Part 4 (1/2)
Next morning the British commander paid his respects to the Emperor, who was now quite weary of the hopeless struggle he had been maintaining for nearly two years, and who willingly departed towards Hindustan. He had by this time heard of the battle of Panipat, and of the plans formed by the Abdali for the restoration of the empire; and there is reason to believe that, but for the jealousy of Mir Kasim, whom a late revolution (brought about by the English) had placed in the room of Mir Jafar, the Emperor would have been at once reinstated at Dehli under British protection. Before he went he created Mir Kasim Subahdar; and the fiscal administration also vested in him, the English having so determined. The Emperor was to have an annual tribute of 240,000.
1762. - As affairs turned out there was much to be done and suffered by the British before they had another opportunity of interfering in the affairs of Hindustan; and a strange series of vicissitudes impended upon the Emperor before he was to meet them in the palace of his fathers. On his way to the northwest he fell into the hands of the ambitious Nawab Vazir of Audh, who had received the Abdali's orders to render the Emperor all a.s.sistance, and who carried out the letter of these instructions by retaining him for some two years in an honourable confinement, surrounded by the empty signs of sovereignty, sometimes at Benares, sometimes at Allahabad, and sometimes at Lucknow.
1763. - In the meanwhile the unscrupulous heroes who were founding the British Government of India had thought proper to quarrel with their new instrument Mir Kasim, whom they had so lately raised to the Masnad of Bengal. This change in their councils had been caused by an insubordinate letter addressed to the Court of Directors by Clive's party, which had led to their dismissal from employ. The opposition then raised to power consisted of all the more corrupt members of the service; and the immediate cause of their rupture with Mir Kasim was about the monopoly they desired to have of the local trade for their own private advantage. They were represented at that Nawab's Court by Mr. Ellis, the most violent of their body; and the consequence of his proceedings was, in no long time, seen in the murder of the Resident and all his followers, in October, 1763. The scene of this atrocity (which remained without a parallel for nearly a century) was at Patna, which was then threatened and soon after stormed by the British; and the actual instrument was a Franco-German, Walter Reinhardt by name, of whom, as we are to hear much more hereafter, it is as well here to take note.
This European executioner of Asiatic barbarity is generally believed to have been a native of Treves, in the Duchy of Luxemburg, who came to India as a sailor in the French navy. From this service he is said to have deserted to the British, and joined the first European battalion raised in Bengal. Thence deserting he once more entered the French service; was sent with a party who vainly attempted to relieve Chandarnagar, and was one of the small party who followed Law when that officer took command of those, who refused to share in the surrender of the place to the British. After the capture of his ill-starred chief, Reinhardt (whom we shall in future designate by his Indian sobriquet of ” Sumroo,” or Sombre) took service under Gregory, or Gurjin Khan, Mir Kasim's Armenian General.
Broome, however, adopts a somewhat different version. According to this usually careful and accurate historian, Reinhardt was a Salzburg man who originally came to India in the British service, and deserted to the French at Madras, whence he was sent by Lally to strengthen the garrison of the Bengal settlement. The details are not very material: Sumroo had certainly learned war both in English and French schools.
After the ma.s.sacre of the British, Kasim and his bloodhound escaped from Patna (which the British stormed and took on the 6th of November), and found a temporary asylum in the dominions of Shojaa-ud-daulah. That n.o.bleman solemnly engaged to support his former antagonist, and sent him for the present against some enemies of his own in Bundelkand, himself marching to Benares with his Imperial captive, as related in the preceding page.
1764. - In February, 1764, the avenging columns of the British appeared upon the frontier, but the Sepoys broke into mutiny, which lasted some time, and was with difficulty and but imperfectly quelled by Colonel Carnac. Profiting by the delay and confusion thus caused, the allies crossed into Bihar, and made a furious, though ultimately unsuccessful attack upon the British lines under the walls of Patna on the 3rd of May.
