INDIA - HISTORY (cont.)

8. British Empire (1765-1881)

The political history of the British in India begins in the 18th century with the French wars in the Carnatic. Fort St George, the nucleus of Madras, was their earliest territorial possession, properly so called, in India, having been founded by Thomas Day in 1639. The land on which is stood, with an area round of about 5 miles in length by 1 mile in breadth, was purchased from the raja of Chandragiri, who claimed to be the lineal descendant of the Hindu emperors of Vijayanagar. The French settlement of Pondicherri, about 100 miles lower down the Coromandel coast, was established in 1672, and for many years the English and French traded side by side, without either active rivalry or territorial ambition. The English especially, appear to have been submissive to the native powers at Madras no less than in Bengal. They paid their annual rent of 1200 pagodas (say £500) to the deputies of the Mughal empire when Aurangzeb annexed the south, and on two several occasions bought off a besieging army with a heavy bribe.

On the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the whole of southern India became practically independent of Delhi. In the Deccan Proper, the Nizám-ul-Mulk founded an independent dynasty, with Hyderabad for its capital, which exercised a nominal sovereignty over the entire south. The Carnatic, or the lowland tract between the central plateau and the eastern sea, was ruled by a deputy of the nizám, known as the nawáb of Arcot, who in his turn asserted claims to hereditary sovereignty. Further south, Trichinopoli was the capital of a Hindu raja, and Tanjore formed another Hindu kingdom under a degenerate descendent of the line of Sivaji. Inland, Mysore was gradually growing into a third Hindu state, while everywhere local chieftains, called pálegárs or naiks, were in semi-independent possession of citadels or hill-forts.

In that condition of affairs the flame of war was kindled between the English and the French in Europe in 1745. Dupleix was at that time governor of Pondicherri, and Clive was a young writer at madras. An English fleet first appeared on the Coromandel coast, but Dupleix by a judicious present induced the nawáb of Arcot to interpose and prevent hostilities. In 1746 a French squadron arrived, under the command of La Bourdonnais. Madras surrendered almost without a blow, and the only settlement left to the English was Fort St David, a few miles south of Pondicherri, where Clive and a few other fugitives sought shelter. The nawáb, faithful to his policy of impartiality, marched with 10,000 men to drive the French out of Madras, but he was signally defeated by a French force of only four hundred men and tow guns. In 1748 an English fleet arrived under Admiral Boscawen and attempted the siege of Pondicherri, while a land force co-operated under Major Lawrence, whose name afterwards became associated with that of Clive. The French successfully repulsed all attacks, and at last peace was restored by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which gave back Madras to the English (1748).

The first war with the French was merely an incident in the greater contest in Europe. The second war had its origin in Indian politics, while England and France were at peace. The easy success of the French arms had inspired Dupleix, with the ambition of founding a French empire in India, under the shadow of the existing Mahometan powers. Disputed successions oat Hyderabad and at Areot supplied him with the opportunity that he lacked. On both thrones he placed nomiees of his own, and for a short time posed as the supreme arbiter of the entire south. In boldness of conception, and in knowledge of Oriental diplomacy, Dupleix has had probably no rival. But he was no soldier, and he was destined in that sphere to encounter the "heaven-born genius" of Clive. For the English of Madras, under the instinct of self-preservation, were compelled to maintain the cause of another candidate to the throne of Arcot in opposition to the nominee of Dupleix. This candidate was Muhammad Ali, afterwards known in history as Wála-jah. The war than then ensued between the French and English, each with their native allies, has been exhaustively described in the pages of Orme. The one incident that stands out conspicuously in the capture and subsequent defence of Arcot by Clive in 1751. This heroic feat, even more than the battle of Plassey, established the reputation of the English fro valour throughout India. Shortly afterwards Clive returned to England in ill-health, but the war continued fitfully for many years. On the whole, English influence predominated in the Carnatic, and their candidate, Muhammad Alí, maintained his position at Arcot. But the French were no less supreme in the Deccan, whence they were able to take possession of the coast tract called "the Northern Circars." The final struggle was postponed until 1760, when Colonel (afterwards Sir Eyne) Coote won the decisive victory of Wandewash over the French general Lally, and proceeded to invest Pondicherri, which was starved into capitulation in January 1761. A few months later the hill-fortress of "That day terminated the long hostilities between the two rival European powers in Coromandel, and left not a single ensign of the French nation avowed by the authority of its Government in any part of India."

Meanwhile the interest of history shifts with Clive to Bengal. The first English settlement in that part of India was Pippli in Orissa, to which the East India Company was permitted to trade in 1633, six years before the foundation of Madras. The river on which Pippli stood has since silted up, and the very site of the English settlement is now unknown and undiscoverable. In 1642 factories were opened at Balasore and Húgli (Hooghly), and in 1681 Bengal was erected into a presidency, as yet subject to Madras. The name of Calcutta is not heard of till 1686, when Job Charnock, the chief at Hooghly, was expelled by the deputy of Aurangzeb, and settled lower down the river on the opposite bank. There he acquired a grant of the three petty villages of Sutanati, gobindpur, and Kálighát (Catcutta), and founded the original Fort William in 1696. At the time of Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 the nawáb or governor of Bengal was Murshid Kulí Khán, known also in European history as Jafar Khán. By birth a Bráhman, and brought up as a slave in Persia, he united the administrative ability of a Hindu to the fanaticism of a renegade. Hitherto the capital of Bengal had been at Dacca on the eastern frontier of the empire, whence the piratical attacks of the Portuguese and of the Arakenese or Maghs could be most easily checked. Murshid Kulí Khán transferred his residence to Murshidábád (Moorshedaba), in the neighbourhood of Kásimbázár, as well as at dácca, Patná, and Maldah. But Catcutta was the headquarters of the English, Chandarnagar of the French, and Chinsurah of the Dutch, all three towns being situated close to each other in the lower reaches of the Hooghly, where the river is navigable for large ships. Murshid Kulí Khán ruled over Bengal prosperously for twenty-one years, and left his power to a son-in-law and a grandson. The hereditary succession was broken in 1740 by Alí Vardi Khán, who was the last of the great nawábs of Bengal. In his days the Murhattá horsemen began to ravage the country, and the English at Catcutta obtained permission to erect an earth-work, which is known to the present day as the Marhattá ditch. Alí Vardi Khán died in 1756, and was succeeded by his grandson. Siráj-ud-Daulá (Surajah Dowlah), a youth of only eighteen years, whose ungovernable temper led to a rapture with the English within two months after his accession. In pursuit of one of his own family who had escaped from his vengeance, he marched upon Catcutta with a large army. Many of the English fled down the river in their ships. The remainder surrendered after a feeble resistance, and were thrown as prisoners into the "black hole" of military jail of Fort William, a room about 18 feet square, with only two small windows barred with iron. It was the month of June, in which the tropical heat of Catcutta is most oppressive. When the door of the prison was opened in the morning, only twenty-three prisons out of one hundred and forty-six were found alive.

The news of this disaster fortunately found Clive returned to Madras, where also was a squadron of king’s ships under Admiral Watson. Clive and Watson promptly sailed to the mouth of the Ganges with all the troops that could be got together. Catcutta was recovered with little fighting, and the nawáb consented to a peace which restored to the Company all their privileges, and gave them compensation fro their losses of property. It is possible that matters might have ended here if a flesh cause of hostilities had not suddenly arisen. War had just been declared between the English and French in Europe, and Clive, following the traditions of his early warfare in the Carnatic, attacked and captured Chandarnagar. Siráj-ud-Daulá, exasperated by that breach of neutrality within his own dominions, took the side of the French. But Clive, again acting upon the policy he had learned from Dupleix, had provided himself with a rival candidate to the throne. Undaunted, he marched out to the battlefield of Plassey (Palási), at the head of about 1000 Europeans and 2100 sepoys, with 9 pieces of artillery. The Mahometan army is said to have consisted of 50,000 foot, 18,00o horse, and 50 pieces of cannon. But there was a traitor in the Mahometan camp in the person of Mír Jafar, who had married a sister of the late nawáb, Alí Vardi Khán. The battle was short but decisive. After a few rounds of artillery fire, Suráj-ud-Daulá fled, and the road to Murshidábád was left open.

The battle of Plassey was fought of June 23, 1757, an anniversary afterwards remembered when the mutiny was at its height in 1857. History had agreed to adopt this date as the beginning of British empire in the East; but the immediate results of the victory were comparatively small, and several more hard-won fights were fought before even the Bengalis would admit the superiority of the British arms. For the moment, however, all opposition was at an end. Clive, again following in the Steps of Dupleix, placed his nominee, Mír Jafar, upon the masnad at Murshidábád, being careful to obtain a patent of investiture from the Mughal court. Enormous sums were exacted from Mír Jafar as the price of his elevation. The Company claimed 10,000,000 rupees as compensation for losses; fro the English, the Indian, and the Armenian inhabitants of Calcutta there were demanded the sums of 5,000,000, 2,000,000, and 700,000 rupees; for the squadron 2,500,000 rupees, and an equal sum for the army. The members of the council received the following amounts:—Mr Drake, the governor, and Colonel Clive 280,000 rupees each’ and Mr Becker, Mr Watts, and Major Kilpatrick 240,000 rupees each. The whole amounted to £2,697,750. The English, deluded by their avarice, still cherished extravagant ideas of Indian wealth; nor would they listen to the ungrateful truth. But it was found that there demands, and they where obliged to be contented with one-half the stipulated sums, which, after many difficulties, were paid in specie and in jewels, with the exception of 584,905 rupees. The shares of the council were, however, paid in full. At the time the nawáb made a grant to the Company of the zamíndárí rights over an extensive tract was about 882 square miles, and it paid a permanent revenue or quit rent of about £23,000. The gross rental at first payable to the Company was £53,000, but within a period of ten years it had risen to £146,000. Originally the company possessed only the zamíndárí rights, i.e., revenue jurisdiction. The superior lordship, or right to receive the quit rent, remained with the nawáb; but in 1759 this also was parted with by the Delhi emperor, the nominal suzerain of the nawáb, in favour of Clive, who thus became the landlord of his own masters, the Company. At that time also Clive was enrolled among the nobility of the Mughal empire, with the rank of commander of 6000 foot and 5000 horse. Clive’s jagír, as it was called, subsequently became a matter of inquiry in England, and on his death it passed to the Company, thus merging the zamíndárí in the proprietary rights.

