, which

scarcely matched the severe inhibitions that followed against anything

like criticism; the actual result being, that while the name of an

invidious office was abolished, the press was left to face

prosecution. In the case of the _Calcutta Journal_, against which Mr

Adams tilted, the end was deportation of the editor to England!

The Burmese war, however, occupied Lord Amherst until 1826, when

various minor campaigns became necessary; one against a Sikh

mendicant, who announced himself as the last of the Avatars of

Krishna, incarnated for the express purpose of ousting all foreigners

from India. Bhurtpore, also, had to be finally taken, a usurper

expelled, and a six-year-old rajah established on the throne, under

the guidance, naturally, of a British resident. Such things had to be

if the standard of Western ethics was to be enforced in Government.

There remained also Oude, that perennial thorn in the side of those

who had created it. Ghazi-ud-din-Hyder had lent a million and a half

more money to the Company--had lent it at 5 per cent.!--but yet, he

complained, there was no pleasing the English master! There is

something pitiful about the good-natured king's plea that

misgovernment _could_ not exist, because Oude from one end to the

other was cultivated like a garden; there was not even a waste place

in it whereon an army might encamp! And as for the disturbances on the

British borders, was he responsible for the landholders being Rajputs

by tribe, soldiers by profession, and so refusing to pay except by

force? And for what did he pay English soldiers, except to use force?

There was force, anyhow, in his arguments, but his grievances remained

unredressed at his death in 1827, when he was succeeded by his son,

Nasir-ud-din-Hyder.

So, without any great excitement save the Burmese war, Lord Amherst's

Governor-Generalship came abruptly to an end, owing to sudden illness

in his family, which prevented his awaiting any arrangement for his

successor. This is somewhat typical of one who never seems to have

taken any personal interest in Indian questions, who, in fact, seems

to have wearied of the East. He was the first Governor-General who

found a Capua at Simla.

Then, after much striving, Lord William Bentinck, who had been

deprived of the Government of Madras in 1807 in consequence of the

mutiny at Vellore, was appointed in Lord Amherst's place. It was a

great triumph for him, being, as it were, an admission that he had

been unjustly dismissed in the first instance. His administration,

however, did much to justify his early treatment, for there can be no

question that he showed an almost phenomenal want of tact. Indeed, but

for the fact that the final extinction of the monopoly of trade did

not take place until 1835, this chapter would end on the assumption of

office by Lord William Bentinck in 1828, since there can be no doubt

that many of his well-meaning efforts should be included amongst the

causes which led up to the mutiny of 1857. The best plan, therefore,

will be to catalogue them briefly here, and discuss them in connection

with others of a like nature after 1835. The first, which brought him

great disfavour with the military, was not, strictly speaking, his

action, but that of England. His only responsibility for what is

called the half-_batta_ (extra allowance) order is that he did not, as

Lord Hastings and Lord Amherst had done, refuse to obey his superiors.

It was a silly retrenchment, since for the sake of a paltry L20,000 a

year it gave umbrage to a very deserving body of men, who could ill

afford to lose the money. The scheme was condemned by all competent

judges in India as "unwise and inexpedient, fraught with mischief, and

unproductive of good."

But Lord William Bentinck had come out bound hand and foot to economy,

social reform, and missionary effort, so he spent his years in adding

up and subtracting, in framing laws, such as that against _suttee_,

and the forfeiture which, under Hindu law, followed on conversion to a

different faith.

For political work he had but one catchword; the catchword of his

employers--non-interference. The puppet-emperor at Delhi complained

bitterly; his complaint being unheard, he actually sent an agent--no

less a person than Ram-Mohun-Rao, the founder of the Brahma-Somajh,

the modern Theistical sect of India--to plead his cause in England.

But he also was unheard. His mission had been kept secret, and so his

credentials were "out of order."

In Oude, Nasir-ud-din, realising this policy of non-interference,

began a series of petty aggressions against Aga-Mir, the finance

minister, whom the British Government supported. These ended

unsatisfactorily for all parties by the minister being conveyed out of

the reach of Nasir-ud-din's vindictive hatred. The Nawab then refused

to appoint any one in Aga-Mir's place, and, being totally unfit, by

reason of his dissolute habits, to manage the state himself,

everything fell into confusion. Finally, driven, for once, out of

non-interference by the effect of it, Lord William Bentinck not only

refused friendly intercourse if a responsible minister were not

appointed, but told the drunken, disreputable occupier of the throne

himself in so many words, that if he did not mend his ways he would be

deposed.

So far well; but when, appalled by this prospect, Nasir-ud-din

besought advice how to govern, this was refused. The policy of which

the Governor-General was the mouthpiece would not allow him to

interfere!

Humanity is at times hard to understand; in this instance

peculiarly so, unless, as was stated at the time by the respectable

courtiers--and even in that sink of iniquity, Lucknow, there were some

just men--the real object of the English was not to improve

government, but to find an excuse for usurping it.

But in Jeypore, in Jodhpore, in Bundi, in Kotah, and many another

minor state, to say nothing of larger ones, the almost slavish

adherence of Lord William Bentinck to the order he had received

brought strained relations. And yet all the while he was attempting

purely diplomatic _rapprochements_ with outlying states. The Russian

scarecrow had begun to trouble the slumbers of Indian statesmen, and

this curious creature, destined to remain a nightmare for generations,

led to interest in the affairs of Kabul. In Lord Minto's time Mr

Mountstuart Elphinstone had, with great difficulty, met the then Ameer

Shah-Sujah at Peshawar, and arranged the terms of a treaty with him,

but ere this could be ratified Shah-Sujah himself had been turned out

of his throne. He had pleaded for help to recover it; but Lord Minto

being one of the non-interference faction, aid had been refused. The

Ameer had, however, been allowed a pension, on which he had lived in

Ludhiana, a Sikh town on the Sutlej river.

Here Lord William Bentinck found him in 1832, when he had an interview

with Runjeet-Singh, the Sikh king of the Punjab.

There can be little doubt that the question of aiding Shah-Sujah to

recover his throne was mooted by Runjeet-Singh, and was negatived by

the Governor-General; there is also little doubt, however, that _too

much cold water_ was not thrown over the scheme, since Dost-Mahomed,

the Kabul usurper, was suspicioned with Russian proclivities and was

being watched.

But these are minor points compared to the changes which were coming

over the East India Company at home. Its charter expired in 1834, and

the question as to whether that charter should be renewed had to be

answered. It was answered in the negative, and on the 22nd April 1834

India ceased to be a land of restrictions. It was thrown open to the

wide world. During the course of the twenty years which had passed

since the semi-extinction of the Company's power, but 1,324 licences

to go to India had been issued. What proportion of these had been

issued to those whose object was "the introduction of religious and

moral improvements" is unknown, but in 1833 mission work had begun

almost all over India; indeed, the concluding years of the period

between 1813 and 1833 were marked by greatly increased efforts and

results in proselytising the natives. One cause of this being the

shortening of the ocean passage to India by the adoption of the Red

Sea route. On the 20th March 1830 the _Hugh Lindsay_, a small steamer,

left Bombay harbour, arriving in Suez in thirty-two days, and on her

next voyage reduced the time to twenty-two. Thus, before the year

1836, despatches from London arrived in Bombay in two instead of six

months; the time taken now is twelve days.

It may seem extravagant to say that the lessening of sea-sickness

brought about the Indian Mutiny, but taken seriously, it is true. That

is to say, the sudden letting loose on a country which had hitherto

been reserved to especially licensed persons, of all and sundry, the

dregs as well as the cream of the West, together with the removal of

the great personal discomfort and expense of a six months' journey

round the Cape, which had hitherto militated against travel in India,

combined to produce such a change in that country as was bound to

create alarm, distrust, and resentment, amongst the most Conservative

people in the world.

FREEDOM AND FRONTIERS

A.D. 1834 TO A.D. 1850

What was the cause which led England to refuse a continuance of its

charter to the East India Company?

