The period was now approaching when the question of the exclusive privileges of the East India Company, which had been extended for twenty years in 1793, was to be submitted to Parliament, and the President of the Board of Control placed himself in communication with the India House several years before the expiration of the Act. The Chairman assumed a lofty tone, and had the presumption to assert the right of the Company to all the territories acquired in India by their armies; but he was ready to pay due attention to any modifications of the existing system which were not incompatible with the principle of leaving the commerce and the government of India in their hands. He proposed, moreover, that the Proprietors of India stock should receive enhanced dividends in proportion to the improvement of the revenues of India; that the British public should contribute towards the liquidation of their debt, and that their privileges should be renewed for a further period of twenty years. The President of the Board replied that the Ministry were not prepared to encourage any arrangement which should preclude the merchants of England from embarking in the trade of India, from their own ports, and in their own ships. The negotiation then came to a pause, and before it was renewed the finances of the Company had become totally deranged. Drafts had been drawn from Calcutta to the extent of five crores of rupees towards the discharge of the debt in India. A crore of rupees had been lost by vessels which had perished at sea, or had been captured by French privateers. The Directors were, therefore, obliged to resort to Parliament for relief, and in June, 1810,
a loan of a crore and a half of rupees was granted to them. In the following year they obtained permission to raise two crores on their own bonds, and in 1812 a further loan of two crores and a half of rupees was sanctioned by the House of Commons. These embarrassments did not, however, abate the resolution of the Directors to insist on what they represented as their right – a renewal of the charter on the existing basis; and they refused to recommend to their constituents to accept it on any conditions which would despoil them of their “most valuable privileges.” Lord Melville, the President of the Board of Control, proposed, by way of compromise, to restrict the import trade of private merchants to London, and to subject it to the system of the Company’s sales and management, on condition that the Directors should throw open the export trade to the nation. The Court refused to accede to this arrangement, and time was thus afforded to the out-ports to survey their interests and to urge their claim to a participation in the entire trade with increased energy.
The questions at issue between the Ministry and the India House were at length reduced to the single point of opening the out-ports to the admission of cargoes from India, but upon this both the Directors and the Proprietors determined to make a peremptory stand. On the 5th May, 1812, a series of resolutions was passed at the India House, which asserted that the removal of this trade from the port of London to the out-ports would break up large and important establishments, and throw thousands out of bread; that it would increase smuggling beyond the possibility of control, and entail the ruin of the China trade; that it would reduce the Company’s dividends, depreciate their stock, and paralyze their power to govern India; that the tranquillity and happiness of the people of India would thus be compromised; that the interests of Great Britain in Asia would be impaired, and even the British constitution itself imperilled. The Ministry were not, however, appalled by this phantom of calamities which the genius of monopoly
had conjured up, and informed the Court that if they still thought the extension of commercial privileges to the nation incompatible with the government of India in their hands, some other agency might be provided for administering it upon principles consistent with the interests of the public, and the integrity of the British constitution; but the Court of Directors refused to give way, and they were vigorously supported by the great body of the Proprietors, who regarded the admission of the out-ports to a share in the import trade a vital question, on which there could be no concession. They expressed their confidence that the wisdom of Parliament would never consent to gratify a few interested speculators by abolishing a commercial system which had existed for two centuries, and was fortified by a dozen Acts. In conformity with this resolution, a petition was presented to Parliament on the 22nd February, 1813, praying for a renewal of the privileges granted to the Company in 1793, and deprecating any interference with the China trade, or any extension of the import trade to the out-ports. Another petition was at the same time, unseasonably, submitted to the House soliciting the payment of a bill of two crores and thirty lacs of rupees, which the Company asserted was still due to them from the nation.
The claim advanced by the Company to a renewal of their exclusive privileges for another generation encountered a very strenuous opposition throughout the country. During the twenty years which had elapsed since 1793, the commercial and manufacturing industry of England had been developed beyond all former example, and new interests of extraordinary magnitude and power had grown up. The cotton manufacturers of Manchester, in the infancy of their enterprise, had solicited the Government to foster their exertions by imposing a protecting duty on the importation of piece goods from India. In the intermediate period, however, their textile fabrics had been brought to such a state both of perfection and cheapness as
in a great measure to supersede the Indian manufacture, the imports of which had fallen from three crores and a half of rupees a-year to half a crore. They had, moreover, invaded the Indian market, where the import of Manchester cottons had increased from about seven thousand rupees a-year to ten lacs. The mill-owners now came forward and claimed the right of an unrestricted traffic with India, both export and import, from their respective ports, and in their own vessels. They maintained that however important the monopoly might have been in the early stages of our connection with India, it had now ceased to be either necessary or profitable, and only served to cramp the spirit of national enterprise. Indeed, the Company had themselves furnished the strongest argument for its cessation by the confession that their trade to India had for many years been carried on at a loss. The Ministers, on their part, had long since made up their minds to emancipate this trade from the fetters of the monopoly. The Emperor Napoleon, by his Berlin and Milan decrees, had closed all the ports of the continent against English commerce, and the public interests required that other channels of trade should, if possible, be opened out. The nation was passing through the most gigantic struggle in which it had ever been involved; the national resources were strained to an unprecedented degree, and it was necessary to spare no effort to sustain the energies of the country.
On the 22nd of March the ministerial plan for conducting the trade and administration of India was introduced by Lord Castlereagh into the House of Commons. He proposed to continue the government of the country in the hands of the Company for a further period of twenty years with liberty to pursue their trade, but, at the same time, to admit the whole nation both to the import and export trade, without any other restriction than that no private vessel should be of larger dimensions than four hundred tons. The exclusive trade to China, which alone yielded any profit, was to be confirmed to them. The restriction on the resort of
Europeans to India was to be virtually removed, though they were still required to take out a licence from the Court of Directors, or, if refused by them, from the Board of Control, but the local authorities were at liberty at any time to cancel it at their own discretion.
