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population were ready for revolt, and in the country beyond these Ghauts-the heart of Mysore. Nothing could surpass the brilliance of this campaign and its future prospects, especially when Macleod got in motion.

"A recent conspiracy," relates the colonel, "had occurred in Seringapatam, menacing the releasement of the English prisoners, the exclusion of Tippoo's family, and the re-establishment of the ancient Rana, or Gentoo sovereign of Mysore. In addition to this enumeration of advantages, we had every reason to rely on the Gentoo, or Canara, race, forming the great mass of the inhabitants in Mysore, who had unequivocal proofs of my earnest zeal to support their interests; while every circumstance of present situation or of future prospect seemed to mark this interesting moment as the crisis of the war." *

The Rajah of Coorg, whose territories are mountainous, covered with forest and jungle, and whose people are a bold and active race, was actively asserting his independence, and invited the Bombay division to pass through Coorg. Thus General Macleod, who was strong in Europeans, native troops, and artillery, moving steadily onward, kept up the flames of war and revolt wherever he went; and now another enemy threatened Mysore in the person of General Jones, who was advancing through Cuddapah, a district usually governed by a nabob under the court of Delhi, but then forming a portion of the inland possessions of Tippoo, whose power seemed now on the point of crumbling away, for the army under Fullarton alone was the strongest belonging to Europeans that had ever been employed in India.

"The countries we had reduced," says the colonel, "extended 200 miles in length, afforded provisions for 100,000 men, and yielded an annual revenue of £600,000, while every necessary arrangement had been made for the regular collection of these resources. The fort and pass of Palaghautcherry secured our western flank, and the intermediate position of General Macleod's army between Palaghautcherry and Tippoo's main army at Mangalore, together with the singular combination of ravines, rivers, and embankments that intersect the Malabar countries, and the mountains that divide them from Mysore (the passes through which were occupied by our friends, the discontented rajahs), rendered it almost impracticable for Tippoo to move in that direction against our new acquisitions." The Rajah of Coorg, whose frontier lay only thirty miles distant from Seringapatam, promised abundant supplies, and the young Zamorin of Calicut faith

* "View of the English Interests in India," &c.

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fully kept all his engagements. He also promised that all the western Hindoo chiefs should not only provide for our troops during the projected siege of Seringapatam, but that ample magazines would be formed on the mountains, and that we should be reinforced by at least 30,000 Nairs of Malabar, fired by hatred and the deep longing for a revenge for the cruelties perpetrated upon them by the Mohammedan conquerors.

The gallant Fullarton, now full of enthusiasm at the prospect of the grand event, had provided his army with ten days' food, repaired his carriages, and was ready to advance, when, on the 28th of November, he received a startling letter from Messrs. Staunton and Sadlier, the British commissioners, who were treating for peace at Tippoo's durbar in the Mysorean camp at Arnee, and who, from the pusillanimous Council at Madras, had full power over the army, commanding him not only to suspend all operations, but to abandon his conquests, and retire within the limits originally occupied by the British on the 26th of July.

When this remarkable document reached him, he was in full possession of information that Tippoo had violated the armistice of Mangalore, and was still intent on the destruction of Campbell's garrison; and thus he knew that the commissioners must have issued their order under a complete misapprehension. He resolved, therefore, to take a middle course, as he did not feel himself at liberty either to violate or obey it.

Thus, instead of advancing on Seringapatam, he halted at Coimbatore, and sent an officer to Madras, explaining his situation, and the continued investment of Mangalore; but, in the meanwhile, he employed every hour in the perfecting of his equipments, in amassing supplies in Dindigul, in procuring money from Tinnevelly, and getting arrack from Paniany. "No soldier," says a writer, "could abandon such a scheme as he had formed, at the very moment when the prospect of success was brightest, without a bitter pang. Ten days of march, with little or no fighting-for there was no Mysorean army in the neighbourhood, except a few irregular cavalry — would have brought Fullarton under the walls of Seringapatam; at that time, ten days more would have sufficed for the reduction of that capital. The events of twentyfive years might have been anticipated; an inestimable amount of money and of blood might have been saved; the power of the British in the whole of the south of India might have been established; and a quarter of a century might have been won to the cause of order and tranquillity.” †