It was the price of tea. Before this, all considerations as to whether

the Company had done its duty to India or not vanish into thin air. As

Mr Mill the historian says succinctly: "The administration of the

Government of India by the East India Company was too exclusively a

matter of interest to India to excite much attention in England." But

with tea it was different. That was a question for every Englishman's

breakfast table. Hitherto China had been debarred from free trade, and

the price of tea was high; therefore monopoly was a bad thing for the

consumer of tea. Q.E.D.

So on the 22nd April 1834, India was thrown open to the world, and

though "John-Company" still ruled its destiny, it did so on a

different footing. For the rest, the story of the dispute concerning

territorial and commercial assets, the haggling over bargains between

the Court of Directors and Parliament, is not edifying, as may be

judged by the fact that the latter suggested the abolition of the

salt-monopoly, not from the slightest consideration for the taxed

native of India, but from a desire to secure a new market for

Cheshire!

One of the first results of the new arrangement was an unseemly

struggle over the filling up of the Governor-Generalship made vacant

by Lord William Bentinck's retirement from ill-health. That the

appointment should have been bestowed on Sir Charles Metcalfe is

certain; he had served India well in many capacities. But parties

objected. Then Mr Mountstuart Elphinstone came into the running, also

Sir Henry Fane, Lord Heylesbury, Lord Glenelg, until at last a

perfectly colourless appointment was made in the person of Lord

Auckland, a most amiable and estimable nobleman, with no experience of

India. He arrived in Calcutta in 1836, the interregnum, during which

Sir Charles Metcalfe had carried on the work, having lasted for over a

year. He immediately started on judicial reform with the aid of a law

commission, of which Mr, afterwards Lord Macaulay, was president.

It was he who drafted the Indian Penal-Code, which, founded on

common-sense and the old Roman Law, remains to this day practically

unaltered, a standing challenge of concise clearness to the confused

medley of old precedent and new practice which so often does duty for

equity in England. While this work was in progress unexpected trouble

in Oude occurred. Nawab Nasir-ud-din-Hyder died suddenly, leaving no

children. It may be remarked that the constant occurrence of

heirlessness amongst the reigning families of India at this time

tells its tale all too clearly. There were two boys favoured by the

Queen-mother, whom the Nawab had once acknowledged, but had since

formally disavowed. He himself had no brothers, and the succession

therefore reverted to the heirs-male of Sa'adut-Ali, his grandfather.

Under British law the next-of-kin would have been the children of an

elder son; under Mahomedan law it was the younger but still living

son. Of this there can be no possible doubt. Looking back on Indian

history, though, as a rule, the failure of direct heirs-male brought

about a general free fight over the succession, a younger uncle has

always claimed above a cousin. Thus in Oude there were instantly three

claimants in the field. The Queen-mother's boy Mura-Jan, the younger

uncle Nasir-ud-daula, and Yamin-ud-daula, who claimed to be son of an

elder uncle, and was therefore a first cousin.

Naturally, the British supported Nasir-ud-daula. Legally, he was the

heir, though after a time another first-cousin-pretender, asserting

that he and he only was the rightful Nawab, actually travelled to

England in order to urge his title. Meanwhile, on the Nawab's sudden

death, old Nasir-ud-daula, the English nominee, had been dragged out

of bed, promptly conveyed to the palace, and left to take an hour or

two's sleep before the fatiguing ceremony of being installed on the

cushion of State.

This was the Queen-mother's opportunity. She nipped in from her

palace at Dilkusha with half the loose riffraff of the town (which in

Lucknow floats about aimlessly awaiting such an opportunity), seized

on the person of old Nasir-ud-daula-it is a wonder they did not murder

him--and promptly put Mura-Jan on the throne; he occupied it for about

one hour and forty-five minutes. Then the British troops having

returned and cleared a way with a few charges of grape, the coronation

of the poor, miserable, by this time nerve-collapsed old uncle went on

in due course!

Small wonder that he signed every obligation which he was asked to

sign. This does not, however, in any way exonerate those who, taking

undoubted advantage of the position, made him sign an unconditional

engagement of submissiveness.

Still, signed it was; and for a very distinct and palpable "good

consideration." Therefore its legality is beyond question.

The year 1836, however, brought up another political question for

decision. The Rajah of Sattarah, quite a small princeling, had given

trouble ever since the English had most unwisely rescued him from

poverty and imprisonment and placed him in power. His proceedings,

eventually, became so outrageous, that the Government deposed him, and

elevated his brother to the vacant throne.

This is mentioned because the incident is made use of as evidence for

the "annexation at any price policy" of the English. In this case, at

any rate, they did not err.

But now, over the horizon of a fairly peaceful India, its statesmen

saw, looming in the distance, the shadow of Russia, and all thought,

all energies, turned to the north-west frontier. Between it and the

territory already swayed by Calcutta lay the Sikh nation and the five

fruitful Doabas of the Punjab. Of these England knew little, save what

she had learnt from Megasthenes the Greek, and Arrian's Anabasis.

One or two courteous interviews had passed with Runjeet-Singh, the

Sikh king, but that was all. It was sufficient, however, to show him

able, a man not to be easily swayed. His life-history confirms this.

Left king at the age of twelve, with a profligate mother who for years

had carried on an intrigue with the chief Minister-of-State, and an

exceedingly ambitious mother-in-law, he managed to rid himself

speedily of their influence, and ere long take his position as

monarch of a far larger kingdom than he had inherited. His conquests

eastwards were, indeed, only checked by meeting with British-protected

states, and he kept an eye steadily on both Kabul and Kashmir. The

former he hoped to gain by using Shah-Sujah, the deposed Ameer, as a

stalking-horse; and as a bribe for help promised, but never given, he

succeeded in extorting from the latter the celebrated Koh-i-nur

diamond. The latter, and Peshawar, he wrested from the Afghans, with

the aid of two French officers who opportunely arrived on the scene.

So much for the Punjab. Below it, still on the western border, lay

Scinde, an independent state. Beyond it, Persia, with which England

already had relations. But what of Afghanistan? There Mr Elphinstone's

attempt to establish connection had ended with Shah-Sujah's flight.

It was determined, therefore, to attempt an embassy to Dost-Mahomed,

his usurping successor, and Sir Alexander Burnes was chosen as the

delegate.

He was a man who had travelled all over Central Asia, who was in every

way qualified for his task. Unfortunately, or fortunately, he was too

well qualified for carrying out the simple commercial instructions

with which the English Government had tentatively, perhaps timidly,

entrusted him. But the discovery of Russian intrigues in full swing at

the Kabul court sent commerce to the right-about. Burnes was in the

thick of diplomacy without delay, and ere long formal questioning and

reply was going on between Russian and English ambassadors regarding

the former's influence on the Indian borderland, which elicited a

categorical denial of any ulterior object on the part of Russia.

But Dost-Mahomed for all that refused to accede to England's somewhat

impertinent request, that he should dismiss the Russian agent from his

court. And so began a quarrel which is barely settled to-day.

Sir Alexander Burnes left Kabul in dudgeon, and almost immediately

after his departure matters came to a crisis by the Persians--avowed

allies of Russia--besieging Herat. Now, Herat was considered by

diplomatists and the military alike the key of India, and in 1838,

after many _pour parlers_, manifestoes, and embroglios, the combined

armies of the tripartite alliance, that is to say, the British, the

Sikhs, and Shah-Sujah, marched on the Punjab to reinstate the latter

on his long-vacated throne in Kabul. In all the long history of India

no more unwarrantable invasion was ever undertaken, though half a

hundred good reasons were given for it at the time, and could be found

for its defence even now by those who fail to see that Dost-Mahomed

was, as Eastern potentates go, quite a decent ruler. There is but one

possible excuse. England chose her career deliberately, thinking not

at all of Afghanistan, but of Russia.