These propositions were vigorously opposed by the Court of Directors, who petitioned the House for leave to be heard by counsel, and to bring forward witnesses to substantiate their claims. The first witness introduced was the venerable Warren Hastings, then in his eightieth year. Twenty-six years before he had been arraigned by the House of Commons at the bar of the Lords for high crimes and misdemeanours. He had outlived the prejudices and the passions of that age, and the whole House rose as he entered, and paid a spontaneous homage to his exalted character and his pre-eminent services. But his views of Indian policy belonged, for the most part, to that remote and normal period when he was employed in giving form and consistency to our rising power. He was opposed to all innovations, however necessary they had become by the progress of time and circumstances. When reminded that as Governor-General he had denounced the “contracted views of monopolists,” and insisted upon it “as a fixed and incontrovertible principle that commerce could only flourish when free and equal,” he had the moral courage to say that he had altered his opinions, and did not come there to defend his own inconsistencies. The evidence of Lord Teignmouth, of Mr. Charles Grant, of Colonel Malcolm, of Colonel Munro, and, indeed of all the witnesses, more than fifty in number, marshalled by the India House on this occasion, ran in the same groove. They affirmed that the climate of India and the habits and prejudices of the natives presented an insuperable barrier to the increased consumption of British manufactures. The trade of India had already reached its utmost limit, and it could be conducted with advantage only through the agency of the Company. The free admission of Europeans would lead to
colonization; the weak and timid natives would become the victims of European oppression, and India would eventually be lost to England. These opinions were advocated, generally, in the spirit of a sincere conviction, and not of mere partisanship; and although, with our. larger experience, we cannot fail to regret that so many great and eminent men should have clung to an erroneous creed, we are constrained to respect the benevolence of their motives when we find that they deprecated the proposed changes chiefly because they dreaded their injurious consequences on the well-being of the natives. But all the authorities and all the evidence the Court of Directors could muster proved unavailing. The House yielded to the voice of the nation, which had been unequivocally expressed in the petitions with which it was overwhelmed, and opened the gates of Indian commerce to the capital and enterprise of England.
The charter discussions in the House of Lords were rendered memorable by the speeches of Lord Wellesley and Lord Grenville. Lord Wellesley, when Governor-General, had incurred the wrath of the India House by advocating and encouraging the enlargement of the private trade, and asserting that it was not likely to lead to a large influx of Europeans, and that if it did, they could be kept under due control by the local authorities. On the present occasion, however, he abandoned his former opinions, and advocated with equal vigour the claims of the Company to the exclusive trade, not only of China, but also of India. He resisted the proposal to allow Europeans to settle in India, because they would outrage the prejudices of the natives, and endanger the security of the Government. He likewise passed a high encomium on the East India Company, affirming that no Government had ever fulfilled its duties with more exemplary fidelity and success. The sentiments expressed by Lord Grenville were the boldest and the most enlightened which had ever been heard within the walls of Parliament on the subject of Indian policy. He considered that twenty years was too long a period for farming
out the commerce of half the globe and the government of sixty millions of people. The sovereignty of India belonged to the Crown and not to its subjects. The blended character of merchant and sovereign was an anomaly. No ruler had ever traded to advantage; no trading company had ever administered government for the happiness of its subjects. The Company had lost four crores of rupees by their trade to India in nineteen years, notwithstanding their monopoly; and they had traded with profit only to China, where they had neither sovereignty nor monopoly. The Government of India ought to be vested in the Crown. If, as he admitted, the transfer of the patronage to the Ministry would weigh down the balance of the constitution, appointments to the civil service should be given by competition, and cadetships distributed among the families of those who had fallen in the service of their country. That the trade of India was susceptible of no extension was a mere idle assumption; commerce increased by commerce, and trade begat trade in all countries, and India would furnish no exception to this universal law. These sound opinions, which were far in advance of the spirit and the courage of the age, carried no weight at the time, and the Bill passed as it came up from the Commons, without any modification. But the seeds of truth once planted in the fertile soil of England never fail to germinate and bring forth fruit in due season. It was a great stride for one age to break up the monopoly. It devolved on a succeeding age to make fresh advances in the career of progress. We find, accordingly, that at the next renewal of the Charter in 1833 the Company were entirely divested of their mercantile character, and confined to the duties of government, while the Charter of 1853 threw open the civil service to competition, and the government itself was transferred from the Company to the Crown five years later.
Reference has been made in a previous chapter to the restrictions which were imposed on the Serampore Missionaries by Sir George Barlow, in 1806, during the panic
created by the Vellore mutiny. Lord Minto, immediately on his arrival, when new to the country, was led by their adversaries to interfere with their proceedings; but their satisfactory explanations, and the discreet course they pursued, induced him to desist from all opposition, and they were enabled for five years to prosecute their labours without molestation. But in the year 1812 Lord Minto’s Government, without any apparent motive, thought fit to adopt the most truculent measures against the missionary enterprise, and to order eight missionaries, the majority of whom had recently arrived in the country, to quit it. The alleged ground of this arbitrary proceeding was, that they were without a licence from the Court of Directors; but as hundreds of Europeans, equally unlicensed, had been allowed freely to enter and settle in the country, it was felt to be a mere pretext for the indulgence of that feeling of hostility to the cause, which was equally strong at that period in the Council chamber in Calcutta and at the India House. The feelings of the Court of Directors on this subject had all the strength of traditional prejudices. They had violently opposed and ultimately defeated the proposal made during the charter discussions of 1793, to permit missionaries and schoolmasters to resort to India, and their aversion to the introduction of secular or religious knowledge had experienced no abatement. It became necessary for the friends of missions to take advantage of the present opportunity, and appeal to Parliament for its interposition. The question was entrusted to Mr. Wilberforce, who, in a speech distinguished for its eloquence, pointed out the injustice and impolicy of the impediments imposed on the resort of missionaries to India, and entreated the House to remove them. He repudiated the remotest intention of forcing Christianity on the country, and only sought permission to place the truths of the Bible before the native mind for its voluntary acceptance. But the India House and its witnesses, with a few honourable exceptions, were as rigidly opposed to this concession as to that of free trade, and reprobated the admission of missionary and mercantile agents with equal vehemence.
