and opinions. I shall here assure your lordship that this unhappy difference did not spring from me, and that, had General Clavering, Mr. Monson, and Mr. Francis brought with them the same conciliatory spirit which I have adopted, your lordship would not have been embarrassed with the appeals of a disjointed administration, nor the public business here retarded by discordant quarrels."*

The Rohilla war was a never-ending source of dispute. One party described the natives who had been dispossessed as all that Macaulay paints them; the other averred that they had all the craft and treachery peculiar to the worst class of the Indians, to which was added the bloodthirstiness of the jungle tigers, and that the real objects of pity in Rohilcund were the meek and oppressed Hindoos. Champion's brigade was to be withdrawn; but the price of the war was to be paid into the treasury, and the nabob was to be compelled to pay to the last anna all he had promised, and to be terrified into making earlier payments than had been agreed upon. "Thus," says a writer pithily, "if they considered the Rohilla war as diabolical work, they would still have the devil's money ;" and these resolutions were carried into execution forthwith, despite the most earnest remonstrances of Hastings and of Barwell.

Their proceedings so harassed and terrified Sujah Dowlah, that it is supposed they shortened his life, for he died soon after, early in January, 1775, in his last moments dictating a letter to Warren Hastings, in which he implored protection and friendship for his eldest legitimate son and suc

cessor.

The latter, by name Asoff-ud-Dowlah, now succeeded to the nabobship of Oude, with all its dependencies, including Rohilcund; but the petty majority of the Council were now as harsh to the son as they had been to the father, and started a very strange doctrine. They maintained that the treaty made with the late nabob expired with himself, and that they were therefore entitled to negotiate with his successor, on the principle that all former arrangements had ceased to be binding. From whence these pundits drew their ideas of international law does not appear, but the profits to accrue therefrom confirmed them strongly in a sense of their own wisdom. In one sense, as a very heavy debt was owing the Company, it appeared that an application of their doctrine to the new nabob would be very efficacious, so, through their agent at Oude, Mr. Bristow, Gleig's "Life of Hastings."

who had succeeded Mr. Middleton, and who took his orders from, and acted entirely in the spirit of, Messrs. Francis, Clavering, and Monson, the luckless Asoff-ud-Dowlah was peremptorily commanded to accede to a treaty which contained one essential article that was, undoubtedly, far more questionable than Hastings' arrangements for the conquest of Rohilcund.

Their terms were, that all the sums of money due to the Company by the late Sujah Dowlah were to be fully and rapidly discharged; that the purchase of Korah and Allahabad, for which fifty lacs of rupees had been paid (or promised) should be ratified, but only on condition that over and above the purchase-money the Company should receive a free grant of the territory of Benares, held under Oude, by the Rajah Cheyte Sing, as zemindar, and yielding a revenue of 2,210,000 rupees (or £221,000), which territory it was not in the nabob's power to cede, as it had been solemnly guaranteed to the rajah by Hastings.

There is little wonder that, in such hands, Asoff-ud-Dowlah displayed what the author of the "British Power in India," terms "the most fluctuating disposition," and delayed to sign the new treaty till he found that delay and resistance availed him not. Moreover, the monthly pay of the Company's brigade, if it was to remain in Oude, was to be increased by 50,000 rupees. Hastings, with just indignation, refused to sanction this treaty, which, nevertheless, met with the warmest approbation of the Court of Directors at home; for these gentlemen, inspired only by the spirit of acquisitiveness, looked smilingly at the money clauses, heedless of the gross injustice of the conditions, or the young prince's ability or inability to fulfil them.

Great importance had been all along attached to the alliance with Oude, as a barrier against the Mahrattas; but matters were not improved by the accession of Asoff-ud-Dowlah. Suspecting the fidelity of Busheer Khan, who commanded in Rohilcund, he took the true Oriental way to get rid of him, by ordering his assassination; but the latter escaped to Agra, where Nujeef Khan, the general of the Mogul army, took him into his service. Shortly after, two chiefs, to whom he had entrusted his conquests in the Doab, threw off their allegiance, and declared themselves independent. These events, with other disturbances fermented by the ambitious spirit of Murteza Khan, the prime minister of Asoff-ud-Dowlah, induced the Council to interfere, more especially as the subsidy had fallen heavily into arrear. In his desperation he applied to his mother, Baboo Begum, who had

father-an empty title, for which he had to pay by a handsome present. But intrigues began to prevail at his court and everywhere around him. His favourite minister, Murteza Khan, behaved to all with insulting arrogance, and, in return, was cordially hated as an upstart; and at the head of the

had frequently distinguished himself in battle, and now commanded the army of Oude. So bitter was the hatred between Kojah and Murteza Khan, that one night, after an apparent reconciliation, when they had both drunk to excess, the latter was murdered by some assassins.

