On the receipt of Lord Hastings’s resignation, the Court of Directors, with the ready concurrence of the Ministry, nominated Mr. Canning, the late President of the Board of Control, Governor-General. A better appointment it would have been difficult to conceive, but India was not destined to enjoy the benefit of his transcendent talents. When on the point of embarking, the sudden death of the Marquis of Londonderry – with whose
name as Lord Castlereagh during Lord Wellesley’s administration the reader is already familiar – led to his joining the Cabinet at home. Two candidates then appeared for this splendid office, Lord William Bentinck and Lord Amherst. Lord William had the strongest claims on the Court of Directors; they had hastily removed him from the Government of Madras in the height of the panic created by the Vellore mutiny, but on a calm review of the case, had acknowledged “the uprightness, zeal, and success of his services.” He was eminently qualified for the Governor-Generalship by his great administrative ability, his intimate knowledge of the native character and habits, and of the system of the Indian Governments, and not less by his intense fondness for the work. Lord Amherst’s claim rested on his embassy to China, and the exemplary patience and fortitude with which he had maintained the dignity of the British crown against the arrogance of the Pekin court. He had also suffered shipwreck on his return. The preference was given to him, and he landed in Calcutta on the 1st August, 1823.
During the interregnum, the Government devolved on Mr. Adam, the senior member of Council, an officer of ability and resolution, and great political experience, but totally disqualified for the highest post in the empire by the strength of his local partialities and prejudices. Lord Hastings had left ten crores of rupees in the treasuries, in addition to a surplus revenue of two crores a-year, and the Government was bewildered with this unexampled exuberance of wealth. Lord Hastings thought that one-half the excess might be very appropriately allotted to the Proprietors of India stock, and the other half to the nation. But the Act of 1813 had ordained that, with the exception of the lac of rupees to be applied to public instruction, all surplus revenue should be assigned to the reduction of the debt. A portion of it was therefore employed in converting the Company’s six per cent. paper into five per cents., which produced a saving of thirty lacs of rupees a-year. With
a portion of the accumulation in the treasuries, it was at one time proposed to pay off the debts of the civilians. The proposal was by no means so preposterous as it may at first sight appear. They formed the official aristocracy of the British dynasty, and supported the honour of their position by a liberal expenditure, which was often, however, beyond their means. There was no lack of wealthy natives ready to furnish the means of extravagance to youths to whom the administration of large districts would be eventually committed. They were seldom importunate for a settlement; the bond was readily renewed from time to time, with the addition of interest, but when the victim had risen to power, his native creditor demanded either the discharge of his debt, now swelled to a prodigious amount, or some influential appointment in his court, where he would of course exemplify the oriental rule of turning power into money. The office was often indignantly refused, but the knowledge of the civilian’s indebtedness to the native, which could not be concealed, deprived him of the reputation of independence, which in popular estimation was essential to the impartial distribution of justice. To liberate the judge or collector from the thraldom of the native money-lender, and to make him the creditor of the state, was therefore as much a benefit to the district as to the individual himself. But the debts of the civilians were found to be so formidable, that the project was never carried out, and within a twelvemonth the Burmese war came and cleared out the treasury, and converted the surplus into a deficit.
Mr. Adams’s brief administration of seven months was marked by great energy, and not a few good measures; but it is now remembered only by his illiberal proceedings against the press, and his vindictive persecution of Mr. Buckingham, who had come out to Calcutta in 1818, and established the “Calcutta Journal.” It was the ablest newspaper which had ever appeared in India, and gave a higher tone and a deeper interest to journalism. A knot of young men in the public service, of brilliant talents, headed by
Mr. Henry Meredith Parker, ranged themselves around the paper, and contributed by their poignant articles to its extraordinary success and popularity. The editor, availing himself of the liberty granted to the press by Lord Hastings, commented on public measures with great boldness, and sometimes with a degree of severity which was considered dangerous. But the great offence of the Journal consisted in the freedom of its remarks on some of the leading members of Government. They had been nursed in the lap of despotism, and their feelings of official complacency were rudely disturbed by the sarcasms inflicted on them. Madras, as a rule, has been unfortunate in its governors; no fewer than six have been recalled – one of them unjustly – and, with the exception of three or four, the rest have been very second-rate men. One of these, Mr. Hugh Elliott, then filled the chair, to the regret of the public, and the Journal affirmed that he had obtained an extension of his term of office, which was announced to the community in a circular with a black border. This innocent pleasantry was registered among the offences of the paper. The Calcutta secretaries had about this time taken to wear a green coat, and the Journal styled them the “gangrene of the state.” Mr. Adam had systematically opposed the liberality shown towards the press by Lord Hastings, and only waited for his departure to impose fetters on it, and to make an example of the obnoxious Journal. A Regulation was accordingly passed in April, 1823, which completely extinguished the “freedom of unlicensed printing,” but the Calcutta Journal continued to write with the same spirit as before. The senior Presbyterian minister, a zealous partizan of Government, had set up a rival Tory paper, and indulged in invectives against Mr. Buckingham, which, when indicted in the Supreme Court, were pronounced to be libellous. Not only was no check imposed on him by the Government, but he was nominated to the well-paid office of clerk to the Stationery Office. The appointment, when announced at home, was condemned by his own church, and revoked by the Court of
Directors. The Calcutta Journal ridiculed the incongruity of this union of offices, which obliged the reverend gentleman to employ himself in counting bundles of tape and sticks of sealing wax, when he ought to be composing his sermons. For this venial offence, Mr. Adam came down at once on Mr. Buckingham, revoked his licence, banished him from India, and ruined his prospects. He appealed for compensation to the India House, but an overwhelming majority of Proprietors passed a resolution approving of the proceedings of the Governor-General. A petition to disallow the press Regulation was presented to the Privy Council, and rejected without any hesitation. Mr. Adam died at sea on his way to England, after an honourable service of thirty years, leaving behind him, as the Directors justly remarked, “the reputation of exemplary integrity, distinguished ability, and indefatigable zeal.”