In 1758 Clive was appointed by the court of directors the first governor of all the Company’s settlements in Bengal. For two quarters troubles threatened, which perhaps Clive alone was capable of overcoming. On the west the sháhzáda or imperial prince, known afterwards as the emperor Sháh Alam, with a mixed army of Afgháns and Marhattás, and supported by the nawáb wazir of Oudh, was advancing his own claims to the province of Bengal. In the south the influence of the French under Lally and Bussy was overshadowing the British at Madras. But the name of Clive exercised a decisive effect in both directions. Mír Jafar was anxious to buy off the sháhzáda, who had already invested Patná. But Olive in person marched to the rescue, with an army of only 450 Europeans and 2500 sepoys, and the Mughal army dispersed without striking blow. In the same year Clive dispatched a force southwards under Colonel Forde, which recaptured Masulipatam from the French, and permanently established British influence throughout the Northern Circars, and at the court of Hyderabad. He next attacked the Dutch, the sole European nation that might yet be a formidable rival to the English. He defeated them both by land and water; and from that time their settlement at Chinsurah existed only on sufferance.

From 1760 to 1765, while Clive was at home, the history of the English in Bengal contains little that is creditable. Clive had left behind him no system of government, but merely the tradition that unlimited sums of money might be exacted from the natives by the mere terror of the English name. In 1761 it was found expedient and profitable to dethrone Mír Jafar, the English nawáb of Murshidábád, and substitute his son-in-law, Mír Kásim, in his place. On that occasion, besides private donations, the English received a grant of the three districts of Bardwán, Midnapur, and Chittagong, estimated to yield an new revenue of half a million sterling. But Mír Kásim proved to possess a will of his own, and to cherish dreams of independence. He retired from Murshidábád to Monghyr, a strong position of the Ganges, which commanded the only means of communication with the west. There he proceeded to organize an army, drilled and equipped after European models, and to carry on intrigues with the nawáb wazir Oudh. The actual outbreak of hostilities with the English happened on his wise. The Company’s servants claimed the privilege of carrying on private trade throughout Bengal, free from inland dues and all other imposts. The assertion of this claim caused frequent affrays between the customs’ officers of the nawáb and those traders who, whether falsely or not represented that they were acting on behalf of the servants of the Company. The nawáb alleged that his civil authority was everywhere being set at nought. The majority of the council at Catcutta would not listen to his statements. The governor, Mr Vansittart, and Warren Hastings, then a junior member of council, attempted to effect some compromise. But the controversy had become too hot. The nawábs officers fired upon an English boat, and forthwith all Bengal was in a blaze. A force of 2000 sepoys was cut to piece at Patná, and about 2000 Englishmen in various parts of the province fell into the hands of the Mahometans, and were subsequently massacred. But as soon as regular warfare commenced Mír Kásim met with no more successes. His trained regiments were defeated in two pitched battled by Major Adams, at Gheriah and at Ugha-nálá, and he himself took refuge with the nawáb wazir of Oudh, who refused to deliver him up. This led to a prolongation of the war. Sháh Alam, who had now succeeded his father as emperor, and Shujá-ud-Daulá, the nawáb wazír of Oudh, united their forces, and threatened Patná, which the English had recovered. A more formidable danger appeared in the English camp, in the form of the first sepoy mutiny. This was quelled by Major (afterwards Sir Hector) Munro, who ordered twenty-four oft eh ring-leaders to be blown from guns, an old Mughal punishment. In 1764 Major Munro who the decisive battle of Baxár, which laid Oudh at the feet of the conquerors, and brought the Mughal emperor as a suppliant to the English camp. Meanwhile the council at Catcutta had twice found the opportunity they desired of selling the government of Bengal to a new nawáb. But in 1765 Clive (now Baron Clive of Plassey, in the peerage of Ireland) arrived at Catcutta, as governor of Bengal for the second time, to settle the entire system of relations with the native powers. Two objects stand out conspicuously in his policy. First, he sought to acquire the substance, though not the name of territorial power, by using the authority of the Mughal emperor for so much as he wished, and for no more; and secondly, he desired to purify the Company’s service by prohibiting illicit gains, and at the same time guaranteeing a reasonable remuneration from honest sources. In neither respect were the details of his plans carried out by his successors. But the beginning of our Italian administration dates from his second governorship of Clive, just as the origin of our Indian empire dates from his victory at Plassey. Clive’s first step was to hurry up from Catcutta to Allahábád, and there settle in person the fate of nearly half India. Oudh was given back to the nawáb wazír, on condition of his paying half a million sterling towards the expenses of the war. The provinces of Allahábád and Kora, forming the greater part of the Doáb, were handed over to Sháh Alam himself, who in his turn granted to the Company the diwání or financial administration of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and also the territorial jurisdiction of the Northern Circars. A puppet nawáb was still maintained at Murshidábád, who received an annual allowance of about half a million sterling; and half that amount was paid to the emperor as tribute from Bengal. Thus was constituted the dual system of government, by which the English received all the revenues and undertook to maintain an army for the defence of the frontier, while the criminal jurisdiction vested in the nawáb. In Indian, phraseology, the Company was diwán and the nawáb was nizám. As a matter of general administration, the actual collection of the revenues still remained for some years in the hands of native officials. In attempting to reorganize and purify the Company’s service, Clive undertook a task yet more difficult than to partition the valley of the Ganges. The officers, civil and military alike, were all tainted with the common corruption. Their legal salaries were absolutely insignificant, but they had been permitted to augment them ten and a hundredfold by means of private trade and gifts from the native powers. Despite the united resistance of the civil servants, and an actual mutiny of two hundred military officers, Clive carried through his reforms. Both private trade and the receipt of presents were absolutely prohibited for the future, while a substantial increase of pay was provided out of the monopoly of salt.

Lord Clive quitted India for the third and last time in 1767. between that date and the arrival of Warren Hastings in 1772 nothing of importance occurred in Bengal beyond the terrible famine of 1770, which is officially reported to have swept away one-third of the inhabitants. The dual system of government, however, established by Clive, had proved a failure. Warren Hastings, a tried servant of the Company, distinguished alike for intelligence, for probity, and for knowledge of Oriental manners, was nominated governor by the court of directors, with express instructions to carry out a predetermined series of reforms. In their own words , the court had resolved to "stand forth as diwán, and to take upon themselves, by the agency of their own servants, the entire care and administration of the revenues." In the execution of his plan. Hasting removed the exchequer from Murshidábád to Catcutta, and for the first time appointed European officers, under the now familiar title of collectors, to superintend the revenue collections and preside in the civil courts. The urgency of the foreign affairs, and subsequently internal strife at the council table, hindered Hastings from developing further the system of civil administration, a task finally accomplished by Lord Cornwallis.

Though Hastings always prided himself specially upon that reform, as well as upon the improvements he introduced into the collection of the revenues from salt and opium, his name will be remembered in history for the boldness and success of his foreign policy. From 1772 to 1774 he was governor of Bengal; from 1774 to 1785 he was the first titular governor-general of India, presiding over a council nominated, like himself, not by the Company, but by an Act of Parliament, known as the regulating Act. In his domestic policy he was greatly hampered by the opposition of Francis ; but, so far as regards external relations with Oudh, with the Marhattás, and with Hyder Ali, he was generally able to compel assent to his own measures. His treatment of Oudh may here be passed over as not being material to the general history of India, while the personal aspects of his rule have been fully discussed in a separate article (vol. xi. p. 512). To explain his Marhattá policy, it will be necessary to give short restrospective sketch of the history of that people.

Sivaji the Great, as already mentioned, died in 1680, while Aurangzeb was still on the throne. The family of Sivají produced no great names, either among those who continued to be the nominal chiefs of the Marhattá confederacy, with their capital at Sátárá, or among the rajas of Kolhapur and Tanjore. All real power passed into the hands of the peshwá, or Brahman minister, who founded in his turn as hereditary dynasty at Poona, dating from the beginning of the 18th century. Next rose several Marhattá generals, who, though recognizing the suzerainty of the peshwá, carved out for themselves independent kingdoms in different parts of India, sometimes far from the original home of the Marhattá race. Chief among these generals were the gáikwár in Guzerat, Sindhia, and Holkar in Málwa, and the Bhonslá raja of Berar and Nághur. At one time it seemed probable that the Marhattá confederacy would expel the Mahometans even from northern India; but the decisive battle of Pánipat, won by the Afgháns in 1761, gave a respite to the Delhi empire. The Marhattá chiefs never again united heartily for a common purpose, though they still continued to be the most formidable military power in India. In especial, they dominated over the British settlement of Bombay on the western coast, which was the last of the three presidencies to feel the lust of territorial ambition. For more than a hundred years, form its acquisition in 1661 to the outbreak of the first Marhattá war at 1775, the English on the west coast possessed no territory outside the island of Bombay and their fortified factory at Surat.

