the collectorate, with an annual payment of thirtyeight lacs of rupees, instead of twenty-seven lacs, the sum for which he had actually agreed. A sum of eleven lacs per annum, or twenty-two lacs for the two years, was at once cut off from the balance supposed to be due by him; and in the end, though the perfect innocence of the naib was not quite clearly established, Hastings was indisposed to deal harshly with him; and after a long hearing, in which the vindictive Nuncomar appeared as accuser, and in which he displayed but too plainly the rancorous hate that inspired him, Hastings declared that the charges had not been made out, and that the fallen man was at liberty. "The rival, the enemy so long envied, so implacably persecuted, had been dismissed unhurt; the situation so long and so ardently desired had been abolished. It was natural that the Governor should be, from that time, an object of the most intense hatred to the vindictive Brahmin. As yet, however, it was necessary to repress such feelings; but the time was coming when that long animosity was to end in a desperate and deadly struggle." While the position of affairs was thus, the Rajah Nuncomar began a new series of subtle villanies. Cruel, heartless, and infamous though he was, he was not without a zeal for the promotion of the Brahmin faith, and the uprootal of Mohammedanism in Bengal. With this view, or to this end, he sent to his son Goordass, the treasurer to the nabob under our auspices, certain letters, which he desired to have copied by the Munny Begum, then regent to the infant prince; and these were to pass as if addressed from herself to the Council at Calcutta. In these specially-designed letters were complaints of infractions of treaties by the British, of curtailments of the royal rights of her little charge, and bluntly demanding the restoration of those rights. By this scheme, Nuncomar thought to kindle such a quarrel as should rouse the British to subvert the Mussulman influence in Bengal; and by humiliating a rival creed, in the confusion and fighting that must ensue, to gratify his hatred of Moslem and Christian alike, while, at the same time, power and plunder might accrue to himself. Hastings soon discovered where the evil spirit was at work; but aware how great and dangerous was the influence that this artful and malevolent son of Menou possessed at the India House, he deemed it prudent to take no step until he had put the Court of Directors in possession of the facts. Instead of ordering his instant arrest, they delayed to reply distinctly for some time, affecting to deem him no worse than other natives; and there would seem to be little doubt that Nuncomar, by the money at his disposal, had won over, in London, some very high partisans, who dreaded the discovery of their having accepted such bribes. One of the objects contemplated by Nuncomar, both in India and England, was the destruction of Warren Hastings, who had foiled his plans before. Foreseeing all this, the latter urged upon the directors that there could be no hope of peace or quiet in Bengal if this dangerous man was listened to; but while this last despatch was on its way, events transpired that were of more immediate importance than punishing the intrigues or contradicting the malevolent representations of the Maharajah Nuncomar. CHAPTER XXXI. THE TREATY OF BENARES.-ROHILLA WAR.-BATTLE OF BABUL-NULLAH, AND CONQUEST OF ROHILCUND. FOR Some time prior to these events, Warren | found all antagonistic to him, as he was entrusted Hastings had been busily devising means for placing the internal trade of Bengal, and the external traffic of the Company, upon a better footing, and in the reformation of all ranks and classes of the Company's servants; and in making these changes which were deemed innovations, and most unwelcome ones he became antagonistic to all, and with the execution of these necessary reforms and alterations. As Clive had done before him, he was thus unconsciously, while in the fulfilment of his trust, sowing the seeds of hatred and vengeance, the effect of which he was to feel in time to come; and, in addition to these thankless and laborious tasks, were added the constant anxieties that arose 1771.] THE BHOTANESE. from the Company's peculiar connections with the Nabob of Oude, with Shah Alum, and the encroaching Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who at uncertain times burst into the heart of India, carrying war and terror from Delhi to the frontiers of Oude, and from the Ghauts of the Carnatic to those behind Bombay. In addition to these he had cause of trouble by murderous hordes of all descriptions-Jauts, Dacoits, Afghans, Bheels, Khonds, and Thugs, "and others of that long array of monstrosity which give to the history of Hindostan the appearance of fable, or of a hideous dream." In his treaty with the Mogul emperor, Shah Alum, Lord Clive had guaranteed that weak and forlorn monarch the quiet possession