1809] MUTINY AT MADRAS 1467 In Mutiny at family, the representative of which was now Runjeet Singh. their dread of the French, the English were for a while blind to his encroachments even on the east of the Sutlej, but as events in Europe showed that Napoleon's Eastern dreams were for the present over, a firmer tone was adopted, and in 1809 the appearance of English troops proved to Runjeet that his hopes of further conquest were futile, and he consented to enter into a treaty of perpetual friendship. The mutiny at Madras was somewhat similar to that which Clive had suppressed in the Bengal army. The withdrawal of an allowance known as the tent contract was the immediate cause of the disaffection, but there had been for Madras. some time discontent among the officers, unfortunately supported by some whose age and position gave them influence over their juniors. General Macdowell, having been refused a seat in the Council, had thrown up his command, and was returning to England in disgust. He entered into an unseemly quarrel with the Quartermaster-General, Colonel Munro, and published a general order declaring that had he remained in India he would have brought him to a court-martial. The Government, in great anger, suspended those officers who had assisted in publishing the general order, and finding them largely supported by their fellow-officers, proceeded to remove a considerable number from their command. This was followed by an open mutiny which broke out in Hyderabad, Seringapatam, and elsewhere. At Seringapatam the mutineers were suppressed by force of arms, elsewhere they came to their senses, and accepted the conditions imposed on them by Lord Minto, who had come to Madras to attempt to meet the difficulty. Lord Minto returned to England in 1813, after an honourable discharge of his duties, and was succeeded by the Earl of Moira, afterwards Marquis of Hastings. 1813-1823. It was during Lord Moira's administration that the work of Wellesley was completed and the position of England Marquis rendered absolutely paramount in India. His first of Hastings. difficulties were with Nepaul, where the Goorkhas had succeeded in establishing a power of some importance, and had not refrained from attacking English territory. The war war with was a severe one; on more than one occasion the Eng- Nepaul. lish troops were defeated or foiled by the strong fortifications of their opponents. But after two campaigns, in 1815, Sir David Ochterlony succeeded in securing the hill-fortresses and compelling the Goorkha chief to come to terms. The Nepaulese surrendered to the English a portion of the Terrai, a territory lying to the south of their country, War with reinstated a considerable number of the small princes they had lately dispossessed, and received an English resident at Catmandoo, their capital. It was at the close of this war that Lord Moira received his marquisate. But events, to which Lord Hastings owes his chief celebrity, arose in a more important quarter. The centre of India was occupied by the great princes of the Mahratta nation, who, though subdued by Lord Wellesley, were uneasy under their altered circumstances, and were dreaming of the restoration of their national greatness. Their nominal head was the Peishwa resident at Poonah, and now placed under a subsidiary treaty with the English. These princes kept up communications among themselves. Agents from Poonah were at all their courts, and some of them certainly engaged in intrigues both with the Nepaulese and Runjeet Singh, the late enemies of the English. Besides these covert and Mahrattas. and dangerous enemies, there existed a body of freebooters called the Pindaries. Recruited from all nations and all religions, their hordes found employment sometimes with the armies of the native princes at war with each other, sometimes in predatory excursions of their own. The reward for which they served was nearly always the right to rob. Their expeditions were of the most destructive character; all mounted and lightly armed, they crossed the country in marches of from forty to fifty miles a day, fell upon the devoted district, and carried off everything moveable in it, frequently burning what they could not carry away, and having recourse to the cruellest tortures to wring from the wretched inhabitants a knowledge of their hidden treasure. They had found their chief support among the Mahrattas, and had established themselves in the country between the Nerbudda and the Vindhya hills. Till 1815 they had refrained from attacking the English, but during the Nepaulese war they had crossed the river into the Deccan, and had ravaged the territory of our ally the Nizam; and the year after they had even passed the British frontiers and plundered more than three hundred villages. Lord Hastings determined to put an end to these robbers, supported as he believed that they were by the Mahratta confederation, before he dismissed the army collected for the war of Nepaul. He applied for leave to act on a great scale, and, having received it, brought into the field large armies from all the Presidencies, and prepared for war on such a scale as rendered it plain that he intended to make a final settlement of Central India. It was the complicity of the Mahrattas with the Pindaries which rendered his work difficult. The Peishwa had already shown his intentions. His favourite, 1817] WAR WITH THE MAHRATTAS 1469 Trimbucjee, had procured the murder of the agent of the Guicowar, who, in union with the English, was negotiating for a new lease of the Peishwa's property in Gujerat. The murderer was screened, and signs were everywhere visible that the Peishwa was meditating treachery. Yielding to the pressure of the English resident, he surrendered Trimbucjee; but on the escape of his favourite he again gave him refuge, and eluded the English demands. At length, yielding to the strong measures taken by them, he apparently gave up the point, and in June 1817 entered into a new treaty considerably more stringent than the Treaty of Bassein, and designed to destroy the Peishwa's nominal superiority over the Mahratta confederation, which was the source of so much danger. The effect of the treaty was very temporary. The Peishwa continued his measures against the English, attacked and burnt the British residency, was defeated after a severe battle and fled, intending to make common cause with his compatriots. Meanwhile events of a somewhat similar character had been taking place at the courts of the other Mahratta chiefs. It was thought necessary not only to separate them from the Pindaries, but to oblige them to join in the suppression of those freebooters. In November Sindia was compelled to make a treaty to that effect, containing a most important