After a halt at Ferozepore, where the allies assembled and where

festivities were held, Runjeet-Singh, an old man now, blind of one

eye, desperately marked with smallpox, and inconceivably ugly, tripped

over a carpet, to the horror of his court (who considered it an evil

omen), and fell flat on his nose at the feet of a big English gun he

was examining; and where, also, Henry Havelock, one of the new school

of the Church-Militant, exclaimed in horror at "the ladies of a

British Governor-General 'watching' choral and dancing prostitutes"

(surely a somewhat over high-toned description of that deadliest of

dull and decorous entertainments, an Indian _nautch_). After all this

a fairly-triumphant march was made through Scinde (where the Ameer of

that country, after a distinct promise that no riverside forts should

be touched, was fairly diddled out of the one at Bukkhur, on the

shameless plea that it stood on an island), through Quetta to Kandahar

and Ghuzni (which made a good resistance); so to Kabul, which was

entered on the 7th August 1839, when Shah-Sujah ran about the passages

of the Bala-Hissar palace like a child, clapping his hands with

delight at finding himself back again after thirty years' absence.

So far good. But, meanwhile, Runjeet-Singh had died, and our rear was

endangered by the almost open enmity of his successor. Thus a

limited garrison, only, had to be left in Kabul; and in addition,

Dost-Mahomed's first flight had proved to be but a prelude to

desperate resistance. Still, armed occupation was held of the town of

Kabul, cantonments were built for the British regiments and sepoys

which formed the garrison, in which the troops passed the winter and

summer of 1841 in comfort. Then came disaster.

What caused the outbreak is a mystery. So far as one can judge, it

began in private revenge upon Sir Alexander Burnes. His house was the

first attacked on the 2nd November 1841 by a mob thirsting for blood

and plunder. He attempted to calm them by harangue. He offered large

sums for his own and his brother's escape, but they were both cut

down, every sepoy murdered, every man, woman, or child on the premises

brutally killed.

And here follows _in petto_ an anticipation of what occurred some

fifteen years later, when a like massacre broke out at Meerut in 1857.

A general paralysis seems to have attacked those in authority. Here,

there, everywhere, in isolated posts, Englishman and sepoy fought

together and fell together bravely; but at headquarters decision

disappeared, and Brigadier Shelton finally settled, weakly, to hold

the cantonments, instead of retiring on the fortified and almost

impregnable Bala-Hissar, where there was a plentiful store of

provision. The mistake was fatal. Within a month a treaty had to be

signed which was practically unconditional surrender. Dost-Mahomed was

to be reinstated; Shah-Sujah allowed to follow his friends back to

India. "The terms secured," writes Sir William McNaghten, "were the

best obtainable." At any rate, at the time, it was hoped that they

would save the lives of some fifteen thousand human beings. But fate

was against it. Sir William McNaghten, failing in a side-intrigue

which, even had it succeeded, would have been barely possible with

honour, was foully murdered, and on the 6th of January about four

thousand five hundred fighting-men and twelve thousand camp followers,

men, women, and children, were driven out into the inclement winter

cold to find their way, as best they could, over peak and pass back to

Hindustan.

The horrors of that terrible march will scarcely bear telling. Over

three thousand found freedom at once by being massacred, wantonly

massacred by mountain tribes in the first pass; the rest, without

food, without fuel, without tents, pressed on, fighting fiercely as

they forced their way eastwards.

It was on the 13th of January that the English garrison at Jellalabad,

looking out up the passes, saw one man swaying in his saddle, scarce

able to keep his seat, urging his jaded, outworn pony eastward, still

eastward!

It was Dr Bryden, the only man who came through. But he brought the

welcome news that some women and children, and a few men, were

prisoners, and so far safe.

Naturally, there was no more question now as to the rights or wrongs

of war. These captives had to be rescued, and punishment meted out to

many murderers. Both objects were accomplished within the year, but

not by Lord Auckland; for Lord Ellenborough succeeded him at the time

of the Kabul disaster, when matters were at their worst. There was

some difficulty in finding a candidate for the throne. Shah-Sujah

himself had in the interval been shot through the head, and his son,

whom the mob of Kabul had first set up as a puppet-king and then

imprisoned, had no stomach for further sovereignty. A younger member

of the family was, however, eventually found willing to face

assassination for the sake of a doubtful crown.

His kingship, which only lasted till the British forces were

withdrawn, at least secured the preservation of the Bala-Hissar, which

otherwise, as a punishment to Kabul, would have been razed to the

ground; as it was, the Great Bazaar, a building entirely devoted to

commerce, was destroyed instead, possibly because Sir William

McNaghten's body had been exposed upon it.

Thus, in 1843, the first Afghan war came to an end with the absurd

incident of the Gates of Somnath. These were supposed to be still hung

at the entrance of Mahomed-the-Despoiler's tomb at Ghuzni. So, with an

odd mixture of sham Orientalism and latter-day romanticism, they were

taken down, carried back to India to form the subject of a most

marvellous effusion addressed to the chiefs and peoples of India,

which goes by the name of "Ellenborough's Song of Triumph," in which

these gates, "so long the memorial of your national humiliation," are

said to have "become the proudest record of your national glory!"

And after all, they were _not_ the Gates of Somnath!

Almost immediately after this the relations with Scinde became

strained. The Ameer had, in truth, just cause of complaint in a breach

of treaty regarding the passage of troops across the Indus, and after

much discussion the sword became the only possible arbiter. So Sir

Charles Napier commenced the war which, conducted by consummate skill

throughout, ended virtually with the victory of Miani and the

annexation of Scinde.

It was towards the end of the next little war, this time with

Scindiah, that Lord Ellenborough was recalled, and Sir Henry Hardinge,

being sent to govern in his stead, found himself instantly plunged in

a war of far greater magnitude with the Sikhs, with whom, after the

death of old Runjeet-Singh, friendly relations had ceased. In truth,

the kingdom was in a state of tumult. The army, which consisted of

almost the whole nation (since every Sikh is by birth and faith a

fighter), realising that the whole power was virtually in its hands,

clamoured for new conquests. Dhuleep-Singh, the heir, was a minor; his

mother, nominally guardian, had no influence, and finally, forced by

circumstances, gave her consent to an invasion of British territory.

It was an unprovoked, and yet not altogether unwelcome assault, and it

met with instant and overpowering reply. On the 13th December 1845 the

Sikh army crossed the Sutlej in force, and on the very same day a

British proclamation was issued, formally declaring that all

possessions of Maharajah Dhuleep-Singh, on the British bank of the

river, were annexed. Swift battle followed. At Moodki on the 18th

December, on the 22nd at Ferozeshah, on the 20th January at Aliwal;

finally, the 10th February saw the last stand made at Sobraon, a

village which stood then on the eastern bank of the sliding river. It

stands now on the western, for the Sutlej has shifted.

Swift, and short, and sure, was the campaign, curiously enough leaving

little of rancour behind it amongst the tall, upstanding Sikhs. "You

were so much better than we were," said an old Sikh worthy, who had

gone through the four defeats, as he showed an infinitesimal slice of

his little finger tip; "just so much--no more! but you were better

led." And the keen old eyes ranged cheerfully over the wide wheat

plain, intersected by silver-shining streaks of sliding river, that

had once been the battle-field of Sobraon, and the old voice went on

exultingly over the tale of how he had knelt to receive the British

cavalry at Aliwal, and knelt on, through three consecutive charges,

until he had fallen unconscious amongst his dead comrades.

A treaty of peace was signed at Lahore twelve days after Sobraon,

which stipulated for the formal cession of the whole Cis-Sutlej

country and an indemnity of L1,500,000, L500,000 of which was to be

paid immediately, and the remaining L1,000,000 to be discharged by the

cession of Kashmir and Hazara.

This practically ended Lord Hardinge's Governor-Generalship, and late

in 1847 Lord Dalhousie took up the office.

The whole of the next year was taken up with a war in Scinde

which spread to the northern half of the Punjab beyond Lahore,

which--despite the cession of Hazara--still remained practically

unsubdued. After the taking of Multan and the defeat of Mulraj's

troops, Lord Gough marched northwards against Shere-Singh, defeated

him at Ramnuggar, fought an indecisive battle against him at

Chillianwala, and finally, on the 21st February 1849, at Gujerat,

completely annihilated the Sikh army, taking all their guns.

Resistance was thus at an end, and the Punjab as far as Peshawar was

coloured red in the map of India.