Lord Amherst had no sooner assumed the government, than he found himself involved in hostile discussions with the Burmese, which terminated within five months in a declaration of war. The kingdom of Burmah lies to the east of Bengal, from which it is separated by hills and forests, inhabited by various tribes of barbarians. Alompra, a man of obscure birth, but cast in the same mould as Hyder Ali and Runjeet Sing, began his career with a hundred followers, and after liberating his country from the yoke of Pegu, succeeded, about the year 1753, four years before the battle of Plassy, in establishing a new dynasty at Ava. Conquest was, as usual, the vital principle of this new Government, and the Burmese soon became a great aggressive power. They successively repelled four invasions of the Chinese, and in 1766 compelled the king of Siam to cede the Tenasserim provinces to them. The province of Aracan, which had long been an independent, and at one period a powerful kingdom – as repeated invasions of Bengal testify – was annexed to the Burmese dominions in 1787. This province stretched along the eastern shore of the
Bay of Bengal, and was separated by the river Naaf from the Company’s territories, in which several Aracan chiefs took refuge six years after, and were pursued across the frontier. Sir John Shore, then Governor-General, surrendered the fugitives on condition that the Burmese should retire to their own side of the river. This concession, which he considered the dictate of justice as well as of prudence, was attributed by the Burmese to pusillanimity, and the deputation of Colonel Symes, soon after, on a mission to Ava, confirmed this impression. He was received with scanty honour, and much gasconade, and the Burmese monarch, on learning from him that the English were at war with Bonaparte, inquired why the Governor-General had not applied to him for 40,000 troops, who would have swept the French from the face of the earth. In 1798, the oppressions of the Burmese forced a body of more than 30,000 Aracanese to seek a refuge in the British district of Chittagong. In their flight through the wilds and forests, without food or shelter, they experienced the extremity of distress, and the paths were strewed with the bodies of the aged and the helpless, and of mothers with infants at the breast. To refuse them an asylum would have been an act of barbarity, and they were settled in the waste lands of the district. The Burmese governor of Aracan demanded the surrender of the whole body, under the threat of an invasion. A large force of sepoys was dispatched to protect the frontier, while Colonel Symes was sent on a second mission to Ava, where he was treated with more than the usual arrogance of the Burmese court. A third embassy was unwisely sent in 1809, and Lieutenant Canning, the envoy, was subjected to increased indignity. The Aracan refugees were animated with inextinguishable hatred of their Burmese oppressors, and made repeated inroads into Aracan. Every effort was made by the British Government to restrain them, but nothing could convince the Burmese that they were not acting under the instigation of the public authorities in Calcutta. The repeated refusal of the Governor-General to
deliver up these helpless creatures to the Burmese executioner exasperated the Government of Ava, and in July, 1818, Lord Hastings received a rescript from the king demanding the surrender of eastern Bengal, including Moorshedabad. “The countries of Chittagong and Dacca, of Moorshedabad and Cossimbazar,” he said, “do not belong to India. They are ours; if you continue to retain them, we will come and destroy your country.” Lord Hastings treated the letter as a forgery, and returned it to the king.
For several years before the war we are about to describe, the Burmese had been engaged in extending their conquests to the north-west of Ava. The kingdom of Assam, abutting on the Company’s district of Rungpore, stretches eastward through the valley of the Berhampooter to the mountains which separate it from China. It had maintained its independence against the repeated assaults of the Mogul emperors, and had defeated the most celebrated of Aurungzebe’s generals. But disputes had now arisen in the royal family which gave the Burmese an opportunity of interfering, and they established a paramount influence in it in 1815. In 1822 Muha Bundoola, the great national hero, completed the reduction of it, and annexed it to the Burmese crown. Munipore, a valley lying to the east of Bengal and encircled with mountains, had once planted its standard on the walls of Ava, but the dissensions of the palace introduced Burmese influence, and it was absorbed in the kingdom of Ava. The Burmese also entered the little principality of Cachar, on the north-east corner of Bengal, but were checked by the Supreme Government, who considered it impolitic to allow them to plant their camps and stockades so near the border. The dynasty of Alompra had thus, in the course of seventy years, succeeded in establishing its authority over territories eight hundred miles in length, stretching from the confines of Bengal to those of China. The uniform success of every enterprise had filled the Burmese with an overweening conceit of their strength, and the
evident indisposition of the Company’s Government to go to war, combined with repeated embassies to Ava, and a profound ignorance of the resources of British power, inspired them with an irrepressible desire to try conclusions with the English in the field. “From the king to the beggar,” as stated by Mr. Laird, an Englishman residing in the country, “the whole community was hot for war.” Muha Bundoola, on his return from Assam, offered to drive the English from Bengal with no other troops than the strangers dependent on Ava. “The English “– such was the language of the royal council – “have conquered the black foreigners, the people of castes, who have puny frames, and no courage. They have never fought with so strong and brave a people as the Burmese, skilled in the use of the spear and the sword.”
The Burmese lost no time in giving effect to this determination. At the southern boundary of the Chittagong district, at the estuary of the Naaf, lies the little island of Shahpooree, which had always been considered a part of the Company’s territories. To defend it against the hostile disposition manifested by the Burmese, a small guard was posted on it in 1823. The Governor of Aracan claimed the island as Burmese territory, and insisted on the removal of the troops. The Governor-General proposed to appoint a joint commission to investigate the question of right, and the Burmese authorities answered the overture by sending over a thousand men, who hoisted the Burmese flag, put a part of the feeble detachment to death, and drove off the remainder. Lord Amherst immediately sent a force which dislodged the Burmese, and addressed a letter to the king, attributing the aggression to the presumption of the Governor of Aracan, and stating that his Government, however anxious to remain at peace, must resort to retaliation if such insults were repeated. The Court of Ava was thus confirmed in the conviction that the English dreaded an encounter with its troops, and Muha Bundoola was sent with a large army to Aracan with orders to expel the English from Bengal,
and to send the Governor-General to Ava, bound in the golden fetters which he took with him. To the official letter no direct reply was vouchsafed from Ava, but the Governor of Pegu was directed to signify the “pleasure of the king of the white elephant, the lord of the seas and of the land, that no further communication should be sent to the golden feet, but that the Governor-General should state his case in a petition to Muha Bundoola, who was proceeding to Aracan with an army to settle every question.” Lord Amherst, finding that every effort to maintain peace only rendered war more imminent, and that the Burmese were preparing to invade Bengal simultaneously on the north-east and the south-east, issued a declaration of war on the 24th February, 1824; and thus began the first Burmese war. At a subsequent period, when the Court of Directors became impatient under the boundless cost and dilatory prosecution of the war, they condemned the origin of it, as a dispute about a contemptible and uninhabited island, a mere sand-bank; and Lord Amherst deemed it necessary to draw up an elaborate defence of his proceedings; but the labour was altogether redundant. The war was universally acknowledged in India by the most experienced statesmen to be “not only just and necessary, but absolutely and positively unavoidable.” “The clearest case,” said Sir Charles Metcalfe, “of self-defence and violated territory.” If it had been conducted with the energy and promptitude of the Mahratta war in the days of Lord Wellesley, or the more recent Mahratta, and Pindaree war, both of which were brought to a successful issue, before the news of the first shot reached Leadenhall-street, there would have been little discussion as to its origin.
The Burmese were the most despicable enemy the British arms had ever encountered in the east. Their army was a miserable half-armed rabble, without discipline or courage. They had few muskets, and their swords and pikes were of a very inferior description. Their chief defence lay in the admirable skill and rapidity
with which they constructed stockades, and which our commanders, with rare exceptions, committed the folly of endeavouring to carry by storm, instead of expelling the enemy by shells and rockets. A hoe and a spade was a more essential part of the equipment of a Burmese soldier than a musket or a sword. Each man as he advanced dug a hole in the ground deep enough to afford him shelter, from which he fired in security until he was unearthed by the impetuosity of the British troops. This information was acquired during the course of the war, but at the commencement of it the Government in Calcutta was profoundly ignorant of the national mode of warfare, of the military force and resources, the population and the geography of the country, or of the approaches to it from our own provinces. The Commander-in-chief, Sir Edward Paget, then in the north-west, asserted that any attempt to enter Burmah either through Cachar or Aracan, would end in disaster, inasmuch as the troops, instead of finding armies, fortresses, and cities, would meet with nothing but jungle, pestilence, and famine. The plan of the campaign was drawn up by Captain John Canning, who had traversed the country and visited the capital; and it was unhappily on his knowledge that the Government placed its sole dependence. He represented that the occupation of Rangoon, the great port of the Irrawaddy, would paralyze the Burmese Government, and that the means of constructing a flotilla for navigating the river, as well as provisions and draught cattle, might be procured in and around that town in abundance. Though the river, like the Ganges, was an impetuous torrent during the rains, the south-west monsoon which prevailed at that season of the year, would, he affirmed, enable the expedition to stem the current and sail up to the capital. It was resolved, therefore, to land the expedition at Rangoon as the rains commenced. The plan was visionary and preposterous, as the military authorities in Calcutta, with their knowledge of the rivers of India, ought to have foreseen; and the adoption of it was the first and most fatal error of the campaign.
