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and withdrew to Kirki, whither he had ordered up a European regiment. The next day the Residency was burnt down, and Kírki was attacked by the whole army of the Peshwá. The attack was bravely repulsed, and the Peshwá immediately fled from his capital. Almost the same plot was enacted at Nágpur, where the honour of the British name was saved by the sepoys, who defended the hill of Sítábaldi against enormous odds. The army of Holkar was defeated in the following month at the pitched battle of Mehidpur. All open resistance was now at an end. Nothing remained but to follow up the fugitives, and to impose conditions for a general pacification. In both these duties

Sir John Malcolm played a prominent part. The dominions Bombay of the Peshwá were annexed to the Bombay Presidency, and annexed, the nucleus of the present Central Provinces was formed out

territories

1818.

Map of India, 1818-48.

Mr. Adam, 1823.

Lord

Amherst, 1823-28.

of the territory rescued from the Pindárís. The Peshwá himself surrendered, and was permitted to reside at Bithúr, near Cawnpore, on a pension of £80,000 a year. His adopted son was the infamous Náná Sáhib of the Mutiny of 1857. To fill the Peshwá's place, as the traditional head of the Marhattá confederacy, the lineal descendant of Sivají was brought forth from obscurity and placed upon the throne of Sátára. An infant was recognised as the heir of Holkar, and a second infant was proclaimed Rájá of Nágpur under British guardianship. At the same time, the States of Rájputána accepted the position of feudatories to the paramount British power. The map of India, as thus drawn by Lord Hastings, remained substantially unchanged until the time of Lord Dalhousie. But the proudest boast of Lord Hastings and Sir John Malcolm was, not that they had advanced the pomœrium, but that they had conferred the blessings of peace and good government upon millions who had groaned under the extortions of the Marhattás and Pindárís.

The Marquis of Hastings was succeeded by Lord Amherst, after the interval of a few months, during which Mr. Adam, a civil servant, acted as Governor-General. The Marhattá war in the Peninsula of India was hardly completed when our armies had to face new enemies beyond the sea. Lord Amherst's administration lasted for five years, from 1823 to 1828. It is known in history by two prominent events, the first Burmese war and the capture of Bhartpur. For some years past, our north-eastern frontier had been disturbed by Burmese raids. Burma, or the country which fringes the western shore of the Bay of Bengal, and runs up the valley

Burma.

of the Irawadi, has a people of Tibeto-Chinese origin, and a history of its own. Tradition asserts that its early civilisation Ancient was introduced from the Indian coast of Coromandel, by a people who are supposed to preserve a trace of their origin in their name of Talaing (cf. Telingána). However this may be, the Buddhist religion, professed by the Burmese at the present day, certainly came from India at a very early date. Waves of invasion from Siam on the south, and from the wild mountains of Asia in the north, have passed over the land. These conquests were marked by that wanton and wholesale barbarity which seems to characterise the TibetoChinese race, but the civilisation of Buddhism survived every shock, and flourished around the ancient pagodas. European Burma, travellers in the 15th century visited Pegu and Tenasserim, 15th cent. which they describe as flourishing marts of maritime trade. During the period of Portuguese predominance in the East, Arakan became the asylum for desperate European adventurers. With their help, the Arakanese extended their power inland, occupied Chittagong, and (under the name of the Maghs) became the terror of the Gangetic delta. About 1750, a new dynasty arose, founded by Alaungphaya or Alompra, with its capital at Ava, and still rules over Independent Burma.1

A.D.

encroach

mese war,

1824.

The successors of Alompra, after having subjugated all Burmese Burma, and overrun Assam, about 1800, which was then an ments on independent kingdom, began a series of encroachments upon India. the British Districts. As they rejected all peaceful proposals with scorn, Lord Amherst was at last compelled to declare war in 1824. Little military glory could be gained by beating First Burthe Burmese, who were formidable chiefly from the pestilential character of their country. One expedition with gunboats proceeded up the Brahmaputra into Assam. Another marched by land through Chittagong into Arakan, for the Bengal sepoys refused to go by sea. A third, and the strongest, sailed from Madras direct to the mouth of the Irawadi. The war was protracted over two years. After a loss to us of about 20,000 lives, chiefly from disease, and an expenditure of £14,000,000, the King of Ava signed, in 1826, the treaty of Yandabu. By this he abandoned all claim to Assam, and Assam, ceded the Provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, already in the military occupation of the British. He retained the whole 1826.

valley of the Irawadi, down to the sea at Rangoon.

1 For the history of Burma, see the article in vol. ii. of the Imperial Gazetteer, pp. 279-283 and 299-307.

nexed,

Bhartpur

taken, 1827.

Lord
William
Bentinck,
1828-35.

His financial reforms.

Abolition of sati, 1829.

The capture of Bhartpur in Central India by Lord Combermere, in January 1827, wiped out the repulse which Lake had received before that city in January 1805. A disputed succession led to the British intervention. Artillery could make little impression upon the massive walls of mud. But at last a breach was effected by mining, and the city was taken by storm, thus removing the popular notion throughout India that it was impregnable-a notion which had threatened to become a political danger.

