come, as he hoped, to make an end, and when he returned to Calcutta in September, most irksome were the duties that lay before him. He had enforced the signature of the covenants interdicting presents, but as large bribes had been given and received after these documents arrived, and they were therefore, though unsigned, or unexecuted, legally binding, it was deemed necessary to make strict inquiries regarding them; and in the sequel, Mr. Spencer, the governor, and nine other leading officials, were dismissed from the Company's service. Every member of Council had more or less shared in the profit system, and the most rapacious and oppressive of their civil servants were those who had the highest patronage at home-for in Leadenhall Street kinsmen and friends, or near connections, were influential directors and share holders; and the general task of reform that Clive had before him was a harder battle than Plassey to fight. commissions were collected for resignation, at a time when 60,000 Mahrattas were on the frontiers, within 150 miles of Allahabad. Early in April, Clive hurried to Moorshedabad, where a congress of native chiefs was held, when a letter of Sir Robert Fletcher, who had succeeded to the command of the army at Monghir, on the departure of Colonel Hector Munro, made him aware that the army was in a state of mutiny. Though Sir Robert wrote in strong terms, Lord Clive could scarcely persuade himself that the danger was so imminent, till a brief inquiry satisfied him that it was so.* From Colonel Smith, the officer commanding at Allahabad, he learned that his officers, like those of Fletcher, were also in a state of mutiny; that the Mahrattas were in motion, that they were collecting boats, and that the European troops of the Company could no longer be relied on—that, in fact, ruin seemed at hand. Clive instructed Smith to keep a resolute front, and only yield when there could be no alternative between concession to the discontented and destruction at the hands of the enemy. Urging the Council at Calcutta to lose no time in procuring a fresh number of officers, pointing out that among the merchants, whose all was at stake, some might be found fit for service, he hastened towards Monghir, and hurried to the chief seat of the conspiracy, relying on the steadiness of the sepoys, whom he knew to be devoted to himself. Without the hesitation of an hour, he placed the ringleaders under arrest, accepted the resignations of all, and sent the more eminent defaulters as prisoners to Calcutta. A few courtsmartial followed, many were cashiered, some were permitted to retire on pensions, and some were reinstated; but Sir Robert Fletcher, who was tried One of his first proceedings after his arrival in the country was to reorganise the army of Bengal, by telling off the corps of which it was composed into three divisions or brigades. These, which consisted respectively of one European regiment of infantry, now in the British service, one company of artillery, one squadron of native cavalry, and six battalions of sepoys, were stationed, the first brigade at Monghir, the second at Bankpore, near Patna, 100 miles beyond Monghir, and the third at Allahabad, 100 miles beyond Patna, as a corps of observation on the Mahrattas. Though there existed a perfect understanding among the officers attached to these brigades, the whole of them regarded a threatened diminution of their allow ance of double batta with disgust. It was even agreed, so early as December, 1765, says Gleig, that the meditated act should be resisted, and that the publication of any edict requiring them to dis-on a charge of concealment of mutiny, was found pense with that field allowance should be a signal for a general resignation of their commissions, and, in effect, a dissolution of the entire army. We are somewhat at a loss, says his biographer, to account for the extraordinary deficiency of intelligence which kept Clive in ignorance of this conspiracy up to the very moment of its completion; yet that the case was so, the event completely proved. On the 1st of January, 1766, an order was issued that the double batta should cease, and that the troops in Bengal should be placed on a footing similar to those upon the coast of Coromandel, that is to say, single batta when in the field, and when in garrison none at all. In a very short period the spirit of discontent spread throughout the subaltern officers, to such an extent that 200 guilty and dismissed the service. Though H.M. (old) 96th Foot had come to India, two out of the first four British regiments in India had returned home-the 84th and 89th Highlanders-in the year before this time of peril, and both deserve at least a brief notice for their bravery in the field. Of the war-worn 84th, but little more than a company in number landed with the colours from the Boscawen, Indiaman, under Major Richard Sherlock. In October, 1759, the regiment had landed at Madras, where it served till the fall of Pondicherry, in 1761, after which it was ordered to Bengal, and en route a detachment of twenty-one officers and 244 men were on board the Pattasalam, * Gleig. 7766.1 THE EIGHTY-NINTH HIGHLANDERS. 