of Allahabad and Korah, with twenty-six lacs of rupees annually as a stipend from the Company, who, amid their many embarrassments, had long grudged this money, which would appear to have been, at no time, too punctually paid, and for fully two years had been withheld altogether. Hastings had ample reasons to plead for withholding the stipend, though it happened, unluckily for him, that these reasons were not specified as probabilities in the Treaty of Allahabad; and hence, in natural anger, Shah Alum, quitting Korah and Allahabad-the only territories he had, and the possession of which he owed entirely to the Company-early in 1771, courted the alliance of the Mahrattas, and took the field with a mixed and numerous army. In this, it is said, that he was secretly encouraged by Sujah Dowlah, of Oude, who longed to be rid of his presence, that he might seize upon both Korah and Allahabad, which had belonged of old to the kingdom of Oude, and which he hoped might fall under his rule, with the aid of the British, if he could make a pecuniary bargain with them. In making this junction with the Mahrattas, Hastings taxed the Mogul with equal treachery and ingratitude to the Company, and in a letter to Sir George Colebrooke, of Gatton, M.P., and long chairman of the Court of Directors, he said, that "of all the powers of Hindostan, the English here alone have really acknowledged his authority. They invested him with the royalty he now possesses; they conquered for him and gave him a territory." * By the end of 1771, the Mahratta chiefs bore the forlorn and foolish Mogul triumphantly into Delhi; but though in the gorgeous palace of Aurungzebe, he was but a state prisoner in the hands of those hordes of warlike horsemen, who * Gleig, "Memoirs of Warren Hastings." 159 compelled him to do whatever they pleased; and he was soon hurried into the field, as they were eager for plunder, for the conquest and permanent possession of the land of the Rohillas, Rohilcund, or Kuttahir, an extensive district, which belonged of old to the province of Delhi, lying between the Ganges and the Gogra, and between the 28th and 30th parallels of north latitude. Its climate is temperate, and its soil most fertile. Long had the eyes of the vizier nabob, Sujah Dowlah, coveted this tempting district, in the hope of obtaining it by British aid and the Company's sepoys. On learning that the Mogul had weakly ceded Korah and Allahabad to the Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who declared his intention of taking immediate possession, the nabob claimed our assistance to prevent these perilous marauders from obtaining a footing in provinces that lay in the heart of his own territory-a settlement that would bring them close upon our own frontier. Thus, to anticipate their movements, Hastings threw into Allahabad a British garrison, under Sir Robert Barker, who was warmly welcomed by the deputy of Shah Alum, that official declaring that his master was no longer a free agent, but a captive of the Mahratta chiefs, who were actually in the habit of subjecting him to blows, and other degradations, when he refused to sign such decrees and firmans as they demanded. Anxious to preserve peace, as the best means of restoring the prosperity and trade of Bengal after the scourge of the famine, the Governor would gladly have contented himself with the demonstration of posting a brigade in Allahabad; and for some time he paid no attention to the representations of Sujah Dowlah, who persistently urged that the Mahrattas, after subduing Rohilcund, would overrun the whole of Oude, and then, bursting down by the Ganges, would spread death and havoc through Bengal and Behar, as they could bring 80,000 men into the field-men before the flash of whose spears the effeminate Hindoos. and timid Bengalees would grovel in the dust. About this time, Hastings sent a detachment, under Captain Jones, to drive the Bhotanese, a fierce and resolute mountain race, out of CutchBehar, a fertile and healthy province, lying between the Choncosh and the Ghoraghat rivers and the stupendous mountains of Bhotan, and to annex it to the Company's dominions, to which geographically it belonged. Jones followed the Bhotanese into their own remote country, and took their strongest fortress-Dhalimacotta-by storm, compelling them to send a bonze, or friend of the Bogdo-Lama, as ambassador to Calcutta. At this the Governor hastened to pursue and to punish, same time, the attention of Hastings was fully ordering another to follow a different track, which occupied by the sudden inroads and devastations the fakirs usually took on their return. Yet, after of the Senessee Fakirs, a vast multitude of variously great exertions by these and other corps, nothing armed men, who united in themselves the several was achieved, and those terrible marauders, covered characters of living martyrs, saints and jugglers, with the blood of many assassinations, and laden robbers