The expedition was collected in the spacious harbour of Port Cornwallis, in the largest of the Andaman islands, lying in the Bay of Bengal, about three hundred miles south of Rangoon. It consisted of about 11,000 European and native troops, the latter drawn exclusively from the Madras Presidency, and it was placed under the command of Sir Archibald Campbell, who had served with distinction under the Duke in Spain. The fleet of transports was convoyed by three vessels of war, and by the “Diana,” a little steamer recently built in Calcutta, and the first which ever floated in the waters of the east. The appearance of this vessel confounded the minds of the Burmese, among whom there was an ancient prediction current, that the kingdom would be invincible till a vessel moved up the Irrawaddy without sails or oars.
While the expedition was in course of equipment, Bundoola entered Aracan for the invasion of Bengal with an army variously estimated at ten and twenty thousand men. The defence of the frontier had been left to a small and inadequate force stationed at Chittagong; and a weak detachment of about three hundred native infantry, with several hundred of the local levies and two guns, had been imprudently pushed forward under Captain Noton to hold a post on our extreme boundary, a hundred miles from the nearest support. The approach of Bundoola was well known in Calcutta, and the public authorities were repeatedly urged to reinforce the small body of troops which was to sustain the first shock of the Burmese, but the request was treated with indifference. The consequence was deplorable. The Burmese force advanced on the 17th May to Captain Noton’s pickets, and the untrained men of the local corps fled. The little band of sepoys was completely surrounded, but they maintained the struggle gallantly for three days with little food or rest, and were then constrained to retreat, when they fell into irretrievable confusion. Captain Noton and five officers were killed, and three wounded. The detachment was annihilated, and the eastern districts of
Bengal were seized with a panic, which extended even to Calcutta. But a large force was sent in haste to the frontier, which effectually checked the advance of the enemy, and Bundoola was soon after recalled to oppose the British force at Rangoon.
The expedition arrived off that town on the 11th May, to the inexpressible surprise of the Burmese, who had never dreamt that the English, whom they were about to expel from Bengal, would venture to attack them in their own territory. No preparations had been made to repel them, and the only defence of the town consisted in a quadrangular teak stockade, about twelve feet high, with a battery of indifferent guns, which were silenced by the first broadside from the “Liffey.” Happily, the discharge was so opportune as also to rescue from destruction the Europeans resident in Rangoon, eleven in number, who had been seized and condemned to death on the approach of the fleet. Their arms had been bound behind as they were made to squat on the ground, and the executioner stood before them sharpening his weapon, when the shot from the frigate flew about the building, which the Burmese officers abandoned in great trepidation, and thus afforded the prisoners the means of escape. The troops landed without any opposition, but they found the town deserted. It appeared that the governor, seeing all resistance hopeless, had ordered the whole population, men, women, and children, to quit it, and retire to the jungles with all their provisions and flocks and herds. The mandate was implicitly obeyed, partly from a dread of the strangers, but more especially from the terror which the ferocity of their own Government inspired in all breasts. By this unexpected stroke of policy the whole plan of the campaign was defeated. Every hope of obtaining the means of advancing to the capital by water or by land was extinguished, and Sir Archibald was obliged to confine his efforts to the shelter of his troops during the six months of inaction to which they were doomed. One entire regiment was quartered
in the Dagon Pagoda, the pride of Rangoon, a magnificent edifice, which is justly admired for the lightness of its contour, the happy combination of its parts, and the vastness of its dimensions, and which serves to give us a very high opinion of the splendid Boodhist architecture with which India was once filled. The object of the Burmese commander was to isolate the British encampment and intercept all supplies, in which he completely succeeded, as well as to destroy the fleet with the fire rafts which the Burmese constructed with singular skill, but which was prevented by the vigilance of the British officers.
Within a week after the occupation of Rangoon, the rains set in with great violence; the country around became a swamp, and the miasma, combined with the sultry heat, brought fever and dysentery and death into the camp. The condition of this noble army was rendered the more deplorable by the want of wholesome food. There was no lack of cattle in the neighbourhood which would have amply supplied all its necessities, but the Government in Calcutta, by a stretch of folly unknown in India, had forbidden the commander to touch them lest he should wound the prejudices of the natives, and the European soldiers were allowed to perish that the cows might live. The troops were thus left to depend on the supplies brought from Calcutta, which was proverbial for the dishonesty of its cured provisions; the meat was found to be putrescent, and the maggoty biscuits crumbled under the touch. Owing to the culpable neglect of the public authorities in Calcutta, and more especially of the commissariat, the army at Rangoon was left for five months in this state of destitution after its exigencies had been completely revealed. It was only through the prompt and indefatigable exertions of Sir Thomas Munro, the governor of Madras, in forwarding supplies that the army was not altogether annihilated. The unhealthiness of the season, and the unwholesomeness of the food soon filled the hospitals, and of the whole force
scarcely three thousand men remained fit for duty. In the month of August an expedition was sent to the Tenasserim provinces, which stretched four hundred miles along the coast. The chief towns were occupied, and in the capital, Martaban, was found an immense arsenal filled with the munitions of war. These districts, remote from the stern influence of the Governor of Rangoon, furnished the troops to some extent with the supplies of vegetables and meat which were so greatly needed. In the beginning of October a large force was sent against Kaik-loo, fourteen miles from Rangoon, where the Burmese had erected a strong stockade. The troops who attempted to storm it were repulsed with considerable loss; but, on the appearance of a larger force, the Burmese were found to have evacuated it.
The King of Ava at length resolved to collect all his strength for one vigorous effort to expel the invaders from the country. The renowned Bundoola was sent down to Rangoon with an army of sixty thousand men, and arrived in front of the British encampment on the 1st December. The rapidity and precision with which corps after corps took up its station, and immediately threw up entrenchments, reflected great credit on Burmese skill and discipline. Within a few hours the British camp was completely surrounded with stockades, and the busy line of soldiers suddenly disappeared behind them, the men sinking in couples into the burrows they had dug, which were stocked with a sufficient supply of rice, water, and fuel. The works, which were watched with intense interest from the British encampment, appeared to rise by the wand of a magician. The first attack on them was made on the 6th December, when two columns supported by gunboats broke through the right of the Burmese entrenchments and dispersed the defenders. Instead, however, of quitting the field, Bundoola pushed his troops the next day up to the great pagoda, but the twenty guns which had been mounted on it, opened a brisk cannonade, and four British columns
simultaneously attacked his force and routed it. But his spirit of perseverance was not exhausted. He sent incendiaries into the town who burnt down one-half of it, and he erected another series of stockades more formidable than any the British army had yet encountered, but on the 10th December, all his hopes were blasted by a total defeat, and he withdrew the whole of his force to Donabew, forty miles up the river.