The Bombay Government was naturally emulous to follow the example of Madras and Bengal, and to established its influence at the court of Poona by placing its own nominee upon the throne. The attempt took form in 1775 in the treaty of Surat, by which Raghunáth Ráo, one of the claimants to the throne of the peschwá, agreed to cede Salsette and Bassein to the English, in consideration of being himself restored to Poona. The military operations that followed are known as the first Marhattá war. Warren Hastings, who in his capacity of governor-general claimed a right of control over the decisions of the Bombay Government, strongly disapproved of the treaty of Surat, but, when war once broke out, he threw the whole force of the Bengal army into the scale. One of his favourite officers, General Goddard, marched across the peninsula from sea to sea, and conquered the rich province of Guzerat almost without a blow. Another, Captain Popham, stormed the rock-fortress of Gwalior, which was regarded as the key of Hindustán. Those brilliant successes atoned for the disgrace of the convention of Wargaum in 1779, when the Marhattás dictated terms to a British force, but the war was protracted until 1782. It was then closed by the treaty of Salbye, which practically restored the status quo. Raghunáth Ráo, the English claimant, was set aside; Guzerat was restored, and only Salsette and some other small islands were retained by the English.

Meanwhile Warren Hastings had to deal with a more formidable enemy than the Marhattá confederacy. The reckless conduct of the Madras Government had roused the hostility both of Hyder Ali of Mysore and of the nizám of the Deccan, the two strongest Musalmán powers in India, who attempted to draw the Marhattáas into an alliance against the English. The diplomacy of Hastings won over the nizám and the Marhattá raja of Nágpur, but the army of Hyder Alí fell like a thunder both upon the British possessions in the Carnatic. A strong detachment under Colonel Baillie was cut to pieces at Pollilore, and the Mysore cavalry ravaged the country unchecked up to the walls of Madras. For the second time the Bengal army, stimulated by the energy of Hastings, saved the honour of the English name. Sir Eyre Coote, the victor of Wandewash, was sent by sea to relieve Madras with all the men and money available, while colonel Pearse marched south overland to overawe the raja of Berar and the nizám. The war was hotly contested, for Sir Eyre well-discipled and equipped, and also skillfully handled by Hyder and his son Tipú in 1784, on the basis of a mutual restitution of all conquests.

It was Warren Hasting’s merit to organize the empire which Clive founded. He was governor or governor-general for thirteen years, a longer period than any of his successors. During that time the English lost the American colonies, but in India their reputation steadily rose to its highest pitch. Within a year Hastings was succeeded by Lord Cornwallis, the first English nobleman of rank who undertook the office of governor-general. His rule lasted from 1786 to 1793 and is celebrated for two events—the introduction of the permanent settlement into Bengal and the second Mysore war. If the foundations of the system of civil administration were laid by Hastings, the superstructure was erected by Cornwallis. It was he who first entrusted criminal jurisdiction to Europeans, and established the Nizámat Sadr Adálat, or supreme court of criminal judicature, at Calcutta; and it was he who separated the functions of collector and judge. The system thus organized in Bengal was afterwards transferred to Madras and Bombay, when those presidencies also acquired territorial sovereignty. But the achievement most familiarly associated with the name of Cornwallis is the permanent settlement of the land revenue of Bengal. Up to his time the revenue had been collected pretty much according to the old Mughal system. Zamíndárs, or Government farmers, who office always tended to become hereditary, were recognized as having a right of some sort to collect the revenue from the actual cultivators. But no principle of assessment existed, and the amount actually realized varied greatly from year to year. Hastings had the reputation of bearing hard upon the zamíndárs, and was absorbed in other critical affairs of state or of war. On the whole he seems to have looked to experience, as acquired from a succession of quinquennial settlements, to furnish the standard rate of the future. Francis, on the other hand, Hastings great rival, deserves the credit of being among the first to advocate a limitation of the state demand in perpetuity. The same view recommended itself to the authorities at home, partly because it would place their finances on a more stable basis, partly because it seemed to identify the zamíndár with the more familiar landlord. Accordingly, Cornwallis took out with him in 1787 instructions to introduce a permanent settlement. The process of assessment began in 1789 and terminated in 1791. No attempt was made to measure the fields or calculated the out turn as had been done by Akbar, and is now done when occasion requires in the British provinces; but the amount payable was fixed by reference to what had been paid in the past. At first the settlement was called decennial, but in 1793 it was declared permanent for ever, or about 2 _ millions sterling. Though Lord Cornwallis carried the scheme into execution, all praise or blame, so far as details are concerned, must belong to Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, whose knowledge of the country was unsurpassed by that of any civilian of his time. Shore would have proceeded more cautiously than Cornwalli’s preconceived idea of a proprietary body and the court of director’s haste after fixity permitted.

The second Mysore war of 1790-92 is noteworthy on two accounts; Lord Cornwallis, the governor-general, led the British army in person, with a pomp and lavishness of supplied that recalled the campaigns of Aurangzeb; and the two great native powers, the nizám of the Deccan and the Marhattá confederacy, co-operated as allies of the British, In the result, Tipú Sultán submitted when Lord Cornwallis had commenced to beleaquer his capital. He agreed to yield one-half of his dominions to be divided among the allies, and to pay three millions sterling towards the cost of the war. Those conditions he fulfilled, but ever afterwards he burned to be revenged upon his English conquerors.

The period of Sir John Shore’s rule as governor-general, from 1793 to 1798,w as uneventful. In 1798 Lord Mornington, better known as the marquis of Wellesley, arrived in India, already inspire with imperial projects that were destined to change the map of the country. Mornington was the friend and favourite of Pitt, from whom he is thought to have derived the comprehensiveness of his political vision and his antipathy to the French name. From the first he laid down as his guiding principle that the English must be the one paramount power in the peninsula, and that native princes could only retain the insignia of sovereignty by surrendering the substance of independence. The subsequent political history of India has been but the gradual development of this policy, which received its finishing touch when Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress on India in 1877.





To frustrate the possibility of a French invasion of India, led by Napoleon in person, was the governing idea of Wellesley’s foreign policy; for France at this time, and for many years later, filled the place afterwards occupied by Russia in the imagination of English statesman. Nor was the possibility so remote as might now be thought. French regiments guarded and overawed the nizám of Hyderabad. The soldiers of Sindhia, the military head of the Marhattá confederacy, were disciplined and led by French adventures. Tipú Sultán carried on a secret correspondence with the French directorate, and allowed a tree of liberty to be planted in his dominions. The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon afforded a convenient half-way house both fro French intrigue and for the assembling of a hostile expedition. Above all, Napoleon Buonaparte was then in Egypt, dreaming of the conquests of Alexander; and no man knew in what direction he might turn his hitherto unconquered legions. Wellesley first addressed himself to the nizám, where his policy prevailed without serious opposition. The French battalions at Hyderabad were disbanded, and the nizám bound himself by treaty not to take any European into his service without the consent of the English Government,—a clause since inserted in every engagement entered into with native powers. Next, the whole weight of Wellesley’s resources was turned against Tipú, whom Cornwallis had scotched but not killed. His intrigues with the French were laid bare, and he was given an opportunity of adhering to the new subsidiary system. On his refusal war was declared, and Wellesyley came down in state to Madras to organize the expedition in person, and watch over the course of events. One English army marched into Mysore from Madras, accompanied by a contingent from nizám. Another advanced from the western coast. Tipú, after offering but a feeble resistance in the field, retired into Seringapatam, and, when his capital was stormed, died fighting bravely in the breach. Since the battle of Plassey no event so greatly impressed the native imagination as the capture of Seringapatam, which won for General Harris a peerage and for Wellesley an Irish marquisate. In dealing with the territories of Tipú, Wellesley acted with unusual moderation. The central portion, forming the old state of Mysore , was restored to an infant representative of the Hindu rajas, whom Hyder Ali had dethroned, while the rest was partitioned between the nizám, the Marhattás, and the English. At about the same time the province of the Carnatic, or all that large portion of southern India ruled by the nawáb of Arcot, and also the principality of Tanjore, were placed under direct British administration, thus constituting the Madras presidency almost as it has existed to the present day.

The Marhattás had been the nominal allies of the English in both their wars with Tipú, but they had never given active assistance, nor were they secured to the English side as the nizám now was. The recognized head of the confederacy was the peshwá of Poona, who ruled the hill country of the Western Gháts, the cradle of the Marhattá race. The fertile province of Guzerat was annually harried by the horsemen of the gáikwár of Baroda. In Central India two military leaders, Sindhia of Gwalior and Holkar of India, alternately held the pre-eminency. Towards the east the Bhonslá rájá of Nágpur, sprung from the same stock of Sivají, reigned form Berar to the coast of Orissa. Wellesley tried assiduously to bring these several Marhattá powers within the net of his subsidiary system. At last, in 1802, the necessities of the peshwá, who had been defeated by Holkar, and driven as a fugitive into British territory, induced him to sign the treaty of Bassein, by which he pledged himself to hold communication with no other power, European or native, and ceded territory for the maintenance of a subsidiary force. This greatly extended the English territorial influence in the Bombay presidency, but led directly to the second Marhattá war, for neither Sindhia nor the rájá of Nágpur would tolerate this abandonment of Marhattá independence. The campaigns that followed are perhaps the most glorious in the history of the British arms in India. The general plan and the adequate provision of resources were due to the marquis of Wellesley, as also the indomitable spirit that could not anticipate defeat. The armies were led by Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards duke of Wellington) and General (afterwards Lord) Lake. Wellesley operated in the Deccan, where, in a few short months, he won the decisive victories of Assaye and Argaum, and captured Ahmadnagar. Lake’s campaign in Hindustán was no less brilliant, though it has received less notice from historians. He won pitched battled at Aligarh and Láswárí, and captured the cities of Delhi and Agra, thus scattering the French troops of Sindhia, and at the same time coming forward as the champion of the Mughal emperor in his hereditary capitals. Before the year 1803 was out, both Sindhia and the Bhonslá rájá were glad to sue fro peace. Sindhia ceded all claims to the territory north of the Jumna, and left the blind old emperor Sháh Alam once more under British protection. The Rhonslá forfeited Orissa to the English, who had already occupied it with a flying column, and Berar to the nizám, who gained a fresh addition by every act of compliance to the British Government. The freebooter, Jaswant Ráo Holkar, alone remained in the field, supporting his troops by ravages through Málwá and Rájputána. The concluding years of Wellesley’s rule were occupied with a series of operations against Holkar, which brought no credit on the British name. The disastrous retreat of Colonel Monson through Central India recalled memories of the convention of Wargaum, and of the destruction of Colonel Baillie’s force by hyder Ali. The repulse of Lake in person at the siege of Bhartpur (Bhurtpore) is memorable as an instance of a British army in India having to turn back with its object unaccomplished.