The proclamation of the Governor-General in announcing the fact is

worthy of quotation as a finish to the long history of English

dealings with Hindustan.

"The Government of India formerly declared that it decreed no further

conquest, and it proved by its acts the sincerity of its profession.

The Government of India has no desire for conquest now; but it is

bound in its duty to provide fully for its own security and to guard

the interests of those committed to its charge. To that end, and as

the only sure mode of protecting the state from the perpetual

recurrence of unprovoked and wasting wars, the Governor-General is

compelled to resolve upon the entire subjection of a people whom their

own Government has long been unable to control, and whom (as events

have now shown) no punishment can deter from violence, no act of

friendship can conciliate to peace."

The question arises, how much of this admirable effusion is strictly

true? In the case of the Punjab there can be no doubt that the Sikhs

began the struggle by wanton and unprovoked assault. But was this

always so? Certainly not always. Yet once begun, there was no

possibility of turning back in England's career of annexation. She had

put her hand to the plough, she was driving a Western furrow over the

uncultivated wilds of the East, and as she sowed and scattered seed,

the necessity for protecting the crop-scanty though it was at

first--arose immediate and insistent.

People say England has brought poverty to India. Perhaps she has.

Poverty is the handmaid of so-called civilisation. But she has also

brought peace--and population!

MANNERS, MORALS, AND MISSIONARIES

A.D. 1850 TO A.D. 1857

Beyond the second Burmese war and the annexation of Oude there is

little to be recorded in this short period of seven years. The former

passed on, as did every war, to annexation; yet once again there seems

little doubt that this was brought about by obstinate refusal to keep

the treaty which ensured "the utmost protection and security" to

British ships trading to Burmese ports.

The question of the annexation of Oude, however, falls into another

category, and is so often cited as one of the chief causes of the

Great Mutiny of 1857, that it is best discussed among the many other

reasons for resentment and rebellion which undoubtedly existed in

India at this time. One of these was the change of manners in the

ruling white-faced race.

In the old days of a good year's voyaging and sea-sickness round the

Cape few women had been found to face it; and so the Englishmen in

India had formed irregular connections with native women, often of

very good birth. These connections, though, of course, contrary to our

marriage laws, were not exactly immoral; they were, indeed, often as

regular as the differing codes of Christianity, Hinduism, and

Mahomedanism would allow. And, naturally, they greatly bridged over

the gulf between the rulers and the ruled.

The short sea-passage changed all this. English ladies came out in

crowds, and seeing themselves surrounded by native sister-subjects who

thought differently to what they did on almost every conceivable

social subject, held up holy hands of horror at everything they saw,

oblivious, apparently, of the obvious fact, that if the native sister

appeared a bogey to them, they also must have been a bogey to the

native sister.

She, however, by her very seclusion, was prevented from airing her

opinion. Not so the Englishwomen and young girls who began to come to

live amongst those who were generally called the heathen. There is no

more charitable and kindly soul than the average British matron, and

in the days before '57 she was beyond measure romantic. This was the

time when, escaping from the stern rule of papa and mama, who had been

ready with bread and water for "miss" if she refused an eligible

_parti_, the English girl looked on Love with a big L, as something

only a trifle less divine than the God whom she worshipped. She was

not, therefore, likely to find anything but militant pity and charity

for a social system which began by ignoring love as synonymous with

passion. Thus the Englishwoman was no factor for peace in the new

order of things. Then the changes inaugurated by the inclusion of the

"introduction of religious and moral improvement" as a licensable

trade had borne much fruit. One has only to read missionary reports to

find out how enormously organised effort to convert the people of

India had increased since 1813, and still more from 1833. In the year

1840 Dr Duff's Christian college at Calcutta numbered over six hundred

pupils, and in 1845 came the added interest to the cause of Missions

brought by the great Evangelical movement, not only in the Church of

England, but throughout all Europe. This wave of religiosity left no

Christian sect untouched, and part of its result was the introduction

into India of a race of Church-Militant officials, admirable in

character, in work, who, despite their faithful performance of duties

to Caesar which demanded absolute impartiality, could not divest

themselves absolutely of their other duty (as they held it) to God;

that is to say, to influence the natives for good--in other words, to

Christianity. Without attempting praise or blame, it is impossible to

deny that the example of such strong and militant Christians as the

Lawrences, as Havelock, as half a hundred other well-known names, to

say nothing of the hundreds of lesser-known ones who in civil stations

and cantonments were encouraging mission work with all their might and

main, must inevitably have attracted the attention of _pandits_ and

_moulvies_, whose profession, whose bare living, was bound up in

so-called heathendom.

Then, ever since the days of Lord William Bentinck, legislation had

favoured the new faith. It will be remembered that he was mixed up

with the mutiny at Vellore--a mutiny, if ever there was one, caused by

abject fear of enforced conversion. His abolition of _suttee_, his

tinkering with Indian law so as to free Hindu converts to Christianity

from disabilities in succession (or as it has been put, "to free them

from the trammels of their former superstitions and secure them in the

full possession of Christian freedom"), had passed muster at the time,

but as their effects became palpable, their interference in matters of

custom and religion was resented. The very inauguration of female

education was an offence, and as the years went on, bringing ever more

and more missionary effort, and, above all, more support to that

effort on the part of the ruling race, fear of wholesale conversion

sprang up amongst the ignorant people, and was carefully fostered by

the priests and preachers who had all to gain and nothing to lose by

revolt.

And behind all this lay slumbering a great resentment. Say what folk

would, be the excuse what it might, the fact remained that the last

hundred years had seen every Indian prince reduced to the position of

a pensioner, his land annexed. And the years between 1850 and 1857

produced a large crop of such annexations and usurpations. To begin

with the petty state of Sattarah. When Pertap-Singh the ruler

(given his chiefship by the British who hunted him up, prisoned,

poverty-stricken) had to be deposed childless, England forebore to

annex, and placed a brother on the cushion of State; but when that

brother, also childless, adopted a son but a few hours before his

death, she refused to recognise his right to do so in regard to the

succession. Such a son was legal heir to personal property, but

Sattarah, being a dependency, could not by Indian law pass by adoption

without the permission of the lord-paramount, which in this case had

not been asked. Legally, she was right; but the sting of annexation

rankled.

Then the case of Kerowli occurred, in which adoption was made without

permission; but here the Governor-General's order was over-ruled by

the Directors, who held that though "Sattarah had been originally a

gift and creation of the British Government, Kerowli was one of the

oldest Rajput states, and merited different treatment." Annexation was

not, therefore, carried out; but the very considerateness of the

decision intensified feeling in the other case.

Following this came the Jhansi case, involving an area of about

2,000 square miles. Here, again, no issue--almost no collateral

relationships--was the cause of an unauthorised adoption which,

because the chiefship was, again, a creation of the English, was held

inadmissible.

Then, as if these three almost forced annexations, occurring in

1849,1852, and 1853 respectively, were not enough to damn British

policy in the eyes of disaffection, yet another case came up for

settlement in 1853; for on the 11th of December died Ragoji-Bonsla,

the Rajah of Berar. He left neither issue nor collateral heir, neither

had he attempted to supply their place by adoption; thus the question

of the state lapsing to the Crown arose in its simplest and clearest

form. The decision was, naturally, that by the Rajah's "death _without

any heir whatever_, the possession of his territories has reverted to

the British Government which gave them"; a decision without any doubt

legal.

Now, ere passing on to the annexation of Oude, which stands on a

totally different footing, it is as well to notice the drift of what

may be read between the lines of this long record of principalities

passing by lack of heirs of the body to the lord-paramount. What does

it mean? Doubtless, it points first to degeneracy, to the fading away

of families which is due to dissolute life. But this life in high

places was no new thing; the English had found it rampant when they

came. Therefore some other reason for the necessity of State

interference must be found. What was this?

Plainly, on the very face of things, the answer is to be found. It was

the order, the law, the freedom from conspiracy, assassination,

self-aggrandisement, which English protection had ensured. In the old

times an heirless rajah of past fifty would have been the centre of a

snatching crowd of nobles, and the strongest would have asserted his

right, and possibly hurried on the death of the dying king, or ever

the lord-paramount had time to interfere; and then a payment in gold

would have satisfied authority! So degeneracy did not matter; a new

family always took the place of the dead one.