Shujaa-ud-daulah, the Nawab of Audh, temporarily retiring, the Emperor resumed negotiations with the British commander; but before these could be concluded, the latter was superseded by Major (afterwards Sir Hector) Monro. This officer's arrival changed the face of affairs. Blowing from guns twenty-four of the most discontented of the sepoys, the Major led the now submissive army westward to Buxar (Baksar), near the confluence of the Karamna.s.sa with the Ganges, where the two Nawabs (for Kasim and the Audh Viceroy had now united their forces) encountered him to be totally routed on the 23rd October, 1764.
The Emperor, who had taken no part in the action, came into the camp on the evening of the following day. By the negotiations which ultimately ensued, the British at last obtained a legal position as administrators of the three Subahs, with the further grant of the Benares and Ghazipur sarkars as fiefs of the Empire.
The remainder of the Subah of Allahabad was secured to the Emperor with a pecuniary stipend which raised his income to the nominal amount of a million a year of our money.
But the execution of these measures required considerable delay, and some further exercise of that pertinacious vigour which peculiarly distinguished the British in the eighteenth century.
Shujaa-ud-daulah fled first to Faizabad in his own territories; but, hearing that Allahabad had fallen, and that the English were marching on Lucknow, he had recourse to the Pathans of Rohilkand, whose hospitality he afterwards repaid with characteristic ingrat.i.tude. Not only did the chiefs of the Rohillas harbour the Nawab Vazir's family at Bareilly, but they also lent him the aid of 3,000 of their troops. Further supported by the restless Mahrattas of Malhar Rao Holkar, a chief who always maintained relations with the Musulmans, Shujaa returned to the conflict.
1765. - It may be easily imagined that what he failed to do with the aid of Mir Kasim and his own territory, he did not effect with his present friends as an exile; and Kasim having fled, and Sumroo having entered the service of the Jats of Bhartpur, the Vazir consented to negotiate with the English; the latter, under strong pressure from Clive, who had lately returned to India, showing themselves perfectly placable, now that it had become impossible for them to insist upon the terms, so distasteful to an Eastern chief, which required the surrender of his infamous guests. General Carnac, who had resumed the command, gave the Nawab and his allies a final defeat near Cawnpore, and drove the Mahrattas across the Jamna. The treaty confirming the terms broached after the battle of Buxar was now concluded, and Audh, together with part of the Doab, made over to the Nawab Vazir Shujaa-ud-daulah, who, being thus reinstated as a feudatory of the British Diwans, returned to his own country, leaving Shah 'Alam at Allahabad as a British pensioner.
The terms accorded to the Emperor will be seen from the counterpart issued by him, part of which is subjoined:-
” + + + Whereas, in consideration of the attachment and services of the high and mighty, the n.o.blest of n.o.bles, the chief of ill.u.s.trious warriors, our faithful servants and loyal well-wishers, worthy of royal favour the English Company, we have granted to them the Diwani of the Soobahs of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, from the beginning of the spring harvest of the Bengal year 1171, as a free gift and fief (Al tumgha), without the a.s.sociation of any other person, and with an exemption from the payment of the tribute of the Diwan which used to be paid to this court; it is therefore requisite that the said Company engage to be security for the sum of twenty-six lakhs of rupees a year for our revenue (which sum has been imposed upon the Nawab), and regularly remit the same.
”Given on the 8th Safar, in the sixth year of our reign.”
The Nawab was to continue Subahdar, the Company was to be his colleague for purposes of civil and fiscal administration, they were to support the Nawab's (Nizamat) expenses, and to pay the tribute (Nazarana) in his name.
The Emperor's establishment during the next few years is thus described by a British officer who enjoyed his intimacy: - ”He keeps the poor resemblance of a Court at Allahabad, where a few ruined omrahs, in hopes of better days to their prince, having expended their fortunes in his service, still exist, the ragged pensioners of his poverty, and burden his grat.i.tude with their presence. The districts in the king's possession are valued at thirty lakhs, which is one-half more than they are able to bear.
Instead of gaining by this bad policy, that prince, unfortunate in many respects, has the mortification to see his poor subjects oppressed by those who farm the revenue, while he himself is obliged to compound with the farmers for half the stipulated sum.