+ Knight,

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The Council at Madras, with their finances ruined, their credit broken, "and the Supreme Council not only withholding confidence, but supposed to be meditating suspension," for the desperate state of the Company's finances had fully occupied Parliament in May of the same year, when Sir Henry Fletcher brought forward his bill "for suspending the payments of the Company now due to the Royal Exchequer, and for enabling them to borrow the sum of £300,000 for their further relief"*—the Madras Government, we say, did not think it worth while to continue the war for the sake of a few Highlanders beleaguered in Mangalore, and on the 8th of December, 1783, they ordered Fullarton to make unqualified restitution of everything, and to fall back; and thus, to the terror of the poor Zamorin, and all the Hindoo chiefs who had committed themselves, at our instigation, with Tippoo, the Army of the South began its retrograde movement; but on the 26th of January, 1784, when Fullarton had quite reached his old boundaries, and got his weary troops into cantonments, he received another despatch from Madras, ordering him "not only to retain possession of Palaghaut, should that fort not have been delivered, but likewise to hold fast every inch of ground of which he was in possession," till he should receive further accounts of the result of the negotiations with Tippoo.

By this time the garrison of Palaghaut (or Palaghautcherry), which had been left in possession of the young Zamorin, had been attacked and driven out by the troops of the infuriated Tippoo, who sacrificed a number of venerable Brahmins, and placed their heads on poles; thus the place could only be regained by another siege, at a time when Tippoo was openly insulting alike the commissioners and the wavering Council of Madras.

While Fullarton, full of anger and bitterness, was collecting troops for this purpose, and was receiving reinforcements and heavy guns from Fort St. George and Tanjore, he received another letter from the commissioners, dated some days after Mangalore had fallen, which detailed the steady enmity of Tippoo, thus convincing him that a continuance of the war was unavoidable, an opinion in which he was confirmed by a letter from General Macleod, an officer who, in his hatred of Tippoo, had, in the old Highland fashion, challenged the sultan to mortal combat with a hundred of their bravest men on each side. Fullarton again began his march, not without hopes that it might eventually end at Seringapatam.

received intelligence that the preliminaries of a treaty of peace had actually been exchanged between Tippoo Sahib and the commissioners, and accordingly it was fully signed on the 7th of March, 1784.

With the first intelligence came orders to restore to Tippoo the fortresses and territories of Darapooram and Carroor, but to retain Dindigul with a strong garrison, until all the British prisoners in Seringapatam should be released from their loathsome and dreadful captivity.

At this crisis, every European in India knew the bloodshed, the devastation, and revenge that awaited the miserable Hindoos of Mysore, Coorg, and Canara; but peace had become a necessity, owing to the impoverished state of the Company's territories; and the negotiations for it were justified and enforced, by the tenor of instructions from the Ministry, from Leadenhall Street, and by the situation of political affairs in Europe.

With all that, even at this date, it is impossible not to regret that Colonel Fullarton's brilliant plan for capturing Seringapatam had not been carried out to the full. The tyrant would then have been crushed in his own blood-stained stronghold; uncounted murders would have been avenged, and others uncounted have been prevented. The reduction of Mysore would have enriched the Company, and the retention of the lands which Fullarton had conquered would, by their revenues, have paid the expenses of the next and inevitable campaign ; for Tippoo, the scourge of his dusky race, when again made a tool of by France, was fated once more, and for the last time, to wage a destructive war with us in the years to come.