Now there was a hard and fast law which had to be obeyed by king and

subject alike; a bitter lesson for any Oriental to learn, whose very

idea of kingship is its superiority to order.

The trouble in Oude began--when did it not begin!

In 1760 Sujah-ud-daula, its hereditary wazir, well beaten by the

Company for aggression on Bengal, ceded Allahabad and Korah, but was

left undisputed master of the rest of his territories. In 1768, again

in consequence of defeat, he was bound over to reduce his army. In

1773 he once more bound himself to further dependence in return for

troops. In 1775 Sujah-ud-daula died, and his son Asaf-ud-daula, in

return for "good consideration," ceded territory as perpetual payment

of the said troops, and afterwards, by various treaties, promised, in

return for the guarantee of the possession, protection, and

administration of Oude, to govern "in such a manner as would be

conducive to the prosperity of his subjects"; also, to act on the

advice of the British Government. Sa'adut-Ali, his successor, ratified

these treaties, and showed, by the mere fact of his amassing treasure

to the amount of L14,000,000 during his reign of fifteen years, that

they were not, at least, pecuniarily hard. Ghazi-ud-din, the next

Nawab or wazir, regained a certain independence, not by treaty, but by

loaning out his father's millions to the Company. The sop of being

allowed to assert his independence of Delhi and call himself King was

thrown to him; but he was no ruler, and the aid of British troops

being refused him, "except in support of just and legitimate demands,"

he defied the treaty which limited his own army, and kept sixty

thousand native troops, two-thirds of whom were entirely without

discipline, living naturally by rapine and robbery. His son

Nasir-ud-din, hopeless debauchee, continued and increased these

evils, drawing down on himself the solemn warning of Lord William

Bentinck in 1829, that deposition must surely follow on such misrule.

Unfortunately, however, advice how to rule was refused, and on

Nasir-ud-din's death--of course without issue--advantage was taken of

the accession of the old man--almost in his dotage--Nasir-ud-daula, to

obtain a fresh and still more stringent treaty, by which, if misrule

continued, the British Government reserved the '_right to administer,

rendering account to the Nawab_,' and so far as possible maintaining

existing forms so as to '_facilitate the future restoration of power

to its rightful owner_.' In other words the Nawab was, if

contumacious, to be put under trustees for the time. This was in 1837.

At Nasir-ud-daula's death in 1842 his son succeeded, and in 1847

another son rose to the throne by his brother's death--of course

without issue. Now Wajid-Ali-Shah, the last Nawab or King of Oude, was

utterly worthless. One has but to read the journal of the Resident,

General Sleeman, to recognise how hopeless was the problem of peace,

prosperity, or progress, under his rule. Surrounded by fiddlers,

prostitutes, poetasters, eunuchs, he wasted half the revenues on these

creatures, by whom he was led about, a silly imbecile, with drugged

brain and diseased body.

"There is not, I believe," writes General Sleeman--a man of infinite

knowledge of the native, infinite sympathy with them--"another

Government in India so entirely opposed to the best interests and most

earnest wishes of the people as that of Oude now is. People of all

classes have become utterly weary of it."

No better case for deposition, for the removing of a whole people from

the grip of fatuous immorality and crass misrule, could be found than

this; but the means chosen to effect the desirable consummation were

mean in the extreme. There were two definite treaties regarding the

government of Oude. The one signed in 1837, gave as the punishment for

misrule, the placing of the administration _under trustees only_. That

signed in 1801 gave a guarantee of British protection in return for

the cession of certain territories, _provided the administration of

Oude coincided with the advice of the Company_. In this case,

therefore, the only penalty was palpably the _withdrawal of

protection_.

Neither of these penalties satisfied the desire for a total change of

policy. Instead of saying this openly, instead of boldly running up

the flag of England, and saying: "This passes! It can no longer be

permitted, that, under the protection of England such vice, such

fraud, such extortion, such downright devilry, should exist. This

crazy, imbecile, lecherous, drunken scoundrel shall take his pension

and cease to be a tyrant." Instead of all this, with at least some

backbone of righteous indignation to carry it through, Lord Dalhousie

the Governor-General and his advisers informed the Nawab that the

treaty of 1837 had never been ratified in England, but that by some

mistake the fact had never been notified to him! And this after Lord

Hardinge in 1847 had threatened the Nawab with the penalty laid down

in that treaty, and no other!

It is almost incredible! But there is more to tell. By thus setting

the treaty of 1837 aside, that of 1801 remained, under which the

English had no power to do more than withdraw their protection from

Oude. Thus annexation stood less justified than ever, except on the

plain ground of the greatest good of the greatest number.

Oude was annexed in 1856. It was the recruiting-ground of a large

portion of our native armies, and there is no doubt whatever that we

have here the great political cause of disloyalty. In the previous two

or three years, also, many measures had been passed to rouse religious

resentment and suspicion, such as the Hindu widows re-marriage Act,

and the Act to remove all forfeiture of property due to a change of

religion. Nor were these things, as of old, too remote to touch on the

common lives of the people. In Lord Dalhousie's term of office alone

4,000 miles of electric telegraph wires had spread a network over

India, railways were every day eating into the heart of the land, a

road, metalled, duly laid out for posting, stretched 2,000 miles from

Culcutta to Peshawar, schools were starting up in the rural districts,

and letters--stamped letters--carrying God knows what of lies born of

fear or fraud, were being delivered for a trifle to almost every town

and hamlet in India.

A mighty change this, bringing with it at every point the defiling

touch of the Feringhi.

Nor was this all. Government was changing. It might be for the

better--at any rate, it could not be for the worse--but still it was

strange. The man to whom the revenue would in future be paid would

have a white face, and that in itself was disturbing.

Yes! without doubt, the West was encroaching fast

Oude, it has been said, was the great recruiting-ground of our native

cavalry, but also for our table attendants. The first went home to

hear tales of annexation, of order which gave the brotherhood-of-arms

that had remained at home no chance of plunder as in the past. The

latter took home with them on their holidays long tales of the

mem-sahibas, and the sahibs' command that all servants should attend

family prayers; and of the _bakshish_ of kindness to be gained by

professing interest in the new faith.

So, fostered by professional agitators, by disappointed

claimants--even as the present unrest is fostered in India

nowadays--the indefinite fear of something grew in the years between

'fifty and 'fifty-seven.

THE GREAT MUTINY

A.D. 1857 TO A.D. 1859

Heaven knows there were not wanting signs and portents in India before

"'fifty-seven" which might have put statesmen on their guard--had they

known of them.

But the terrible fact is that they did not know of them. Why? Because

those whose duty it was to keep their fingers on the pulse of the body

corporate, whose duty it was to note every passing symptom of the new

organism of whose life so much remained to be learnt, did not, as a

rule, know enough of the language of India; the language by which

alone they could gather information at first hand.

Reading the records of these fateful two years, plodding through

question and answer in many a weary enquiry or trial in which long

pages of evidence are given by officers who required an interpreter in

dealing with the men under them, the connection comes home

startlingly, that the greatest cause of the Indian Mutiny was the

ignorance of Englishmen. And this much is certain; that in every case

where incipient rebellion was quelled, where officers seemed to have

had some hold over their subordinates, the influence came through

"knowledge of the vernaculars."

Yet so great was the ignorance of England, that even General Hearsay,

a man noted for his tolerant friendliness with his sepoys, could write

on the 11th February 1857: "We have at Barrackpore been dwelling on a

mine ready for explosion."

Still some there were who saw, who feared and even gave expression to

their fears, like Sir Charles Metcalfe.

"I expect to wake some fine day and find India lost to the English

Crown."

Fateful words, which might have come true but for the national

characteristic of Englishmen: their readiness to die in order to

retrieve the mistakes they have lived to make.

