[76] This was in accordance with the instructions I had received, and
most assuredly marks the character of the proceeding. Yet it has been
stated, I was immediately, _before investigation_, to seize the persons
of the principal offenders.
[77] This was afterwards discovered to be a fabrication.
[78] Post.
[79] I had watched an opportunity of making this communication in the
manner I thought would have most effect. I am accused by the Government
of Fort St. George of never having made it.
[80] Vide page 149.
[81] I had received authority to proceed (without waiting for my
colleagues) in this inquiry. Lieutenant-Colonel Berkeley had, indeed,
been prevented from attending by a severe illness.
No. III.
TO
THE HON. SIR G. H. BARLOW, BART. & K.B.
GOVERNOR IN COUNCIL.
Fort St. George.
HONOURABLE SIR,
I have this day transmitted to the Commander-in-Chief of the forces
an account of the inquiry into the proceedings of the officers at
Masulipatam, previous to my assuming the command at that station. I
now consider it my duty to report every event that occurred during my
command of that garrison. It is, however, essential to my own character
and to the information of Government, that I should state the peculiar
circumstances under which I proceeded on this duty, as well as the
impressions which existed at that moment on my mind, respecting your
intentions not only regarding the garrison of Masulipatam, but the
whole army; as it is with reference to those impressions alone that my
conduct in the discharge of this delicate and important duty can be
judged.
I received a message to attend at your Gardens on the 1st July; and
was informed, when I arrived there, of the mutiny which had occurred
at Masulipatam, and of an improper and disrespectful remonstrance
which you had that day received from the Company's officers of the
subsidiary force in the Deckan. You did me the honour to ask my opinion
on both subjects; and I suggested, that an officer of rank should be
immediately ordered to Masulipatam, to inquire into, and report upon,
the proceedings of the officers of that garrison; and that a letter
should be written to the commanding officers of the subsidiary forces
at Hyderabad and Jaulnah, informing them of your having received, with
regret and disapprobation, a Memorial from the officers under their
command, soliciting that you should rescind the orders of the 1st of
May; and pointing out, in the most forcible manner, the dangerous
tendency of such addresses, and the total impossibility of complying
with their request; and directing the commanding officers to call
upon the officers under their command to reflect upon the serious
consequences which a perseverance in such measures must produce.
After some discussion regarding the officer it would be proper to
nominate to the command of the European regiment and the garrison
of Masulipatam, I offered to proceed myself upon that service; and
you accepted my offer with an apparent confidence in my success, of
which I could not but be proud. The emergency gave no time for the
preparation of instructions, and I was immediately appointed to command
the garrison of Masulipatam and the Madras European regiment; while two
respectable officers, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Berkeley and Major Evans,
were nominated to act with me, as members of a military committee that
was directed to investigate the conduct of the garrison.
I was repeatedly assured by you, at the last interview with which I was
honoured, that you committed the dignity and interests of Government
(as far as those were implicated on this occasion) into my hands with
perfect confidence, and that you gave me the fullest latitude of
action: adding, that I was fully acquainted with your sentiments upon
the whole subject of the existing discontents among the officers of the
Company's army. I certainly was, from the confidence with which you had
honoured me, fully aware of your sentiments. I knew that you were most
solicitous to allay the ferment that had arisen in the army, and that
you were at that moment resolved to use every means in your power to
effect that object, but such as you deemed derogatory to the honour and
dignity of the Government with which you were charged. You regarded,
I knew, the occurrence of a rupture between the state and any part of
its army, one of the most desperate evils that could arise, and thought
every moment that such an event was delayed was of ultimate importance,
as it gave time for reflection and the action of better feeling, and
strengthened the hope that deluded men might yet return to that path of
duty and good order from which they had so widely departed.
The act of my appointment to Masulipatam of itself proclaimed these
sentiments; and I was confirmed in them from the approbation you gave
to my suggestion regarding the mode of treating the Memorial you had
received from the officers of the subsidiary force, which you desired
I would put into the form of a letter, and send to you; which I did,
through the medium of your military secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel
Barclay. Impressed with these sentiments, I sailed for Masulipatam
early on the morning of the 2d of July, and arrived there on the
4th. I found the officers of that garrison in a state of open and
bold mutiny against Government, with every thing prepared to march
towards Hyderabad, to effect a junction with the subsidiary force at
that place, by whom they had been promised complete support in the
opposition they had commenced to the authority of Government. The
most violent among the officers of the garrison saw, in recognising
my authority, a complete suspension, if not a total discomfiture, of
their plans, and argued loudly against my being acknowledged: and
it was not till after a discussion of near five hours that I was
enabled to bring these deluded men to a sense of all the perils of
their situation, and of the consequences that must ensue from their
throwing off their allegiance to the state. They at last were subdued
by the force of reason; for no other means were used, as I thought it
equally my duty to avoid any promise of amnesty for the past, or of
consideration for the future: and they, after repeated and fruitless
trials, desisted from all applications upon these points. A repetition
of the discussions which occurred at this scene (accompanied, however,
with less violence) took place next day: after which, the question of
disputing my authority was abandoned.