Leaving Sir Archibald at Rangoon without an enemy, we turn to the operations of the war in other quarters. At the beginning of 1825, the province of Assam was wrested from the Burmese by Colonel Richards, who met with no resistance in occupying the capital, Rungpore, though it was mounted with two hundred pieces of ordnance.
The Commander-in-chief, as already stated, had dissuaded Government from any attempt to invade Burmah through Cachar or Aracan, but when it became evident that the Rangoon expedition had failed to achieve anything, he changed his opinion and encouraged Lord Amherst to organise one army to advance through Cachar and Munipore southward upon Ava, and another to penetrate Aracan, cross the Yomadown hills, and debouch in the valley of the Irrawaddy and then turn up north to the capital. Both expeditions proved abortive. The Cachar force consisting of 7,000 men was entrusted to the command of Colonel Shouldham. The Burmese had evacuated the province, but a more formidable enemy was found in the unexampled difficulties of the route. The army was enabled to advance along a road which the pioneers had opened with immense labour and perseverance to a point within ninety miles of Munipore, but the country beyond it was found to consist of an unbroken succession of abrupt bills and dales, the hills clothed to the summit with impenetrable forests, and the dells rendered impassable by deep quagmires. The rains commenced in February, and continued without abatement throughout March. The troops were harassed beyond
endurance. Hundreds of bullocks and camels, and a large proportion of the elephants, sunk under fatigue, or were imbedded in the mire. To transport the stores, the artillery, the heavy baggage, and all the impedimenta of a civilised army through such a region and under such circumstances was impossible, and the Colonel prudently relinquished the conquest of attempt and returned to Bengal.
The expedition to Aracan was still more unfortunate. It consisted of about 10,000 men, and proceeded on its march from Chittagong on the 1st January. The commander was General Morrison, a King’s officer of good repute, but he imprudently rejected the advice of the experienced Company’s officers on his staff, who were acquainted with the face and character of the country. There was a constant succession of blunders, and the army was three months marching down the coast, a distance of only two hundred and fifty miles, and did not reach the capital of the province, which was occupied with little resistance, till it was too late in the season to make any farther progress. The monsoon commenced early in May, the country was flooded and became a pestilential marsh. One-fourth of the troops perished by disease, and two-thirds of the remainder were in hospital. Few ever recovered their former health and vigour, and the Aracan fever was long remembered with feelings of horror. The army, as an organised body, had ceased to exist, and on one occasion, when a wing of a European regiment was mustered on parade, only one soldier, it was said, appeared to answer to his name. But it was not till the end of the year that the new Commander-in-chief, Lord Combermere, consented to withdraw the remains of the army from this lazaretto.
Sir Archibald Campbell, after having been encamped nine months at Rangoon, and lost two months of the season for operations, at length moved up towards the capital, on the 13th February. The army was divided into three columns, one of which, by an unaccountable fancy, was sent down under Colonel Sale, to occupy the town
and district of Bassein, on the southern coast, where there was no reason to apprehend any kind of danger. The small Burmese force fled at his approach, and he returned to Rangoon without any loss, save that of invaluable time. Another column moved up by land, under the personal command of Sir Archibald, without seeing the face of an enemy. The third proceeded by water up the Irrawaddy, under Brigadier Cotton, and came abreast of Donabew on the 28th February. All the resources of Burmese engineering science had been employed by Bundoola in strengthening the fortifications of this post. The stockade extended a mile along a sloping bank of the river, and was composed of solid teak beams, fifteen feet in length, firmly driven into the earth. Behind this wooden wall the old brick ramparts afforded a firm footing for the defenders. Upwards of a hundred and fifty guns and swivels were mounted on the works, which were, moreover, protected by a wide and deep ditch, rendered formidable by spikes, nails, and holes. The garrison consisted of 12,000 men, and was commanded by the great Bundoola himself; who maintained so stern a discipline that on one occasion when some of his artillery-men shrunk from their post on seeing their commander shot down, he descended to the spot, and ordered the heads of two of the recreants to be struck off and fixed to a pole, by way of example. The Brigadier succeeded in carrying the smaller works, but met with a signal defeat in his attempt to storm the larger entrenchment; and having indiscreetly left one of his regiments behind him on the route, pronounced his force unequal to the capture of the place. Sir Archibald had scarcely three months left for the campaign when he quitted Rangoon, and the capital was five hundred miles distant. But it was indispensable to retrieve the honour of the British arms, and to keep open his communications with the sea. Preferring, as he remarked, the sacrifice of time to the loss of men, he marched back to the succour of Brigadier Cotton with his whole force, and thus incurred the loss of an entire month. The attack began on the 1st
April, when a shower of shells and rockets was poured down on the Burmese encampment. The next morning, the heavy guns and mortars began to play on it, but no answer was returned, and soon after the whole of the Burmese army was observed to be in full retreat. Bundoola had, in fact, been killed by the bursting of a shell the preceding night,. and with him expired all the courage and spirit of his troops. No farther obstacle was offered to the advance of the General, and Prome was occupied without firing a shot. But the rains were approaching, and the second campaign was brought to a close within ten weeks, during which the army had advanced a hundred and fifty miles.