Of this powerful phalanx, Mr. Marsh, who had amassed a fortune at the Madras bar, and obtained a seat in Parliament, became the champion, and delivered a speech of extraordinary power and virulence against the missionary clause. Mr. Wilberforce had supported his argument by a reference to the proceedings and the success of the missionaries at Serampore; but Mr. Marsh assailed their characters with inordinate bitterness, denounced them as fanatics and incendiaries, and applied to them such gross epithets as the House had not been accustomed to tolerate. He asserted, moreover, that the safety of the British empire in India depended on the exclusion of all missionaries. But the voice of the country, which the House implicitly obeys, was raised with more than ordinary unanimity against the monstrous doctrine that the only religion to be proscribed in India should be that of its Christian rulers. The clause was passed by a large majority, and the same liberty was given to the introduction of Christianity which had been enjoyed by the Mohamedans and by the various Hindoo sectaries for the propagation of their respective tenets. At the same time a Bishop was appointed to Calcutta and an Archdeacon to Madras and Bombay, to superintend the chaplains; and a clause was added to the Bill at the last moment, and on the motion of a private member, to appropriate the sum of one lac of rupees a-year, out of a revenue of seventeen hundred lacs, to the object of public instruction.
The Charter Act of 1813 inflicted the first blow on the monopoly of the East India Company. For more than a hundred and fifty years that monopoly had been not only beneficial, but essential to the interests of British commerce in India. It gave a character of energy and perseverance to the national enterprise which enabled it to encounter opposition with success, and to survive reverses. Without it neither the commerce nor the dominion of England would have been established in India. The venality and oppression of the officers of the native powers, which a powerful
corporation was able to withstand, would have been fatal to the private adventurer. But the monopoly became a positive evil after the Company had become sovereigns. As rulers of the country they owed it to the interests of their subjects to grant the fullest scope for the expansion of their commerce, instead of fettering it by the bonds of a state monopoly. The extinction of the mercantile privileges of the Company was, therefore, not less beneficial to India than to England. The reasons advanced against it showed little judgment and still less foresight; and it may serve to rebuke the dogmatism with which official men are prone to enforce their opinions, to note that all the gloomy predictions of the Court of Directors, and even of the most renowned of their servants, who were regarded as the great authorities of the time on Indian questions, have turned out to be utterly fallacious, without a single exception. The trade, which they assured the House of Commons admitted of no expansion, has risen from thirteen millions to one hundred millions in 1865, and still presents the prospect of an indefinite increase. In 1813 India was reckoned among the smallest of the customers of England, but fifty years later she had attained the highest rank. The export of British cotton manufactures to India at the renewal of the charter in 1813 was only ten lacs, but in spite of the inveterate habits and prejudices of the natives, it has increased fifty fold. The Europeans who have been admitted into India have contributed in the highest degree to its improvement and prosperity by their capital and enterprise, and so far from being a source of danger to Government, it is certain that if there had been a body of only five thousand European settlers in the North West provinces during the last mutiny in 1857, it would have been nipped in the bud. If the hand-looms of India have been in many cases silenced by the power-looms of Lancashire, the loss has been more than compensated by the hundred crores of silver and gold which free trade has poured into her bosom during the last fifteen years.
The Earl of Moira, subsequently created Marquis
of Hastings – by which title we shall begin to designate him – was appointed Governor-General in succession to Lord Minto, and took the oaths and his seat in Council on the 4th October, 1813. He was of the mature age of fifty-nine, a nobleman of Norman lineage, with a tall and commanding figure, and distinguished above all his predecessors by his chivalrous bearing. He had entered the army at seventeen, served for seven years in the war of American independence, and was rewarded for his services with an English peerage. His life was subsequently passed in connection with great public and political affairs, and he brought with him to his high office a large fund of experience, a clear and sound judgment, and great decision of character, together with the equivocal merit of being the personal friend of the Prince Regent. It is worthy of note that the responsibilities of the Government of India produced the same change of views in him as in his illustrious predecessor. Lord Wellesley was so thoroughly convinced of the criminality of Warren Hastings that he had offered to assist in conducting the prosecution, and he came to Calcutta, as he admitted, with the strongest prejudices against him. But as he grew familiar, on the spot, with the policy and character of his administration, he expressed his unqualified admiration of it; and in 1802, when the Nabob of Oude, hearing that Mr. Hastings had been impoverished by his trial, offered to settle an annuity of twenty thousand rupees on him, the information was conveyed by Lord Wellesley in one of the most flattering letters the impeached Governor-General had ever received. In like manner Lord Hastings, in his place in Parliament, had denounced the spirit of Lord Wellesley’s administration, and his ambitious policy of establishing British supremacy throughout India. He had now an opportunity of testing the value of that opinion, and he speedily saw cause to recant it. He had no sooner completed his survey of the position and prospects of the empire than he recorded his impression “that our object in India ought to be to render the British Government paramount in effect, if
not declaredly so, to hold the other states as vassals, though not in name, and to oblige them, in return for our guarantee and protection, to perform the two great feudatory duties of supporting our rule with all their forces, and submitting their mutual differences to our arbitration.” Before he quitted India he had waged war on a more gigantic scale than even Lord Wellesley; he had made the Company supreme throughout India, and declared that the Indus was, to all intents and purposes, the boundary of our empire.
In the autumn of 1813, Lord Minto quitted India with the firm belief that, with the exception of the Pindaree cloud, it was in a state of the most perfect security. “On my taking the reins of Government,” wrote Lord Hastings, “seven different quarrels, likely to demand the decision of arms, were transferred to me.” In fact, the non-intervention policy, which, during the preceding eight years the home authorities had considered the perfection of political wisdom, and the native princes the result of sheer pusillanimity, had produced the same result of fermentation and anarchy, as the faint-hearted policy of Sir John Shore’s days. The total withdrawal of our influence from Central India had brought on a contempt of our power, and sown the seeds of a more general war than we had as yet been exposed to. The government of Holkar was virtually dissolved when he became insane, and there ceased to be any authority to control the excesses of the soldiery, while Ameer Khan, with his free lances, was at once the prop and the burden of the throne. The troops of Sindia had been incessantly employed in operations tending to promote the aggrandisement of his power by usurpations. The Peshwa, who had recovered his throne in 1802 by the aid of the Company, had been husbanding his resources for the first opportunity of shaking off the yoke of this connection. Rajpootana was a prey to the rapacity of Ameer Khan, and the insatiable battalions of Sindia and Holkar. The Pindaree freebooters were spreading desolation through a region five hundred miles in length, and four hundred
in breadth, and a new power on the northern frontier of the Bengal Presidency had matured its strength, invaded the border districts, and bid defiance to the British Government. The Company’s army, which had been subjected to large reductions, in a spirit of unwise economy, was found to be inadequate to the defence of our extensive frontier. The treasury was empty. The island of Java was an expensive acquisition. The Mauritius and Ceylon had been permitted to draw on Calcutta, and had not allowed the privilege to remain idle. The supercargoes at Canton were pouring their bills for the Company’s China investment on the Indian treasury, and the Court of Directors were importunate for cash remittances. Lord Hastings, at length, succeeded in overcoming the reluctance of his colleagues in Council to the transmission of thirty Lacs in gold, which, at the premium of the day, gave relief to the India House to the extent of forty-five lacs, but it left the cash balances in India so low as to be barely sufficient for the current expenditure.
