Part 44 (1/2)

The year 1800 showed the outlook all over India more than usually threatening; so lowering indeed, that Lord Mornington, now the Marquis Wellesley, consented to prolong his service in India in order to tide affairs over the crisis which seemed about to come.

The chief factor in the unrest was Mahratta jealousy. The Nizam of the Dekkan, their hereditary enemy, had just been granted a new treaty.

Under it he had been promised a definite protection of troops in consideration of his ceding territory to the revenue amount of the subsidy which he would otherwise have had to pay--and, no doubt, would have paid irregularly.

It may here be remarked that this desire to secure regular payment for the mercenary troops necessary to maintain prestige and power, was nearly always the cause of English aggression and annexation in India.

This treaty affronted the Mahrattas, but ere they could formulate their grievances, internecine war broke out amongst them, consequent on the death of Nana Furnavese, the Peishwa who had for so long opposed Ragoba. Over this Holkar and Scindiah, who for some time past had been at each other's throats, fought furiously, and the new Peishwa, Baji-Rao, feeling himself in danger of falling between the two stools of his unruly va.s.sals, applied to England for the protection of six battalions of British-trained sepoys, and promised in return to cede territory of the annual value of 225,000.

It was granted to him, but the treaty contained other stipulations regarding future relations which practically reduced the Peishwa to a state of dependence.

Holkar and Scindiah, on the part of _their_ sections of the Mahrattas, resented this fiercely. As usual, they refused to be bound by the Peishwa's pusillanimity. So war was declared; a war which for the time taxed even Sir Arthur Wellesley's military genius to the uttermost, for the Mahrattas were born fighters. But the battle of a.s.saye, fought on the 23rd of September 1803, broke their power in Central India.

They had over ten thousand disciplined troops commanded by Europeans, chiefly French officers, and a train of one hundred guns, in addition to nearly forty thousand irregular infantry and cavalry. Against these Arthur Wellesley had but a total of four thousand five hundred men, but they included the 78th Highlanders, the 74th Regiment, and the 19th Dragoons.

It was a fine fight; a double fight, for when, overwhelmed by a real bayonet charge--the first, possibly, they had ever seen--the Mahrattas fell back on, and pa.s.sed, their guns, the artillery men, feigning death, flung themselves in heaps on the ground. So, ridden over by the pursuing cavalry, treated as dead, spurned as things of no account, they remained until, the tyranny overpast, they were up and at their guns again, bringing _volte face_ destruction to their enemy's rear.

It needed a desperate charge of the Highlanders, with Arthur Wellesley himself at its head, to retrieve the day.

The number of British killed was one thousand five hundred and sixty-six, more than one-third of their total force.

England, however, was now finally on the war-path; hesitation was over, the Mahratta power all over India had to be crushed. No less than fifty-five thousand British troops of all arms were gathered together in India, and these were divided out between the Dekkan, Guzerat, Orissa, and Hindustan proper. Of the foremost of these divisions the record has just been given; the two next, though successful, were in all ways of minor importance. The last, under General Lake, was the largest, and consisted of nearly fourteen thousand men all told. He advanced up the Gangetic plain, and the battle of Alighur was fought before that of a.s.saye. It was practically fought against Scindiah's forces under General Perron, the celebrated French commander, who, with De Boigne and Raymond, had been for many years the backbone of resistance against England. But it was fought in the name of the blind Shah-alam, puppet-emperor of India; for the Mahrattas, always good fighters, had sent round the fiery cross on every possible pretext of personal and national loyalty, of tribal faith and racial adherence.

But on the 16th of September, after a pitched battle before Delhi in the low-lying land across the river Jumna--the country sacred now to pig-sticking!--General Lake rode with his staff to the palace which Shahjahan in all his glory had built, there to have the first interview which a conquering Englishman had ever had with the Great Moghul himself.

It was a fateful interview. In the palace, glorious still in its lines of beauty, an old man, blind, decrepid, seated under a tattered canopy, poverty-stricken, miserable. By his side, soon to be Akbar II., was his son, and his grandson, the man who afterwards, as Bahadur-Shah, served out the measure of his crimes in the Andaman Islands.

It reads like some bad nightmare, does that circ.u.mstantial description given by Lake of his ride through the thronged city at sunset-time, when the people, wide-eyed, curious, expectant, crowded so close that the little cavalcade could scarce make a way for itself.

Of what were they thinking, those poor Delhi folk who had suffered so often at the hands of so many men? Were they still faithful to the memory of the Moghuls, or did their eyes seek wistfully in the faces of the newcomers for a new master?

Certainly on that 16th of September at sunset-time, after the interview had fizzled out with the exchange of empty t.i.tles, and as ”Sword of the State,” ”Hero of the Land,” ”Lord of the Age,” and ”Victorious in War,” Lake and his staff left the old palace to nightfall, and the old king to dreams, a pale ghost may well have walked through the halls of audience beneath the reiterated pride of that legend: ”If there be a Paradise upon Earth, it is this, it is this, it is this,” and asked itself what might have been it instead of a fever-stricken grave at Benares, it had found help to recover kings.h.i.+p?

Poor Jiwan Bukht! Had you, indeed, as your name implies, the Gift of Life?

Perhaps you had--and we squashed it!

But there was more to be done by Lake's force ere on the 27th February 1804 Scindiah, who was in reality the man behind the gun, gave in, and a treaty was signed which enabled the Governor-General to give vent to his feelings in the following bombast:--

”The foundations of our empire in Asia are now laid in the tranquillity of surrounding nations, and in the happiness and welfare of the people of India. In addition to the augmentation of our territories and resources, the peace manifested exemplary faith and equity towards our allies, moderation and unity towards our enemies, and a sincere desire to promote the general prosperity of this quarter of the globe. The position in which we are now placed is such as suits the character of the British nation, the principles of our laws, the spirit of our const.i.tutions, and that liberal policy which becomes the dignity of a great and powerful empire. My public duty is discharged to the satisfaction of my conscience by the prosperous establishment of a system of policy which promises to improve the general condition of the people in India, and to unite the princ.i.p.al native states in the bond of peace under the protection of the British power.”

After which there was naturally nothing to be done save to whack Holkar also; for he had kept out of the scrimmage discreetly. This campaign was not so successful. The fort of Bhurtpore withstood four a.s.saults, and might have withstood four more, had not peace with honour and a donation of 200,000 intervened.

This--for the Rajah of Bhurtpore was an independent ally of the Mahrattas--rather upset Scindiah's calculations, for he was on the point of rejoining Holkar in defiance of all treaties. So the ultimate issue stood deferred when the Marquis of Wellesley ceased to be Governor-General.

He had deviated horribly from the ”restrictive policy,” and had consistently acted in the way which Parliament had p.r.o.nounced to be ”repugnant to the wish, the honour, and the policy of our nation.”

But that policy had been a broken reed. It was virtually the policy of folding the arms, and awaiting the blow in the face that was bound to come sooner or later.

Nevertheless, the expense of Marquis Wellesley's wars told against his reputation; he went home obscured by a cloud of deferred dividends, and Lord Cornwallis returned for a second attempt at Indian administration. Age had undoubtedly cooled the ardour of his blood, for he immediately made most pusillanimous concessions to Scindiah for the sake of peace, pa.s.sing over flagrant breaches of treaty with an easy diplomacy, and might have done infinite harm had he lived longer.

But he died at Buxar within two months of his arrival in India.