The war was found to be more expensive than any in which the Company had ever been engaged. The mere field expenses, together with the cost of the additional troops who had been enlisted without necessity at the Bengal Presidency to fill up the gap temporarily created by the Burmese expedition, were estimated at a lac of rupees a-day. It was proposed to halt at Prome, and act on the defensive, but Lord Amherst wisely rejected this advice, under the conviction that the most effectual mode of bringing the war to a termination was to push on rapidly towards the capital. At the same time he urged the General to welcome any disposition on the part of the Burmese for peace, and that no opportunity of negotiation might be lost, associated in a commission with him, the naval Commander-in-chief, and Mr. Thomas Campbell Robertson, a civilian of experience and judgment, who had been the political agent at Chittagong. Mr. Ross Mangles, a young civilian of great promise, was appointed to act as secretary. Before the arrival of the Commissioners, the General had intimated to the Burmese Court that he was authorized to negotiate a peace. The overture was readily accepted; an armistice was concluded for a month, and envoys were sent down from Ava to the British encampment. They were informed that the King would be required to abstain from all interference in Cachar and Assam,
to recognise the independence of Munipore, to cede the provinces of Aracan and Tenasserim, and pay two crores of rupees towards the expenses of the war. They stated that it was beyond their power to accede to these severe terms, and the armistice was prolonged to enable them to make a reference to Ava. The reply of the King was brief and simple: “The English must empty their hands of what they hold, and then sad a petition for the release of the European captives; but if they hint at the cession of territory or the payment of money there must be an end of all friendship.” In that spirit of indomitable perseverance which the Burmese had manifested throughout the war, and which in some measure atoned for the want of courage, another army of forty thousand men was collected and sent to Prome, with orders to expel the English. With this body there was an engagement at Wattigaum in which the British troops were repulsed from the stockades with the loss of two hundred men, of whom ten were officers. Emboldened by this success, the Burmese commander advanced against the British lines, but was signally defeated and very closely pursued. On the 26th December a boat with a flag of truce made its appearance with fresh envoys from Ava to renew the negotiations. It was anchored in the middle of the stream, and the plenipotentiaries entered it from opposite directions, with a retinue of fifty men on each side. The Burmese ministers waived every objection to the territorial cessions, but withstood the pecuniary payment, on the score of poverty, with so much earnestness that the English Commissioners were induced to reduce it by one-half. A treaty was accordingly signed on the 3rd January, and the royal ratification was promised on the 18th of the month. A little incident which occurred during the conference serves to illustrate the character of Burmese officials. One of their attendants, in lighting a cigar on the roof of the boat, happened to drop a spark on some loose gunpowder, which caused a slight explosion, and startled the principal envoy. When the offender was named to him, he exclaimed, “cut off his
hand,” and a moment after added, “off with his head,” and the sentence would have been executed at once, but for the earnest entreaty of Sir Archibald. But the ratification never arrived; the time was employed, as the Burmese had intended it should be, in strengthening the fortifications of Mellown, which lay opposite the British encampment on the Irrawaddy. The British force attacked it with great vigour on the 19th January, captured all the guns, stores, and ammunition, and after delivering the encampment to the flames, pursued its march towards the capital.
The king began now to tremble for his throne, and released Dr. Price, one of the American missionaries whom he had placed in confinement, and sent him down with another of the European captives to renew the negotiations. They were informed that no severer terms would be exacted in consequence of the victory at Mellown, but that one-fourth of the indemnity must be paid down within twenty days. The two European gentlemen returned to Ava, with the promise of appearing in the English camp on the 12th February, if the proposal was accepted by the king. But before that day he was induced to make one final effort to avert this humiliation. One of his military chiefs, in a burst of patriotism, engaged to expel the invaders if he were entrusted with an army. All the troops the Burmese were now able to muster did not exceed the number of 16,000, and with these the general marched down towards the English encampment, resolved to abandon the national mode of warfare, and, instead of digging holes and erecting stockades, to assail the British army boldly in the open field. Sir Archibald had only 1,300 men left out of his whole army to meet this force, but 900 of them were European veterans. The result of the engagement, which took place at Paghan-mew, may be easily imagined. The Burmese force was totally routed, and fled back to the capital in wild disorder, and the Burmese general expiated his patriotism by being trampled to death under the feet of an elephant. Sir Archibald advanced
to Yandaboo, within forty miles of the capital. The last Burmese army had been extinguished, the strength of the monarchy was completely exhausted, and the king hastened to send Dr. Price, in company with Mr. Judson, the head of the American mission, who had suffered a cruel captivity in Ava for two years, and with two of his own ministers, to accept whatever terms the English general might dictate. They brought with them the first instalment of the money, and all the European prisoners save one, who was detained for a time, because the king had been informed that the Company had married one of his relatives! The treaty of Yandaboo was signed on the 24th February. The king ceded Assam, Aracan, and Tenasserim to the Company, agreed to pay a crore of rupees towards the expenses of the war, and to submit to the admission of a British minister at Ava, although there is nothing to which Eastern princes feel so bitter an aversion as the residence of a European representative – a barbarian eye, as they term it – at their courts.
This was the first occasion on which the British arms were carried beyond the confines of India, and great fears were entertained lest the Company should thus be drawn into collision with the various Indo-Chinese nations; but the apprehension has proved groundless. The Burmese war was also more expensive and less recuperative than any which had preceded it. The great Mahratta and Pindaree war cost the Government only a crore of rupees, which was more than covered by a year’s revenue of the provinces acquired by it. The Burmese war cost thirteen crores, and the return consisted in three impoverished and thinly inhabited provinces. A fatality seemed, moreover, to mark every arrangement in this war, and in the presence of a contemptible enemy, it was remarkable only for want of judgment and perpetual delay. Its character was not redeemed by a single stroke of generalship. A great outcry was consequently raised against Lord Amherst in England; he was denounced in the Court of Proprietors as in every way unfit, by education, habits, and character, for the Government
of India, and repeated attempts were made to procure his recall. But Sir Thomas Munro, whose opinion was entitled to more confidence than that of any other statesman of the day, considered that there was great injustice in the idle clamour raised against the Governor-General. The Court of Directors, he said, were unreasonable in expecting to find every day for the Supreme Government such men as Cornwallis, and Wellesley, and Hastings, who appeared only once or twice in an age. Lord Amherst was as good a Governor-General as they were likely to send out. His situation was an arduous one; he was necessarily influenced by Captain Canning and the military authorities around him; he was new to India, and the Burmese were entirely unknown to us. But we lose sight of the mismanagement of the war when we view the prosperous condition which the provinces it gave us presents after the lapse of forty years. The energy and enterprise of the interlopers whom the Court of Directors endeavoured to exclude from India in 1813, have contributed in no small degree to augment the resources and the strength of the empire. They have covered Assam with tea gardens. The desolate and pestilential swamp of Aracan has become the granary of the Bay of Bengal, and hundreds of vessels are annually employed in conveying its produce from the port of Akyab to India, China, and Europe. Moulmein, the capital of the Tenasserim provinces, which contained only half a dozen fishermen’s huts when it was first occupied, has become a flourishing port, with a population of seventy thousand souls, and a trade of more than fifty lacs of rupees a-year.