I was happy to find, by a letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Barclay, under
date 12th July, that the mode as well as substance of the proceedings
that I adopted on my arrival at Masulipatam was honoured with your
entire approbation.
I took every opportunity of mixing with the officers of the garrison,
and circulated among them a variety of letters, which I had written
with a view of reclaiming the more violent of my brother officers
to better feelings and better sentiments; and I found that my
conversation, and the perusal of these papers, had soon a very visible
effect; and that though they continued to share the general proceedings
of the army, they no longer (as they had done before my arrival)
thought it incumbent upon them to take the lead in an insurrection
against Government, though they were excited to that measure by the
most violent letters from almost every station in the army, and were
also impelled to it by their own sense of danger from what had passed,
which they thought would be greatly diminished when the majority of the
officers of the army were sharers in the general guilt. I considered,
that by effecting this change in the temper of the garrison of
Masulipatam, one of the chief objects which you had in contemplation
when you sent me to that garrison, was accomplished. The rupture which
had recurred, and which was likely to be followed by an insurrection
of a great part of the officers of the army, had been arrested in
its progress, without the slightest sacrifice of the authority, or
compromise of the dignity, of the state; and time was gained, which,
under every view that could be taken of the subject, appeared of the
greatest advantage to Government.
The first serious interruption to this progressive improvement of good
feeling among the officers of the garrison of Masulipatam, was caused
by a letter from an established committee at Hyderabad, which reached
that garrison on the 18th July. This letter, which, like all other
papers of a similar tendency, was shown to me, reproached the officers
at Masulipatam with want of wisdom in having admitted me to assume the
command of the garrison. The committee desired they would instantly
demand from me an assurance that the order of the 1st of May would be
rescinded; and, if I refused it, recommended that measures should be
immediately taken to oblige me to quit Masulipatam. A paper of demands,
which the Hyderabad committee termed their _Ultimatum_, and which
they said they intended to forward to Government, accompanied this
letter. These papers were shown to me by an officer of some rank and
influence, with whom I was in the habit of confidential intercourse. He
told me the senior officers of the garrison were far from approving of
the sentiments of the Hyderabad committee, but much was to be feared
from the violence of the juniors. I took this occasion of exposing
all the fallacy of the grounds on which they were proceeding, and of
impressing, in the most forcible language I could, the dangers into
which many of the officers of the Company's army were precipitately
rushing. As the substance of the communication I made to this officer
was afterwards circulated in the form of a letter, I enclose an extract
from my journal, in which it was immediately entered: and this extract
will show you the nature of those arguments I used to reclaim men from
their deep delusion. This communication had evidently a great effect
upon the person to whom it was addressed; and he promised me he would
not only communicate my sentiments to some of the most reflecting
among the officers of the garrison, and obtain, through their means,
the rejection of the proposals from Hyderabad, but would endeavour,
in concert with them, to effect an arrangement that would exclude the
younger part of the officers from any right of deliberation on the
questions with which the army was now agitated; which I agreed with him
would be a point of the greatest importance, and the first step towards
a final settlement of existing evils.
All these measures were happily effected. An answer was sent to
Hyderabad, that the officers of Masulipatam must assert their right
of judging for themselves, and that they could not comply with their
demand regarding me; and the garrison committees, which were mobbish
meetings of the whole of the officers, were dissolved, and all future
proceedings entrusted to a few of the senior officers, who were (it
was agreed) not to be influenced either by the opinions of other
committees, or by the opinion of any officer in the garrison not
included in their number, which was limited to eleven.
I had at this period received a report that Lieutenant-Colonel
Berkeley was too unwell to come to Masulipatam, and there was likely
to be some delay in the arrival of Major Evans. I also found that
formal examinations before a regular committee would be likely to
excite an irritation, which it had been, throughout, my study to
avoid. I therefore took advantage of the authority conveyed to me by
Lieutenant-Colonel Barclay's letter of the 12th of July, to commence
myself the investigation of the conduct of the garrison previous to my
arrival.