The first and immediate difficulty of Lord Hastings arose out of the encroachments of the Nepalese, or Goorkhas. The war into which he was forced with them was bequeathed to him by his predecessor, who left him no option but to draw the sword, or compromise the character of the Government by abandoning the interests of its subjects. The valley of Nepal is embosomed in the Himalaya mountains, and bounded on the north by some of its loftiest and most majestic elevations, and on the south by the first and lowest range. That range is skirted by a magnificent forest, from eight to ten miles in depth, which presents an unvaried aspect of gigantic trees; no breath of wind reaches the interior, which is littered with rank and decayed vegetation; no animals inhabit it, and no sound of a bird is heard in its recesses. An open plain, called the teraee, stretches to the south of the forest, five hundred miles in length, and about twenty in breadth. The soil is watered by the various streams which descend from the mountains, and, when cultivated, produces
the most luxuriant crops, but during the greater portion of the year it is as pestilential as the Pontine marshes. It is dotted at considerable intervals with little hamlets, but the population, which is chiefly migratory, is composed of herdsmen, who annually bring their flocks and herds, in some cases from the distance of many hundred miles, to graze on its rich pasturage.
About the middle of the fourteenth century, various colonists of Rajpoots entered the country and subdued the aborigines, the Newars, a Mongolian race, professing the creed of Boodh. The principalities which the Rajpoots established in these hills generally included a strip of the adjacent forest and of the low lands. In the course of time, the weaker chiefs were absorbed by the stronger, and the country came to be partitioned among three families. In the middle of the last century, Prithee-Narayun, the chief of the mountain tribe of Goorkha, gradually raised himself to power, and having subdued the other rajas, founded a new dynasty, about ten years after the battle of Plassy. He was succeeded by his son in 1771, and his grandson, an odious tyrant, was put to death in open durbar by his half brother, in 1805. His infant son was proclaimed raja by Bheem-sen, who assumed the office of chief minister, and formed a council of regency of the principal military officers. The strength of the Goorkha dynasty consisted in its military organization, and the impulse of conquest which the founder communicated to it was maintained with increasing vigour after his death. An expedition was sent across the northern mountains to Llama, and the living type of Boodh was subjected to the humiliation of paying tribute to his Hindoo conqueror. But the Emperor of China, the secular head of Boodhism, resolved to avenge the insult, and invaded Nepal with a large army. The Goorkhas were signally defeated, and obliged to acknowledge the supremacy of China by submitting to the deputation of a mission to Pekin, with tribute, once every three years. Foiled in their projects in the north,
they pushed their conquests four hundred miles, on the east, to Sikkim, and on the west to the Kalee river. Their most renowned general Umur Sing, who acted to a great extent independent of the regency, carried his arms beyond that river, which brought him in contact with the rising power of Runjeet Sing, and the two ambitious chiefs confronted each other in the mountainous region of the higher Sutlege. Umur Sing entered the Punjab, and invested Kote Kangra, a fortress in a position so strong by nature, that in the opinion of the ablest French engineers, it might be rendered impregnable by science and art. After an unsuccessful siege of four years, he was obliged, in 1813, to retire, with no little damage to his military reputation. He made several attempts to engage the British Government in a crusade against Runjeet Sing, but was, soon after, obliged to look to the defence of his own country against an invasion from Hindostan.
The Goorkhas, not content with the possessions they had acquired in the hills, pushed their encroachments into the low lands, and during the twenty-five years preceding the war we are about to describe, had usurped more than two hundred British villages. The subjects of the Company were thus exposed to perpetual aggression along the whole line of frontier, and there ceased to be any security for life or property. At length, the Goorkhas had the presumption to lay claim to the two districts of Bootwul and Seoraj which they had seized in Goruckpore, though they had been ceded to Lord Wellesley by the Nabob Vizier in 1801 Lord Minto was anxious to avoid a war with the Nepalese, and suggested that delegates should be sent from the capital, Catmandoo, to meet the British representative, and investigate the merits of the question. The inquiry occupied more than a twelvemonth; the Goorkha envoys were unable to establish their claim, and Lord Minto forwarded a demand to the Nepal regency in June, 1813, for the immediate restitution of the districts, and intimated that in case of refusal they would be occupied by force. The Government
in Calcutta was thus bound to support the demand, even at the hazard of hostilities. The Goorkha cabinet distinctly refused to resign the districts, and again asserted their right to them. Their reply did not, however, reach Calcutta till after Lord Hastings had assumed the government, when, on a careful examination of all the documents, he deemed it indispensable categorically to demand their surrender within twenty-five days. The period expired without any communication from the regent, and the magistrate of Goruckpore was directed to expel the Goorkha officers, and establish police stations in the two districts.