What, then, were those signs. There were many. Chief amongst them the

steady distribution northwards and westwards of the hearth-baked cake

which passed from the hands of one village watchman to the other, with

the mysterious message? "For the elders; from the south to the north,

from the east to the west." What did it mean? Heaven knows. Most

likely it was merely an attempt to arouse in the calm, steadfast lives

of the peasants in their fields, something of the unrest which was

being felt wherever native life impinged upon the life of the new

master. It failed, of course. Throughout the whole Mutiny, the India

of the wide wheat-fields, the flooded rice-patches, the sugarcane

brakes, the tall millet-stretches, and the snow-tufted cotton bushes,

dreamt on peacefully.

Then there was the general grievance, started craftily in Calcutta

and carried throughout every native regiment in India, of the

grease-defiled cartridges. Was the tale true or untrue? In the

beginning, at Dum-Dum, there may have been a possibility of suet

smearing. Afterwards there was none. But that mattered little.

Agitators, professional agitators, were abroad, and in India no lie is

too gross to be believed.

Then the commissariat flour was defiled purposely by bone dust--(it

may have been of malice prepense, for agitation in India _sticks at

nothing_); no righteous man could eat of it and live. This was a dish

prepared for the high-caste Brahmins, and Kshatriyas of Oude; and for

the Mussulmans a like poisoned _plat_ was made ready by the English

shiftings and shufflings over the annexation of that country and the

deposition of its king.

Taking this, and a like anger from every decadent court in India, the

absolute brutality of the Mutiny ceases to be inexplicable. Every

scoundrel in India was against us. Doubtless, honest dread of

wholesale conversion, even a sense of duty, drove many fairly honest

men to murder; but the whole Mutiny was, so to speak, engineered by

lust of power which had passed.

The 34th Native Infantry began the ball at Barrackpore, about 100

miles north of Calcutta, and so within reach of the priestly power

that gathers always round Mai-Kali's famous and bloody shrine. Thanks

to General Hearsay's prompt action, it was quelled. The story of the

old man's gallop across the parade-ground, revolver in hand,

accompanied by his protesting son as aide-de-camp, is well worth

telling, but there is no time for it here. Then fires began to break

out in cantonments all over India, showing a state of unrest, which

made old General Hearsay give the warning so early as the 18th of

April, that "the Hindoos, generally, are not at present trustworthy

servants of the State."

By the 2nd of May his words were found true in Lucknow, where a

regiment of irregular cavalry--part of the late Nawab's marauding

army--mutinied openly over the greased cartridge question--which had

now so openly become a pretence--and was disarmed by Sir Henry

Lawrence's prompt action. But India had not an indefinite supply of

heroes and hard-headed old campaigners ready and able to cope with

danger, and the 10th May at Meerut found hopeless, helpless weakness.

In order to abate the growing grievance of the cartridge, orders

had been issued that they were no longer to be bitten as of old,

but torn, thus obviating, it was thought, all possible danger of

caste-defilement. It was a mistaken order, since it gave credence to

the lie of their being greased at all. Consequently, the 3rd regiment

of Light Cavalry (Oude-recruited almost to a man) refused even to

handle them. On the 9th of May, eighty-five men, condemned to ten

years' penal servitude for mutiny, were, by General Hewitt's senseless

severity, degraded publicly before the whole garrison, and marched off

to prison; he the while watching the proceedings complacently from his

buggy, for he had already been removed from the Peshawar command on

account of physical unfitness for duty.

Ere twenty-four hours had passed, he proved himself also mentally

unfit to grapple with a great emergency. Meerut was in flames, women

and children lying murdered, yet His Majesty's 60th Rifles, the 6th

Dragoon Guards, the European Artillery, and no small loyal contingent

from the native regiments, were cooped up, inactive; not even one man

sent to warn Delhi, but 30 miles away!

How the heart aches as one reads of brave men on their knees begging

for a squadron! Only a troop! For a gun! for anything! wherewith to

dash down the broad, white road, and guard the way to Delhi--begging,

and being refused!

All one can say is that, inadvertently, General Hewitt did good

service to his country, in that his folly precipitated, and made

premature, an outbreak which, had it gone on to full growth, would

surely have lost us India for a time.

"To Delhi! To Delhi!" That was the one cry of the half-dazed

mutineers, feeling freedom full in their faces; unexpected,

unhoped-for freedom. Yet, even so, the old habit was strong on them.

They must have a master; if the new one hid like a coward, they must

find another. And at Delhi was the representative of the House of

Timur, of Akbar, whose memory still lingered in the hearts alike of

Hindu and Mahomedan. He, the man without a State-religion, the man who

had held the balance true, to whom all religions equal, was master

indeed! Whether old Bahadur-Shah, his degenerate descendant, who since

Akbar II.'s death had dozed and dreamed away a drugged life full of

causeful and causeless complaints, was in the plot beforehand, or

whether it took him by surprise to find himself acclaimed King instead

of Puppet, is a moot point. All that is to be known of this is, that a

nine months' trial--a trial, be it remembered, by a victorious,

autocratic accuser which thus, in a country like India, where strength

ever goes to the strong, could have its pick of witnesses--failed to

find evidence of complicity.

Not that it mattered, save to one poor, dottled old man saved thus

from the hangman's noose, whether he knew or did not know. Events

marched with terrible rapidity, murderous certainty, whether the

palace gave orders for them or whether it watched, stupefied,

expectant. The Ridge was swept clear of Englishmen, women, children,

save for the few who sought refuge in the Flagstaff Tower, thus

deferring for a time their inevitable fate. Dawn had brought the first

troopers to shoot down the captain of the palace guards and savagely

to cut to pieces Simon Fraser, the Commissioner, who attempted to

harangue them, and all day long massacre had gone on unabashed; but

even the blood-drunken assassins paused and held their breaths when at

sunset, with a great roar, a shaking of solid earth which by force

made the bodies of the mutineers shiver, the "Glorious Nine" in the

Arsenal sent their message of defiance to the skies. Truly, that

blowing-up of the magazine by the "Nine"-by Willoughby, Forrest,

Scully, Buckley, and five others--may be likened to the roar of the

British Lion, as yet half-asleep.

It was the only note of defiance that was heard at Delhi for five long

weeks.

Women and children were murdered; the Palace, roused from its

dreamings, took the goods the Gods gave--and small blame to it, seeing

how coincident had been the dwining of the Moghuls' power with the

widening of English influence; the mutineers looked in each others

faces, almost appalled at their own success; yet still the master made

no sign. Truly had it been said that their rule was but to be one

hundred years, and was not this the centenary of Plassey, when

Sabat-Jung, the "Daring in War," had first laid finger on Hindustan?

If the "Daring in War" had been here now! That was a thought which

surely must have been in the minds of many of these hereditary

soldiers whose fathers may have fought against Clive. But there were

no such sahibs nowadays; Suraj-ud-daula--on whom be peace!--had said

sooth when he held the English but a small nation--scarce ten thousand

warriors all told!

In good sooth, however, there was some excuse for inaction. Of

personal courage--take a stronger word and say heroism--there was no

lack, but of national preparedness, nothing. Mutiny spread like

mushroom spawn in the dark, and everywhere took authority by surprise,

so holding back the power which otherwise would have been free for

giving help where help was needed. Fortunately, some places found a

man able and willing to take the lead. At Benares, two hundred

Europeans faced and overpowered two thousand sepoys, chiefly owing to

the personal vitality of Colonel Neill, and at Lucknow Sir Henry

Lawrence, after crushing one rebellion, was calmly making his

preparations for the next, which he knew must come ere long. Whether

in his sagacious head lay the thought that by holding Lucknow at all

costs he might lessen the pressure of Delhi, and so divert the

attention of some mutineers from that central point, who can say? But

his action undoubtedly saved the whole situation. Had Lucknow--the

defenders--gone, thus setting free the hordes of rebels investing it,

the forlorn hope of attackers who clung to the Red Ridge of Delhi in

almost helpless defiance all the long hot summer could not have held

their own.

So when the question is raised as to which heads the list of

importance in this history of the Mutiny--the Defence of Lucknow or

the Forlorn Hope of Delhi--the only possible answer is, that they both

form part and parcel of the one desperate effort to retain hold of

Empire in India.