I had always intended (provided I had obtained your permission) to
have proceeded with the report of the committee to Madras, as I was
sensible I should never be able to convey to you by letters the whole
of that important information I had obtained of the real state and
temper of the majority of the officers of the Company's army on the
coast, who, though apparently united in one confederacy, were actuated
by widely different motives, and took very different views of the
nature of the scene in which they were engaged: and of these different
shades in their situation and intentions it appeared to me most
essential you should have the fullest information, as this knowledge
was evidently the only basis upon which any arrangement could be made
for the settlement of the whole question, without having recourse to
an open and declared rupture, which I ever understood it was your
earnest desire to avoid till the last extremity. As I found the changes
which had been effected left me without any fear of the garrison of
Masulipatam departing from their duty during my absence, I thought
it my duty, after I had completed the investigation with which I was
charged, to exercise that discretion which you had given me before my
departure from Madras, and proceed in person to report the result of my
investigation. I communicated this intention to Major-General Pater,
the commander of the division, who arrived at Masulipatam on the 20th
July, and it met with his fullest concurrence and approbation.
I heard, before my departure, of the 2d battalion of the 10th regiment
of native infantry having refused to march; but as that event did
not appear likely to be immediately followed by any open act of
contumely or disobedience in the Hyderabad force, and as it produced no
commotion whatever in the garrison of Masulipatam, it was an additional
excitement to the resolution I had adopted, as I expected to have
arrived at Madras (by travelling in the rapid manner I did) before any
determination had been taken upon this act of mutiny and disobedience,
and to have furnished information that might have aided your judgment
in deciding upon that important question.
As I always conceived that it was the object of Government to
reclaim, if possible, the minds of the officers, I directed my whole
attention, during the period I was at Masulipatam, to this great
object. I therefore cautiously abstained from any attempt to discover
the sentiments of either the European or native soldiery. Such an
attempt must have been instantly known, and would have inflicted an
irremediable wound on the minds of the officers, and have been certain
to precipitate that crisis which it was my labour to avoid.
To evince that I have not been deceived in the expectations I formed of
the change of feeling in the affairs of the garrison of Masulipatam, I
enclose an extract of a letter from an officer, in whose correctness
I place entire confidence. The resolutions which the committee of
Masulipatam have agreed to consider, are such, no doubt, as it would
be impossible for Government to have acceded to; but they exhibit
a most important change from former violence to comparative temper
and moderation; and their agitation shows that these officers reject
all share in the demands made in that paper which is termed their
_Ultimatum_ by the Hyderabad committee. It must be recollected, that
in cases like the present, where the minds of a large body of men have
been greatly disturbed, that their return to reason is likely to be
as gradual as their departure from it: and I can have no doubt, from
what I know of the present temper and inclination of some of the senior
officers in the northern division, as well as in other quarters of
this army, that had not the recent acts of the force at Hyderabad led
to those measures which Government has thought it its duty to adopt,
they would have seized with avidity any opportunity that the indulgent
considerations of Government for their past errors had afforded them,
of reclaiming themselves and others from the deep crimes into which
they had plunged, and of restoring to its former name and glory a
service which the rash madness of some of its members threaten with
ruin and destruction.
It remains for me only to state, and I do it with deep regret, that, as
far as I can judge, late occurrences have annihilated every hope of the
garrison of Masulipatam (I speak with the exception of the artillery
company) remaining faithful to its duty; and I fear there are several
corps in the division, the officers of which will be disposed to follow
their example.
I entreat you to pardon the length of this letter, as well as the
freedom with which I have stated my sentiments. I can have no desire
but to show that I have not been false to that confidence by which
I was honoured; and that I have laboured with zeal, and not without
success, (at least as far as the scene in which I was employed was
concerned,) to promote the public interests.
I have the honour to be,
Honourable sir,
Your most obedient servant,
(Signed) JOHN MALCOLM.
Madras,
1st August, 1809.
No. IV.
_Address of the Inhabitants of Madras to_ Sir GEORGE BARLOW.
TO
THE HON. SIR G. BARLOW, BART. & K.B. GOVERNOR, AND PRESIDENT IN
COUNCIL, OF FORT ST. GEORGE AND ITS DEPENDENCIES.