Lord Hastings’s letter created a profound sensation at Catmandoo, and convinced the regent that the local dispute regarding these border lands was rapidly merging into a question of peace or war with the British power. A national council, composed of twenty-two chiefs, was held at the capital, in which the subject of their future policy was discussed with great animation. Umur Sing said his life had been passed amid the hardships of war, and he was not ignorant of its risks, but he deprecated a collision with the British power, and maintained that the lands in dispute were not worth the hazard. “We have hitherto,” he said, “been hunting deer, but, if we engage in this war, we must be prepared to fight tigers.” Several other chiefs offered similar advice; but the regent and his party, filled with an overweening conceit of their national prowess, treated it with scorn. “Hitherto,” they said, “no power has been able to cope with us. The small fort of Bhurtpore was the work of man, yet the English were worsted before it, and desisted from the attempt; our hills and fastnesses are the work of the Deity, and are impregnable. Even the mighty Secunder, Alexander the Great, who overthrew many empires, failed to establish his authority in these mountains.” They talked of the futility of debating about a few square miles, since there could be no real peace between the two states until the Company resigned the provinces north of the Ganges, and
made that river their boundary. The council resolved on war, and, as if to render it inevitable, sent down a large force to Bootwul; the police officer was murdered in cold blood on the 29th May, and eighteen of his men were put to death. The Goorkhas had thrown down the gauntlet, and no course was left to the Government but to take it up promptly, without waiting a twelvemonth by a reference to the Court in Leadenhall-street. The whole Goorkha army did not exceed 12,000 men, and it was scattered over an extensive frontier; their largest gun was only a four-pounder, and it appeared an act of infatuation in the Nepal regency to defy the British power, but the uninterrupted successes of a quarter of a century had turned the hardy little mountaineers into an army of skilful and courageous veterans, confident in their own strength, and animated with a strong feeling of national pride. Their troops were equipped and disciplined like the Company’s sepoys, and their officers adopted the English military titles. They moved about without the encumbrance of tents. They had no sooner taken up a position than they set to work to fortify it; every soldier worked at the entrenchment, and a strong stockade of double palisades, filled up with earth or stones, was completed in almost as little time as the English soldier required to erect his tent. But the chief strength of the Nepalese consisted in the impracticable nature of their country, and our entire ignorance of its localities.
Lord Hastings found himself dragged into a difficult war with an empty exchequer. On previous occasions the usual resource was to open a loan, but this was now out of the question, the Government notes being at a discount of nine or ten per cent., and the merchants in Calcutta paying twelve per cent. for money. In this dilemma he cast his eyes on the hoards of the Nabob Vizier, who had amassed a private fund of eight crores of rupees. The treaty of 1801 contained a loose engagement on the part of the Vizier to attend to the advice of the Resident regarding the amelioration of his system of government, which was vicious
in the extreme. Various remonstrances had been made to him during Lord Minto’s administration, but he had no mind for reforms which would embarrass his arrangements, and curtail his savings. These representations were rendered still more unpalatable by the bearing of the Resident, who assumed a dictatorial tone, which lowered the Nabob in the eyes of his Court and his subjects, and who broke in upon him at all hours when he had anything to prescribe. He interfered in the private, and even personal, arrangements of the Nabob, and went so far as to raise objections to the beating of the nobut, the great drum, the exclusive and most cherished privilege of royalty, because it disturbed his morning slumbers. Lord Hastings, who had resolved to treat the native princes with every consideration, ordered these irritating demands for reform to be discontinued, and the Vizier, who had been informed of the embarrassment of the treasury in Calcutta, offered the Company a gift of a crore of rupees, “to mark his gratitude,” as Lord Hastings said, “for my having treated him as a gentleman.” Lord Hastings left Calcutta early in 1814, on a tour through the provinces, and a visit to Lucknow. The Nabob died during the journey, but his son renewed the offer, not without a latent hope that it might conduce to the appointment of another Resident, which was the supreme wish of his heart. Lord Hastings was unable to receive the money as a gratuity, but agreed to accept it as a loan. He was now furnished with the sinews of war, but he was destined to a severe disappointment. Of the old eight per cent. loan which the Government in Calcutta had been endeavouring to convert into six per cents., a sum of fifty-four lacs was still unredeemed, and the members of Council, without giving a hint of their design to Lord Hastings, took upon themselves to advertise the payment of this sum, which absorbed more than half the Lucknow loan. This was regarded in Calcutta as a clever stroke of economy, but it was an act of supreme political folly. It completely deranged the plans of the Governor-General, and
would have produced the most disastrous effect on the campaign if he had not submitted to the humiliation of soliciting a second crore, which was granted with no little reluctance.
With regard to the plan of the campaign, Lord Hastings considered it highly impolitic to confine our operations to the defence of an immense length of frontier, which it would be found impossible to guard effectually against the inroads of a hostile, vigorous, and rapacious neighbour. He felt only that our military character could be sustained only by a bold and successful assault on the strongest of the enemy’s positions in the hills. With a view to distract the attention of the regency, he planned four simultaneous attacks on four points – the western on the Sutlege, the eastern on the capital, and two others on intermediate positions. Of the Goorkha army, one-third, under Umur Sing, guarded the fortresses on the Sutlege; two thousand were distributed between the Jumna and the Kalee rivers, and the remainder protected the capital and its neighbourhood. Four British armies were accordingly assembled in the field, comprising in all about thirty thousand men with sixty guns.
The division under General Gillespie, who had acquired a brilliant reputation in quelling the mutiny at Vellore and in Java, was the first in the field. He advanced at the head of 3,500 men into the Dhoon valley to lay siege to the fortress of Nahun. On the route he came upon the fortified position of Kalunga, defended by six hundred Goorkhas, under the command of Captain Bulbuddur Sing. On receiving the summons to surrender late in the day, the Goorkha chief coolly replied that it was not customary to carry on a correspondence at such an hour, but he would pay his respects to the General the next morning. Lord Hastings had repeatedly enjoined General Gillespie to avoid storming works which required to be reduced by artillery, but this order was totally disregarded, and in the impetuosity of his reckless courage, he determined to carry the fort by assault.