clause, as it allowed the English to make separate treaties, which had hitherto been forbidden, with those chiefs, especially the Rajputs, who were dependent upon Sindia. The unity of his kingdom was thus broken up. A treaty of a similar character was concluded with Ameer Khan, the head of a large body of freebooters in close connection with Holkar, though at the time resident at Jeypoor. With the other two great chiefs, the Rajah of Nagpoor and Holkar, more violent measures were found necessary. Appa Sahib, the uncle of the late prince, had obtained the government of Nagpoor, and had pretended a close friendship with England. But the same national aspirations as had moved the Peishwa acted upon him too. As the Peishwa was the nominal viceroy of the Mahrattas, so was he their nominal commander-in-chief. He repeated the treachery at Poonah, and attacked the British residency; and as his army was strong, and consisted largely of Arabs, he was only defeated after a battle of eighteen hours' duration. By December, however, he was thoroughly conquered, and had given himself up to the English; Nagpoor had been evacuated, and the Arabs dismissed. Just about the same time the forces of Holkar had been also defeated at Mahidpoor, in the neighbourhood of Oojein. On the insanity of Holkar himself, his power had passed into the hands of his young wife, Toolsee-Bhye, as regent for the young prince; but she was mistrusted by the war party, seized, and put to death. The chiefs then plunged into war, but were thoroughly defeated by Hislop's forces, and the young Holkar was compelled to enter into a treaty, which, among other things, bound him to perpetual peace, and established the Company as the arbitrator in all his quarrels. As in the case of Sindia, the Rajput princes subject to his dominion were allowed to contract separate treaties with the English, and gladly seized the opportunity. Thus the great confederation was defeated in detail, and the Peishwa alone, a fugitive from his capital, was capable of making resistance. It was found nearly impossible to come up with him; though combats were occasionally fought, no general battle resulted. But a new plan was devised which before long completed his destruction. The strongholds of his country were one by one reduced; and among others, in February, Satara, the residence of the descendants of Sevaji, whose nominal minister the Peishwa was. The authority of this prince was re-established, and the Peishwa was deposed, and thus the national character of his resistance destroyed. Soon after, also (Feb. 19, 1818), he was forced to battle at Ashtee, near Bunderpoor, and there thoroughly beaten. His power of resistance was now at an end, his fortresses had fallen one by one; his motley army, consisting largely of Pindaries, was broken up, and in June, finding himself surrounded, he surrendered to Sir John Malcolm. He accepted an allowance of £80,000 a year, with leave to withdraw and reside at Benares, where he remained quietly during the rest of his life. He had refused even to the last to surrender Trimbucjee, who was, however, shortly afterwards captured, and kept a prisoner till his death. The destruction of the Mahratta power had gone hand in hand with that of the Pindaries. Wherever they had been met with they had been beaten. By the end of February all their leaders had surrendered, and such remnants of them as were left had been removed to Goruckpoor, where they settled quietly down. There was one exception; their great chief, Chetoo, was still at large, and when Appa Sahib of Nagpoor, continuing his treachery after the treaty, and still holding communication with the Peishwa, was dethroned, the two chiefs took refuge in the Mahadeo hills on the south of the Nerbudda, and there assembled a mixed army of Mahrattas, Arabs, and Pindaries, to the number of about 20,000. The destruction of these troops closed the war. The English forces were concentrated for a great attack; seeing the hopelessness of resistance, the leaders fied, and took refuge in the fort of Aseerghur, 1823] THE BURMESE WAR 1471 which belonged to Sindia, with whom no doubt Appa had still relations. The fortress could not long shelter him. Sindia, in fear, refused to receive him; he fled to Runjeet Singh, and was finally allowed to return and live peaceably in Judpore. Chetoo, deprived of most of his followers, also took flight; he attempted to retire into the Malwa, but during his retreat sought refuge in a thicket, and was there devoured by a tiger. As a punishment for having received the fugitives, Aseerghur was besieged and taken, and as clear proofs were found in it of Sindia's treachery, it was retained. This was the last act of the war. At its conclusion the whole dominions of the Peishwa, with the exception of a district given to the Rajah of Satara, and all Appa Sahib's dominions in Berar, passed directly into the hands of the English. All the Rajput rajahs had placed themselves under British protection, and Sindia was the only prince with whom there had not been concluded a satisfactory subsidiary treaty. Lord Hastings had thus the merit of thoroughly completing the great plans of the Marquis of Wellesley. When Hastings left his office, which he had held for nine years, he was succeeded by Lord Amherst, who reached Calcutta Lord Amherst. in August 1823, and held the Governor-generalship till 1823-1828. 1828. During that period the dominions of England received a still further accession, and the difficulty of putting a stop to a course of conquest once begun was shown. At the same time that Clive had laid the foundation of the English Empire, a man of the name of Alompra had established a great empire on the other side of the Ganges. He had succeeded in bringing into one the kingdoms of Siam, Pegu, Ava, and Aracan. By degrees the two empires of Burmah and of India had become conterminous. The Burmese had been rendered so confident by their successes that they had demanded of Lord Hastings the surrender of Chittagong, Dacca, and other places, as having been originally dependencies of Aracan; their demand had of course been absolutely disregarded, but they were now proceeding to conquer Cashar, a district in North-Eastern Bengal, the rajah of which applied for help to the English. A further act of encroachment on their part brought on a war; they seized, on the coast of Chittagong, a little island in the possession of a small British outpost. No satisfaction could be obtained, and in March 1824 war became inevitable, much against the will, and somewhat to the surprise, of Lord Amherst, who had intended to be peaceful. The The Burmese attack of the English was made upon Rangoon at the War. mouth of the Irawaddi. It was easily occupied, but the Burmese |