109 the halberts or deserted during these five years." Both regiments were disbanded soon after their return home, an order having been issued in 1763 to reduce the army to the present 70th Foot. which was lost forty-eight hours after she sailed. | others, in all 780 men, not a man was brought to All perished except seven officers (including Major Sherlock), a sergeant, and a captain's wife, who got away in the long-boat, in which they were five days without water or provisions. They were cast on the coast of Orissa, made prisoners, and remained so, fed only on rice and water, till December following, when they were sent to Fort William, in the last stages of misery. It appears that this regiment, between the time it left England in Clive still continued actively the work of reform at Calcutta, where many, confident in their powerful patronage at home, protested, and refused to act under him, upon which he resolved to procure support elsewhere, and got some civil servants April, 1759, and January, 1764, buried thirty- | from Madras. "Then recourse was had to the eight commissioned officers and upwards of 1,300 men. The 89th Gordon Highlanders served in all the operations we have recorded, with this very remarkable circumstance, that during their five years' fighting in India, there was neither death, promotion, nor change among the officers, save in one instance, when Lord William Gordon was promoted to the 67th Regiment. "There is another circumstance," says General Stewart, "in itself highly honourable to this respectable corps, that out of eight companies raised by the Duke of Gordon, Major Munro, Captains M'Gillivray, Grant, M'Pherson, and gentler ways of flattery and entreaty, arguments, persuasions, and prayers; but they would have been as profitably employed in bidding the monsoons to forget to blow at their fixed seasons, or in commanding the Ganges to roll back its waters to their sources among the eternal snows of the Himalayas. Nothing could turn Clive from his purpose." The private trade and dangerous privileges assumed by the servants of the Company, he as rigidly prohibited as the extortion or reception of presents from the natives. From papers laid before Parliament in 1766, it appears that the latter were frequently imprisoned in order to obtain from them large sums for the remission of crimes which never had existence; and that those who collected the revenue in the provinces ceded by Meer Cossim constantly extorted presents for themselves. the king and queen, to whom he brought princely presents from the Nabob of Oude. It is worth recording that he gave twenty guineas to the seaman who first sighted the white cliffs of his beloved old England. The name of Clive must for ever remain connected with the glory and the greatness of British India. "All the qualities of a soldier were combined in him, and each so admirably proportioned to the rest, that none predominated to the detriment. of the other. His personal courage," continues Edward Thornton, in his "British Empire in India," "enabled him to acquire a degree of influence over his troops which has rarely been equalled, and which, in India, was before his time In strong contrast to the selfish conduct of others, there was no finer example of Clive's disinterestedness than the use to which he applied a legacy of 100,000 secca rupees, or £70,000, left to him by old Meer Jaffier. He paid it into the Company's treasury at Fort William, to lie at interest for the support of European officers and soldiers, disabled or decayed in the Company's service in Bengal, and for the widows of those who might die on service there. The Company afterwards extended this provision, but the original fund still bears the name of Clive. From this unknown; and this, united with the cool and confund a colonel originally received £300 per annum, and the scale descended according to rank, so that a private obtained £10 per annum in addition to his pension; but alterations have been made subsequently, from time to time. summate judgment by which his daring energy was controlled and regulated, enabled him to effect conquests which, if they had taken place in remote times, would be regarded as incredible. Out of materials the most unpromising, he had to create Fully satisfied with the fortune he had amassed, he the instruments for effecting these conquests, and had declared, on accepting his duties as a reformer, he achieved his object where all men but himself that he renounced all claim to the monetary might have despaired. No one can dwell on the advantages attached to the post of governor-more exciting portions of his history without that he wanted only a reform, complete and catching some of the ardour which led him thorough, which, in the end, should prove equally a through those stirring scenes; no one who loves benefit to the oppressor and the oppressed, to the the country for which he fought can recall them poor natives and to the British nation. Seldom has to memory without breathing, mentally, honour a man so scrupulously adhered to the purity of his to the name of Clive. plans amid temptations such as those that beset Clive; for in India the princes would have paid any price for his open or secret alliance. According to Sir John Malcolm and others, the Rajah of Benares offered him diamonds of the greatest value; the Nabob of Oude pressed him to accept a large sum of money and a casket of costly jewels. Clive courteously, but peremptorily refused, and he always boasted with truth that