His men were staggered by the murderous fire which the Goorkhas skilfully directed against them as they advanced up to the wicket, when the General, irritated by the repulse, placed himself at the head of three companies of Europeans and rushed up to the gate, but was shot through the heart as he waved his hat to his men to follow him. A retreat was immediately sounded, but not before twenty officers and two hundred and forty men lay killed and wounded. A month was lost in waiting for heavy ordnance from Delhi. On the 27th November a breach was reported practicable, and a second attempt was made to storm the fort, but after two hours’ exposure to a galling fire the troops were withdrawn, with a loss of six hundred and eighty in killed and wounded. The sacrifice of men in these two futile assaults exceeded the whole number of the garrison, and it was at length resolved to bring the mortars into play. The place was little more than an open space surrounded by a stone wall. Three days of incessant shelling rendered it untenable, and reduced the garrison from six hundred to seventy, when the brave Goorkha commander sallied forth at the head of the survivors and escaped. If the positive orders of Lord Hastings had been obeyed in the first instance, the Government would have been spared a lamentable loss of life and the disgrace of two failures, which, at the opening of the campaign, disheartened their own troops as much as it emboldened the enemy. The reputation of this division was not retrieved by General Martindell, who succeeded to the command, and laid siege to Jytuk at the end of December. It was situated on a lofty and almost inaccessible mountain, and strengthened by extensive and substantial stockades and breastworks. The whole district was under the command of Colonel Runjoor Sing, the son of Umur Sing. Two powerful detachments were sent to occupy two important position; but owing to the blunders of the General, they were both overpowered and cut up. With a force of 1,000 Europeans and 5,000 natives he allowed himself to be held at bay
by 2,300 natives, and despairing of success turned the siege into a blockade, in which the rest of the campaign was unprofitably consumed.
The division under General J. S. Wood was appointed to re-take Bootwul, and penetrate Nepal through Palpa, but its efforts were paralyzed by similar imbecility. After much unnecessary delay the General took the field in the middle of December, and, without making any reconnaissance, allowed himself to be brought unexpectedly on the stockade of Jeetpore by the treachery of a brahmin guide, on the 14th January, 1814. It might have been expected, however, that a British army of 4,500 men, fully equipped, would have been a match for 1,200 Goorkhas, but the General, after fighting his way to a position which commanded the entrenchment, and placed it within his grasp, sounded a retreat just as the enemy had begun to abandon it. The opposition he had encountered, although insignificant, made so deep an impression on his feeble mind that he retired within the British frontier, and confined his exertions to an attempt to defend it; but the Goorkhas, emboldened by his pusillanimity, penetrated it in every quarter, and scarcely a day passed in which some village was not pillaged and burnt. Reinforcements were sent to him without delay, but he had neither the spirit nor the skill to employ them, and his division was rendered worse than useless throughout the season.
The chief reliance of Lord Hastings for the successful issue of the campaign was placed. on the army entrusted to General Marley, 8,000 strong, which was destined to march directly on the capital, only a hundred miles from our frontier, but he proved to be more incompetent than even Wood and Martindell. After reaching Puchroutee on the 20th December, he lost a month in devising the best mode of advancing to Catmandoo. Two detachments were sent to two points, east and west, twenty miles distant from head-quarters, without any support. No military precautions were adopted in these
isolated positions, and the Goorkhas simultaneously surprised both corps on the 1st January. The officers were deserted by the sepoys, but fell fighting with their usual valour, and all the guns, stores, and magazines fell into the hands of the enemy. The skill and audacity manifested by the Goorkhas in these encounters confounded the wretched General, and he made a retrograde movement to guard the frontier against an enemy, magnified by his fears to 12,000 men, but who never exceeded even a tenth of that number. As he declared that his army was inadequate to the object assigned to it, Lord Hastings strained every nerve to reinforce him, and, including two European regiments, raised its strength to 13,000 – a force sufficient to have disposed completely of the whole army of Nepal. But General Marley could not be persuaded to enter the forest, and on the 10th February mounted his horse before day light, and rode back to the cantonment of Dinapore, without delegating the command to any other officer, or giving any intimation of his intentions. General George Wood was then sent to assume the command. An encounter was accidentally brought on with the Goorkhas, in which four hundred of their number perished, and their comrades, dismayed by this reverse, abandoned all their positions in the neighbourhood, and left the road to the capital open; but General Wood had as little spirit as his predecessor, and this division was likewise lost to the object of the war.
This was the first campaign since the Company took up arms in India in which their own troops outnumbered those of the enemy, and in the proportion of three to one. The plan of operations appears to have been skilfully and judiciously adapted to the novel character of this mountain warfare. It was the unexampled incompetence of four out of five of the generals which rendered it abortive, and enabled the enemy to hold our armies in check outside the forest from the frontier of Oude to the frontier of Bengal. “We have met,” wrote Mr. Metcalfe, the Resident at Delhi, “with an enemy who decidedly
shows greater bravery and steadiness than our own troops. In some instances Europeans and natives have been repulsed with sticks and stones, and driven for miles like a flock of sheep.” “The successes of the Goorkhas,” wrote Lord Hastings, “have intimidated our officers and troops, and with a deeply anxious heart I am keeping up an air of indifference and confidence; but were we to be foiled in this struggle, it would be the first step to the subversion of our power.” The reverses which our arms had sustained were published throughout India, and served to revive the dormant hopes of the native princes. For several months the country was filled with rumours of a general confederacy against us. Mahrattas, Pindarees, and Patans appeared for a time to suspend their mutual animosities, under the impression that the time had come for a united effort to extinguish our supremacy. The Peshwa took the lead in these machinations, and sent envoys to all the Mahratta courts, not overlooking the Pindaree chiefs. A secret treaty of mutual support was concluded, the first article of which bound the princes to obey and serve him in this crusade. The army of Sindia was organized on our frontier to take advantage of our difficulties, Ameer Khan, with a body of 25,000 horse and foot, thoroughly organized and equipped, and one hundred and twenty-five guns, took up a position within twelve marches of our own districts, and insulted our distress by offering to march to Agra, and assist us in combating the Goorkhas. Runjeet Sing marched an army of 20,000 men to the fords of the Sutlege, and 20,000 Pindarees stood prepared for any opportunity of mischief. To meet the emergency Lord Hastings ordered the whole of the disposable force of the Madras Presidency up to the frontier of the Deccan, and despatched a Bombay force to Guzerat. The Court of Directors were importunate for retrenchment and reductions, but he considered the public safety paramount to obedience, and raised three additional regiments of infantry, enlisted bodies of irregular horse, remodelled the whole of the Bengal army, and by these and
other arrangements increased its strength to 80,000 soldiers. But, as the natives observed, the Company’s ikbal – good fortune – was still in the ascendant. The clouds began to break. Runjeet Sing was recalled to his capital by a threatened irruption of Afghans; Sindia’s two principal commanders, after long discord, attacked each other; Ameer Khan found more immediate employment for his bands in the plunder of Joudhpore, and the Pindaree leaders quarrelled among themselves. The cloud was completely dispersed by the brilliant success of General Ochterlony, to which we now turn.