Affecting to be innocent of this atrocity, Kojah Bussunt waited on the nabob to explain, but was ordered at once to be beheaded. Saadut Ali, the nabob's brother, and real instigator of the murder, fearing that he was in danger, mounted a swift horse, and fled to Nujeef Khan; so thus, in one day, did the nabob lose his general, his minister, and his brother. From Etawah he went to Lucknow; but his army being left without a head, and in arrears of pay, became ready for mutiny; and, as jealousy of their European officers afforded a ready pretext for disturbance, on a given day, several battalions, though distant from each other, concerted to set them totally at defiance. Some of the officers effected an escape with great difficulty; and, at last, by stern measures, to which two of the Company's regiments lent their aid, the mutineers were reduced or scattered.

possession of all his father's treasure, and she gave him the sum of thirty lacs, and a release for a sum of twenty-six lacs previously advanced, on his binding himself to trouble her for money no more. To provide for defence abroad and tranquillity at home, he placed European officers over his troops; but having disbanded a body of match-malcontents was Kojah Bussunt, an eunuch, who lockmen, while their pay was five months in arrear, a dangerous mutiny broke out, and 4,000 of them set out to attack his camp at Etawah, on the banks of the Jumna. There the banks of the river are prodigiously high, and are rent or perforated into enormous holes and ravines by the action of the rains, while the soil is a hard conglomerated earth. The town, which overhangs these ravines, has a curious aspect, many of the houses being perched on crags which have been cut off from the main body; but ruin and desolation are everywhere apparent.* Yet in no part of India, save the hilldistricts, are more beautiful flowers, birds, and insects to be seen. There the oleanders, spreading into large shrubs, send forth their delicious perfume from clusters of pink and white blossom; the baubool also breathes from its bells of gold, while the white jasmine and other flowers that are full of fragrance abound; and amid the bushes may be seen the lovely little tailor-bird, sewing leaves together in his sweetly-scented nest; the bright green fly-catcher; the ring-necked parroquet; and the byaks, or crested sparrows, whose breasts are of the brightest yellow, and look like gold as they float along; and numbers of gaily-plumaged waterThe Oudean officer commanding at Korah, by birds feed there along the banks of the Jumna. name Mahboob Ali Khan, was an object of susHere, then, in this romantic spot, Asoff-ud-picion to the nabob, who requested that two of the Dowlah came to meet his mutineers, if disbanded Company's battalions might occupy that district ; men can be called so. He went forth in person, and they were readily sent under Colonel Parker, but having failed to pacify them, resolved to put an officer whose mode of procedure was both them down by force, and for this purpose drew up unwise and eccentric. The first step he took, was 15,000 sepoys in line. Mr. Bristow, as resident, to disarm all the officers of Mahboob, whose troops remonstrated against this proceeding, but in vain, at his approach had received him by a royal salute and a regular battle ensued. Some of the match- of twenty-one guns in his honour. Most singularly, lockmen, appalled by the force opposed to them, Parker chose to deem this an act of defiance, and gave way; but of 2,500, who bravely held their demanded the surrender of the guns. This was of ground, 600 were killed and many wounded, while course refused, on which the colonel, at the head of 300 sepoys fell-altogether a new way of settling his troops, fell on with the bayonet, and in ten arrears of pay, that seems rather costly. After this minutes had captured the whole brigade of fielddisturbance was quelled, Asoff-ud-Dowlah spent pieces. All this looked so much like the commany days sunk in dissipation, in drinking to mencement of a war that the nabob, in his sober excess, and amusing himself by the intoxication of moments, was sorely perplexed, and at one time all about him. "Such was the ally from whom the denounced Mahboob as a traitor, and at another Company had been taught to expect so much!" thanked the blundering Parker for his services, at the same time permitting the former to appear at court, and to receive new marks of the highest favour.

The nabob, while lingering at Etawah, obtained from the emperor, Shah Alum, the office of Vizier of the Mogul Empire, which had been held by his

* Archer.

This state of matters also perplexed the Council

SALSETTE CONQUERED.—TREATY WITH RAGOBAH.-THE BATTLE OF ARASS.-FALL OF RAGOBAH THE MAHRATTA.

200 gun - lascars, under General Robert Gordon, had in like manner become the tools of Mohammed conducting the military, and Commodore Watson Ali, and put him in possession of the kingdom of the naval, portion of the armament, was dispatched Tanjore, not because the rajah had done them any against Tannah, though, both while negotiating with injury, but, on the contrary, because they had, by Ragobah and deliberating on the intended capture, their own confession, injured him; and having thus the Bombay Council were doubtful of the extent of reason to fear that he might become their enemy, their powers, as the Regulating Act made them deemed it necessary, for their own security, to subordinate to the Council and Governor-General aggravate the injury tenfold, by robbing him of his at Calcutta. But there was no time to be lost, personal liberty and depriving him of his kingdom. for the very day after the expedition departed, The Council of Bombay had done iniquity on a less the Portuguese fleet came to anchor off Bombay extensive scale, but in a still more flagrant manner. harbour, and lodged a formal protest against it. In their conquest they could not even pretend the entanglements of allies whose importunities they found it impossible to resist, but unblushingly seized upon property belonging to one ally, and claimed by another, simply because they had long coveted it, and had ceased to have any hope of obtaining it except by violence!"