The progress of the Burmese war gave rise to another sepoy mutiny. The Aracan expedition was composed of two regiments of Europeans and of several native corps from Madras and Bengal. The Madras troops embarked with extraordinary alacrity; those from Bengal, owing to their religious aversion to the sea, were directed to march down the coast. The disaster at Ramoo had diffused throughout the army a great dread of the Burmese soldiers who were represented as magicians, and
created a passionate repugnance to the service. The Bengal sepoys had been accustomed to provide for the transport of their own baggage out of their pay, but the public demand for cattle had not only doubled the price, but exhausted the local supplies. Towards the end of October, the 47th Native Infantry at Barrackpore, one of the regiments warned for service, presented a respectful memorial setting forth the extreme difficulty of procuring the means of conveyance. The representation was just and reasonable, and might have been investigated without any peril, but the military chiefs, accustomed to the stringent discipline and implicit obedience of European regiments, resented the slightest appearance of backwardness in the native army, and the sepoys were informed that they would receive no assistance from Government, and must procure their own cattle at their own expense, without delay. Discontent was thus ripened into insubordination; excited meetings were held in the cantonments; the sepoys rose in their demands, and solemnly pledged themselves not to march without a supply of cattle, and also an increase of pay. To augment the embarrassment of the crisis, the whole army had been recently remodelled, and officers transferred from one regiment to another. Those of the 47th had been only three months with the corps, and had not acquired any influence over the men. On the 1st November, the 47th was paraded in marching order, but scarcely a third of the regiment fell in; the rest assembled tumultuously in the adjacent lines. The commandant of the station and other officers of rank attempted to reason with them, but were repulsed with vehement gestures and vociferations. The Commander-in-chief then resolved to crush the mutiny by force of arms. Two regiments of Europeans, a detachment of horse artillery, and the Governor-General’s body-guard, were marched over night to Barrackpore and drawn up, unperceived, in the vicinity of the parade ground. In the morning, the Commander-in-chief came on the ground with his staff. The regiment was paraded, and officers, whom the men were accustomed to
respect, were sent to remonstrate with them, but without success. The sepoys were ordered to march forthwith, or to ground arms. They stood still in a state of stupid desperation, resolved not to yield, but making no effort at resistance. A volley was discharged by the artillery, when they cast away their arms with a loud shriek, and fled in dismay. The European troops then fired on them, and the body-guard sabred the fugitives. The slaughter on the ground and on the line of pursuit was very severe, and some were drowned in attempting to swim across the river. The ringleaders were subsequently tried by court-martial, and executed; and others were sentenced to hard labour in irons. A Court of Inquiry was held, which came to the decision that the “mutiny was an ebullition of despair at being compelled to march without the means of doing so.” There was no intention of resistance on the part of the sepoys, as scarcely one of the muskets left on the ground was found to be loaded, though each man had forty rounds of ammunition. When the corps had reached a state of actual mutiny, armed coercion was the only course which could be adopted, but the military authorities incurred a heavy responsibility by treating their legitimate representations with scorn. The Bengal sepoys are, after all, but a mercenary militia, bound to serve their foreign rulers within the limits of their own country. A little consideration for men required to march into an unknown region, peopled by the terrors of their imagination with goblins who had destroyed their fellow-soldiers, would have averted the catastrophe; but the sharpness of the remedy served to secure the subordination of the native army for sixteen years. In the following year Lord Amherst availed himself of the conquest of Aracan, to grant a free pardon to all the prisoners, but so little did they appreciate this act of kindness, that they asked, as they left the jail, what compensation they were, to receive for the brass lotas, or water-pots, they had lost on the morning of the mutiny.
The condition of India at the beginning of the
Burmese war was such as to create much disquietude, though no alarm. Notting is so soon forgotten in India as our successes, and nothing so long and so heartily remembered as our reverses. The recollection of the splendid triumphs of the Mahratta and Pindaree war had begun to fade, and some of the princes whom we had rescued from oppression were impatient under the restraints imposed on them, and the punctual demand of the tributes they had agreed to pay. There were few districts in Hindostan in which disaffection was not, more or less, manifested; the Mahratta states were not free from disorders, and one of the old Pindaree chiefs emerged from obscurity and collected a small band of followers. This fermentation in various and widely separated provinces was important chiefly from its common origin in the contempt which was growing up for British power. The withdrawal of troops for the Burmese war, and the reports which were diligently circulated of our non- success, as well as of the talismanic prowess of the Burmese, produced no small agitation among the natives. They had been accustomed to see a campaign begun and ended in a few months; but in the second year of the Burmese war, the army had scarcely advanced a third of the way to the capital.
The hopes of our downfall, always fondly cherished by the princes of India, were again revived. But in no instance was the defiance of our power so bold and significant as at Bhurtpore. Runjeet Sing, the Jaut chief, who had baffled Lord Lake in 1805, bequeathed the kingdom to his son in 1823, on whose death, without issue, it devolved on his brother. He was infirm in health, and applied to Sir David Ochterlony, the British representative in Malwa and Rajpootana, to recognize his son, a child of six years, as his successor. The question was referred to Calcutta, and, in obedience to the express orders of the Governor-General in Council, the investiture was performed by one of the political officers of the Residency. A twelvemonth after he ascended the throne, on the death of his father, under the guardianship
of his maternal uncle. But before a month had elapsed, Doorjun Saul, the nephew of the deceased raja, an ambitious and impetuous youth, having succeeded in corrupting the troops, put the guardian to death, and placed his cousin in confinement. Sir David, acting on his own responsibility, and with his usual energy, zeal, and promptitude, lost no time in issuing a proclamation to the Jauts to rally round their lawful sovereign, and in ordering a force of 16,000 men with a hundred guns into the field to support his rights, and vindicate the authority of the British Government. But the Governor-General disapproved of this proceeding. He denied that we were bound to uphold the young raja by force of arms. He considered it imprudent to embark the small disposable force in the north-west in a new war during the hot weather, while we were engaged in a conflict in Burmah, the extent, or duration, or demands of which could not be foreseen. Considering all the circumstances of the time, the Government was prudent in hesitating to incur the risk of a second siege of Bhurtpore. “A failure there,” wrote Sir Charles Metcalfe, “would have given a shock to our power in every part of India, shaken the confidence of our army, and confirmed the fatal belief that we could be successfully resisted.”
The opinion of Government might, however, have been communicated to Sir David Ochterlony in a manner worthy of his long and eminent services, but for some time past there had been a strong desire in Calcutta to remove him from his post, and he had been repeatedly thwarted in his proceedings. He had latterly exhibited some of the infirmities of age, though it could not be denied that in the present instance he had manifested all the vigour of youth. Accustomed, moreover, as he had long been, to the exercise of great authority, and feeling a just confidence in his own experience, he was, perhaps, disposed to stretch the exercise of his power beyond the limits of his subordinate position. The unauthorized. assemblage of a field force presented the occasion which had long been desired,
of getting rid of him. He was informed that he had acted on imperfect and unsatisfactory information, and that his measures were precipitate and unjustifiable; he was ordered to countermand the march of the troops and to recall his proclamation. The letter was intended to provoke him to a resignation, and Sir Charles Metcalfe was summoned from Hyderabad to supersede him before he could receive it. He replied to this communication with much, and perhaps with undue, warmth. He said the usurpation would never have been attempted but under the strong impression then prevalent that the Government was no longer in a position to punish insolence and to support right, and he affirmed that his military preparations fully justified the expectation that the fort would fall in a fortnight. As to the hot winds which had been adduced as an argument against the expedition, the old soldier remarked that the hour of necessity and the call of honour fixed the time for military operations. It was on this principle that, in his youth, the army had kept the field three years against Hyder, knowing no repose but during the rains, when the country was equally impassable for both parties, On this principle also, Lord Lake began the campaign of 1803, in the height of the rains, and remained under canvas during the hot winds of 1804, in the hottest province in Hindostan. He considered every moment of delay a submission to disgrace. But, in obedience to the orders he had received, he suspended the progress of the army, and issued another proclamation to the effect that the Government proposed, in the first instance, to investigate the merits of the question of the succession. He then tendered his resignation, stating that “as he had erred so egregiously in what he considered the proper and dignified course to pursue, he could no longer conceal from himself his unfitness for the situation he held.” The ungenerous treatment to which he had been subjected, broke his heart, and he retired to Meerut, where he died within two months, as he said, with a bitter feeling, “disgraced,” after an illustrious career of half a century, during
which there were few military operations in which he had not taken an active part. In the camp which he formed for the reduction of Bhurtpore in 1826, he discoursed with great zest of his early campaigns in the Carnatic in the days of Hastings and Coote. He was one of the brightest ornaments of the Company’s service, equally eminent in the cabinet and in the field, a man born for high command and fitted to strengthen the power and to sustain the dignity of Great Britain in India. As the British representative in Malwa and Rajpootana, he commanded universal deference, as well by the equity of his Decisions as by the magnificence of his retinue, which from time immemorial has always been an element of power in eastern countries. He was not, however, without his weak side. The blind confidence which he reposed in the natives around him was employed, as usual, for the purpose of extortion, the odium of which fell on his reputation. His moonshee had the presumption to place his name on the pension list of the King of Delhi for a thousand rupees a-month, where it remained till it was accidentally discovered by his master; but he was happily the last of the moonshees of European officers who created a princely fortune out of his position. Sir David’s memory was more especially cherished by the Indian army from the fact that he was the first Company’s officer who received the highest honours of the Bath, which, down to the period of the Nepal war, had been invidiously confined to the officers of the Crown.
