Another feature in the character of Tippoo was his religion, with a sense of which his mind was deeply impressed. He spent a considerable part of every day in prayer. He gave to his kingdom a particular religious title, CUDADAK, or God-given, and he lived under a peculiarly strong and operative conviction of the superintendence of a divine Providence. To one of his French advisers, who urged him zealously to obtain the support of the Mahrattas, he replied, "I rely solely on Providence, expecting that I shall be alone and unsupported; but God and my courage will accomplish everything." "He had the discernment to perceive, what is so generally hid from the eyes of rulers in a more enlightened state of society, that it is the prosperity of those who labour with their hands which constitutes the principle and cause of the prosperity of states. He therefore made it his business to protect them against the intermediate orders of the community by whom it is so difficult to prevent their being oppressed. His country was, accordingly, at least during the first and better part of his reign, the best cultivated, and his population the most flourishing in India; while under the English and their pageants, the population of the Carnatic and Oude, degenerating into the state of deserts, was the most wretched upon the face of the earth; and even Bengal itself, under the operation of laws ill adapted to their circumstances, was suffering almost all the evils which the worst of governments could inflict. For an Eastern prince, he was full of knowledge. His mind was active, acute, and. ingenious. But in the value which he set upon objects, whether as means or as an end, he was almost perpetually deceived. Besides, a conviction appears to have been rooted in his mind, that the English had formed a resolution to deprive him of his kingdom, and that it was useless to negotiate, because no submission to which he could reconcile his mind would restrain them in the gratification of their ambitious designs." Tippoo was right. The great design of the English, from their first secure footing in India, was to establish their control over the whole peninsula, and we shall soon see that, in prosecuting that object, no cruelties of Tippoo could exceed theirs. Warren Hastings had saved Madras and the Carnatic, but only at a cost of crime and extortion, which have scarcely any parallel in the history of the earth. To obtain the necessary money, he began a system of robbery and coercion on the different princes of Bengal and Oude, who were in the power of the British government, which was truly astonishing. The first experiment was made on Cheyte Sing, the rajah of Benares, who had been allowed to remain as a tributary prince, when that province was made over to the British by the nabob of Oude. The tribute had been paid with a regularity unexampled in the history of India; but when the war broke out with France, Hastings suddenly demanded an extraordinary addition of fifty thousand pounds a-year, and as it was not immediately paid, the rajah was heavily fined into the bargain. This was rendered still more stringent in 1780, when the difficulties in Madras began. Cheyte Sing sent a confidential agent to Calcutta, to assure Hastings that it was not in his power to pay so heavy a sum, and he sent him two laes of rupees, twenty thousand pounds, as a private present to conciliate him. Hastings accepted the money; but no doubt feeling the absolute need of large sums for the public treasury, he, after awhile, paid this into the treasury, and then said to Cheyte Sing that he must pay the contribution all the same. In fact, Hastings could not afford to be bribed; he must have every possible farthing that he could force from the rajahs for the public needs. He compelled the rajah to pay the annual sum of fifty thousand pounds, and ten thousand pounds more as a fine, and then demanded two thousand cavalry. After some bargaining and protesting, Cheyte Sing sent five hundred horsemen and five hundred foot. Hastings made no acknowledgment of these, but began to muster troops, threatening to take vengeance on the rajah. In terror, Cheyte Sing then sent, in one round sum, twenty lacs of rupees, two hundred thousand pounds, for the service of the state; but the only answer he obtained for the munificcut offering was, that he must send thirty lacs more, that is, altogether, half a million. Following his words by acts, he set off himself, attended only by a few score sepoys, for Benares. He appeared so confident of his safety, that he took Mrs. Hastings with him as far as Monghir. Cheyte Sing came out as far as Buxar to meet the offended governor, and paid him the utmost homage. Hastings received it with the stern silence of an incensed master. The rajah expressed his sorrow at Hastings' displeasure, declared the whole zemindary at his command, and, as a sign of the most decided submission, laid his turban on the governor's knee. Nothing moved the man who wanted the last farthing that the rajah had, and was determined to come at it. He continued his journey with the rajah in his train, and entered the rajah's capital, the great Mecca of India, the famed city of Benares, on the 14th of August, 1781. He then made more enormous demands than before; and the compliance of the rajah not being immediate, he ordered Mr. Markham, his ownappointed resident at Benares, to arrest the rajah in his palace. Cheyte