his last administration, instead of increasing his fortune, had greatly lessened it. After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health made it necessary that he should return home, and on the 16th of January, 1767, he met the Select Committee at Calcutta for the last time. After a long address, full of sound advice, he concluded thus: "I leave the country in peace: I leave the civil and military departments under discipline and subordination it is incumbent on you to keep them so." * A few days afterwards he left India for ever, with General Caillaud, on board the Britannia, Captain Rous, and in July reached London, where he was received with universal acclaim, and welcomed by * Malcolm's Life; "History of India," &c "In India his fame is even greater than at home, and that fame is not his merely, it is his country's. As a statesman, Clive's vision was clear, but not extensive. He could promptly and adroitly adapt his policy to the state of things which he found existing; but none of his acts display any extraordinary political sagacity. Turning from his claims in a field where his talents command but a moderate degree of respect, and where the means by which he sometimes sought to serve the state and sometimes to promote his own interests, give rise to a different feeling, it is due to one to whom his country is so deeply indebted, to close the narrative of his career by recurring once more to that part of his character which may be contemplated with unmixed satisfaction. As a soldier, he was pre-eminently great. With the name of Clive commences the flood of glory, which has rolled on till it has covered the wide face of India with memorials of British valour. By Clive was formed the base of the column, which a succession of heroes, well worthy to follow his footsteps, have carried upward to a towering height, and surrounded with trophies of honour, rich, brilliant, and countless." CONQUEST OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLES.-AFFAIRS OF THE CARNATIC.-HYDER ALI, ETC. By our capture of Pondicherry, that ascendency which the French had hoped to establish in the East was so completely overthrown, that the government of Madras thought the time had now come to humble the Spaniards by depriving them of Manila, the capital of the Philippine Isles, but as this then important affair, though an East Indian expedition, is somewhat apart from general Indian history, our notice of it must be brief. These isles, which form an extensive archipelago in the Indian seas, and are sometimes called the Manilas, were originally named after Philip II. of Spain by the Spaniards, who first settled there in 1565, though they had been discovered by Magellan in 1520, and isle by isle they gradually became masters of the whole group, which have now a population that borders on 3,000,000 of whites, Chinese, and natives. This reduction was planned by Colonel Draper, who prevailed upon the Madras Government, in 1762, to send the Seahorse frigate, Captain Grant, to cruise near the archipelago, with orders to intercept all vessels bound for Manila, the capital; and on the 21st of July the first division of the fleet sailed from Madras Roads under Commodore Teddinson. The second followed on the first of the next month, under Admiral Sir Samuel Cornish, when the whole armament consisted of fourteen sail, led by the flagship Norfolk (seventy-four guns), having on board the 79th Regiment, under Colonel Draper, a local force furnished by the inhabitants of Madras, consisting of 600 sepoys, a company of artillery, another of Caffirs, and two of pioneers and Topasses, two of French mercenaries, and a party of lascars as labourers. On the 27th, the armament rendezvoused off the lofty and palm-covered isle of Timoan, and on the 23rd of September appeared off Manila, the capital. of the archipelago, which occupies a kind of spit of sand at the mouth of a tolerably navigable river. The Spanish force in garrison consisted of the governor's guards, a battalion of the Regimiento del Rey, under Don Pedro Valdez, some marines and artillery, a company of Pampangos, and another of cadets, the whole being commanded by Lieutenant-General Don Felix de Eguilux, and his second, Brigadier the Marquis de Villa Medina. A place for landing was selected two miles south of the city, and three frigates, warped close in shore, covered the descent with their broadsides. The 79th, with 274 marines, and some gunners and matrosses, with one mortar and three field-guns, in the long-boats and launches of the squadron, were formed in three divisions. Colonel Draper leading the centre, Colonel Monson the left, and Major More the right, they pulled rapidly in shore, through a dreadful surf, which, by dashing the boats against each other, stove several, by which much munition of war, but no lives, were lost. The guns of the shipping drove back the enemy, who were in force to oppose the landing, which was successfully achieved, and next day 632 seamen, under Captains Collins of the Weymouth (sixty), Ourry of the Elizabeth (sixty-four), and Pritchford of the America (sixty), landed to reinforce the troops. A few days were now unavoidably spent in reconnoitring, seizing advantageous posts, and erecting batteries, and in securing the communication with our shipping; but during these days there were dreadful