and assassins, although such a combina- with valuable plunder, crossing steep mountains tion was not reconcilable to Indian ideas and and deep rivers in safety, reached their fastnesses superstition. in those wild and distant districts that lie between Hindostan, Thibet, and China; but the results of their ravages had a serious effect upon the revenues of the Company, quite as much from real as from pretended losses. Hordes of these wretches, almost naked, smeared with ochre, ashes, and ghee, had been for ages prowling over all India, pretending to live by alms and prayer, while stealing, murdering, and committing every species of abomination. An army of them, led by an old woman, calling herself an enchantress, had at one time defeated that of the Emperor Aurungzebe, and made him tremble on his peacock throne at Delhi. Silently, swiftly, the present horde, in bands of about three thousand each, rushed through Bengal, burning, destroying the villages, and committing unnumbered horrors wherever they went. Five battalions were sent in pursuit of them, but they swept from place to place with a celerity that defied the pursuit of any regular infantry. To save the Company's exchequer, Hastings had reduced the native cavalry, and, save a troop or so of horse, we had none in that part of India. When it was weakly supposed that this filthy swarm of fakirs had crossed the Brahmaputra river, they suddenly reappeared in various places in the interior of Bengal. In a letter to Sir George Colebrooke, dated March, 1773, Hastings says, that though "the severest penalties were threatened to the inhabitants in case they failed to give notice of the approach of the Senessees, they are so infatuated by superstition as to be backward in giving the information, so that the banditti are sometimes advanced into the very heart of our provinces before we know anything of their motions, as if they dropped from heaven to punish the inhabitants for their folly." One of their detached bands fell in with a small party of our troops, under Captain Edwards, and threw them into confusion; after which, that officer, in attempting to rally his men, was slain and mutilated. Excited by this petty victory, the savage fakirs rushed into fresh excesses, and actually put to the rout an entire battalion of sepoys, led by an officer who had been most vigilant in their pursuit, but who, until this occasion, always found them gone before he reached the place to which he had been directed. With one detachment, The nabob was now told that the operations of the Company would be purely defensive; and that, though troops had been placed in Allahabad, nothing should tempt them to overstep the strict line of defence, or allow our arms to pass beyond the frontier of Oude. But the wily nabob knew well the financial difficulties of the Company, and did not lose courage. He therefore proposed a personal interview at Benares. He reached that magnificent city on the 19th of August, 1773, and on the 7th of September there was concluded between him and the Company what has been named the Treaty of Benares, the leading articles of which were: "That the districts of Korah and Allahabad, which, less than three months before, had been formally taken possession of by one of the members of the Calcutta Council, in the name of the Company, acting as allies of the king, Shah Alum,' should be ceded to the nabob for fifty lacs of rupees, payable to the Company, twenty in ready money, and the remainder in two years, by equal instalments; and that for whatever of the Company's forces the nabob might require, he would pay at the fixed rate of 210,000 rupees per month for a brigade." This treaty was very severely commented upon at home, and doubtless it bore injustice on the face of it, inasmuch as it engaged the Company to sell, for their own behoof, districts which were held by them in trust. Notwithstanding this, the biographer of Hastings maintains that he really cannot see "upon what grounds, either of political or moral justice, this proposition deserves to be stigmatised as infamous." But though that clause of the treaty looked harmless enough, the understanding which bound the Company to accept money as the price of blood, and to hire out its troops as mercenaries, bore an unpleasant construction. “If we understand the meaning of words," comments Macaulay, "it is infamous to commit a wicked action for hire, and it is wicked to engage 1774] HOSTILITIES AGAINST THE ROHILLAS. 