Sing was a timid man, yet the act of arresting him in the midst of his own subjects, and in a place so sacred, and crowded with pilgrims from every part of the East, was a most daring deed. The effect was instantaneous. The people rose in fury, and pouring headlong to the palace with arms in their hands, they cut to pieces Markham and his sepoys. Two other companies were dispatched to their aid, but these were cut to pieces in the streets. Had Cheyte Sing had the spirit of his people in him, Hastings and his little party would have been butchered in half an hour. Hastings says this himself, that he and the thirty English gentlemen with him must have perished at once. But Cheyte Sing only thought of his own safety. He got across the Ganges, and whole troops of his subjects flocked after him. Thence he sent protestations of his innocence of the emeute, and of his readiness to make any conditions. Hastings, though surrounded and besieged in his quarters by a furious mob, deigned no answer to the suppliant rajah, but busied himself in collecting all the sepoys in the place. Before night, he had assembled four hundred, and had sent messengers to Mirzapore, on the other side of the Ganges, to another small knot of sepoys, to A.D. 1781.] HASTINGS' TREATMENT OF CHEYTE SING. 369 march to the palace of Ramnagur, opposite to Benares, outrage, but Hastings had himself sanctioned it in a note, whither Cheyte Sing had betaken himself, and secure him. suggesting that, without examination, the women might Natives as these men were, and many of them subjects of contrive to carry off the treasure. The sum of two hundred Cheyte Sing, they duly obeyed orders; and Hastings then and fifty thousand pounds, which the ranee, the mother of dispatched a message to his wife at Monghir, assuring her Cheyte Sing, claimed as her own, was seized, and which she that he was safe. He wrote to other quarters, ordered in vain demanded to be restored, as her own private property, troops to march to his aid, and, as if to show his perfect guaranteed by the terms of the capitulation. She implored coolness, addressed a dispatch to the officer who was in vain, Popham and the officers divided the whole amongst negotiating with the Mahrattas, giving him some instruc- themselves and the army. Hastings was confounded! He tions. The means by which he sent his messages through had run all these dangers, and created all these troubles, in the furious crowd which besieged his house, were ingenious. the hope of securing this booty, but the army had taken him The hircarrahs, or couriers of India, when they travel, lay | at his word, and paid themselves with the whole. It is the aside their enormous ear-rings, and put a quill or bit of only consolation in this detestable affair, that he missed the paper, rolled like a quill, into the orifice, to prevent it plunder of the rajah, and received the severe censure of the growing up. These rolls, on this occasion, were the besieged court of directors, and afterwards of parliament, for this governor's dispatches. Some of them were detected, but monstrous conduct. Hastings afterwards endeavoured to more passed safely. compel Popham and the officers to disgorge the treasure by law, but in vain. Deeply chagrined, he now returned to Benares at the head of his victorious force, where he soon restored order, and set up another puppet rajah, a nephew of Cheyte Sing, but raised the annual tribute to forty lacs of rupees, or four hundred thousand pounds a-year, and taking the mint and the entire jurisdiction of the province into the hands of his own officers. But the situation of Hastings was at every turn becoming more critical. The sepoys, sent to seize Cheyte Sing in the palace of Ramnagur, were repulsed, and many of them, with their commander, killed. The multitude were now more excited than ever, and that night would probably have seen the last of Warren Hastings, but he contrived to make his escape from Benares, and to reach the strong fortress of Chunar, situated on a rock several hundred feet above the Ganges, and about seventeen miles below Benares. Cheyte Having failed in his attempt to screw sufficient money from Sing, for a moment, encouraged by the flight of Hastings, Cheyte Sing, and undeterred by the perils he had run, he put himself at the head of the enraged people, and, appeal-next determined to experiment on the nabob of Oude. This ing to the neighbouring princes on his treatment, declared he would drive the English out of the country. But troops and money were speedily sent to Hastings from Lucknow, others marched to Chunar from their cantonments, and he found himself safe amid a sufficient force commanded by the brave major Popham, the conqueror of Gwalior, to defy the thirty thousand undisciplined followers of Cheyte Sing. From the 29th of August to the 20th of September, there were different engagements betwixt the English and the forces of Cheyte Sing; but on every occasion, though the Indians fought bravely, they were worsted, and on the lastnamed day, utterly routed at Pateeta. Cheyte Sing and his family fled to the fortress of Bidjegur, about fifty miles from Benares. Thither Hastings sent Popham to besiege him, having in his letters intimated to that officer that the treasures of the rajah would serve to pay the troops, who had long been in arrears of their pay. Cheyte Sing did not wait for the arrival of the English troops he