CHAPTER III.

ROMANCE OF EASTERN STATE-CRAFT.

No history can look more like romance than that of the Seikhs, from the reign of Runjit to the invasion by the Seikh army of the British territory in India, during the winter of 1845. Not even in Eastern despotisms might such a train of quickly occurring conspiracies and revolutions, elevations and depressions, be expected to occur in the course of six short years. They remind one, indeed, of the exploits of a pantomime, in which the chopping off of people's heads is a joke, the cutting of their bodies into pieces a pleasant episode. The point of contrast, however, is plain enough. In the fictitious, the heads soon rejoin the bodies, or are easily done without

whilst the removal of the severed limbs seems to be but a relief to their temporary owners; in the real, however, the heads once off, cannot be replaced; the bodies once dismembered, we hear nothing more of the intriguing spirits that animated them.

During the entire administration of Runjit Singh, which lasted from 1799 to 1839, the Punjab was a prosperous, flourishing kingdom; its revenues ample and constantly increasing, its power formidable to its neighbours, and itself therefore respected. Runjit was one of those uncompromising, white-bearded, turn-up nosed eastern despots, who, whilst they take their fill of all the pleasures that money and power can procure, yet know how to keep a firm grasp of the reins of government, and to wield with energy the unsparing sword of justice or polity. The Seikh nation required such a ruler, and willingly obeyed the man who proved by his firmness and ability that he was fitted to command. Like a fiery

courser, that would unseat a timid ruler, but is obedient to a bold one, they bent their necks tamely to his yoke, winced at his un

flinching severity, and admired whilst they winced.

He understood the posture of affairs, too, out of the Punjab-with that far-seeing eye of his, voluptuous in its full proportions, but powerful in its overhanging mass of shaggy eye-brow, he had looked deeply into the exact position of India. He had got together a great army, he had established a vast park of artillery, he was surrounded by French and Italian officers, who drilled his infantry, and who introduced European tactics into his army, men ready to take their oaths on the Bible, the Koran, or the Grunth-it was all one to them-that the lion of the Punjab' had but to will it, and the British should be driven from India.

He was surrounded by flatterers, who extolled his power and magnified his resources. He let them flatter, listened to what they said, catching the tones with one ear and letting them go with the other, as he smiled with the smile of a despot at their empty praises.

I might drive the Ungreez Bahador (the Honourable English) as far as Allyghur, but I should be driven back soon after, first to the

Sutlej, then out of my kingdom," was his reply, when he was thus importuned to give the order for the destruction of the foreigners.

Of the Europeans in his service, Avatibili, Ventura, and others, he made good use, whilst he paid them well. Cannon were cast in Lahore, his capital; artillery-men were trained; infantry and cavalry were disciplined; but he took care that these Europeans should not get the upper hand, or become the leading-strings by which he, puppet-like, was to be directed. He treated them well, but kept rather aloof from them, not admitting any to much intimacy. They had money, women, command, but not political power-that was reserved for himself, and for those of the Seikhs whom he thought worthy of it.

To British emissaries who visited him, whether military or civil, he took care to display his military power. His salutes were fired from a hundred pieces of ordnance, whilst twenty thousand muskets rolled forth incessantly and unremittingly during the booming of the larger artillery. "They would fire better and more quickly if in presence of an enemy," he would carelessly observe to his

English visitor; "but, on the whole, that's pretty well." It was a part of his policy never to permit his European servants to hold commands in the artillery-they might be too dangerous there, he thought. The British have reason to know that this artillery of Runjit's was by no means despicable, and thousands of Her Majesty's and the Company's troops, who rot beneath the sands of the Punjab, are dead witnesses of the fact.

It must be remembered, too, that these Seikhs, whom Runjit governed so well, were but the ruling race in the Punjab-that by far the greater proportion of the inhabitants were Hindus and Mussulmans. The Seikh

faith endeavoured to combine the Vedas and the Koran into one harmonious system, and its earlier disciples were, of course, equally persecuted by the upholders of both. Thousands of them had fallen martyrs to their new dogmas, before they finally settled in the Punjab, and became its rulers. Considering then that these Seikhs, of whom Runjit was the king, were but the lords of the Punjab, with the vast majority of the population in serfdom, and ready to rise at any moment against