The ambitious policy and the continuous wars of Lord Welleyley exhausted the patience of the court of directors at home. In 1804 Lord Cornwallis was sent out as governor-general a second time, with instructions to bring about peace at any price, while Holkar was still unsubdued, and Sindhia was threatening a fresh war. But Cornwallis was now an old man and broken down in health. Travelling up to the north-west during the rainy season, he sank and died at Gházipur, before he had been ten weeks in the country. His immediate successor was Sir George Barlow, a civil servant of the Company, who, as a locum tenens, had no alternative but to carry out faithfully the orders of his employers. He is charged with being, under these orders, the only governor-general who diminished the area of British territory, and with violating engagements by abandoning the Rájput chiefs to the tender mercies of Holkar and Sindhia. During his administration also occurred the mutiny of the Madras sepoys at Vellore, which, though promptly suppressed, sent a shock on insecurity throughout the empire.

Lord Minto, governor-general from 1807 to 1813, consolidated the conquests which Wellesley had acquired. His only military exploits were the occupation of the island of Mauritius, and the conquest of java by an expedition which he accompanied in person. The condition of Central India continued to be disturbed, but Minto succeeded in preventing any violent outbreaks without himself having resource to the sword. The Company had ordered him to follow a policy of non-intervention, and he managed to obey his orders without injuring the prestige of the British name. In his time the Indian Government first opened relations with a new set of foreign powers, by sending embassies to the Punjab, to Afghánistán, and to Persia. The ambassadors were all trained in the school of Wellesley, and formed perhaps the most illustrious trio of "politicals" that the Indian service has produced. Metcalfe was the envoy to the court of Ranjít Sinh at Lahore; Elphinstone met the sháh of Afghánistán at Pesháwar; and Malcolm was despatched to Persia. If it cannot be said to any of these missions were fruitful in permanent results, at least they introduced the English to a new set of diplomatic relations, and widened the sphere of their influence.

The successor of Lord Minto was Lord Moira, better known as the marquis of Hastings, was governed India for the long period of nine years, from 1814 to 1823. This period was marked by two wars of the first magnitude, the campaigns against the Gúrkhans (Goorkhas) of Nepál, an the third and last Marhattá war. The Gúrkhas, the present ruling race in Nepál, and Hindu immigrants who claim a Rájput origin. The indigenous inhabitants, called Newars, belong to the Ind-Tibetan stock, and profess Buddhism. The sovereignty of the Gúrkhas dates only from 1767, in which year they overran the valley of Khatmandu, and gradually extended their power over all the hills and valleys of Nepál. Organized upon a sort of military and feudal basis, they soon became a terror to all their neighbours, marching east into Sikkim, west into Kumáun, and south into the Gangetic plains. In the last quarter their victims were British subjects, and at last it became imperatively necessary to check their advance. Sir George Barlow and Lord Minto had remonstrated in vain, and nothing was left to Lord Moira but to take up arms. The campaigns of 1814 was little short of disastrous. After overcoming the natural difficulties of a malarious climate and precipitous hills, the sepoys were on several occasions fairly worsted by the unexpected bravery of the little Gúrkhas, whose heavy knives or kukris dealt terrible execution. But in 1815 General Ochterlony, who commanded the army operating by way of the Sutlej, stormed one by one the hill forts which still stud the Himálayan states, now under the Punjab government, and compelled the Nepál darbár to sue for peace. In the following year the same general advanced from Patná into the valley of Khatmandu, and finally dictated the terms which had before been rejected, within a few miles of the capital. By the treaty of Segauli, which defines the English relations with Nepál to the present day, the Gúrkhas withdrew on the one hand from Sikkim, and on the other from those lower ranged of the western Himálayas which have supplied the health-giving stations of Naini Tál, Massuri, and Simla. Meanwhile the condition of Central India was every year becoming more unsatisfactory. Though the great Marhattá chiefs were learning to live rather as peaceful princes than as leaders of predatory bands, the example of lawlessness they had set was being followed, and bettered in the following, by a new set of freebooters, known as the Pindháris. As opposed to the Marhattás, who were at least a nationality bound by some traditions of a united government, the Pindháris were merely irregular soldiers, corresponding most nearly to the free companies of mediaeval Europe. Of no common race and of no common religion, they welcomed to their ranks the outlaws and broken tribes of all India,—Afgháns Marhattás, or Játz. Their headquarters were in Málwá, but their depredations were not confined to Central India. In bands, sometimes numbering a few hundred, sometimes many thousands, they rode out on their forays as far as Malabar and the Coromandel coast. The most powerful of the Pindhári captains, Amír Khán, had an organized army of many regiments, and several batteries of cannon. Two other leaders, known as Chitu and Karim, at one time paid a ransom to Sindhia of £100,000. To suppress the Pindhári hordes, who were supported by the sympathy, more or less open, of all the Marhattá chiefs, Lord Hastings (1817) collected the strongest British army that had been seen in India, numbering nearly 120,000 men, half to operate from the north, half from the south. Sindhia was overawed, and remained quiet. Amír Khán consented to disband his army, on condition of being guaranteed the possession of what is now the principality of Tank. The remaining bodies of Pindhárís were attacked in their homes, surrounded, and cut to pieces. Karim threw himself upon the mercy of the conquerors. Chitu fled to the jungles, and was killed by a tiger. In the same year (1817) as that in which the Pindhárís were crushed, and almost in the same mouth (November), the three great Marhattá powers at Poona, Nágpur, and Indore rose against the English. The peshwá, Báji Ráo, had long been chafing under the terms imposed by the treaty of Bassein (1802), and the subsequent treaty of Poona (1817), which riveted yet closer the chains of dependence upon the paramount power. Elphinstone, the resident at his court, foresaw what was coming and withdrew to Kirkee, wither he had ordered up a European regiment. The next day the residency was burned down, and Kirkee was attacked by the whole army of the peshwá. The attack was bravely repulsed, and the peshwá immediately fled from his capital. Almost the same plot was enacted at Nágpur, where the honour of the British name was saved by the sepoys, who defended the hill of Sítábaldi against enormous odds. The army of Holkar was defeated in the following month at the pitched battle of Mehidpur. All open resistance was now at an end. Nothing remained but to follow up the fugitives, and determine the conditions of the general pacifications. In both these duties Sir John Malcolm played a prominent part. The dominions of the peshwá were annexed to the Bombay presidency, and the nucleus of the present Provinces was formed out of the territory saved from the Pindhárís. The peshwá himself surrendered, and was permitted to reside at Bithúr, near Cawnpur, on a pension of £80,000 a year. His adopted son was the infamous Náná Sáhib. To fill the peshwá’s place to some extent at the head of the Marhattá confederacy, the lineal descendant of Sivaji was brought forth from obscurity, and placed upon the throne of Sátárá. An infant was recognized as the heir of Holkar, and a second infant was proclaimed rájá of Nágpur under British guardianship. At the same time the several states of Rájputána accepted the position of feudatories of the paramount power. The map of India, as thus drawn by Lord Hastings, remained substantially unchanged until the time of Lord Dalhousie. But the proudest boast of Lord Hastings and Sir John Malcolm was, not that they had advanced the pomoerium, but that they had conferred the blessings of peace and good government upon million who had suffered unutterable things from Marhattá and Pindhárí tyranny.