While Sir David was assembling the army, Doorjun Saul manifested a spirit of entire submission to the British Government, and professed to be satisfied with the regency, but when he found that the troops were remanded, he assumed a higher tone, claimed the throne itself, and prevailed on the chiefs of his tribe to rally round him. His cause became popular, as soon as it was understood that he intended to hold Bhurtpore against the will of the Governor-General. Rajpoots, Jauts, Mahrattas,
Afghans, and not a few of the Company’s own subjects, flocked to his standard, and a body of 25,000 men was speedily collected for the defence of the place. From the neighbouring Mahratta and Rajpoot chiefs he received every token of encouragement, and it was firmly believed that they were fully prepared to take part in the quarrel. The Supreme Council met to deliberate on this perilous state of affairs soon after the death of Sir David. The two civilian members of Council, and the Commander-in-chief maintained, that as the young raja had been invested with the insignia of royalty under the authority of the Governor-General, they were bound to support him against a usurper, at any hazard, more especially as the increasing disorders in the north-west threatened a general convulsion. Lord Amherst alone strenuously resisted all active measures from an overwhelming dread of a second failure at Bhurtpore. Happily Sir Charles Metcalfe arrived in Calcutta in August on his way to Delhi, and, after a careful examination of all the documents on the question, drew up a clear, bold, and masterly minute, which at once decided the policy of the Government. “We have, by degrees,” he said, “become the paramount state in India. In 1817, it became the established principle of our policy to maintain tranquillity among the states of India and we cannot be indifferent spectators of anarchy therein without ultimately giving up India again to the pillage and confusion from which we then rescued her. ... We are bound, not by any positive engagement to the Bhurtpore state, nor by any claim on her part, but by our duty as supreme guardians of general tranquillity, law, and right, to maintain the legal succession of Bulwunt Sing. ... Our supremacy has been violated, or slighted, under the impression that we were prevented by entanglements elsewhere from sufficiently resenting the indignity. ... A display and vigorous exercise of our power, if rendered necessary, would be likely to bring back men’s minds in that quarter to a proper tone, and the capture of Bhurtpore, if effected in a
glorious manner, would do us more honour throughout India, by the removal of the hitherto unfaded impressions caused by our former failure, than any other event that can be conceived.” Lord Amherst surrendered his opinion to Sir Charles Metcalfe, and had the candour and grace to place the fact on record. The Council was now unanimous, and on the 18th September, at a time when the Court of Directors maintained that “the settlement of 1818 had in no degree extended our right of interference in the internal concerns of other states, except as it had been provided by treaty,” passed the following manly resolution: “Impressed with a full conviction that the existing disturbances at Bhurtpore, if not speedily quieted, will produce general commotion and interruption of the public tranquillity in Upper India, and feeling convinced that it is our solemn duty, no less than our right, as the paramount power and conservators of the general peace, to interfere for the prevention of these evils, the Governor-General in Council resolves that authority be conveyed to Sir Charles Metcalfe to accomplish the above object, and to maintain the succession of the rightful heir to the raj of Bhurtpore, if practicable, by expostulation and remonstrance; and should these fail, by a resort to measures of force.”
Sir Charles’s expostulations and remonstrances, as might have been expected, were lost upon Doorjun Saul, who determined to hold the fortress to the last extremity, and it became necessary to resort to arms. To the astonishment of the princes of Upper India, who believed that the war in which the Company were engaged in Burmah had absorbed all their military resources, a British army of 20,000 men, together with a hundred mortars and heavy ordnance, suddenly sprung up in the midst of them. Bhurtpore was considered an insuperable check to British power, and the last bulwark of national independence, and the eyes of all India were fixed upon the siege, not without a general wish for its failure. The head-quarters of the Commander-in-chief, now Lord Combermere, were established
before it on the 10th December, and Sir Charles Metcalfe soon after joined the camp. At a short distance from the town there was a lake, separated from it by an embankment, which the defenders had cut in the former siege, and thus filled the ditch with water. On the present occasion they had commenced the same operation, but by the timely arrival of a British detachment, and the energetic exertions of Captain Irvine, the flow of water was checked, and the breach repaired. A delay of a few moments would have altered the result of the siege. The defences of this celebrated fort consisted of lofty and thick walls of clay, five miles in circumference, hardened in the sun, supported and bound by beams and logs, rising from the edge of a ditch, fifty-five feet in depth, and a hundred and fifty feet broad. It was strengthened by the outworks of nine gateways, and flanked by thirty-five lofty mud bastions, one of which, called the “bastion of victory,” was built to commemorate the defeat of Lord Lake, and, as they vauntingly said, with the skulls and bones of those who had fallen in the first siege. For the level country in which it was situated, the fortification was the strongest, and, so to speak, the most impregnable which could be devised, Thirty-six mortars and forty-eight pieces of heavy ordnance played on the ramparts for many days without making any impression on the walls, or creating a practicable breach. The heaviest shot only caused the defences to crumble into rugged masses falling down on each side of the conical wall, but leaving the ascent scarcely less steep and inaccessible than before. At the commencement of operations Colonel Galloway, who had been present at the former siege, and had written a valuable treatise on Indian fortifications, and Lieutenant, afterwards General, Forbes, had, unknown to each other, urged on Lord Combermere the necessity of endeavouring to create a breach by mining, but the proposal was treated with contempt. It was only when every effort to breach the wall by batteries had hopelessly failed, that the thief engineer consented to adopt this advice and to have recourse to mines, several of
which were completed and fired, but without any adequate result. A great mine was at length completed, and charged with ten thousand pounds of powder. The explosion, which took place on the 18th January, seemed to shake the foundations of the earth; enormous masses of hardened earth, and blocks of timber, mingled with heads, legs, and arms, were sent flying into the air, and the sky was darkened with volumes of smoke and dust. The column destined for the assault, under General Reynell, rushed up the breach and bayonetted the defenders, who fought to the last with the greatest resolution. Six thousand – according to other accounts double that number – were said to have fallen in the siege, while the loss in the Company’s army did not exceed a thousand. Doorjun Saul was captured as he endeavoured to make his escape, and sent first to Allahabad and then to Benares, where he passed twenty-five years of his life, in that asylum of disinherited princes, upon a pittance of five hundred rupees a-month. The boy raja was conducted to the throne by Sir Charles Metcalfe and Lord Combermere, but the laurels of Bhurtpore were dishonoured by rapacity, The siege was undertaken to expel a usurper and to restore the throne to the rightful prince, yet all the state treasures and jewels found in the citadel, to the extent of forty-eight lacs of rupees, were unscrupulously pronounced by the military authorities to be lawful prize, and at once distributed among the officers and men. Six lacs fell to the share of the Commander-in-chief. This procedure was defended by the sophism that “as Doorjun Saul had been in quiet possession of the throne, and acknowledged by all parties as the Maharaja, no individual either openly or secretly supporting the claims of Bulwunt Sing, naturally gave the former the full right to all the property in the fort, and deprived the latter of any claim which he might be supposed to have to it.” This spoliation was denounced by Sir Charles Metcalfe, in terms of indignation: “Our plundering here,” he wrote, “has been very disgraceful, and has tarnished our well-earned honours.