By the treaty of peace, both parties were to make a full restitution of all they had taken in war. But Tippoo could not restore our hapless officers and soldiers, the helpless prisoners who had died in fetters and torture in the damp dungeons of Seringapatam, who had been carried to Cabal Droog and poisoned, or taken into the woods and hacked to pieces. Of the wretched survivors, he surrendered 180 British officers, and 900 soldiers, with 1,600 sepoys; and the tales these men had to tell of all they had been compelled to endure, made the blood of the listeners boil, and excited such horror and indignation, that our soldiers alone, in the temper they were then in, rendered the duration of peace a great problem.

The following extract affords a sample of Tippoo's character. Four years after these events he paid a visit to Calicut, where the country people were

Fullarton had not proceeded far, when he dwelling in peace. "He compelled them to quit their habitations, and reside in villages of forty

*T. A. Lloyd.

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REBELLION AND MASSACRE AT BENARES-ROUT, FLIGHT, AND DETHRONEMENT OF CHEYTE SING.

THE wars we have narrated had greatly extended our dominion in India, and India itself had been saved to us; but the expense of those wars was now enormous. The difficulties of faction within the Supreme Council troubled Warren Hastings no more, but the financial embarrassments of the Company were great in the extreme, at home and abroad. The means had to be found by Hastings alike for the maintenance of the government in Bengal, and of making remittances to the shareholders in Leadenhall Street. No more could be done with the Mogul or the now enslaved Rohillas; yet Hastings found that, imperatively, money must be got wherever it could be decently obtained; so he now turned his eyes on Benares, the holy city of the Hindoos-the very soil of which is sacred to them, as that of Mecca is to the Mohammedans. To die there, is for a follower of Menou to conquer the pang of death; and thither are brought the urns of those who have breathed their last at vast distances from the waters of "Holy Mother Ganga." At Benares, "it was commonly believed that half a million of human beings was crowded into that labyrinth of lofty alleys, rich with shrines and minarets, balconies, and carved cornices, to which the sacred apes clung by hundreds. The traveller could scarcely make his way through the press of holy mendicants, and not less holy bulls. The broad and stately flights of steps which descended from these swarming haunts to the bathing-places along the Ganges, were worn every day by the footsteps of an innumerable multitude of worshippers. The schools and temples drew crowds of pious Hindoos from

every province where the Brahminical faith was known. Hundreds of devotees came hither every month to die for it was believed that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man who should pass from the sacred city into the sacred river. Nor was superstition the only motive which allured strangers to that great metropolis. Commerce had as many pilgrims as religion. All along the shores of the venerable stream lay great fleets of vessels laden with rich merchandise."

Many of the neighbouring princes owed their political existence solely to the arms of Britain, and were known to possess treasure to a great amount; and if they would not contribute voluntarily, it was resolved to put a judicious pressure upon them, and the first to whom this was to be applied was Cheyte Sing, the Rajah of wealthy Benares, who held his musnud entirely through Hastings. The three opponents of the latter had transferred Cheyte's dominions to the Nabob of Oude; but Hastings had secured him in possession, on condition of his paying a fixed tribute to the Company.

This tribute, though Cheyte's life and throne must have perished had our enemies succeeded in the late war, he paid most grudgingly, and more than once pleaded poverty, particularly in 1779, to evade it entirely, though Macaulay asserts that it was paid "with strict punctuality." About £60,000 only had been obtained from him. In 1780, a demand was made upon him, not for money, but for troops-as many cavalry as could be spared from his service. This vague demand our resident at Benares fixed at 2,000 men; but on the rajah asserting that he had but 1,300 troopers, who were

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necessary for the collection of his revenue, the demand was limited to 1,000. To comply with this request, Cheyte Sing collected the men from among the budmashes and other street vagabonds, 500 of whom he mounted on horses, and 500 more of whom he armed with old matchlocks, and sent Hastings word that they awaited his orders. At this time, so critical to himself, the traitor prince and false friend was discovered to be maintaining an insidious and dangerous correspondence with those who were then in arms against us, and an air of insolence and independence was observed in all he did and said. No answer was returned in the matter of the 1,000 men, for coercion had been resolved on, and the Governor-General said, "I am resolved to draw from his guilt the means of relief to the Company's distresses. In a word, I had determined to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact a severe vengeance for his past delinquency."