The next Governor-General was Lord William Bentinck, who had been Governor of Madras twenty years earlier, at the time of the mutiny of Vellore (1806). His seven years' rule (from 1828 to 1835) is not signalized by any of those victories or extensions of territory by which chroniclers measure the growth of an Empire. But it forms an epoch in administrative reform, and in the slow process by which a subject population is won over to venerate as well as to dread its alien rulers. The modern history of the British in India, as benevolent administrators, ruling the country with a single eye to the good of the natives, may be said to begin with Lord William Bentinck. According to the inscription upon his statue at Calcutta, from the pen of Macaulay: 'He abolished cruel rites; he effaced humiliating distinctions; he gave liberty to the expression of public opinion; his constant study was to elevate the intellectual and moral character of the nations committed to his charge.' His first care on arrival in India was to restore equilibrium to the finances, which were tottering under the burden imposed upon them by the Burmese war. This he effected by three series of measures-first, by reductions in permanent expenditure, amounting to 1 million sterling a year; second, by augmenting the revenue from land which had unfairly escaped assessment; third, by duties on the opium of Málwá. He also widened the gates by which educated natives could enter the service of the Company. Some of these reforms were distasteful to the covenanted service and to the officers of the army. But Lord William was staunchly supported by the Court of Directors and by the Whig Ministry at home.

His two most memorable acts are the abolition of satí, or widow-burning, and the suppression of the thags. At this distance of time it is difficult to realize the degree to which these two barbarous practices had corrupted the social system of the Hindus. European research has clearly proved that the text in the Vedas adduced to authorize the immolation

But the practice had

of widows, was a wilful mistranslation.1 been enshrined in Hindu opinion by the authority of centuries, and had acquired the sanctity of a religious rite. The Emperor Akbar prohibited it, but failed to put it down. The early English rulers did not dare to violate the religious traditions of the people. In the year 1817, no less than 700 widows are said to have been burned alive in the Bengal Presidency alone. To this day, the holy spots of Hindu pilgrimage are thickly dotted with little white pillars, each commemorating a satí. In spite of strenuous opposition, both from Europeans and natives, Lord William Bentinck carried a regulation in Council on the 4th December 1829, by which all who abetted sati were declared guilty of 'culpable homicide.' The honour of suppressing thagi must be shared between Lord Suppres William Bentinck and Captain Sleeman. Thags were hereditary assassins, who made strangling their profession. They travelled in bands, disguised as merchants or pilgrims, and were sworn together by an oath based on the rites of the bloody goddess Káli. Between 1826 and 1835, as many as 1562 thags were apprehended in different parts of British India, and, by the evidence of approvers, this moral plague-spot was gradually stamped out.

sion of

thagi.

1833.

Two other historical events are connected with the administration of Lord William Bentinck. In 1833, the Charter of Renewal of charter, the East India Company was renewed for twenty years, but upon the conditions that the Company should abandon its trade and permit Europeans to settle in the country. At the same time, a fourth or legal member was added to the Governor-General's Council, who might not be a servant of the Company; and a Commission was appointed to revise and codify the law. Macaulay was the first legal member of Council, and the first President of the Law Commission. In Mysore 1830, it was found necessary to take the State of Mysore protected, under British administration. It continued so up to the present year, when it was restored to native government (March 1881). In 1834, the frantic misrule of the Rájá of Coorg Coorg brought on a short and sharp war. The Rájá was permitted annexed, 1834. to retire to Benares; and the brave and proud inhabitants of his mountainous little territory decided to place themselves under the sway of the Company. This was the only annexation effected by Lord William Bentinck, and it was done 'in consideration of the unanimous wish of the people.' Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Metcalfe succeeded Lord

1 See ante, p. 92.

1830.

Lord
Metcalfe,

1835-36.

William as senior member of Council. His short term of office is memorable for the measure which his predecessor had initiated, but which he carried into execution, for giving entire liberty to the press. Public opinion in India, as well as the express wish of the Court of Directors at home, pointed to Metcalfe as the fittest person to carry out the policy of Bentinck, not provisionally, but as Governor-General for a full term. Party exigencies, however, led to the appointment of Lord Auckland, Auckland. From this date commences a new era of war and 1836-42. conquest, which may be said to have lasted for twenty years. All looked peaceful until Lord Auckland, prompted by his evil genius, attempted to place Sháh Shujá upon the throne of Kábul; an attempt conducted with gross mismanagement, and ending in the annihilation of the British garrison placed in that city.

Lord

Afghánistán under

the Duránís, 1747-1826.

Our early dealings

with Kábul,

1800-37.

For the first time since the days of the Sultáns of Ghazni and Ghor, Afghánistán had obtained a national king in 1747 in Ahmad Shah Durání. This resolute soldier found his opportunity in the confusion which followed the death of the Persian conqueror, Nádir Sháh. Before his own decease in 1773, Ahmad Shah had conquered a wide empire, from Herat to Peshawar, and from Kashmir to Sind. His intervention on the field of Panipat (1761) turned back the tide of Marhattá conquest, and replaced a Mughal Emperor on the throne of Delhi. But Ahmad Shah never cared to settle down in India, and alternately kept state at his two national capitals of Kábul and Kandahar. The Duráni kings were prolific in children, who fought to the death with one another on each succession. At last, in 1826, Dost Muhammad, head of the powerful Barakzai family, succeeded in establishing himself as ruler of Kábul, with the title of Amir, while two fugitive brothers of the Duráni line were living under British protection at Ludhiana, on the Punjab frontier.

The attention of the English Government had been directed to Afghán affairs ever since the time of Lord Wellesley, who feared that Zamán Sháh, then holding his court at Lahore (1800), might follow in the path of Ahmad Sháh, and overrun Hindustán. The growth of the powerful Síkh kingdom of Ranjít Sinh effectually dispelled any such alarms for the future. Subsequently, in 1809, while a French invasion of India was still a possibility to be guarded against, Mountstuart Elphinstone was sent by Lord Minto on a mission to Sháh Shujá to form a defensive alliance. Before the year expired, Sháh Shujá had been driven into exile, and a third brother, Mahmúd Sháh, was on the throne. In 1837, when the curtain rises upon the

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