Until I can get rid of the prize agents, I cannot establish the sovereignty of the young raja, whom we came professedly to protect, but have been plundering to the last lotah – water-pot – since he fell into our hands.”
The capture of Bhurtpore is a salient point in the history of British progress in India. Though absolute masters of the whole continent, our prestige still seemed to be suspended upon the issue of the siege, which was watched with extraordinary interest throughout the country, and more particularly in the metropolis. Government had been constrained to open a loan in the month of August, but the moneyed classes hung back from it till the result of the siege was known. The privilege of private posts had not then been abolished, and the Calcutta bankers received daily intelligence of the progress of operations before Bhurtpore more speedily than the Governor-General obtained it through the public mail, and the first intimation which the Government received of the capture of the town was from the sudden influx of subscriptions to the loan, to the extent of thirty lacs of rupees, as soon as the treasury opened for the day. Bhurtpore was dismantled, and the proud walls which had baffled the hero of Laswaree and Delhi were levelled with the ground. The capture of the town and fort by the skill of British engineers diffused a salutary feeling of awe throughout India, and, combined with the simultaneous submission of the Burmese, dissolved the hopes of the disaffected, and strengthened the power of Government.
The gross mismanagement of the Burmese war had created great discontent in England, but the successful termination of it brought the Governor-General a step in the peerage as Earl Amherst of Aracan – though the most disastrous of his expeditions – and a vote of thanks from the Court of Directors for “his active, strenuous, and persevering efforts in conducting to a successful issue the late war with the King of Ava.” On the return of peace he made a progress through the north-west, and held stately
durbars, and the native princes who had recently been meditating the downfall of British power, hastened to offer their homage to it. In the summer of 1827 he proceeded to Simla, the delightful climate and majestic scenery of which was then for the first time selected as a summer retreat by the head of the Government. His example has been followed by his successors, and this sanatarium has now become the annual resort of European officers and residents in the north-west from the heat of the plains to such an extent as to support a banking establishment.
The financial result of Lord Amherst’s administration was calamitous. The wealth left in the treasury by Lord Hastings was dissipated; the surplus of revenue was converted into a deficit, and an addition of ten crores was made to the public debt. Of this sum about one-fourth was obtained from the hoards of the King of Oude, the perennial reservoir of the Calcutta treasury. Large sums were likewise subscribed by native chiefs and bankers after the capture of Bhurtpore, and Bajee Rao himself was induced to invest in “Company’s paper” some portion of the accumulations of his annuity.
Lord Amherst, immediately after his arrival, and while new to the country and to the community, was led by the Tory members of the Government to continue those truculent proceedings against the press which they had originated. But it was not long before he adopted a more generous policy, and on his departure was complimented by the journals in Calcutta “on the liberality and even magnanimity with which he had tolerated the free. expression of public opinion on his own individual measures, when he had the power to silence them with a stroke of his pen.” It was during his absence at Simla, and without his concurrence, that the Vice-President in Council revoked the licence of one of the Calcutta papers, and ruined the proprietor, for a racy but innocent squib on the higher members of the service, similar to those which form the weekly attraction of the London “Punch.” This was happily the last interference on
the part of the public authorities with the local press. Within thirteen months of this vindictive act Lord William Bentinck practically restored its freedom, and on his departure, Sir Charles Metcalfe placed that freedom on a legal basis.
Sir Thomas Munro, the Governor of Madras, was anxious to resign his post in 1824, but was solicited to assist in fitting out the Burmese expedition, and in supplying its wants. His advanced age and the state of his health required repose, but he resolved to obey the call of duty. So energetic were his exertions as to draw from Lord Amherst and his Council the graceful acknowledgment, that, but for his aid, it would have been impossible to undertake the vigorous measures which were adopted. The year after the conclusion of the war, while preparing to return to his native land, he was smitten down by an attack of cholera. He ranks. among the greatest of the Company’s servants. He was a man of strong mind and original thought, and united a solid and practical judgment with broad views of policy. Mr. Canning was proud of having selected him for the government of Madras, and stated in Parliament that “Europe never produced a more accomplished statesman, nor India, fertile as it was in heroes, a more skilful soldier.” He was one of the very rare instances of a good Governor of Madras, and presented a very marked contrast to his predecessor, Mr, Hugh Elliott, and to Mr. Lushington, who succeeded him. Mr. Canning took equal credit to himself for the appointment of Mr. Elphinstone to the government of Bombay. He was second to none of the great men who have contributed to render the Company’s rule successful and illustrious. It was he who organised the institutions of the Bombay Presidency after it had been enlarged to its present size by the territories acquired from the Peshwa, and one of his last acts was the completion of the Bombay code, which bears his name, and has served in no small degree to enhance his reputation. Mr. Jenkins had been charged with the management of the Nagpore territories after the deposition of
Appa Sahib, during the minority of his successor, and resigned it into his hands in 1826, when he came of age. His administration was the most honest and beneficial the Bhonslay kingdom had ever been blessed with, and was rendered the more memorable by the condition to which it relapsed when again subjected to native rule. The same lamentable result followed the removal of Sir Charles Metcalfe to Delhi, and the consequent abandonment of the administrative system he had introduced into the domains of the Nizam. By a singular coincidence, each of these statesmen, though civilians, had enjoyed an opportunity of acquiring laurels in the field, Sir Charles Metcalfe at Deeg, Mr. Elphinstone at Kirkee, and Mr. Jenkins at Seetabuldee; but it was the revenue settlement and civil administration of the large kingdoms confided to them at Hyderabad, Bombay, and Nagpore, which formed the chief distinction of their career. They may be considered, in conjunction with Sir John Malcolm, Sir Thomas Munro, and Sir David Ochterlony, as forming that galaxy of talent which gave solidity and splendour to the Company’s government during the first quarter of the present century.
Lord Amherst was constrained to leave Calcutta earlier than he had expected through the illness of his daughter, and embarked for England in February, 1828. Mr. Bayley, the senior member of Council, a disciple of Lord Wellesley’s school, succeeded temporarily to the office of Governor-General, and was for four months employed in discussing and maturing some of those great measures of reform which rendered the next administration memorable in the history of British India.
This collection transcribed by Chris Gage