The division of General Ochterlony was destined to dislodge the Goorkhas from the territories they had acquired on the higher Sutlege, the defence of which was entrusted to the gallant Umur Sing, and the ablest of the Goorkha commanders was thus pitted against the ablest of the English generals. The scene of operations was a wild and rugged region, presenting successive lines of mountains, rising like steps one above another, to the loftiest peaks of the Himalaya. It was broken up by deep glens, and covered with thick forests, and still further protected by numerous stockades, and by six forts on points almost inaccessible. It would not have been easy to imagine a more difficult field for military operations. The General had formed a correct estimate of the bold character of his opponent, and of the advantages which he enjoyed by his positions, and in a spirit of high enterprise, tempered with sound judgment, he proceeded towards his object by cautious, yet sure, steps. He did not disdain to copy the tactics of the Goorkhas, and erect stockades to protect isolated detachments, which saved many of them from being overpowered, though other generals were disposed to condemn the device as a confession of weakness. Having crossed the plain from Loodiana, he entered the hills and encamped on the 1st November before the fort of Nalagur, where he received intelligence of the disaster at Kalunga and the death of General Gillespie. But he had wisely brought on the whole of his battering train, which he caused
to play on the fort for thirty hours, when the commander surrendered it, and the campaign opened auspiciously by the capture of an important fortress, with the loss of only one European soldier. It would be wearisome to enter into any detail of the operations of the next five months, during which the gallantry of the British troops was matched by the heroic valour of the Goorkhas, and the strategy of British engineers was repeatedly foiled by the tact and resolution of Umur Sing. The service was the most arduous in which the Company’s army had ever been engaged in India. At the elevation of more than five thousand feet above the level of the sea, at the most inclement season of the year, amidst falls of snow, sometimes of two days’ continuance, the pioneers were employed in blasting rocks and opening roads for the eighteen-pounders, and men and elephants were employed day after day in dragging them up those Alpine heights. The energy of the General, and the sublime character of the warfare, kindled the enthusiasm of the army. By a series of bold and skilful manoeuvres every height was at length surmounted, and every fortress save one captured, and on the 15th April Umur Sing found himself confined to the fort of Malown, situated on a mountain ridge, with a steep declivity of two thousand feet on two sides. The next day Umur Sing assaulted the British works with his whole force, under the direct command of his ablest general, who on leaving the Goorkha camp directed both his wives to prepare for suttee, as he had determined to conquer or fall. He fell covered with wounds, and General Ochterlony ordered his body to be wrapped in shawls and delivered to his master. His wives sacrificed themselves on the funeral pile the next day. The Goorkha army was obliged to retire, with the loss of five hundred men. But the feeling of exultation occasioned by this victory was damped by the loss which the army soon after sustained in the death of Lieutenant Lawtie, of the engineers, a young officer of the highest professional zeal, penetration, and promise, to whom, as field engineer, the General had been
more indebted for the success of his operations than to any other officer. The whole army went into mourning for him.
Information reached the General’s camp soon after of the occupation of Almora. This province formed the centre of the Nepal conquests westward, and Lord Hastings considered that the reduction of it would greatly facilitate the operations against Umur Sing, by cutting off his communications with the capital. As no regular troops could be spared for this service, Colonel Gardner, an officer of great merit, who had been in the Mahratta service, was directed to raise some irregular corps in Bundelkund. These raw levies, under their enterprising commander, entered the province, and speedily cleared it of the Goorkhas. The capital fell on the 27th April to Colonel Nicolls, an officer of the regular service, who was sent with a large force to complete the work which Colonel Gardner had begun. The Goorkha force at Malown was thus isolated, and deprived of all hope of reinforcement, which led the Goorkha officers to entreat Umur Sing to make terms with General Ochterlony, but the stern old chief spurned their advice, and the great body of his troops passed over to the English. He himself retired into the fort with about two hundred men, who still clung to his fortunes, but when the English batteries were about to open, he felt unwilling to sacrifice in a forlorn conflict the lives of the brave men who had generously adhered to him to the last, and accepted the terms offered to him, thus ceding the whole of the conquests which the Nepalese had made west of the Kalee. General Ochterlony allowed him to march out with his arms and accoutrements, his colours, two guns, and all his personal property, “in consideration of the skill, bravery, and fidelity with which he had defended the country committed to his charge.” The same honourable terms were likewise granted by General Ochterlony to his son, who had defended Jytuk for four months against General Martindell. The Goorkha soldiers did not hesitate to take service under the Company’s colours. They were formed into three regiments,
and no sepoys have ever manifested greater loyalty or valour.