The marquis of Hastings was succeeded by Lord Amherst, after the interval of a few months, during which Mr Adam, a civil servant, acted as governor-general. Lord Amherst’s administration lasted fro five years, from 1823 to 1828. It is known in history by two prominent events, the first Burmese war and the capture of Bhartour. For some years past the north-east frontier had been disturbed by the restlessness of the Burmese. The country that fringes the western shore of the Bay of Bengal and runs up the valley of the Irawadi, with a people of Tibeto-Chinese origin, has a history of its own, parallel to, but not altogether independent of, that of India. Tradition asserts that its early civilization was introduced from the opposite coast of Coromandel, by a people who still preserve a trace of their origin in their name of Talaing (ef. Telinga and Teluga). However this may be, the Buddhist religion, professed by the Burmese at the present day, certainly came direct from India at a very early date. Many waves if invasion from Siam in the south and from the wild mountains in the north have passed over the land. These conquests were marked by that wanton and wholesale barbarity which seems to characterize the Tibeto-Chinese race, but the civilization of Buddhism survived every shock, and flourished around the ancient pagodas. European travelers in the 15th century visited Pegu and Tenasserim, which they describe as flourishing marts of maritime trade. During the period of Portuguese predominance in the East, Arakan became the resort of loose European adventures. With their help the Arakanese extended their power inland, occupied Chittagong, and (under the name of the Maghs) became the terror of the entire delta of the Ganges. About 1750 a new dynasty arose, founded by Alaungphaya or Alompra, with its capital at Ava, which still rules over Independent Burmah. The successors of Alompra, after having subjugated all Burmah, and overrun Assam, which was then an independent kingdom, began a series of encroachments upon British territory in India. As all peaceful proposals were contumeliously rejected, Lord Amherst was compelled to declare war in 1824. Little military glory could be gained by beating the Burmese, who were formidable only from the pestilential character of their country. One expedition with gunboats proceeded up the Brahmaputra into Assam; another marched by land through Chittagong into Arakan, for the Bengal sepoys refused to go by sea; a third, and the strongest, sailed from Madras direct to the mouth of the Irawadi. The war was protracted over two years. At last, after the loss of about 20,000 lives and an expenditure of £14,000,000, the king of Ava consented to sign the treaty of Yandabu, by which he abandoned all claim to Assam, and ceded the provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, which were already in the military occupation of the British. He retained all the valley of the Irawadi, own to the sea at Rangoon. The capture of Bhartpur in Central India by Lord Combermere in 1827 wiped out the repulse which Lake had received before that city in January 1805. A dispusted succession necessitated British intervention. Artillery could make little impression upon the massive walls of mud, but at last a breach was effected by mining, and the city was taken by storm, thus losing its general reputation throughout India for impregnability, which had threatened to become a political danger.

The next general-governor was Lord William Benticnk, who had been governor of Madras twenty years earlier at the time of the mutiny of Vellore. His seven year’s rule (from 1828 to 1835) is not signalized by any of those victories or extensions of territory by which chronicles delight to measure the growth of empire. But it is forms an epoch in administrative reform, and in the slow process by which the hearts of a subject population are won over to venerate as well as dread their alien rulers. The modern history of the British in India, as benevolent administrators ruling the country with a single eye to the good of the natives, may be said to begin with Lord William Bentinck. Accoridng to the inscription upon his statue at Catcutta, from the pen of Macaulay, "He abolished cruel rites; he effaced humiliating distinctions; he gave liberty to the expression of public opinion; his constant study it was to elevate the intellectual and moral character of the nations committed to his charge." His first care on arrival in India was to restore equilibrium to the finances, which were tottering under the burden imposed upon them by the Burmese war. This he effected by reductions in permanent expenditure, amounting in the aggregate to 1 _ millions sterling, as well as by augmenting the revenue from land that had escaped assessment and form the opium of Málwá. He also widened the gates by which educated natives could enter the service of the company. Some of these reforms were distasteful to the covenanted service and to the officers of the army, but Lord William was always staunchly supported by the court of directors and by the Whig ministry at home.

His two most memorable acts are the abolition of sati (suttee) and the suppression of the Thags (Thugs). At this distance of time it is difficult to realize the degree to which these two barbarous practices had corrupted the social system of the Hindus. European research has clearly proved that the text in the Vedas adduced to authorize the immolation of widows was a willful mistranslation. But the practice has been engrained in Hindu opinion by the authority of centuries and had acquired the sanctity of a religious rite. The emperor Akbar is said to have prohibited it by law, but the early English rulers did not dare so far to violate the traditions of religious toleration. In the year 1817 no less than seven hundred widows are said to have been burned alive in the Bangal presidency alone. To this day the most holy spots of Hindu pilgrimage are thickly dotted with little white pillars, each commemorating a sati. In the teeth of strenuous opposition, both from Europeans and natives, Lord William carried the regulation in council on December 4, 1829, by which all who abetted sati were declared guilty of "culpable homicide." The honour of suppressing Thagi must be shared between Lord William and Captain Sleeman. Thau was an abnormal excrescence upon Hinduism, in so far as the bands of secret assassins were sworn together by an oath based on the rites of the bloody goddess Kálí. Between 1826 and 1835 as many as 1562 Thags were apprehended in different parts of British India, and by the evidence of approvers the moral plague spot was gradually stamped out.





Two other historical events are connected with the administration of Lord William Bentinck. In 1833 the charter of the east India Company was renewed for twenty years, but only upon the terms that it should abandon its trade and permit Europeans to settle freely in the country. At the same time a legal or fourth member was added to the governor-general’s council, who might not be a servant of the Company, and a commission was appointed to revise and codify the law. Macaulay was the first legal member of council and the first president of the law commission. In 1830 it was found necessary to take the state of Mysore under British administration, where it has continued to the present year (1881), and in 1834 the frantic misrule of the raja of Coorg brought on a short and sharp war. The raja was permitted to retire to Benares, and the brave and proud inhabitants of that mountainous little territory decided to place themselves under the rule of the Company; so that the only annexation effected by Lord William Bentinck was "in consideration of the unanimous wish of the people."

Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Metcalfe succeeded Lord William as senior member of council. His short term of office is memorable for the measure which his predecessor had initiated, but which he willingly carried into execution, for given entire liberty to the press. Pu8blic opinion in India, as well as the express wish of the court of directors at home, pointed to Metcalfe, not provisionally, but as governor-general for a full term. Party exigencies, however, led to the appointment of Lord Auckland. From that date commences a new era of war and conquest, which may be said to have lasted for twenty years. All looked peaceful until Lord Auckland, prompted by his evil genius, attempted to place Sháh Shujá upon the throne of Cabul, an attempt which ended in the gross mismanagement and annihilation of the garrison placed in that city. The disaster in Afghánistán was quickly followed by the conquest of Sind, the two wars in the Punjab, the second Burmese war, and last of all the Mutiny. Names like Gough and Napier and Colin Campbell take the place of Malcom and Metcalfe and Elphinstone.

For the first time since the days of the sultans of Ghazní and Ghor, Afghánistán had obtained a national king in 1747 in the person of the Ahmad Sháh Duráni, who found his opportunity in the confusion that followed on the death in 1773 Persian conqueror, Nádir Sháh. Before his death in 1773 Ahmad Sháh had conquered a wide empire, from Heart to Pesháwar and from Kashmir to Sind. His intervention on the field of Pánipat (1761) turned back the tide of Marhattá conquest, and replaced a Mughal emperor on the throne of Delhi. But Ahmad Sháh never cared to stele down in India, and kept alternate state at his two national capitals of Cabul and Kandahár. The Duráni kings were prolific in children, who fought with one another for the succession to the death. At last, in 1826, Dost Muhammad, head of the powerful Barakzái family, succeeded in establishing himself as ruler of Cabul, with the subordinate title of amír (ameer), while two fugitive brothers of the Duráni line were living under British protection at Ludhiána, on the frontier of the Punjab.

The attention of the English Government had been directed to Afghán affairs ever since the time of Lord Wellesley, who feared that Zamán Sháh, then holding his court at Lahore, might follow in the path of Nádir Sháh, and overrun Hindustán. The growth of the powerful Síkh kingdom of Ranjít effectually dispelled any such alarms for the future. Subsequently, in 1809, while a French invasion of India was still a possibility to be guarded against, Elphinstone was sent by Lord Minto on a mission to Sháh Shujá to form a defensive alliance. Before the year was out, Sháh Shujá had been driven into exile, and a third brother, Malmúd Sháh, was one the throne. In 1837, when the curtain rises upon the drama of English interference in Afghánistán, the usurper Dost Muhammad Barakzái was firmly established at Cabul. His great ambition was to recover Pesháwar from the Síkhs; and when captain Alexander Burnes arrived on a mission from Lord Auckland, with the ostensible object of opening trade, the Dost was willing to promise everything, if only he could get Pesháwar. But Lord Auckland had another and more important object in view. At this time the Russians were advancing rapidly in Central Aisa, and a Persian army, not without Russian support, was besieging Heart, the traditional bulwark of Afghánistan on the east. A Russian envoy was at cabul at the same time as Burnes. The latter was unable to satisfy the demands of Dost Muhammad in the matter of Pesháwar, and returned to India unsuccessful. Lord Auckland forthwith resolved upon the hazardous plan of placing a more subservient ruler upon the throne of Cabul. Sháh Shujá, one of the two exiles at Ludhiána, was selected for the purpose. At this time both the Punjab and Sind were independent kingdoms. Sind was the less powerful of the two, and therefore a British army escorting Sháh Shujá made its way by that route to enter Afghánistan through the Bolán Pass. Kandahár surrendered, Ghazní was taken by storm, Dost Muhammad fled across the Hindu Kush, and Sháh Shujá was triumphantly led into the Bala Hissár at cabul in August 1839. During the two years that followed Afghánistán remained in the military occupation of the British. The catastrophe occurred in November 1841, when Sir Alexander Burnes was assassinated in the city of Cabul. The troops in the cantonments were then under the command of General Elphinstone (not to be confounded with the civilian Mountstuart Elphinstone), with Sir William Macnaghten as chief political adviser. Elphisntone was an old man, unequal to the responsibilities of the position. Mecnaghten was treacherously murderned at an interview with the Afghán chief, Akbar Khán, eldest son of Dost Muhammad. After lingering in their cantonments for two months, the British army set off in the depth of winder to find its way back to India through the passes. When they started they numbered 4000 fighting men, with 12,000 camp followers. A single survivor, Dr Brydon, reached the friendly walls of Jalálábád, where Sale was gallantly holding out. The rest perished in the defiles of Khurd, Cabul, and Jagdalak, either from the knives and matchlocks of the Afgháns or from the effects of cold. A few prisoners, mostly women, children, and officers, were considerately treated by the orders of Akbar Khán.