161 in war without provocation. In this particular their zenanas and children at Lucknow and war, scarcely one aggravating circumstance was Fyzabad. wanting. The object of the Rohilla war was this: to deprive a large population, who had never done us the least harm, of a good government, and to place them, against their will, under an execrably bad one. Nay, even this is not all. England now descended far below the level of those petty German princes who, about the same time, sold us troops to fight the Americans." Be all this as it may, the war went on, though the Government were not without misgivings; and Hastings, in a singularly blundering and somewhat sophistical way, compared the relation of Rohilcund to Oude, with that of Scotland to England, before the union of their crowns; but he forgot that Scotland was an independent kingdom, while the Rohillas were scattered over a country peopled by different races, who regarded them as intruders and severe task-masters; so, in that sense, the simile was absurd. But soon after, the Nabob of Oude made an application of another kind. Encouraged by some successes which he had obtained over the Mahrattas, and by a new alliance made with the Mogul, who had escaped from these invaders, and had actually offered to assist in the reduction of Rohilcund, he applied for the promised brigade of the Company's troops, which, under the command of Colonel Champion, received orders to begin its march from Patna. There was no longer any disguise as to the kind of service in which these troops were to be engaged, for the colonel was distinctly told "that the object of the campaign was the reduction of the Rohilla country lying between the Ganges and the mountains. On entering the vizier's country, he was to acquaint his excellency that he was at his service, and seek a personal interview, for the purpose of concerting the intended operations in which the Company's troops were to be employed." In making these hostile arrangements, the claims of humanity were completely omitted, as nothing was remembered about mitigating the evils of war to the unfortunate people about to be attacked and sacrificed; but the money question-the 210,000 rupees per month-was kept prominently in view, and Champion had orders to fall back on Benares if it was permitted to be a day beyond the month in arrear. "The Rohilla country," he wrote, "is bounded on the west by the Ganges, and the north and east by the mountains of Tartary. It is to the province of Oude, in respect both to its geographical and political relation, exactly what Scotland was to England before the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It lies open on the south where it touches Oude. The reduction of this territory would complete the defensive line of the vizier's dominions, and, of course, leave us less to defend, as he subsists on our strength entirely. It would add much to his income, in which we should have our share." And with these incentives, it was resolved to vicinity of Delhi, could be ready to take the field. make war on the first opportunity. Hastings was not deceived in his anticipation that the Vizier-Nabob of Oude would soon want his assistance. As the year 1773 was closing, the nabob was somewhat scared by a rumour that the Abdallees, a fierce and warlike Afghan tribe, were about to invade him, and actually applied for some place of shelter within our territories for the women and children of his family, and also for those of the principal chiefs of Oude. Hastings immediately granted this request, considering that it sounded well in favour of humanity, and to the honour of Britain; while, at the same time, he shrewdly supposed that the families of these great zemindars would be accompanied by a host of retainers and servants, many of whom might settle within the safe and certain frontier of our territory; but he was disappointed in this. The Abdallees did not come down from their native mountains, so the nabob and his zemindars kept The colonel commenced his march at a time when the Governor did not think that the viziernabob, who was conferring with the Mogul in the However, "the brigade," he wrote, "will gain in its discipline by being on actual service, and its expense will be saved." On the 21st of February, 1774, Colonel Champion took the field; and on the 24th of March he crossed the Caramnassa, a small river which falls into the Ganges near Buxar, and was in full march towards the country of the Rohillas, when he received a letter from their leader, a famous warrior, named Hafiz Rahmet, proposing an accommodation. This could not be listened to, as the nabob, who had formerly made the non-payment of forty lacs of rupees a pretext for the war, now demanded two crores, equal to two millions sterling-more than the whole country contained in specie. The luckless Rohillas, aware now that nothing but their destruction would satisfy a cruel enemy, to whom the Company, in whose equity they had hitherto placed some reliance, had completely abandoned them, prepared to put the whole affair to the issue of the sword, and, in hot haste, mustered 40,000 men-infantry, horse, and rocketeers. "It is impossible to describe a more obstinate firmness than the enemy displayed," reported With these, Hafiz Rahmet took up a strong Colonel Champion to Hastings. "Numerous position at Babul Nullah. There, on the morning were their gallant men who advanced, and often |