The discomfiture of their ablest general and the loss of their most valuable conquests took away from the Council of regency at Catmandoo all confidence in their mountain fastnesses, and induced them to sue for peace. The conditions proposed by Lord Hastings were, that they should resign all claims on the hill rajas west of the Kalee, cede the belt of low lands denominated the teraee, restore the territory of Sikkim north of Bengal, and receive a British Resident. To the relinquishment of the teraee the Goorkhas manifested greater repugnance than even to the residence of a British representative at the court. The revenue derived from these lands, though small, was important to a poor state; some of the most valuable jageers in them were held by the members of the regency, and Lord Hastings therefore reduced his demand to a portion of this territory. The negotiations were at length brought to a close, and the Goorkha commissioners came down to Segowlee and signed the treaty on the 2nd December, under an engagement that the ratification of it by the regency should be delivered within fifteen days. The treaty was duly signed by the Governor-General in Calcutta, and a royal salute was fired in honour of the peace; but it was premature. Umur Sing and his sons had arrived at Catmandoo, and urged the chiefs still to confide their fortunes to their swords, to dispute every inch of mountain territory, and, if driven from it, to retire to the borders of China. Acting under this advice, the council determined to reject the treaty, and sent an envoy to announce their resolution to continue the war. At the same time they made every effort to collect their military resources, and to fortify the passes. Lord Hastings, on his part, spared no pains to strike a decisive blow at the capital before the rains commenced. An effective force of 20,000 men was rapidly assembled, and entrusted to the command of Sir David Ochterlony, who bad intermediately been created a baronet. On emerging from the forest,
and approaching the first pass, on the 10th February, 1816, he found that the works of the Goorkhas were altogether unassailable. But Captain Pickersgill, of the quartermaster-general’s department, had discovered a route to the left which, though incomparably difficult, would enable the general to turn the flank of the enemy. The enterprise was the boldest effort in the whole course of this mountain warfare, but it proved completely successful, and at once decided the issue of the campaign. During the night of the 14th February General Ochterlony marched in dead silence through a narrow ravine, where twenty men might have arrested a whole army. By seven in the morning the Choorea heights, to the west of the enemy’s position, were gained without any resistance. There the force bivouacked for two days without food or shelter, while the other detachments were brought up. The General then advanced to Mukwanpore, within fifty miles of Catmandoo, where the Goorkhas made a stand, but were completely defeated. This blow took away from the regency all conceit of fighting; the treaty was sent down in hot haste with the red seal attached to it, and peace was finally concluded on the 2nd March, 1816.
The Nepal war, though waged in a difficult region, and prolonged for eighteen months, was managed with such singular economy as to add only fifty-four lacs of rupees to the public debt. The Goorkhas were not only the most valiant, but the most humane foes we had ever encountered in India, and they also proved to be the most faithful to their engagements. Unlike other Indian treaties, that which was made in 1816 has never been violated, and the Goorkhas, instead of taking advantage of our exigencies in the mutiny of 1857, sent a large force to assist in quelling it. The barren region which was the scene of this deadly conflict of 1815 has proved an invaluable acquisition to the empire. It has furnished sites for sanataria at Simla and Mussooree, at Landour and Nynee-thal, where the rulers of British India are enabled to recruit their strength during the heat of summer,
as the Mogul emperors were wont periodically to exchange the feverish temperature of Agra and Delhi for the delicious climate of Cashmere. The distance between Calcutta and Simla is abridged by a rail, and a thousand miles are now traversed with greater speed than a hundred in the days of Akbar and Jehangeer; while the electric telegraph, which conveys messages to the extremities of the empire in a few minutes, gives a character of ubiquity to the Government while sojourning in the hills.
The Nepal war closed on the 5th March, 1816, and the Pindaree war commenced on the 16th October in the following year. The intermediate period was not, however, a season of tranquillity. Two military operations were forced on Government in the north-west provinces, which, though of comparatively minor importance, enabled Lord Hastings to assure the Court of Directors, who were importunate for the reduction of the army, that “our own possessions were not precisely as secure as an estate in Yorkshire.” To relieve the pressure on the finances, it was resolved to impose a house-tax for the support of the municipal police on certain of the great towns, and, among others, on Bareilly, the capital of Rohilcund. The rate was to be assessed by each ward, and the expenditure controlled by the townsmen. It was by no means oppressive in amount, the highest sum being only four rupees a-year, and the lowest class being altogether exempted from it. But a house-tax was an innovation not sanctioned by custom or tradition, and a spirit of opposition was roused against it among those who willingly submitted to the anomalous but ancient system of town duties. The Rohillas, the most turbulent of the Afghan colonists in India, determined to resist it. The magistrate, on entering Bareilly to arrange the details of the assessment with the principal inhabitants, was assailed by a mob excited by the moofty, or chief priest, and obliged to order his guard to clear the way, when three of their number, together with six or seven of the inhabitants, were killed and wounded. They
were regarded as martyrs by the populace, and the exasperation became intense. Messengers were despatched to the neighbouring town of Rampoora, which was the general resort of large bodies of Afghan adventurers, who streamed down annually from their own barren mountains to seek military service among the various princes of India. From Rampoora and other towns reinforcements were drawn to Bareilly during the night, and in the morning five or six thousand fanatics were found to be assembled under the green flag of the prophet. Happily the military force of Government had also been augmented at the same time, and in the severe conflict which ensued no fewer than four hundred of the insurgents were killed and a greater number wounded, but the whole body was dispersed. Had the result been different the whole province of Rohilcund would have immediately risen in rebellion, and Ameer Khan, a Rohilla by birth, who was encamped at the time within a few marches of Agra with 12,000 Rohillas under his standard, would not have allowed the opportunity to slip.
This event evinced the impolicy of allowing the great landholders in the adjacent Dooab, or country lying between the Jumna and the Ganges, to continue to garrison their castles with a large body of military retainers, as they had done when the province belonged to Sindia. One of these zemindars, Dyaram, a Jaut, and a relative of the raja of Bhurtpore, had been permitted to retain his estates and his fortress of Hatras, on the borders of Rohilcund. He had already presumed to levy contributions on the country, and to give shelter to thieves and robbers; and he now proceeded to exclude every servant of the Government from his town, and to interrupt the process of the courts. His fort, which was considered one of the strongest in the country, was surrounded by a ditch a hundred and twenty-five feet broad and eighty-five feet deep. It had been placed in a state of complete repair, and strengthened by the adoption of all the improvements made by the Government engineers in the adjacent fort of Allyghur. He and a neighbouring zemindar, equally
refractory, were able at any time to assemble a force of 10,000 men. Lord Hastings deemed it important that this baronial castle should no longer bid us defiance, and ordered up an overwhelming force, together with such an array of mortars – his favourite weapon – as nothing could possibly withstand. On the 1st March, 1817, forty-five mortars and three breaching batteries began to play on the fort, but the garrison gallantly stood this storm of shot and shell for fifteen hours. At length, however, the great magazine blew up with a concussion which was felt at Agra, thirty miles distant, and which destroyed half the garrison and nearly all the buildings. Dyaram made his escape with a few horsemen. The complete reduction of one of the strongest fortresses in Hindostan in a few hours, not only secured the ready submission of the contumacious zemindars in the Dooab, but created a salutary impression throughout India, and doubtless contributed to the success of the ensuing campaign. Hatras is now a peaceful railway station.
This collection transcribed by Chris Gage