storms of thunder, lightning, and blinding rain; yet the invaders soon discovered that the fortifications of the town, though regular, were incomplete. The ditch had never been finished; the covered way was out of repair; the glacis was too low, and many places were without guns. The garrison under Don Felix mustered 800 Spaniards, who were reinforced by many halfcastes, and 10,000 Pampangos, or men of the country, all Indians remarkable for their fearlessness and intense ferocity, who murdered every one that fell into their hands, even one of our officers when bearing a flag of truce, thus provoking the most terrible acts of retaliation. The governor of the Philippines was also the archbishop who predicted that the British would be destroyed like the host of Sennacherib. Draper's force was too small to invest a place of such extent as Manila ; he could but attack it on one side, while the others were open for the reception of supplies, and of those terrible Pampango archers, of whose aid the commandant availed himself to the utmost. On the morning of the 4th October, 1,000 of these attacked the cantonment of the naval brigade, by stealing softly forward under cover of some brushwood, encouraged by a hope that the firearms might have been rendered unserviceable by the recent rains. Their united yells pierced the still morning air, as they fell suddenly upon a picket of the 79th, whose flank fire, ere they fairly reached the seamen, shot down three hundred of them. Armed only with spears and bows, they rushed upon the bayonets that pierced their naked bodies, and died gnawing them with their teeth like wild beasts. In this affair Captain Porter, R.N., and many seamen were slain. While the savages made this sortie, another body of them made a sally from a different point, and with tumultuous yells drove our sepoys from a church which they occupied, and this post Don Felix instantly filled with men of the Regimiento del Rey, till Draper's field-guns dislodged them, with the loss of seventy men. But this cost him an officer and forty men of the 79th. After this, the courage of the Pampangos cooled, and by them the city was nearly left to its fate, which was soon sealed. A practicable breach was made, and sixty volunteers of different corps, under Lieutenant Russel of the 49th, supported by the grenadiers of that regiment, led the forlorn hope. "Colonel Monson and Major More were at the head of two grand divisions of the 79th; the battalion of seamen advanced next, sustained by other two divisions of the 79th; the Company's troops closing the rear." In this order the forces made a furious rush, with the bayonet, at the breach, which was carried in spite of all opposition, and the troops forced their way into the Plaza, where the Spaniards fired on them from the houses, and Major More was shot by the arrow of a Pampango. In the guardhouse above the Royal Gate 100 defenders, who refused all quarter, were bayoneted to the last man; three hundred more, who attempted to escape over the river Passig, were drowned; the archbishop and staff capitulated in the Casa del Ayuntamiento, to Captain Dupont of Draper's regiment, and the capital of the Philippines was won. It was ransomed from pillage on the payment of four millions of dollars, and in it were taken 556 pieces of brass and iron cannon and mortars, and with it fell the whole archipelago under our dominion.* The flames of war were now kindled in the Carnatic by Hyder Ali, the ruler of Mysore, whom we last saw in brief alliance with James Francis Law and his band of roving Frenchmen. This remarkable adventurer, who became one of our most formidable antagonists in India, had since his expedition towards Pondicherry, in his vain attempt to succour the Count de Lally, greatly added to his forces, which were chiefly recruited from the wild and military freebooting tribes of Western India; but instead of paying them, Hyder made the singular arrangement that they should pay him, by according him half the booty they might win under his banner; thus, by degrees, he won more horses, elephants, camels, arms, and treasure than his nominal master, the Rajah of Mysore, upon whom he ultimately made war; and, as the court of the latter had the usual number of disaffected chiefs and traitors, he defeated and made him prisoner, and as his name and habits attached all marauders to his standard, out of the fragments of old principalities he formed for himself the great, compact, warlike, and vigorous empire of Mysore. Therein he became the founder of Mohammedanism, and our most dreaded and strongest enemy in India. By the end of 1761, the authority of this singular marauder was firmly established in Mysore, a country enclosed by the Eastern and Western Ghauts, 210 miles in length, by 140 in breadth, having a fertile table-land 3,000 feet above the level of the sea. His origin was a most humble one. His grandfather had been a wandering dervish; Macaulay says his father was a petty collector of revenue; but another account has it that he was a naik or subaltern, for, in the very scarce papers of Baron Grant, we are told, that "about the year 1728, Cuttalich Khan, Soubah or GovernorGeneral of the Deccan, sent Termamoud Khan, an officer of reputation, and a Patan by birth, to deprive the Nabob Abdoul Ressoul Khan of his * Draper's Despatches. |