The fact that a whole month elapsed ere the blow given at Meerut was

returned, made the task of the Red Ridge a harder one. But for the

loyalty of the Punjab the counterblow might have been even longer in

coming. Sir John Lawrence, however, was at Lahore, and none of the

Lawrences ever failed their country. Still, Fate was unkind, and

Englishmen--brave, patriotic Englishmen--still more unkind

in their lack of comprehension. When the blow was finally struck at

Budli-keserai, and the mutineers ran pell-mell for Delhi, 6 miles off,

they were not followed, though the Kashmir and the Mori gates were

open wide, though the populace were waiting, waiting, watching for the

master's return. But we condemned Delhi unheard. We held every man in

it a rebel, and so, as night fell, the open gates were closed once

more. How many men's life-blood was spilt thereinafter in trying to

open them as wide again? God knows. So the army clung to the Red Ridge

instead, and as the heat grew and the rocks seemed to blister and the

sunshine to scorch, half of it gave up the struggle for a quiet sleep

in the shadow of Earth's breast. Even the generals died; but the

change of command brought no change in action, until, on the 5th of

August, a tall, lank, black-bearded man rode into camp ahead of the

relief column with which he had marched from Peshawar. It was John

Nicholson.

By a curious coincidence, a faint echo of the challenging roar which

Willoughby and Forrest, Buckley and Scully, had sent to the skies just

three months before, greeted his entry as the powder factory in the

rebel camp blew up. But this was no challenge; it was a salute. Within

ten days of the arrival of the four thousand who had come to relieve

the six thousand on the Ridge, the battle of Nujufghur had been won.

On this occasion the troops under Nicholson marched 36 miles through a

morass, and fought a desperately hard fight in six-and-thirty hours.

But Nicholson did not spare others, because he did not spare himself.

Then ensued a wait of nine days, ere the siege-train arrived; a wait

that was full of work. The man saw what had to be done, and made up

his mind to do it, despite all difficulties placed in his way; for he

was but six-and-thirty, and the older officers had not his fire, his

dash.

It was on the 14th of September 1857, at three o'clock in the grey

dawn, that the assault of Delhi commenced: by noon it was taken, but

the man who had taken it lay shot through the breast. He had attempted

the impossible. He had seen his own regiment--Jacob's rifles, the 1st

Bengal Fusileers--hesitate, and hesitate perhaps rightly, seeing that

the storming of that lane by the Burne bastion had been attempted many

times and failed. So he had given the old call, "Forward, Fusileers!

Officers to the front!" and had led the way.

The rush did not fail that time. The Burne bastion was taken, but the

heart and soul of the man who had arisen for this purpose had orders

for recall. John Nicholson lay dying.

He lived to see the whole city taken, the English flag floating over

the Palace. Concerning the charge that drunkenness amongst the English

army was the cause of the five days' delay in achieving this end, much

has been written. Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, who was on the staff,

has given an authoritative denial to this charge, by stating that he

did not see a single drunken man throughout the day of the assault,

although in the "discharge of his duty, he visited every position held

within the walls."

This sounds satisfactory, were it not for the fact that this

inspection was immediately followed by a general order for fatigue

parties to destroy all liquor found in the shops (though some of it

was urgently needed by the hospital); and also for the subsequent

despatch which says, three days later, that an attempt to take the

Lahore gate had failed, "because of the refusal of the European

soldiers to follow their officers."

But Delhi was taken, and, practically, the Mutiny was at an end. For

the sepoys could not live without a master, and the master, a

trembling, distracted old man, had given himself up from his

hiding-place in his great ancestor Humayon's tomb, to Major Hodson, of

Hodson's Horse. Concerning the yielding up of, and the subsequent

shooting down of, the Delhi princes, much again has been written.

Whether honourably or treacherously given, they richly deserved their

fate; but the validity of the excuse that the shooting down was a

sudden necessity which arose out of the fact that rescue was attempted

while Major Hodson was conveying them under escort to Delhi, is

fatally injured by a tiny scrap of evidence, irrefutable absolutely.

Hodson's favourite orderly, in telling the story in after years,

invariably gives this detail: "Prince Abul-bakr wore a talisman on his

arm; so I said to Hodseyn-Sahib: 'Wait a bit, Huzoor! to kill him with

that on will bring ill-luck. I'll take it off ere we shoot him.'"

No hurry there, no stress of circumstances surely, to make the

immediate use of a revolver necessary?

But, once again, Delhi was taken. "If ever India needs a deed of

daring done, John Nicholson is the man to do it." So had said a

comrade-in-arms years before, and now the deed was done. Delhi, which

had focussed rebellion for four long months, was taken by assault.

And how of defence?

Lucknow still held out, despite the death of the man who had made

defence possible, for Henry Lawrence died from a shell-wound on the

4th July; but he left stout hearts behind him. And then, with all

justice be it said, the besiegers were but half-hearted. They must

have been so, else how could a scant garrison of fifteen hundred, in a

weak position, with scarce a palisade in some places between them and

the foe, have held their own against close on twelve thousand

soldiers, backed by the wildest, wickedest, most wanton town-rabble in

all India? And the population of Lucknow runs into hundreds of

thousands.

Meanwhile, English troops on their way to China had been stopped and

diverted to India by telegraph; England, grasping the magnitude of the

disaster, was sending out regiment after regiment, and divisions were

being formed up and sent hither and thither to quell and to punish.

Amongst the commanders of these, Henry Havelock stands first, and at

the head of a movable column, started for Cawnpore in July. Too late

to save the beleaguered garrison, pent up foolishly in untenable

entrenchments; too late even to save the horrible tragedy of the well

at Cawnpore, into which, by the wanton wickedness of a courtesan, two

hundred English women and children were thrown, after being foully

murdered.

They did not, however, die in vain; for from the moment the news of

the awful massacre reached the English camps there was no more

hesitation. Not by God, but by the slaughter-house at Cawnpore, every

man swore that retribution should be bitter and deep. How deep, how

bitter it was, it is not well to say. Let the dead past bury its dead.

It was hard for the British soldier to believe that the peasants whose

villages he entered in his forced marches scarcely knew that war was

abroad. But so it was. Within 20 miles of Delhi itself there are

villages which passed through the Great Mutiny time knowing no more of

it than that "the Toorkh"--the bugbear of Indian rustic life--had

appeared again. That sometimes with a dark face, sometimes with a

white one, he appeared, plundered the grain-stores, perhaps cut down a

man or two, mayhap ravished a woman, and then disappeared. That was

all. To the vast, the overwhelming majority of the people of India,

that was all!

But to those who had sworn by the festering, blood-stained well at

Cawnpore, all life seemed bound up in those two thoughts: "Will Delhi

fall ere we reach it to help?" "Will Lucknow hold out ere we can

relieve it?"

There was so much to be done. All over the country isolated

resistances were staring death in the face bravely. At Arrah, half a

dozen civilians held a miserable thatched bungalow for days, almost

amusing themselves in its defence, strengthening its possibilities

with mud from the garden, and using their sporting rifles with deadly

effect on their foes. In another place a magistrate used his bulky

files to fortify the public office roof, writing afterwards to report

coolly that for impenetrability he could recommend a good criminal

case, full of hard swearing.

All this, and hundreds of other heroisms, filled up the long hot

summer of '57. The rains fell copiously, the crop was a bumper one,

the peasants, mercifully, had no time to think, even, of aught save

its harvesting and husbanding; there was so much to be done.

On the 25th of September, just five days after the final fall of

Delhi, Havelock and Outram, with a small force, had pushed their way

through to Lucknow, but, though the garrison was relieved, the

generals did not feel themselves strong enough to march out and face

the rebels. So once more, but now heartened up by the certainty of

success which came to every Englishman in India with John Nicholson's

daring deed, Lucknow waited for more help.

It came with Sir Colin Campbell's force on the 16th of November, when,

leaving Outram to hold the Alumbagh with three thousand five hundred

men, the general marched back as he had come, triumphantly carrying

with him the women, the children, and the sick.

Thus the Defence had ended, the Attack had succeeded, and only

Retribution remained.