present palace of its now nominal rajah, Ramnuggur,
four miles distant on the opposite bank of the
Ganges. Rumour went, that the two grenadier
companies had come on their perilous duty without
ammunition in their pouches, so a third was dis-
patched with it to support them. The sepoys who
guarded the rajah were under arms in an enclosed
square, which surrounded the apartment in which
Cheyte was confined.
When the third company
approached, they found every avenue blocked up
by yelling hordes of armed men, excited with rage,
religious rancour, and too probably maddened by
bhang. The fierce multitudes soon became in-
flamed to a dangerous pitch. A fire of all kinds, of
pistols and matchlocks, opened on the sepoys within
the square, who, having no ammunition, could make
but a feeble resistance to the human surge that
rolled in upon them armed with weapons of many
sorts, and every man of the detachment was cut to
pieces. "The officers were, it is supposed, the first
victims; but they did not fall till they had made
astonishing efforts of bravery, and involved a much
superior number of assailants in their fate. Eighty-
two men fell in this massacre, and ninety-two were
wounded.” †

During the mêlée, Cheyte effected his escape through a wicket, tied several turbans together, lowered himself down into a boat, and reached the other side of the river, followed by the rabble. The third company of sepoys, under Lieutenant Birrel, now came on, took possession of the palace, and with the bayonet ferreted out all the people of the rajah, but not without casualties-making a total loss of 205 killed and wounded. Had Cheyte's rescuers, instead of flying after him, suddenly fallen upon Warren Hastings, he says, "my blood and that of about thirty English gentlemen of my party would have been added to the recent carnage.” On learning that Ramnuggur was deserted, Hastings did not deem its occupation prudent, as originally his whole force at hand consisted of only six companies of Popham's regiment from Buxar, and three of these had suffered as related.

On the 14th of August, 1781, Hastings arrived at Benares, and so little did he apprehend danger, that Mrs. Hastings accompanied him as far as Monghir, and he took with him only his usual body-guard and staff. The cunning Cheyte Sing came eastward as far as Buxar "to meet the Governor-General, and lay his turban upon his lap in token of entire submission," and they entered the holy city together; and then Cheyte, who in the narrative of this affair is styled "Rajah Cheit Sing, Zemindar or Renter of the Circars of Benares, Gauzipore, and Chunar," was taken to task, but replied evasively and insolently. Hastings then gave our resident, Mr. Markham (son of the Rev. Dr. William Markham, Archbishop of York, and formerly Bishop of Chester), orders to arrest him early on the following morning. Accordingly, that very evening, Cheyte found himself a prisoner in his own stately palace under two grenadier companies of Major Popham's native regiment, under Lieutenants Stalker, Scott, and Symes. The disgust of the rajah at this sudden proceeding was lost in his amazement at its boldness. Benares was fully 420 miles distant from Calcutta, and contained, as we have said, a population of about half a million. Cheyte Sing, now that the first fury of the popu To these might be added all that were casual and lace had evaporated, and though his early flight migratory-pilgrims and holy mendicants-well- showed his fear of Hastings, knew that the situation. nigh insane with fanaticism, and many of them of the latter and his handful of Britons in Benares ferocious desperadoes, all provided with arms. was most critical. They were surrounded on all Among all these, and the people generally, Cheyte sides, and were without money or provisions for a was popular. Tidings of his arrest spread through single day. Thus Cheyte on one hand sent humble the great city like wildfire, and a universal rush was apologies for the slaughter committed, while on the made to the palace, led by fakirs and fanatics of all other he began to arm all the men he could muster; kinds. and on the 18th of August, having recovered from This took place, not in the city, but at the his consternation, he sent 2,000 men, under one of

* Hastings' "Narrative."

+ "Narrative" (London, 1783).

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