fled into Bundelcund, and never returned again to Benares. He was supposed to have carried the greater part of his wealth with him in jewels, but in the fortress he left his wife-a woman of amiable character-his mother, all the other women of his family, and the survivors of the family of his father, Bulwant Sing. The ladies capitulated on condition of safety to the men, and safety and freedom from search for the women. Three hundred women, besides children, then came out of the castle; but no sooner were they without the gates, than the capitulation was violated. The ladies were plundered of everything valuable, and their persons otherwise rudely and disgracefully treated by the soldiers and followers of the camp. Major Popham exerted himself to defend the unhappy women from the insulting nabob, Asoff-ul-Dowlah, was an infamously dissipated prince, spending his own money in licentious pleasures, and extorting what he could from the begums, his mother and grandmother. The old ladies lived at the palace of Fyzabad, or the "Beautiful Residence," situated in a charming district, amid hills and streams, about eighty miles from Lucknow. The nabob's father had left them large sums of money and extensive jaghires, so that they kept a handsome court, and yet had the reputation of having accumulated about three million pounds sterling. The nabob had compelled them, by coercive means, to let him have, at different times, about six hundred thousand pounds, and he thirsted exceedingly for more. To defend themselves from his rapacity, the begums appealed earnestly to the English governor-general, who, in conjunction with the council, Francis, Barwell, and Wheler, in 1778, compelled the nabob to enter into a solemn engagement not to violate any further the rights of these ladies, either in their money or their jaghires. The council expressed their lively sense of the disgraceful conduct of the nabob in thus extorting their property from these ladies, and talked much of the honour and reputation of the company being implicated by it. But there is no doubt that the existence of this wealth being thus brought to the knowledge of Hastings, had determined him, spite of his moral vows to the nabob, to seize it for the purposes of conducting the war in Madras. There was nothing so easy as to frame reasons why he should have this money, notwithstanding his own affected sense of indignation at the idea of the son and grandson getting it by pressure. The nabob had requested the service of a brigade of British troops to secure him against his own people, whose disaffection he had excited by his oppressions. Hastings had most readily granted it, seeing at once that it would be the means of putting him completely in his power. The nabob, in addition to the heavy tribute under which he lay, was to pay a heavy price for the brigade, besides maintaining it. By these means, by the time that Hastings had resolved to seize the money of the begums, he had swelled up an account of arrears against Asoff-ul-Dowlah of nearly a million and a half sterling. This enormous amount Hastings himself admitted to the nabob, when he afterwards wanted his co-operation in coming at the money of the begums, was run up by extravagant charges of all kinds; and that he had, moreover, been unmercifully squeezed by the British officers in Oude. In fact, the nabob had for years been earnestly imploring that the brigade should be recalled, as he was quite unable to pay for it, or that the charge for it should be dropped. But Hastings had taken no notice of his demand, but had gone on, keeping the brigade at Lucknow, still running up the account. It was one part of his original plan, on going to Benares, to go on to Oude, and to employ his claims on the nabob as a lever to wrench the money bags from the begum. The failure of his cash anticipations at Benares had made Hastings all the more desperate. He sent for the nabob of Oude while he was still in the fortress of Chunar, and there reminding him of his debts, proposed to him coolly the robbery of his mother and grandmother. He was ready to give up the million and a half on condition that he got the three millions of the begums. He therefore offered to take the jaghires from these ladies-lands, let it be understood, as fully and completely left to them by the late Soujah Dowlah, as the sovereignty of Oude had been left by him to the nabob, and on which neither the nabob nor Hastings had any claim whatever, for it is not pretended that the princesses were in any debt or arrears to the nabob, or to the British government. But as India, according to Hastings, can and must be saved, there must be money for it; the begums had money, and he was resolved to have it. He agreed, therefore, to give up to the nabob the jaghires of his mother and grandmother, as though they had been his own, and the nabob was to take the odium of forcing the money from the ladies and handing it to Hastings! The proposal was so barefaced, that, when Hastings came to propose it to the nabob, he felt that he really required some pretended reason for thus arbitrarily laying hands on the property of these innocent women, and therefore unblushingly asserted that they had been concerned in stirring up the insurrection at Benares-a matter, besides that it was so notoriously the result of Hastings' own daring arrest of Cheyte Sing, the begums had neither motive for meddling in nor time