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Maráthá

treaty,
1817.

The Maráthá attack.

Last Mar

áthá war, 1817-18.

(November) as that in which the Pindáris were crushed, the three great Maráthá powers at Poona, Nágpur, and Indore rose separately against the English. The Peshwá, Bájí Ráo, had long been chafing under the terms imposed by the treaty of Bassein (1802). A new treaty of Poona, in June 1817, now freed the Gáekwár from his control, ceded further districts to the British for the pay of the subsidiary force, and submitted all future disputes to the decision of our Government.

Elphinstone, then our Resident at his Court, foresaw a storm, and withdrew to Kirki, whither he had ordered up a European regiment. The next day the Residency was burnt down, and Kirki was attacked by the whole army of the Peshwa. The attack was bravely repulsed, and the Peshwa immediately fled from his capital, Poona. 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.

It had now become necessary to crush the Maráthás. Their forces under Holkar were 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 Bombay dominions of the Peshwá were annexed to the Bombay Presidency, and the nucleus of the present Central Provinces was formed out of the territory rescued from the Pindárís. The Peshwá himself surrendered, and was permitted to reside at Bithúr, near Cawnpur, on a pension of £80,000 a year. His adopted son was the infamous Náná Sáhib of the Mutiny of 1857.

territories annexed, 1818.

Sátára;

To fill the Peshwa's place, as the traditional head of the Maráthá 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 guardianRájputána. ship. At the same time, the States of Rájputána accepted the position of feudatories to the paramount British power.

Map of India, 1818 48.

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 pomærium, but that they had conferred the blessings of peace and good government upon millions who had groaned under the extortions of the Maráthás and Pindárís.

LORD AMHERST'S WORK.

403

The Marquis of Hastings was succeeded by Lord Amherst, Mr. Adam, after the interval of a few months, during which Mr. Adam, 1823. a civil servant, acted as Governor-General.

The Maráthá

war in the Peninsula of India was hardly completed when our armies had to face new enemies beyond the sea. Lord Lord Amherst's administration lasted for five years, from 1823 to Amherst, 1828. It is known in history by two prominent events, the first Burmese war and the capture of Bhartpur.

1823-28.

Burma.

For some years past, our north-eastern frontier had been disturbed by Burmese raids. which fringes the western shore and runs up the valley of the of Tibeto - Chinese origin, and a history of its own.

Burma, or the country Ancient of the Bay of Bengal, Irawadi, has a people

Tradition asserts that its civilisation was introduced from the 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 China in the north, have passed over the land. These conquests were marked by the wanton and wholesale barbarity which seems to characterize the Tibeto-Chinese race; but the civilisation of Buddhism survived every shock, and flourished around the ancient pagodas. European travellers in the 15th century visited Pegu and Tenasserim, which they Burma, describe as flourishing seats of maritime trade. During the 15th cent. Portuguese predominance in the East, Arakan in Northern A.D., Burma became an asylum for desperate European adventurers. With their help, the Arakanese conquered Chittagong on the Bengal seaboard, and (under the name of the Maghs) became the terror of the Gangetic delta. About 1750, a new Burmese dynasty arose, founded by Alaung-paya or Alompra, with its capital at Ava. Alompra's successors ruled Independent Burma. until its annexation to British India in 1886.1

ments on

The dynasty of Alompra, after having subjugated all Burmese Burma, and overrun (1800) Assam, which was then an inde- encroachpendent kingdom, began a series of encroachments upon the India. 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 mese war,

1 For the history of Burma, see the articles BURMA, BRITISH, and BURMA, INDEPENDENT, in The Imperial Gazetteer of India.

1824.

Assam, etc., annexed, 1826.

Bhartpur taken, 1827.

Lord
William

Bentinck,
1828-35.

His financial reforms.

character of their country. One expedition with gunboats proceeded up the Brahmaputra into Assam. Another marched by land through Chittagong into Arakan, as 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 ceded the Provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, already in the military occupation of the British. He retained the whole valley of the Irawadi, down to the sea at Rangoon.

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 benign 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 an 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.'

Lord William Bentinck's 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

LORD W. BENTINCK'S REFORMS.

405

sterling a year; second, by augmenting the revenue from lands which had surreptitiously 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 Abolition widow-burning, and the suppression of the thags.

At this of sati, 1829 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 of widows, was a wilful mistranslation. But the practice had 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 SuppresLord 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, these abominable brotherhoods were gradually stamped out.

sion of

thagi.

Two other historical events are connected with the admini- Renewal of charter, stration of Lord William Bentinck. In 1833, the Charter of 1833. the East India Company was renewed for twenty years, bu upon the condition that the Company should abandon its trade and permit Europeans to settle in the country. At the same time, a fourth or 'Law-member' was added to the Governor-General's Council, who might not be a servant of the 1 Vide ante, chap. iv. p. 78.

Mysore

1830.

Coorg annexed, 1834.

Company; and a Commission was appointed to revise and codify the law. Macaulay was the first Law-member of Council, and the first President of the Law Commission.

In 1830-31, it was found necessary to take the State of protected, Mysore under British administration. It continued so up to March 1881, when it was restored to native government. In 1834, the frantic misrule of the Rájá of Coorg brought on a sharp and short war. The Rájá Lingaraj was permitted to retire to Vellore, then to Benares, and finally to England, where he died. 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.'

Lord

Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Metcalfe succeeded Lord Metcalfe, William as senior member of Council. His short term of 1835-36. office is memorable for the measure which his predecessor had initiated, but which he carried into execution, for giving entire liberty to the press. From this time the Indian Government lost the power of deporting journalists who made themselves formidable by their pens. 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.

Lord

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 by force to place Shah 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.

the

Afghán- For the first time since the days of the Sultáns of Ghazní istán under and Ghor, Afghánistán had obtained a national king in 1747 Duránís, in Ahmad Shah Durání. This resolute soldier found his 1747-1826. 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 Herát to Peshawar, and from Kashmir to Sind. His intervention on the field of Pánípat (1761) turned back the tide of Maráthá conquest, and replaced a Mughal Emperor on the throne of Delhi. But Ahmad Sháh never cared to settle down in India,

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