Within a mouth after the news reached Calcutta, Lord Auckland had been superseded by Lord Ellenborough, whose first impulse was to be satisfied with drawing off in safety the garrisons from Kandahár and Jalálábád. But bolder counsels prevailed. Pollock, who was marching straight through the Punjab to relieve Sale, was ordered to penetrate the Cabul, while Nott was only too glad not to be forbidden to retire from Kandahár through Cabul. After a good deal of fighting, the two English forces met at their common destination in Stepember 1842. The great bazaar at Cabul was blown up with gunpowder, to fix a stigma upon the city; the prisoners were recovered; and all marched back to India, leaving Dost Muhammad to take undisputed possession of his throne. The drama closed with a bombastic proclamation from Lord Ellenborough, who had casued the gates from the tomb of Mahmúd of Ghazní to be carried back as a memorial of "Somnáth revenged."

Lord Ellenborough, who loved military display, had his tastes gratified by two more wars. In 1843 the Mahometan rulers of Sind, known as the "meers" or amírs, whose only faut was that they would not surrender their independence, were crushed by Sir Charles Napier. The victory of Miáni, in which 3000 British troops defeated 20,000 Baluchís, is perhaps the most brilliant feat of arms in Indian history; but an honest excuse can scarcely be found for the annexation of the country. In the same year a disputed succession at Gwalior, fomented by feminine intrigue, resulted in an outbreak of the overgrown army which the Sindhia family had been allowed to maintain. Peace was restored by the battles of Maharájpur and Punneah, at the former of which Lord Ellenborough was present in person.

In 1844 Lord Ellenborough was recalled by the court of directors, who differed from him on many points of administration, and distrusted his erratic genius. He was succeeded by Sir Henry (afterwards Lords) Hardinge, who had served through the Peninsula War and had lost a hand at Ligny. It was felt on all sides that a trial of strength between the British and the Síkhs was at hand.

The Síkhs were not a nationality like the Marhattás, but a religious sect bound together by the additional tie of military discipline. They trace their origin to one Nának, an excellent and successful preacher, who was born in the neighbourhood of Lahore in the latter half of the 15th century, before the arrival of either Mughals or Portuguese in India. Nának was a religious reformer, like others that arose in the country about that time, who preached the abolition of caste, the unity of the Godhead, and the obligation of leading a pure life. From Nának ten gurus or apostles are traced down to Govind Sinh in 1708, with whom the succession stopped. Suffering continual persecution from the ruling Mahometans , which culminating in the reign of Aurangzeb, the Síkh religion maintained itself with extraordinary tenacity. At last the downfall of the Mughal empire transformed it into a territorial power, which possessed the only organization remaining in the Punjab. Even before the rise of Ranjít Sinh, offshoots from the Síkh misls or confederacies, each led by its elected sardár, had carved out for themselves feudal principalities along the banks of the Sutlej, some of which have endured to the present day. Ranjít Sinh, the founder of the Síkh kingdom, was born in 1780. In his twentieth year he obtained the appointment of governor of Lahore from the Afghán emperor, and from that time he set himself to the task of basing a personal despotism upon the religious fanaticism of the Síkhs. The khálsá or "the liberated" were organized into an army under European officers, which for steadiness and religious fervour has had no parallel since the "ironsides" of Cromwell. From Lahore as his capital he extended his conquests south to Múltán, west to Pesháwar, and north to Kashmír. On the east side alone he was hemmed in by the Sutlej, up to which river the authority of the British Government was advanced in 1804. Till his death in 1839 Ranjít Sinh was ever loyal to the engagements which he had entered into with Metcalfe in 1809. But he left no son capable of wielding his scepter. Lahore was torn by dissensions between rival generals, ministers, and queens. The only strong power was the army of the Khálsá, which since the disaster in Afghánistán burned to measure its strength with the British sepoys. The French generals, Avitable and Court, were foolishly ousted, and the supreme military command was vested in a series of pancháyats or electric committees of five.

In 1845 the Síkh army, numbering 60,000 men with 150 guns, crossed the Sutlej and invaded British territory. Sir Hugh Gough, the commander-in-chief, together with the governor-general, hurried up to the frontier. Within three weeks four pitches battles were fought, at Moodkee, Ferozshah, Aliwál, and Sobráon. The British loss on each occasion was heavy; but by the last victory the Síkhs were fairly driven into and across the Sutlej, and Lahore surrendered to the British. By the terms of peace then dictated the infant son of Ranjít, Dhulip Sinh, was recognized as raja; the Jalandhar Doáb, or tract between the Sutlej and the Ráví, was annexed; the Síkh army was limited to a specified number; major Henry Lawrence was appointed to be resident and Lahore; and a British force was detailed to garrison the Punjab for a period of eight years. Sir H. Hardinge received a peerage, and returned to England in 1848.

Lord Dalhouise succeeded, whose eight year’s administration (from 1848 to 1856) was more pregnant of results than that of any governor-general since Clive. Though professedly a man of peace, he was compelled to fight two wars, in the Punjab and Burmah. These both ended in large acquisitions of territory, while Nágpur, Oudh, and several minor states also came under British rule. But Dalhousie’s own special interest lay in the advancement of the moral and material condition of the country. The system of administration carried out in the conquered Punjab by the two Lawrences and their assistants is probably the most successful piece of difficult work ever accomplished by Englishmen. British Burmah has prospered under their rule scarcely less than the Punjab. Inboth cases Lord Dalhouise deserves a large share of the credit. No branch of the administration escaped his reforming hand. He founded the public works department, to pay special attention to roads and canals. He opened the Ganges Canal, still the largest work of the kind in the country, and he turned the sod of the first Indian railway. He promoted steam communication with England via the Red Sea, and introduced cheap postage and the electric telegraph. It is Lord Dalhousie’s misfortune that these benefits are too often forgotten in the vivid recollections of the Mutiny, which avenged his policy of annexation.

Lord Dalhouise had been six months in India before the second Síkh war broke out. Two British officers were treacherously assassinated at Múltán. Unfortunately Henry Lawrence was at home on sick leave. The British army was not ready to act in the hot weather, and, despite the single-handed exertions of Lieutenant (afterwards Sir Herbert) Edwardes, this outbreak of fanaticism led to a general rising. The khálsá army again came together, and once more fought on even terms with the British. On the fatal field of Chilianwála, which patriotism prefers to call a drawn battle, the British lost 2400 officers and men, besides four guns and the colours of three regiments. Before reinforcements could come out from England, with Sir Charles Napier as commander-in-chief, Lord Gough had restored his own reputation by the crowning victory of Guzerat, which absolutely destroyed the Síkh army. Múltán had previously fallen; and the Afghán horse under Dost Muhammad, who had forgotten their hereditary antipathy to the Síkhs in their greater hatred of the British name, were chased back with ignominy to their native hills. The Punjab henceforth became a British province, supplying a virgin field for the administrative talents of Dalhousie and the two Lawrences. Rájá Dhulip Sinh received an allowance of £50,0000 a year, on which he retired as a country gentlemen to Norfolk in England. The first step in the pacification of the Punjab was a general disarmament, which resulted in the delivery of no less than 120,000 weapons of various kinds. Then followed a settlement of the land tax, village by village, at an assessment much below that to which it had been raised by Síkh exactions, and the introduction of a loose but equitable code of civil and criminal procedure. Roads and canals were laid out by Colonel Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala); and the security of British peace and the personal influence of British officers were felt to the furthest corners of the province. Thus it happened that, when the Mutiny broke out in 1857, the Punjab remained not only quiet but loyal, after only eight years’ experience of English rule; while the North-Western Provinces, which had been British territory for more than half century, rose in rebellion. The second Burmese war of 1852 was caused by the ill-treatment of European merchants at Rangoon, and the insolence offered to the captain of a frigate who had been sent to remonstrate. The whole valley of the Irawadi, from Rangtoon to Prome, was occupied in a few months, and, as the king of Ava refused to treat, it was annexed, under the name fo pegu, to the provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, which had been acquired in 1826. Since annexation the inhabitants of Rangoon have increased tenfold in number, and that port now ranks third in British India, being surpassed only by Calcutta and Madras. Lord Dalhouise’s dealings with thefeudatory states of India can only be rightly appreciated as part of his general policy. That rulers only exist for the good of the ruled was his supreme axiom of government, of which he gave the most conspicuous example by the practice of his own daily life. That British administration was better for the people than native rule followed form this axiom as a necessary corollary. He was thus led to regard native chiefs from somewhat the same point of view as the Scotch regarded the hereditary jurisdictions after 1745, as mischievous anomalies, to be abolished by every means practicable. Good faith must be kept with rulers on the throne and with their legitimate heirs, but no false sentiment should preserve dynasties that had forfeited all consideration by years of accumulated misrule, or prolong those that had no natural successor. The "doctrine of lapse" was merely a special application of these principles, though complicated by the theory of adoption. It has never been doubted that, according to Hindu private law, an adopted son entirely fills the place of his father or to inherit his property. But it was argued that the succession to a throne stood upon a different footing. The paramount power could not recognize such a right, which might be used as a fraud to hand over the happiness of millions to a base-born impostor. Here came in the maxim of "the good of the governed." The material benefits to be conferred through British administration surely weighed heavier in the scale than a superstitious and frequently fraudulent fiction of inheritance. The first state of escheat to the British Government in accordance with these principles was Sátárá, which had been reconstituted by Lord Hastings on the downfall of the peshwá in 1818. The last direct representative of Sivaji died without a male heir in 1848, and his deathbed adoption was set aside. In the same year the Rájput state of Karauli was saved by the interposition of the court of directors, who drew a fine distinction between a dependent principality and a protected ally. In 1833 Jhánsi suffered the same fate as Sátárá. But the most conspicuous application of the doctrine of lapse was the case of Nágpur. The last of the Bhonslás, a dynasty order than the British Government itself, and without a son, natural of adopted, in 1853. That year also saw British administration extended to the Berars, on the assigned districts which the nizám of Hyderabad was induced to cede as a territorial guarantee for the subsides which he perpetually kept in arrear. Three more distinguished names likewise passed away in 1853, though without any attendant accretion to British territory. In the extreme south the titular nawáb of the Carnatic and the titular raja of tanjore both died without heirs. Their rank and their pensions died with them, though compassionate allowances were continued to their families. In the north of India, Báj Ráo, the ex-peshwá who had been dethroned in 1818, lived on till 1853 in the enjoyment of his annual pension of £80,000. His adopted son, Nána Sáhib, inherited his accumulated savings, but could obtain no furt5her recognition.