for doing it. They till now regarded the British as their own only protectors. They were living quietly at Fyzabad, one hundred and fifteen miles from Benares, when the insurrection broke out from very obvious causes. This infamous bargain being concluded at Chunar, Hastings relying on his agent at Lucknow, Mr. Middleton, compelling the nabob to carry it out, retreated to Benares, and thence to Calcutta. The nabob returned to Lucknow to enforce the diabolical scheme; but he found his mother and grandmother determined to resist the iniquitous order, and so shameful was it, that even the needy and debauched nabob He left it to felt compunctions in proceeding with it. Middleton to execute, but Middleton, in his turn, recoiled from the odious business. Not so Hastings; cold and resolute, he wrote to Middleton, that if he could not rely upon his firmness he would free him from his charge, and himself proceed to Lucknow and enforce his own orders. To induce Middleton to abandon his scruples of conscience and honour, the ever-ready friend of Hastings, the chief-justice of Bengal, Sir Elijah Impey, it appears, wrote to Middleton, and inculcated the necessity of obedience. Middleton and the nabob, therefore, seized on the jaghires of the begums, and suddenly surrounded Fyzabad and the palace with troops, and made themselves masters of both. But the old ladies had not been so inattentive to the approaches of the storm as to neglect the secretion of their treasures; they could not be found. The nabob, who was familiar with all the modes of hiding and finding such possessions, assisted Middleton and his officers, but the money could not be traced. The whole palace was filled with terror by the soldiers hunting through every room, even the very apartments of the alarmed and shrieking women. Thus cruelly disappointed of the expected hoard, and the begums remaining firm in their refusal to produce any part of it, Middleton seized on their two chief ministers, the eunuchs, Jewar Ali Khan and Behar Ali Khan. These two old men had been the most confidential servants of Sujah Dowlah, and had, since his death, stood in the same relation to his widow, the Bhow begum. They were now thrown into prison, put in irons, and orders were given to starve and torture them till they revealed the secret of the concealment of the treasure of their mistresses. At the same time, the two ladies were placed in very rigorous confinement themselves. These proceedings, at length, produced some effect: a large sum was given up; but by no means such a sum as the English were bent upon having. Instead, therefore, of any mitigation of the duresse of the eunuchs or the ladies, this was rendered only the more severe. Middleton himself signed an order to the officer commanding the troops, that the eunuchs should be kept without food, &c., their irons should be increased in weight, and torture be menaced, till the expected sum should be extorted. To aid in the coercion and the torture, officers of the nabob, well acquainted with these devilish atrocities, were admitted to the unhappy old men in their prison. Let it be remembered that we are not relating mere inventions of romance, but facts proved on the most unquestionable evidence; nor the dark deeds of Italian of Spanish inquisitors, whose names have filled the world with horror, but the acts of English gentlemen, high in the service of their country in the eighteenth century, and who have found many defenders of their deeds, on the simple plea that India must be saved, and that the begums had the money that could save it. If this plea be admitted, then there is nothing to be said against the most infamous transactions in history. In perpetrating these deeds Hastings was arbitrarily throwing down every solemn engagement which the British government in India had set up, and to permit the violation of which they had shortly before pronounced to the nabob to be most dishonourable, and destructive of our national character. He now took away the jagħires, and gave them to the nabob, and made him assist in robbing and torturing his own mother and grandmother. By the continuance of such means, he at length forced from the begums the sum of five hundred thousand pounds; but this was but a sixth of the riches he was hoping for; and the same system of violence was continued through the greater part of 1782. It was reported by the officer of the sepoy guard, that the health of the two old eunuchs had suffered severely, and that they implored that their irons might be taken off, and themselves be permitted to walk a little for a few days in the palace gardens, the officer asserting that there was not the slightest danger of their escape. But the request was not only refused, but orders were issued to treat them more severely. They were informed, that if they did not give information where the money was, they should undergo still more exquisite torture. They were then removed to Lucknow, and confined in the English prison there; but the English assistant resident wrote an order to the British officer in command of the sepoy guard :-"Sir,-The nabob being determined to inflict corporal punishment upon the prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his officers, when they shall come, may have free access to the prisoners, and be permitted to do with them as they shall see proper." It was hoped that the nabob's people being thus employed in