By this time the Delhi column, set free from its task, had marched

southwards for further assault. Agra, Jhansi, Central India generally,

had to be settled, and settled they were satisfactorily.

By the 11th of May 1858 the Mutiny had disappeared, as the mutineers

themselves had disappeared on that fateful day in late September 1857,

when, having retreated--some fifty or sixty thousand strong--from

Delhi to the plains about Agra, the dusk found them encamped, still

coherent, still resolved on struggle, and the night glittered with the

watch-fires of a vast army. But the dawn, coming cloudily,

reluctantly, found only the dead ashes of a resolve that had passed in

the night; the men who had made it had vanished into thin air. They

were hurrying back to their homes, eager to be found peacefully at

work when the master should once more come on his tour of inspection.

The 2nd of August in that same year a bill for the "Better Government

of India" passed into law.

It had eighty-five sections, but its general object was to transfer

the whole administration of India from the Company to the Crown.

Whether better government has resulted, or not, is a question which it

is to be hoped the English reader of this mere sketch of Indian

history may be more qualified to judge than he (or she) was before the

perusal of these slight pages.

INDEX

Abul-faiz,

Abul-fazl,

Agriculture,

Ajata-sutru,

Akbar,

Ala-ud-din,

Alexander,

Alighur,

Ali-Verdi-Khan,

Allah-ud-din,

Altamish,

Anabasis,

Anangpal,

Ancient Age,

Andhra,

Antivivisection,

Architects,

Architecture,

Arcot,

Arrian,

Aryan,

----gods,

----laws,

Asaf-daula,

Asaf-Jah,

Asoka,

Assaye,

Astronomy,

Asva-medha,

Attock,

Auckland, Lord,

Aurungzebe,

Babar,

Bactrians,

Bahmani dynasty,

Baji-rao,

Battlefield,

Beas,

Begums,

Begum Sumroo,

Benares,

Bentinck,

Bernier's views,

Bhattinda,

Bhim-si,

Bhishma,

Bimbi-sara,

Bindu-sara,

Birbal,

Black Hole,

Board of Control,

Bodh-Gya,

Bo tree,

Brahmana,

Brahmans,

Bucephalus,

Buddha,

Buddhism,

Buddhist Councils,

----Creed,

Bussy,

Byram I.,

----II.,

----III.

Campaigns of the Crescent,

Carnatic,

Censorship,

Chandra-gupta I.,

----II.,

Chaos,

Character of Hindus,

Charter,

Chikandin,

Child, Sir John,

Chitore,

Christianity,

Church establishment,

Chytuc,

Clive,

Coins,

Coote,

Cornwallis, Lord,

Cuttack,

Dalhousie, Lord,

Darius,

Dark Ages,

Dasyas,

Dekkan,

Delhi,

Deva-datta,

Devastated India,

Dharnia Sutra,

Didda,

Doaba,

Drama,

Draupadi,

Dupleix,

Eastern knowledge,

East Indian Companies,

Ellenborough, Lord,

English administration,

----army,

----encroachments,

----grip on India,

----laws,

----motive,

----travellers,

Epic period,

Faizi,

Fatehpur Sikri,

Ferghana,

Ferishta,

Feroze Toghluk,

First grants,

Fortunata, Princess,

Francis, Philip,

French and English,

----Companies,

Frontiers,

Ganga,

Ganges,

Geography,

Ghazi-ud-din,

Ghiass-ud-din,

Ghori,

Ghuznevide dynasty,

Ghuzni,

Godeken,

Gold,

Golden Age,

Gondophares,

Grammarians,

Greased cartridge,

Great Mauryas,

----Moghuls,

Greed of gold,

Greek influence,

Gupta Empire,

Hamida,

Hamir,

Hardinge, Lord,

Harsha,

_Harsha-charita_,

Hastinapur,

Hekataios,

Hemu,

Herat,

Hiuen T'sang,

Horse sacrifice,

House of Sur,

Humayon,

Hydaspes,

Hyder-Ali,

Hymns,

Impeachments,

Indian agriculture,

----architecture,

----geography,

----knowledge,

----literature,

----lost river,

----morality,

----philosophy,

----policy,

----religions,

----rivers,

----secretiveness,

Indo-Bactrian,

Indo-Parthian,

Invasion, Aryan,

----Bactrian,

----Mahomed,

----Mongolian,

----Parthian,

----Sakas,

----Yuehchi,

_Jaghirs_,

Jahangir,

Jainism,

Jaipal,

Janaka,

Jesuits,

Jeysulmer,

Jhelum,

Jingi,

Jodhpur,

Johar,

Jullunder,

Kabul,

Kafur,

Kalidasa,

Kalingar,

Kandahar,

Kanishka,

Kapila,

Karna,

Kauravas,

Khilji dynasty,

King's duties,

Kishna Kumari,

Kosala,

Kshatriya,

Kutb-din-Eibuk,

Kutb Minar,

Labourdonnais,

Lahore,

Lake, Lord,

Lally,

Lawrence,

Lost river,

Love,

McNaghten,

Madras,

Magadha,

Mahabharata,

Mahmud Ghuzni,

----ambition,

----greed,

Mahomed,

----death of,

----Ghori,

----Toghluk,

----treachery of,

Mahratta,

Manes,

Mangalore,

Marvellous Millenium,

Maurya,

Megasthenes,

Mercenaries,

Middle Age,

Mihr-un-nissa,

Mir-Jaffar,

Missionaries,

Mobarik,

Moghul,

Moira, Earl of,

Monism,

Monopoly,

Mornington, Lord,

Mutiny,

Nadir, invasion of,

Naga,

Nagarkot,

Nanda dynasty,

Nasir-ud-daula,

Nasir-ud-din,

----,

_Nawa-ratani_,

Nawab of Bengal,

New Rajagriha,

Nine gem necklace,

----Nandas,

Nizam,

Nuncomar,

Nurjahan,

Nyaya,

Omichand,

Oude,

Oudipur,

Outlying provinces,

Padmani,

Palibothra,

Pandu,

Paniput,

Parthians,

Pataliputra,

Patna,

Peace of Aix la Chapelle,

Permanent settlement,

Persistency of creed,

Personality,

Pertap,

Pillars of Asoka,

Pirates,

Plassey,

Pondicherry,

Portuguese,

Porus,

Prithvi-Raj,

Private trade,

Punjab,

Puranas,

----creed,

Queen Elizabeth,

Rajagriha,

Rajputni heroism,

Rajputs,

----confederacy,

----resistance,

Ramayana,

Razia Begum,

Reinhardt,

Religion,

Rig-Veda,

Rock edicts,

Sa'adut-Ali,

Sabaktagin,

Sai-nair,

Sakas,

Salim,

Samudra-gupta,

Sanchi,

Sandracottus,

Sankhya,

Sanwat era,

Saraswati,

Scythians,

Seleukos Nikator,

Self-choice,

Serpent kings,

Ses-naga kings,

Shahab-ud-din,

Shahjahan,

Sidi Dervish,

Sikhs,

Siva-ji,

Sivalak,

Slave kings,

Smith,

Soma,

Somnath,

Sonput,

St Thomas,

Successions,

Sunjogata,

Suraj-ud-daula,

Susceptibility to personal equation,

Sutra,

Syyeds,

Taj,

Takshaks,

Taksila,

Tanjore,

Tartar dynasties,

Taxiles,

Teetotalism,

Teignmouth Shore,

Thaneswar,

Timur,

----, cruelty of,

Tippoo-Sultan,

Toghluk dynasty,

Toghlukabad,

Toork,

Trichinopoly,

Trumpet-flower City,

Ujjain,

University,

Upanishads,

Vaisasika,

Vedanta,

Vedas,

Vellore,

Vikramaditya,

Vyan-Mata,

Warren Hastings,

Watson,

Wazir-Ali,

Wellesley, Marquis of,

----, Arthur,

White Huns,

Woman's plea,

Yoga,

Yuehchi,

Yunani system,

Zemindar,

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End of Project Gutenberg's India Through the Ages, by Flora Annie Steel