The annexation of the province of Oudh is to be defended on very different grounds. Ever since the nawáb wazir, Shujá-ud-Daulá, received back his forfeited territories from the hands of Lord Clive in 1765, the very existence of Oudh as an independent state had depended only upon the protection of British bayonets. Thus, preserved alike from foreign invasion and from domestic rebellion, the long of subsequent nawábs had given way to that neglect of public affairs and those private vices which naturally flow from irresponsible power. Their only redeeming virtue was steady loyalty to the British Government. Oudh has been called "the Garden of India" by an author1 who endeavours to show that the evils of native rule were never so black as they have been painted. But at any rate that fair corner of the Gangetic basin, which now supports a denser population than any equal area on the surface of the globe, had been groaning for generations under anarchy for which each successive governor-general admitted that he was partly responsible. Warning after warning had been given to the nawábs (who had assumed to title of shah or king since 1819) that they must put their house in order. What the benevolent Bentinck and the soldierly Hurdinge had only threatened was reserved for Lord Dalhousie, who united honesty of purpose with decision of character. In this determination he had the full support of the court of directors at home. In 1856, the last year of his rule, he issued orders to General (afterwards Sir James) Outram, then resident at the court of Lucknow, to assume the direct administration of Oudh, on the ground that "the British Government would be guilty in the sight of God and man, if it were any longer to aid in sustaining by its countenance an administration fraught with suffering to millions." The refused to recognize the justice of his deposition. After a mission to England, by way of protest and appeal, he settled down in the pleasant suburb of Garden Reach near Calcutta, where he lived in the enjoyment of a pension of £120,000 a year. Oudh was thus annexed without a blow; but it may be doubted whether the one measure of Lord Dalhouise upon which he looked back himself with the clearest conscience was not the very one that most alarmed natoive public opinion.

The marquis of Dalhouise resigned office in March 1856, being than only forty-four years of age; but he carried home with him the seeds of a lingering illness which resulted in his death in 1860. Excepting Cornwallis, he was the first, though by no means the last, of English statesmen who have fallen victims to their devotion to India’s needs. He was succeeded by his friend, Lord Cannings, who, at the farewell banquet in England given to him by the court of directors, uttered these prophetic words: "I wish for a peaceful term of office. But I cannot forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a small cloud may arise, no larger than a man’s hand, but which, growing larger and larger, may at least threaten to burst and overwhelm us with ruin." In the following year the sepoys of the Bengal army mutinied, and all the valley of the Ganges from Patná to Delhi rose in open rebellion.

The various motives assigned for the Mutiny appear inadequate to the European mind. The truth seems to be that native opinion throughout India was in a ferment, predisposing men to believe the wildest stories, and to act precipitately upon their fears. The influence of panic in an Oriental population is greater than might be readily believed. In the first place, the policy of Lord Dalhousie, exactly in proportion as it had been dictated by the most honourable considerations, was utterly distasteful to the native mind. Repeated annexations, the spread of education, the appearance of the steam engine and the telegraph wire, all alike revealed a consistent determination to substitute and English for an Indian civilization. The Bengal sepoys, especially, though that they could see into the future farther than the rest of their countrymen. Nearly all men of high caste, and many of them recruited from Oudh, they dreaded tendencies which they deemed to be denationalizing, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant. They believed it was by their prowess that the Punjab has been conquered, and all India was held quiet. The numerous dethroned princes, their heirs and their widows, were the first to learn and take advantage of the spirit of disaffection that was abroad. They had heard of the Crimean war, and were told that Russia was the perpetual enemy of England. They had money in abundance with which they could buy the assistance of skilful intriguers. They had everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by a revolution.

In this critical state of affairs, of which the Government had no official knowledge, a rumour ran through the cantonments of the Bengal army that cartridges had been served out greased with the fat of animals unclean alike to Hindu and Mahometan. After this, nothing could quiet the minds of the sepo0ys. Fires occurred nightly in the native lines; officers were insulted by their men; all confidence was gone, and only the form of discipline remained. On the afternoon of Sunday, May 10, 1857, the sepoys at Meerut (Mirath) broke into open mutiny. Their first mad frenzy marked by its excess the change from their usually quiet manners and orderly habits. They broke into the jail, and then ran through the cantonments, cutting down every European they met. At last they streamed off the neighbouring city of Delhi, to stir up the native garrison and the criminal population of that great city, and to place themselves under the authority of the discrowned Mughal emperor. Meerut was the largest military station in India, with a strong European garrison of foot, horse, and guns, sufficient to overwhelm the mutineers before ever they reached Delhi. But just as the sepoys acted in irrational panic, so did British officers in but too many cases act with equally irrational indecision. The news of the outbreak was telegraphed to Delhi, and nothing more was done that night. The next morning the Mahometans of Delhi rose, and all that the Europeans there could do was to blow up the magazine. A rallying centre and a traditional name was thus given to the revolt, which forthwith spread like wildfire through all the North-western Provinces and Oudh down into Lower Bengal. The same narrative must suffice for all, though each episode has its own peculiar story of sadness and devotion. The sepoys rose on their officers, without warning, and sometimes after protestations of fidelity. The Europeans, or persons of Christian faith, were massacred, sometimes also women and children. The jail was broken open, the treasure plundered, and tehn all marched off to some centre of revolt, to join in what had now become a national war. Only in the Punjab were the sepoys anticipated by the stern measures of repression and disarmament adopted by Sir John Lawrence and his lieutenants, among whom Edwardes and Nicholson were conspicuous. The Síkh population never wavered. Crowds of willing recruits came down from the Afghán hills. And thus the Punjab, instead of being itself a source of danger, was able to furnish a portion of its own garrison for the siege of Delhi. In Lower Bengal most of the sepoys mutinied, and then dispersed in different directions. The native armies of Madras and Bombay remained true to their colours. In central India the contingents of many of the great chiefs sooner or later joined the rebels, but the Mahometan state of Hyderabad was kept loyal by the authority of its able minister Sir Sálar jang.

The main interest of the sepoy war gathers round the three cities of Cawnpur, Lucknow, and Delhi. The cantonments at Cawnpur contained the largest native garrison in India; and in the immediate neighbourhood, at Bithúr, was the palace of Dandhu Panth, the disinherited heir of the last peshwa, whose more familiar appellation of Nána Sáhib will ever be handed down to the infamy of history. At first the Nána was profuse in his professions of loyalty, but as soon as the sepoys mutilated he put himself at their head, and was proclaimed peshwá of the Marhattás. The Europeans at Cawnpur, who numbered more women and children than fighting men, shut themselves up in improvised entrenchments, where they sustained a siege for nineteen days under the sun of a tropical June. At last, trusting to a safe conduct from the Nána as far as Allahábád, they surrendered their position, and to the number of four hundred and fifty individuals embarked in boats on the Ganges. Forthwith a murderous fire was opened upon them from the river bank. Only a single boat escaped, and but four men, who swam across to the protection of a friendly raja, ultimately survived to tell the tale. The rest of the men were massacred on the spot; the women and children, numbering one hundred and twenty-five, were and children, numbering one hundred and twenty-five, were reserved for the same fate a few days later, when the avenging army of Havelock was at hand. Sir Henry Lawrence, the chief commissioner of Oudh, had foreseen the coming storm with a prophetic eye. He had fortified and provisioned the residency at Lucknow in good time, and neither he retired with all the European inhabitants and was mortally wounded by a shell. But his example inspired the little garrison to hold out under unparalleled hardships and against enormous odds, until relieved by Havelock and Outram on September 25. Bu the relieving force was itself invested by fresh swarms of rebels, and it was not till November that Sir Colin Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde, cut his way into Lucknow, and effected the final deliverance of the garrison. The siege of Delhi began on June 8, just one month after the original outbreak at Meerut. Siege in the proper sense of the word it was not, for the British army, encamped on the historic ridge, never exceeded 8000 men, while the rebels within the walls were more than 30,000 strong. In the middle of August Nicholson arrived with a reinforcement from the Punjab, but his own encouraging presence was mor4e valuable than the reinforcement he brought. On September 14 the assault was delivered, and after six day’s desperate fighting in the streets Delhi was again won. Nicholson fell at the head of the storming party. Hodson, the intrepid leader of a corps of irregular horse, hunted down and brought in as prisoner the old Mughal emperor, Bahádur Sháh, and then in cold blood shot down the emperor’s sons with his own hand. After the fall of Delhi and the final relief of Lucknow the war loses its dramatic interest, though fighting went on in various parts of the country for eighteen months longer. The population of Oudh and Rohilkhand, stimulated by the presence of the begum of Oudh, the nawáb of Bareilly, and Nána Sáhib himself, had joined the mutinous sepoys en masse. In this quarter of India alome, it was the revolt of a people rather than the mutiny of an army that had to be quelled. Sir Colin Campbell in person conducted the campaign in Oudh, which lasted through two cold seasons. Valuable assistance was lent by Sir Jang Bahádur of Nepál, at the head of a numerous army of Gúrkhas. Town after town was occupied, fort after fort was stormed, until at length the last gun had been recaptured and the last fugitive had fled across the frontier by January 1859. In the meanwhile Sir Hugh Rose (afterwards Lord Strathnairn), with another army from Bombay, was conducting an equally brilliant campaign in Central India. His most formidable antagonists were the disinherited rání fo Jhánsi, and Tántia Topi, whose military talent had previously inspired Nána Sánib with all the capacity for resistance that he ever displayed. The rání died fighting bravely at the head of her troops in June 1858; Tantiá Topí, after doubling backwards and forwards through Central India, was at last betrayed and run down in April 1859.