this horrible business the cruelties would appear to be his, and not those of the English; and this system was continued till they had forced upwards of a million sterling from the begums, and found that they might kill both them and their aged ministers, but could get no more. When the begums and two old men were liberated, they were told by the resident-not now Middleton, but Bristow-that they owed this favour to the governor-general, who had determined to have them "restored to their dignity and honour." It is impossible to decide whether in this history the atrocity or the hypocrisy is the most astounding. During the conferences at Chunar, Hastings, in open defiance of the law against receiving presents from the Indian princes, accepted a present of one hundred thousand pounds from his accomplice, the nabob of Oude. This was probably to obtain his desire, that the jaghire of Fyzoola Khan, the Rohilla chief, which had been secured to him in the north of Rohilcund, should be seized by the nabob. Hastings readily agreed to the seizure, and it was duly made a clause of the treaty at Chunar. But Hastings, with that ready duplicity for which he was so famous, at the same time wrote to the council to say he never intended to carry it into execution; that the independence of Fyzoola Khan was more to the interests of the British than his suppression. The nabob, therefore, notwithstanding his earnest demands to be put in possession of the jaghire, never was gratified. Hastings, however, sent to the khan, to inform him that, by the payment of fifteen lacs of rupees, he could engage to guarantee his retention of the jaghire. Fyzoola replied that he did not possess any such sum of money, and that he relied on his treaty with the English government for the possession of his jaghire; and, singular enough, he was allowed to retain it during his life. There was another name connected with these events, and with almost equal disadvantage, that of Sir Elijah Impey, the chief-justice. We have seen how this old schoolfellow 371 of Hastings had supported him against the opposition of Francis and his party; how he had condemned and hanged Nuncomar, the mortal enemy of the governor-general; and how, though, for a time, he, with the other justices, were in hostility to Hastings regarding their own authority; all this was forgiven, and Impey was rewarded with a new judgeship, with a salary of five thousand pounds a-year, in addition to his old one of eight thousand pounds a-year. Impey, who had no jurisdiction in Oude, was found, however, up there in the midst of these transactions, volunteering his assistance in getting up charges against the begums. These charges were supported by a host of venal witnesses, such as were brought forward to swear away the life of Nuncomar, and affidavits of their evidence were made out, and sent down to Calcutta, to justify the dark doings of Hastings. But the violent proceedings of Hastings and his council, partly against each other, and still more against the natives, did not escape the authorities at home. Two committees were appointed in the house of commons in 1781, to inquire into these matters. One of them was headed by general Richard Smith, and the other by Dundas, the lord-advocate of Scotland. In both of these the conduct of Hastings, especially at that time in the war against the Rohillas, was severely condemned, and the appointment of Impey to the new judicial office was greatly disapproved. In May, 1782, general Smith moved an address praying his majesty to recall Sir Elijah Impey, which was carried unanimously, and he was recalled accordingly. Dundas also moved and carried a resolution declaring it to be the duty of the court of directors to recall Warren Hastings, on the charge of his "having, in sundry instances, acted in a manner repugnant to the honour and policy of the nation." The court of directors complied with this suggestion; but lord Rockingham dying, his ministry being dissolved, and Burke, the great opponent of Indian oppressions, being out of office, in October the court of directors, through the active exertions of the friends of Hastings, rescinded his recall. The succeeding changes of administration, and their weakness, first that of the Shelburne, and then that of the coalition ministry, enabled Hastings to keep his post in India, and finish the war in Madras. It was the India bill of Pitt in 1784, which, by creating the board of control, and enabling the government to take immediate cognisance of the proceedings of the governor-generals, and other chief officers in India, which broke the power of Hastings, and which led him to resign, without, however, enabling him to escape the just scrutiny which his administration needed. In the India bill of Pitt there was a clause calling on the court of directors to inquire into the state of the debts of the nabob of Arcot. Of these debts, the most extraordinary accounts were in circulation; the most wonderful stories of the peculations and inventions of Englishmen, by which they had arrived at their monstrous dimensions. As the fate of the nabob of Arcot-that great friend of the English-was the fate of so many of the English allies-the nabobs of Oude, Tanjore, Benares, Surat, and others—we will give a rapid sketch of his history, from first to last, though we have incidentally noticed one or two of the events in the details of proceedings against Hyder Ali. |