This, with the treaty payment from the revenues of Bengal, is all Shah Alum possesses to support the dignity of the Imperial house of Timor. [Dow. ii. 356, A.D. 1767.]
The following further particulars respecting Shah 'Alam's Court at this period are furnished by Gholam Hossain, and should be noted here as relating to personages of some of whom we shall hear more anon.
Mirza Najaf Khan, the Imperial General, was a Persian n.o.ble of high, even of royal, extraction, and destined to play a conspicuous part in the events related in a large portion of the remainder of this history. It will suffice, for the present, to state that, having been a close follower of Mohammad Kuli, he joined the British after that Chief's murder (Vide Sup. p. 68) and was by them recommended to the Emperor for employment. He received a stipend of one lakh a year, and was nominated Governor of Kora, where he occupied himself in the suppression of banditti, and in the establishment of the Imperial authority.
Under the modest state of steward of the household, Manir-ud-daulah was the Emperor's most trusted councillor and medium of communication with the English. Raja Ram Nath, whom we saw accompanying the prince in his escape from Dehli, continued about him; but the chief favourite was an illiterate ruffian called by the t.i.tle Hissam-ud-daulah, who stooped to any baseness whereby he could please the self-indulgent monarch by pandering to his lowest pursuits. The duties of the office of Vazir were delegated by Shujaa to his son Saadat Ali, who afterwards succeeded him as Nawab of Audh.
Fallen as the Emperor truly was, and sincerely as we may sympathize with his desire to raise the fortunes of his life, it might have been well for him to have remained content with the humble but guaranteed position of a protected t.i.tular, rather than listen to the interested advice of those who ministered, for their own purposes, to his natural discontent.
In this chapter I have been partly referring to Mill. Not only is that indefatigable historian on his strongest ground when describing battles and negotiations of the British from civil and military despatches recorded at the India House, but in treating of the movements of the native powers he has had access to a translation of the very best native work upon the subject - the Siar-ul-mutakharin - which was written by Ghulam Hossain Khan, a Musalman gentleman of Patna, himself an eye-witness of many of the scenes described. His account of the capture of Law, for example, given at length in a foot-note to Mill's short account of the action of Gaya after which the affair occurred, is full of truthfulness and local colour.
Since, however, the events were already amply detailed, and the best authorities exhausted in a standard work accessible to most English readers; and since, moreover, they did not occur in Hindustan, and only indirectly pertained to the history of that country, I have not thought it necessary to relate them more minutely than was required to elucidate the circ.u.mstances which led to the Emperor Shah Alam becoming, for the first time, a pensioner on British bounty, or a dependent on British policy.
Those who require a complete account of the military part of the affair will find it admirably given in Broome's Bengal Army, a work of which it is to be regretted that the first volume alone has. .h.i.therto been made public. Of the value of this book it would be difficult to speak too highly. Coming from the pen of an accomplished professional man, it sets forth, in a manner no civilian could hope to rival, the early exploits of that army of which the author was a member. It may be well to note, in concluding this chapter, what appears to have been at this time the legal relation of the British settlers in Bengal towards the Government of the Empire. In 1678 the Company's Agents had obtained a patent conferring upon them the power of trading in Bengal. In 1696 they purchased from the Nawab the land surrounding their factory, and proceeded to protect it by rude fortifications. A number of natives soon began to settle here under the protection of the British; and when the Nawab, on this account, was desirous of sending a judicial officer to reside among them, the factors staved off the measure by means of a donation in money. The grant of land and permission of a formal kind for the fortifications followed in 1716 on Mr. Hamilton's cure of the Emperor Farokhsiar. During all this period tribute continued to be paid (nominally at least) to the Emperor; but in 1759, by espousing, as stated in the beginning of this chapter, the cause of Mir Jafar, the British committed acts of open rebellion against the Sovereign. By the treaty of Benares, however, they returned to their nominal allegiance, and became once more subjects, tenants and even subordinate officials of the Great Moghul ( Vide Judgment of Lord Brougham in the case of the Mayor of Lyons v. East India Company). Elphinstone (Rise of Brit.