The Mutiny sealed the fate of the east India Company, after a life of more than two and a half centuries.

The Company received its original charter of incorporation from Elizabeth in 1600. Its political powers, and the constitution of the Indian Government, were derived from the Regulating Act of 1773, passed by the ministry of Lord North. By that statute the governor of Bengal was raised to the rank of governor-general; and, in conjunction with his council of four other members, he was entrusted with the duty of superintending and controlling the governments of Madras and Bombay so far as regarded questions of peace and war; a supreme court of judicature was appointed at Calcutta, to which the judges were appointed by the crown; and a power of making rules, ordinances, and regulations was conferred upon the governor-general and his council. Next came the India Bill of Pitt (1784), which founded the board of control, strengthened the supremacy of Benhal over the other presidencies, and first authorized the historic phrase "governor-general-in-council." The Act which abolished the Company’s monopoly of trade (1833) also introduced several reforms into the constitution of the Indian Government, and added to the council an additional member, who might not be chosen from among the Company’s servants, and was entitled to be present only at meetings for making laws and regulations; it gave the authority of Acts of Parliament to the laws and regulations so made, subject to the disallowance of the court of directors; it appointed a law commission; and it gave the governor-general-in-council a control over the other presidencies in all points relating to the civil or military administration. The charter of the Company was renewed for the last time in 1853, not for a definite period of years, but only for so long as parliament should ordain. On this occasion the number of directors was reduced, and their patronage as regards appointments to the civil service was taken away, to make room for the principle of open competition.

The Act for the better government of India (1858), which finally transferred the entire administration from the Company to the crown, was not passed without an eloquent protest from the directors, nor without acrimonius party discussion in parliament. It enacts that India shall be governed by, and in the name of, the sovereign of England through one of the principal secretaries of state, assisted by a council of fifteen members. The governor-general received the new title of viceroy. The European troops of the Company, numbering about 24,000 officers and men, were amalgamated with the royal service, and the Indian navy was abolished. By the Indian Councils Act (1861) the governor-general’s council and also the councils at Madras and Bombay were augmented by the addition of non-official members, either natives or Europeans, for legislative purposes only; and by another Act passed in the same year high courts of judicature were constituted out of the existing supreme courts at the presidency towns.

It fell to the lot of Lord Canning both to suppress the Mutiny and to introduce the peaceful revolution that followed. As regards his execution of the former part of his duties, it is sufficient to say that he preserved his equanimity undisturbed in the darkest hours of peril, and that the strict impartiality of his conduct incurred alternate praise and blame from the fanatics on either side. The epithet then scornfully applied to him of "Clemency" Canning is now remembered only to his honour. On November 1, 1858, at a grand darbár held at Allahábád the royal proclamation was published which announced that the queen had assumed the government of India. This document, which has been called the magna Charta of the Indian people, went on to explain the policy of political justice and religious toleration which it was her royal pleasure to pursue, and granted an amnesty to all except those who had directly taken part in the murder of British subjects. Peace was proclaimed throughout India on July 8, 1859; and in the following cold weather Lord Canning made a viceregal progress through the upper provinces, to receive the homage of loyal princes and chiefs, and to guarantee to them the right of adoption. The suppression of the Mutiny increased the debt on India by about 40 millions sterling, and the military changes that ensued augmented the annual expenditure by about 10 millions. The grappled with this deficit, Mr James Wilson was sent out from the treasury as financial member of council. He reorganized the customs system, imposed an income tax and licence duty, and created a state paper currency. The penal code, originally drawn up by Macaulay in 1837, passed into law in 1860, together with a code of civil and criminal procedure.

Lord Canning left India in March 1862, and died before he had been a month in England. His successor, Lord Elgin, only lived till November 1863, when he too fell a victim to the excessive work of the governor-generalship, dying at the Himálayan station of Dharmsálám where he lies buried. He was succeeded by Sir John Lawrence, the saviour of the Pinjab. The chief incidents of his administration were the Bhután war and the terrible Orissa famine. Lord Mayo, who succeeded him in 1869, carried on the permanent British policy of moral and material progress with a special degree of personal energy. The Ambálá (Ymballa) darbár, at which Shere Alie was recognized as amír of Afghánistán, though in one same merely the completion of what Lord Lawrence had begun , owed much of its success to the personal influence of Lord Mayo himself, stood him in good stead in all his dealings both with native chiefs and European officials. His example of hard work stimulated all to their best. While engaged in exploring with his own eyes the further corners of the empire, he fell by the hand of an assassin in the convict settlement of the Andaman Islands in 1872. His successor was Lord Northbrook, whose ability showed itself chiefly in the department of finance. During the time of his administration a famine in Lower Bengal in 1874 was successfully obviated by Government relief and public works, though at an enormous cost; the gáikwár of Baroda was dethroned in 1875 for misgovernment and disloyalty, while his dominions were continued to a nominated child of the family; and the Prince of Wales made a tour through the country in the cold weather of 1875-76. Lord Lytton followed Lord Northbrook in 1876. On January 1, 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India at a dárbár of unequalled magnificence, held on the historic "redge" overlooking the Mughal capital of Delhi. But while the princes and high officials of the country were flocking to this gorgeous scene, the shadow of famine was already darkening over the south of India. Both the monsoons of 1876 had failed to bring their due supply of rain, and the season of 1877 was little better. The consequences of this prolonged drought, which extended from the Deccan to Cape Comorin, and subsequently invaded northern India, were more disastrous than any similar calamity since the introduction of British rule. Despite unparalleled importations of grain by sea and rail, despite the most strenuous exertions of the Government, which incurred a total expenditure on this account of 11 millions sterling, the loss of life from actual starvation and its attendant train of diseases was lamentable. The total number of deaths from disease and want in the distressed tracts in excess of the normal mortality for the two years 1876-78 is estimated to have raised the death-rate by 40 per cent., or 5 _ millions. In the autumn of 1878 the affairs of Afghánistán again forced themselves into notice. Shere Ali, the amír, who had been hospitably entertained by Lord Mayo, was found to be favouring Russian intrigues. A British embassy was refused admittance to the country, while a Russian mission was received with honour. This led to a declaration of war. British armies advanced by three routes,—the Khaibar (Khyber), the Kuram, and the Bolán and without much opposition occupied the inner entrances of the passes. Shere Ali fled to Afghán Turkestán, and there died. A treaty was entered into with his son, Yákub Khán, at Gandamak, by which the British frontier was advanced to the crests or further sides of the passes, and a British officer was admitted to reside at Cabul. Within a few monts the British resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari, was treacherously attacked and massacred, together with his escort, and a second war become necessary. Yákub Khán abdicated, and was deported to India; Cabul was occupied in force, and an Afghán chief of the Duráni line was placed in the government of Kandahár with the title of wáli. At that crisis of affairs a general election in England resulted in a defeat of the ministry. Lord Lytoon resigned with the Conservative ministry, and the marquis of Ripon was nominated as his successor in 1880. Since then, a British brigade received a defeat between Kandahár and the Helmand river from the Heráti army of Ayúb Khán, a defeat promptly and completely retrieved by the brilliant march of General Sir Frederick Roberts from Cabukl to Kandahár, and by the total rout of Ayúb Khán’s army on Septembver 1, 1880. Abdurrahman Khán, the eldest male representative of the stock of Dost Muhammad, has now been recognized as amír of Cabul.

Governor-General of India under the East India Company, 1765-1858.

1765. Lord Clive.
1767. Henry Verelst.
1769. John Cartier.
1772. Warren Hastings.
1786. Lord (afterwards Marquis) Cornwallis.
1793. Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth).
1798. Sir Alured Clarke (protem.).
1798. Lord Mornington (Marquis Wellesley).
1805. Lord Cornwallis again.
1805. Sir George Barlow (protem.)
1805. Earl of Minto.
1813. Earl of Moira (Marquis of Hastings).
1823. John Adam (pro tem.)
1823. Lord William Cavendish Bentinck.
1835. Sir Charles Metcalfe (Lord Auckland.
1842. Earl of Ellenborough.
1844. Viscount Hardinge.
1848. Earl (afterwards Marquis) of Dalhousie.
1856. Earl Canning.

Viceroys of India unde the Crown, 1858-1881.

1858. Earl Canning.
1862. Earl Of Elgin.
1864. Sir John Lawrence (Lord Lawrence).
1869. Earl of Mayo.
1872. Lord Northbrook.
1876. Lord Lytton.
1880. Marquis of Ripon.


Footnote

809-1 The Garden of India, or Chapters on Oudh History and Affairs, by H. C. Irwin, London, 1880.



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